Italy Travel Agents & Reviews

We were a group of four 65-year-old women, college friends, traveling together for a 12-day stay in Italy. Zicasso was an excellent resource for planning and during our stay. They gave us two experienced travel agents who provided intinerarys and quotes. After speaking with both, we chose ours. Our agents really listened to our preferences and set up a seamless trip, complete with hotels, dinner reservations, tours, and transfers. When we wanted to make changes during our travel, we were able to contact the agency and they made it all very easy.

This was our second time using Zicasso. Our first trip was to Greece two years ago. We would highly recommend Zicasso for overseas travel.

All arrangements for transfers and hotels went smoothly.  For the most part the local guides were good but some not so much.  A number of guides found it easy to be distracted by phone calls while in the course of guiding and while they apologized for this, these interruptions detracted from the overall experience - the issue is were they necessary and/or urgent interruptions given that the guide was being paid to essentially work for the client?I would certainly use Zicasso for another trip to Mediterranean Europe and recommend it to others - Eleonora was excellent and fully responsive  in all respects to request, questions etc. 

What a great trip! Zicasso’s tour operator and her people laid out everything so wonderfully! They were with us every step of the way. From great tours to fantastic restaurants to top-notch hotels, they planned all of it to perfection. They even had the trains planned, including the switch in Paris from one station to the other.

My husband and I recently traveled to Italy for the first time. We wanted it to be a trip of a lifetime with as little stress as possible. We wanted to stay in beautiful hotels close to everything as my husband has some physical limitations. We wanted it to be comparable in price to other tours we were researching.

We wanted a lot.

I learned about our travel company from a Zicasso ad in the New York Times. We feel so lucky to have found this incredible company. They were able to, literally, check all of our boxes and give us everything we wanted and needed for our beautiful trip.

Preplanning was key. The personalized collaborative planning started with a personal conversation with the owner on Zoom. He collected much information about our interests, goals for the trip, physical needs, and budgetary constraints. His team then created a beautiful itinerary, with many choices of hotels and VIP tours. It was so much fun to do research and make the choices that began to shape our once-in-a-lifetime trip.

Our travel concierge offered advice and recommendations, and answered the many questions we had throughout the planning process, until we came up with our final itinerary. Designing a trip with an expert in the field was fun and well worth it!!

Once in Italy, the attention to every detail made our experience simply extraordinary. From the moment we got off the plane, we were seamlessly guided and transported throughout the week by drivers and guides. We never had to worry about how we would get anywhere, which enabled us to fully focus our attention on all the beautiful locations and culture of Italy.

Choosing some guided tours was well worth it too. There is so much history and culture in Italy it is mind boggling. Our guides were enthusiastic and very knowledgeable. We highly recommend going to the Vatican in Rome, Orvieto in Tuscany, and Pompeii in Sorrento.

We highly recommend our travel company to anyone who plans to go to Italy. Just one more question for our agent. Now that we have fallen in love with Italy, where to next?

Our trip with Zicasso’s travel agency was close to perfect! Our agent listened to everything I asked for, and delivered! Plus more! Our drivers were excellent and our tour guides couldn’t have been any better! Each knew the history of the region, was friendly, and spoke fluent English! We were very impressed!

The agent set up classes and tours for us with the local Italians, so we really got a feel for each region! We learned how proud each region is of their history and their ancestors!

We feel we not only enjoyed Italy, but learned so much and saw the most beautiful churches and artwork Italy has to offer!

Overall, the trip was really great. There were some issues with logistics and the way the trip was set up. For example, we wanted to do wine tasting and they should've scheduled the wine tasting out of Florence. Getting in and out of Florence and going down to Tuscany and hitting some major wineries was much easier. Instead, they scheduled it out of Castelfalfi, which was a very beautiful place, but logistically very difficult to get in and out of to explore Tuscany. It was at least an hour each way of extra driving to do any kind of exploration. It was a ridiculous amount of driving and only allowed us to do a couple of things before we had to head back. They should understand those logistics and schedule it better. That's why we hire them.

We were scheduled to visit a lot of small towns along the way. This was great, but sometimes when we were driving to our next destination, we would drive right past the town that we had just visited the day before. Logistically, this seemed ridiculous. We should've just visited the town on our way to the next destination. Again, this should be easily managed by the agency when you live in Italy and you're planning the trip. I was surprised how many times we backtracked past different towns and just kept thinking this could've been done so much better.

They also scheduled a lot of our private tours in vans, which must have made the expense so much more. We only needed a van when we were traveling to new places with our luggage. We didn't need a van for day trips.

We paid extra for English-speaking drivers, but half of our drivers didn't talk to us. They offered no information about the area and it was disappointing. I thought we were going on tours, but in fact, we were just getting dropped off and the driver provided no information about where we were going. This was especially prevalent in Puglia.

We were on a golf trip as well. A few times, the scheduled time for drop-off and pick-up did not allow enough time to play golf. That was frustrating and we had to call the agency multiple times to get the logistics figured out.

I had a number so I could text them with issues and it seemed like I was texting them every single day. They were very responsive and very helpful, and did whatever they could to fix the problem. I was very grateful for that.

The hotels we stayed at were amazing and the beds were very comfortable, and the wine tours and other tours they put together were fantastic.

The Zicasso travel agency delivered a top-notch itinerary and I would not hesitate to use them again for trips to Italy.

The accommodations were very nice, and were all located within walking distance to all of the venues, Eiffel Tower, museums ,etc that we wanted to visit.  Paris- the Musee d' Orsay was a most wonderful Art Museum.  The building was magnificent, and the traffic pattern was such that it was easy to see only the venues that was interesting to me.  The Louve was a nightmare to try find stairs to get to any area of interest.  Seeing the Mona Lisa was a highlight however.Venice - was amazing.  So nice to have only foot traffic through all of the alleyways, and the gondola ride through all of the waterways was magnificent. Florence - I loved seeing David by Michelangelo, and all of his partially finished sculptures, and the narrative by the guide was great.  Loved seeing the Venus de Milo, The Birth of Venus, etc.However, the Uffizi art museum was 2/3 under construction and a complete waste of effort.  The Accademia was great.The day long trip from Florence to the coastal towns of Cinque de Terra was very well done.  Great driver full of information.  Beautiful scenery.  Delicious fish and pasta lunch.  The boat couldn't dock, so we had more train rides and walking than normal.  I am 80 years old, and should have stopped for some sustenance in the afternoon.  We walked 14000 steps that day up and down the hilled towns.  I almost ran out of gas in the afternoon.  You might warn people to bring water and a snack in the afternoon for energy.All in all I would not change many things on our trip.  Thank you!