Italian adventure - our 3rd Kimkim trip

Italy | Feb 12 - Feb 23, 2026

This is our third experience with KimKim planning an adventure for us. It was just spectacular. Our original concept was seeing the Olympics, which was an adventure unto itself.

Planning began months ago. But it’s hard to understand everything in advance. Our contacts in Italy, Sonia and Lucrezia, worked around the events we had purchased tickets for perfectly. They were also very patient with our silly questions.

It always starts for us with hotel selection, and once again they were stellar. The location of our Milan hotel was perfect, a very short walk to the Duomo and Central hub for transportation. They introduced us to Larissa our private guide for visiting the last supper and other amazing sites around Milan. We are amazed at our local advisors ability to again identify private guides that speak excellent English and are able to give us the special flavor of the city where they live. The guides themselves become an additional set of advisors for us during our stays.

In Verona, the hotel was not only perfect, but it had a history. Our guide in that city was CECILIA. Amazing, lovely, information packed, and personal. We totally see the value of private guides and all recommendations from Kim Kim have been perfect perfect.

Off to Lake Como and another amazing location with a room facing the lake. We enjoyed our calm time there and our boat guide taking us around the lake, pointing out villas and their histories, and a lovely walk around Bellagio. We also met Max for a bike tour that took us up into the mountains around Lake Como. We were on E bikes, while our guide was on a regular road bike. Pretty impressive thing. He also gave us restaurant recommendations locally of his favorite places, and they were delicious.

Cannot forget the car rental. Seems like a simple effort. We like driving in a nice car when we are in another country. Kim Kim saw to it that our selected vehicle perfectly met our standard again and also met the anecdotal requirement of not being too large. If you’ve ever gone to an Italian parking lot, you will know what I am talking about!

Finally, our local concierge Roberta picked us up at the airport and was available to us all throughout our stay. She checked in regularly and in advance for pre-scheduled activities. Always providing Detail on pick up or meet up location, the name of our guide and the expectation. It was in retrospect, very comforting.

I know that in 2026 people fancy using social media to identify ways to visit foreign cities and find unique experiences. From our perspective, Kim Kim is a very unique one stop shop. They anticipate the details and make our experiences into adventures. We are not the type of people who want to travel on a bus or with a group. We are looking to plan our next adventure to bring our children and their mates so they can experience what we have.

Thank you, Kim Kim, again!

—
Paul and Lynn Essner