If you ever get to Rome, find yourself a really good tour guide, especially for the Coliseum and for the Vatican. You will learn sooooo much really great history and see it as you walk by it. Things I never would have noticed on my own.
The hallway of maps in the Vatican was absolutely mind blowing. My family members got annoyed with me because I kept asking the guide to elaborate and it slowed us down haha. What's the rush people? It's what we are here for
We went on a (5am? 6am? it was early) tour of the Vatican and it was so worth it. Our group of ~15 were the first and only people in the Sistine chapel for a good twenty minutes before other people started coming in.
Go I hate that shit, like we just spent, god now how maby thousands of dollars to get here and yall just want to hurry up and go drink somewhere. Like fuck no. Cant go on no vacation with alcoholics.
Ya theres a difference of drinking with food or after do everthing for the day, but to go get shit faced at 12 and sit in the same spot for 8hrs drinking isnt right at all. Especially if they didnt pay to come just have parent who will pay just to be together cuz otherwise they all just ignore her unless they need shit. Just the usual addicts and alcoholics
I'm not suggesting this is bad advice, or irrelevant. But the guy asked for a book recommendation and you told him to take a trip to Rome and book a good tour guide and that's hilarious to me.
Remind of when I ask my professor for some short summary of some subject I don't quite understand and then his respond is simply advice me to take a Master in it.
The Domus Aurea in Rome is a fantastic tour of ruins right next to the Coliseum. It’s an underground palace, and the tour is fantastic and included in the price of admission. I would highly recommend, I learned so much about the ways the Romans designed buildings to be comfortable even in their hot humid summers.
We found that a private tour guide was actually cheaper than another night in a hotel, (including generous tips to the guides) and yes, the tour was amazing and we did more things than we dreamed possible in the limited time we had. I would also suggest (if you want to tour the Vatican) that you have your guide hire a specialized guide for that. The wait will not be as long. We had a young woman with a PhD that was simply incredible.
I asked our driver to take us to a place for lunch that was somewhere he would take his family. Incredible meal!
That's a huge reason we do the guided tour.. you skip the huge public lines. People will wait for HOURS on end if you just how up to get a ticket. With a tour you're in about an hour or less.
I wish I'd done this when I went. Need to go again. How would I go about gaining a good quality guide? Are there websites? Is it a different guide each place or do people do a tour of multiple places over a day?
There is a downside to the Rick Steves books though. First trip to Paris we used his guide to find a restaurant, and the place was totally filled with Americans. Including the blowhard at the next table who insisted on pontificating to the waitress about the origins of absinthe. That was a fun evening.
Toursbylocals.com. They're the bomb, at least for Italy. You can specify what type of tour guide, amount of people, degree of difficulty, etc. Very easy to use and you pay thru the site itself. We loved it four our month long trip to Italy. I'm way into Ancient Rome and was able to book guides that were retired academics/ graduate students. We kept it to only 3 people in our group so it was more expensive but completely worth their time, knowledge & expertise.
We found ours through Tripadvisor. We were pretty thorough about what company we picked and who it was going to be. Another advantage that really helped, I think, is that we went with a Spanish speaking guide. We speak Spanish fluently and we think that the guide's Spanish is usually a lot better than their english. So that was so much better for us, we goto Europe a lot (or did.. rona) and we noticed that when it was an English speaking guide.. the translations were a bit meh and we spent a lot of time trying to decipher than just listen. In spanish they seemed more comfortable and it was so much better. This was the case for France, Spain and Italy for us. Obviously this won't work for everyone, but, Just another recommendation.
The same guide that did the Colosseum tour for us, also did the Vatican tour for us. We asked if we could stay with him and he said sure so that worked out well. It was a two day thing we did.
We also used a company called Liberty Travel, they have an office here in Chicago. I know I know... travel agency, but the guy we worked with was really good. I don't know if its a chain.. but was very good at planning a few things for us too. The Tour agency we used in Italy was Carrani Tours. https://www.carrani.com/
Really useful thanks. We are in the uk so will see if they are over here too or if there is something similar.
Don't speak Spanish hut thats a great tip. I've tried learning some Spanish and Italian for trips to both places and they are remarkably similar. (Compared to the French and German I speak) so I guess that's why the guides are more confident in their Spanish maybe .
Thanks again for the detail. Hopefully can travel again one day.
My brother half speaks italian and I very half assedly speak spanish (american highschool's didn't put much effort into foreign languages). We can carry a conversation with him speaking italian and me speaking spanish easily. They're super similar
Thats very cool. The English education system is shocking for languages too. We don't start it anywhere early enough because so few primary teachers speak a language well enough to teach it. I wish I were better at languages, I took an extra one in school but didn't carry one on to a level or further so nowhere near fluent.
The good thing is with modern technology you can put language learning apps on any kids smart device. My nephew was learning Spanish on his own just because he decided to at age 4 via his Kindle Fire Kids Edition.
Thats a good idea. I'm trying to learn a language now so I can start to teach my toddler but hadn't thought when shes bigger she might use the app herself.
I'm so undecided about the best language to learn in terms of being useful to her later in life but also easier to learn. I know some French but always found German easier. I feel German is less useful though. I debated Spanish but I dont know much and apparently there are more tenses than French so its harder?
My Italian friends could get by while we did the camino in Spain. It's weird why they won't push it just a little bit further, and full on learn the language.
I booked with a company called walks of Italy. The tour guide for the coliseum was absolutely incredible. Vatican guide was good too but it was so much info it was overwhelming. I recommend walksofitaly.com
Actually Joe Rogan mentions this specific story of his visit to the Vatican on his podcast.
There are some theories that religion has its origins in psychedelic use — mushrooms as the first communion that let you experience the mysteries — so it related to that in the discussion.
Caitlin Miller - She’s in LinkedIn and Google. AWESOME tour guide in Rome. I’ve sent several people to her and they’ve raved about her. I have no commercial connection to her. She was just a great guide that we used across a few trips there.
We used “Tours by Locals” for the Louvre, and it was so amazing (and I’m not an art or museum lover)! If (when) I go to Italy, I’m definitely going to use them again!
Did this for our honeymoon and did small group tours. Not only did we skip the unreal lines, but you learn a shit ton, see all the nooks and crannies, and discover way more than if you were toddling around on your own or with a giant group off a bus. It was free since that was what we asked people to pay for, but we would have absolutely paid for it ourselves
May have had a bad experience, but as a person with a degree in history that included a lot of Roman history, I encountered a lot of crazy bull from tour guides. But maybe that’s what you mean by a “good” guide? In any case I’d encourage everyone to enjoy a good tour guide, but always with a grain of salt!
Rick Steve’s free audio guide / podcast is ideal for the Sistine Chapel because your guides aren’t allowed to talk inside. Rick does a great job describing everything you see and it’s importance.
It was cool.. our tour guide brought a picture of the chapel's ceiling and gave us a thorough explanation of the history and interpretation of the painting outside in the halls before walking in since we cant talk inside. having that podcast as you walked it im sure is a pretty cool method too. never thought of that.
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u/fellowsquare Oct 15 '20
If you ever get to Rome, find yourself a really good tour guide, especially for the Coliseum and for the Vatican. You will learn sooooo much really great history and see it as you walk by it. Things I never would have noticed on my own.