Jewels of Italy

After checking in, you can unwind at the hotel or wander out as scooters hum past shuttered façades and the aroma of tomato, garlic and baking bread drifts from nearby trattorias. Later, you meet your Travel Director and fellow travellers, putting names to the faces who will share the week ahead. At a nearby square, waiters weave between tables and laughter travels through the evening air beneath softly lit balconies.

With so much to see and do, you could explore Rome for an eternity without getting bored. Get to grips with the city's main attractions, joining a Local Specialist. View St. Peter's Square before crossing the Tiber to see the mighty Colosseum and the countless other ancient sites that featured prominently during the days of the powerful Roman Empire. There’s even time for a leisurely stroll to one of the city’s thronging piazzas to people-watch or to join an Optional Experience dinner in a Roman trattoria. Embrace life lived the Italian way – to the fullest.

You’ll travel north through Tuscany, watching vineyard rows fold over the hills and silver-green olive trees flicker beyond the window. Across the broad green of Pisa’s Square of Miracles, you look towards the Leaning Tower at its improbable angle, then browse for a keepsake before continuing to Florence. Later, you may head into the Tuscan countryside for an Optional Experience, sitting down to dinner among vineyard rows and olive trees as the glowing sunset washes over the hills beyond your table.

Your Local Specialist accompanies you from the Baptistery’s bronze doors to the green, white and red marble of Santa Maria del Fiore and Giotto’s Bell Tower. On Ponte Vecchio, you might want to browse, glimpsing gold in jewellers’ windows and brushing your fingertips over the supple grain of Florentine leather. You may also join an Optional Experience to San Gimignano, threading between brick buildings as its medieval towers climb high above the town. You return to your hotel for dinner after a day filled with bronze, marble and Tuscan craftsmanship.

The Apennine road climbs and dips as you head for Verona, where the Arena’s carved limestone arches surround a stage still used for opera beneath the open sky. You can follow Piazza Bra’s broad red-stone Liston or continue along Via Mazzini, Verona’s leading shopping street. Arriving in Venice, you might explore the lagoon islands or sip an Aperol Spritz beside the canals. You may instead join an Optional Experience, crossing the lagoon by water taxi before settling into a black-lacquered gondola and feeling it rock gently as you slip beneath low bridges between centuries-old palaces.

By private launch, you’ll cross to St. Mark’s Square and look up at the Basilica’s domes, carved portals and mosaic-covered arches. Beyond the square, you enter Venice’s narrow calli before stepping inside a glassblowing workshop, where furnace heat fills the room and a master craftsman turns glowing molten glass on a long iron rod. Later, join an Optional Experience to Burano, moving between façades painted scarlet, saffron and turquoise while mooring ropes creak and small boats knock softly against the quays.

Your final morning in Italy brings one last chance to thank your Travel Director and exchange farewells with the fellow travellers who have shared Rome, Florence and Venice with you. For now, it’s arrivederci rather than goodbye.