Eastern Europe Art and architecture Trips

Our guide, Sapfo, was truly excellent. Without doubt the best group leader you could wish for. She was interested and engaged with everyone in the group. She was knowledgeable. She was super organized and nothing was a chore. Our group dinners every night were a big success. Her restaurant choices were excellent. Our driver, Georgiou, was also really great. He kept the Mercedes mini bus immaculate. He was a careful and considerate driver and you always felt safe even on the tight back roads of the Mani Peninsula. Itinerary is good except that Monemvasia should be included as part of the tour proper and Sparta dropped from the itinerary. Make sure you take the optional extra of visiting Monemvasia if offered. It is well worth it. Overall I would say the tour is best described as “very full on”. A lot of the ancient and medieval sites have many many steps and some of the stones are very polished from so many people stepping on them over thousands of years. So I would recommend wearing hiking shoes if you have them also also bringing walking poles if you have them. Both will help with climbs, of which there are quite a few as I say. Overall the accommodation was ok (but not brilliant) except for Hotel Galaxy (they need to axe Het Galaxy). The Pantheon City Hotel was the best. Our group got on well, and I think that was in large part due to our guide Sapfo.

We loved everything about this trip. Our tour guide was amazing, the tours were informative with a little more free time than we’d like but made the best of our time in each city! The hotel was subpar, we found some black mold in our room and bathroom but other than that the vacation was wonderful!

The itinerary for the first 3 days was too light with not much to do, but after that the tour was great. Valentina did a great job as tour manager. Venice, was beautiful, as was Florence, Romagna, Orvieto, and San Marino. The excursions at the glass factory and cheese making school were very interesting. The wine resort was beautiful.

We were lucky to have a virtually private tour with an excellent guide and brilliant driver plus beautiful accommodation. Very interesting tour experiences too with such a knowledgeable guide.

I loved staying at the winery. I loved Venice and San Marino. It was all wonderful. It was the best vacation that I have been on in my entire life!

I really enjoyed this trip to Sicily. It was definitely full on, we saw and did so much! The days were long but filled with good information and beautiful sights. Our local guides, with one exception, were fantastic. They offered a huge amount of information and history and made our tour more valuable. My fellow travelers were a great group of people and we really bonded well. I did feel at times the days were so full it didn't leave much time to explore on our own or time to stop and enjoy some places and some felt unnecessary. Maybe we could have spent more time in other places? But I appreciate that we got to see the whole island vs any other tour company I looked at. Our hotels were good, typical of my other Explore tour. They were clean and the breakfasts were adequate and the staff were always wonderful. Since we only stayed in most places for 1 night, the location wasn't as much of a concern since we were quickly on the go. The private van was the perfect way to travel and very comfortable. But there were times having wifi would have been nice. Our tour guide made fantastic dinner recommendations and we almost always ate as a group. I wish he had provided us with a bit more general info as we moved from place to place but overall he did a good job.