Dream Vacation Come True

Italy | Sep 5 - Sep 16, 2023

We had the best time on this trip through Italy, largely due to the excellent planning and coordination provided by the team at Your Custom Journey. The planning with Valeria was fairly simple to do via KimKim. Honestly, the hardest parts were choosing between all of the great city destinations/excursions and committing to a budget. Luckily Valeria was very patient with me as I tried to get my group to come to a consensus.

Our in-country contact, Barbara was fantastic at keeping us in the loop with possible itinerary changes, reminders for the upcoming day, transportation, and checking to make sure we were enjoying everything as we'd hoped. She even was our tour guide a few times in Venice. The other guides were great as well, particularly Gianni, who led our tour of the Palace of Caserta and Valeria, who took us on a walking food tour of Rome. All of the guides were local to the regions we were touring, and most of them were born and raised in Italy, and I think that really made the difference. Not having a lot of familiarity with the Italian language ourselves (despite studying all spring and summer), it was a relief not to have to worry as much about the language barrier since all of our guides were fluent English speakers. Plus, at all of the church and palace tours we were able to skip the long lines.

The excursions were interesting and thoughtfully prepared. Highlights included a lunch and wine tasting at a hillside winery on the Amalfi Coast, the Venice walking tour that ended with the Doge Palace and San Marco Basilica, seeing Pompeii and the Vatican, and the stunning views in Sorrento. This trip was everything to me and my family, and I'm so glad I had the help to plan it as well as the local support so that I could enjoy it as much as everyone else did.