03 May 2023
Our tour guide was a wonderful guy who knew a lot of history about the buildings and the area. He had a great sense of humor and was fun to get to know. He was very open to questions. That was wonderful! We did, however, want more information on the food and culture of Italy itself: where it had originated, how it had become popular, special things they did to make it or how it's commonly made. There was a little of that, but not a lot. There was a good variety of food and we were super stuffed by the end! I felt like we hardly put a dent in the pasta at the end of the night because we were so full!
We had two larger disappointments, however.
First: The desserts were *phenomenal* and we loved them! Trying the cheese and truffle and other unique foods was interesting. However, while the pizza and pasta were OK, they weren't *really good.* They were like cheap pizza and pasta in the US, in my opinion. I was expecting to be really wowed by the flavors, but they were bland. We really wondered if, instead of taking us to the *best* places, he was taking us to cheap places to save money, or to his friend's places that they tip him for.
Second, I'd specifically requested that we have specialty drinks that weren't alcoholic or coffee. I didn't want to just have soda shoved at us, either, when the tour usually includes some kind of specialty wine. Kind of a hard request, I know, but we'd been assured that our guide would plan around exactly what we wanted to do. We had booked a private tour for that reason, but it seemed that our guide hadn't planned for that at all. So we got soda. It was interesting to try, but kind of a cop out.