The trip was really great and everything went very smoothly. Everyone agreed that their favorite part of the trip was Levanto. We hiked a great deal, enjoying the area’s national park, with its woods and wildflowers mixed in with the olive groves and rocky trails. It seemed every view was more beautiful than the last. The regional train had a one day strike, but we just adjusted and hiked north. We loved the hotel in Levanto, especially the private terraces which faced the mountains.
We walked everywhere – except for our arrival in Rome, we never took a bus or a taxi. So the hotels you picked were very well located. Also, the Rome Night Segway Tour was hilarious and we all loved careening through the narrow, café-filled streets. Of course, the monuments and fountains are beautiful at night.
Our favorite restaurant in Levanto was Da Rino. Steven and Gordon shared a seafood stew loaded with mussels, octopus and scallops, and could not eat half of it. Mario’s is a great restaurant in Rome.
The Chianti wine tour was fabulous. The driver who brought us from Florence stopped by the World War II Cemetery, and it was Memorial Day so there were wreaths everywhere. It was a really beautiful place with an interesting map depicting the movement of the US and British troops. At the winery we were seated with a family from California and enjoyed our meal with them very much. I felt I had the best meal of all as a vegetarian. For the appetizer course, everyone else had two kinds of meat (the specialty of the region, of course) while I had an appetizer plate with five or six delicious goodies – bruschetta, cheese, tapenade, etc. It happened again with a main meat course – I had a superb frittata with two other dishes on the side. All of your vegetarian clients will really love the Castello di Verrazzano! -Ball Family, Florence, Cinque Terre and Rome, May 2014
