Rome, Florence, and Venice Itineraries

"We could not say enough good things about every part of our vacation."

I am sorry to report this but as a customer of Zicasso I feel you should know when a travel agency does not live up to your standards. Both Mike, myself and our friends have used your referral company and have had great results. There were just too many things about this trip that were a huge disappointment.Train tickets issued to Mike & I were for two different train cars! Why would a premiere travel agent who knows we have never traveled this way put myself and my husband on a train in two completely different train cars! Thankfully the ticket handler was gracious enough to let us sit together. As a premiere travel agency we definitely should have been asked to if we would like to have premiere economy and definitely should have had tickets where we sat together.Location of Villas: While the Villa in Chianti and the hotel in Perugia were both wonderful places but very isolated. The places we were scheduled to travel to were all located a long ways away. We spent so much time in our van driving it was cause for a lot of stress. For example poor time management on scheduling: Florence - travel distance fine, tour guide great, no time at all to shop as driver was waiting to take us back. Pienza - a 2+ hour drive when we arrived the driver said he would need to take us to next stop in 20 minutes! That is not relaxing. We were then late to our lunch at the farm which they were not pleased but were very accommodating for us. Thank goodness she was such a doll. On to Montalcino but no, we had no time to visit this village because we had to be at a winery for a tour. Then a 2+ hour drive home only to have our other driver waiting to take us to dinner. Stress. Castello di Ami yet another long and windy road trip to go to two wineries. Which were nice but feel there were probably some closer that would have satisfied. Cortona was fun yet another long day in the van. The hotel in Perugia seemed so relaxing but we never had time to spend there. Next day another 1.5+ hr. drive to a winery and 2 villages one Montefalco was fun to walk around, when we arrived at the village of Bevagne it was literally a ghost town no shops were open nothing. This might have been due to August holiday but the Travel agent should be aware of these things. It was a waste of time. Restaurants suggested: a Chianti restaurant was cute and nice to have when you are tired from traveling. The Tuscany restaurant was lovely, 25 minute drive just fine and we had a great meal. The other restaurants in this area that were suggested were too far away 45 min.+ after being in a car all day - again travel agent should be cognizant of this itinerary. We found a fun castle 5 min. drive away and had a great meal. After traveling all day to get to our hotel in Perugia we were not up for traveling yet again to a restaurant but there was nothing close by and this restaurant was to be on Lake Trasimeno so we decided to go. It was awful no view of the lake the wait staff forgot our order and food was sub par. ugh The next night we ate pizza at the resort! Transportation: We were to have English speaking drivers every day. We had 2 the rest of them spoke very little English in fact the last one driver spoke no English we had him for 2 days. Luckily he was so sweet that he downloaded a translate app and I sat in the front seat so we could "talk" to him.