Grand Tour of Italy & Sicily

Europe » Italy
July 31st 2010

Published: December 6th 2010

This is our Grand Tour of Italy and Sicily on Insight Vacations. We started off in Rome; naturally we visited the Vatican including the Sistine Chapel and the Museum. We had a look at Pompeii then on to Naples to catch the night ferry to Sicily. We had a tour of Sicily including Mt Etna which was an optional extra. Later we saw Sorrento with a visit to the Isle of Capri. Other destinations on the way back to Rome were Assisi, Venice and Florence. We spent a lot of time driving on motorways pulling off now and then to look at churches and more churches, sometimes four in one day.

We had been on several coach tours before, always found them interesting and good value for money, this time we thought we would try what we expected to be one of the top of the range companies “Insight Vacations” whose slogan is ‘The Art of Touring in Style’, we do wish that had asked which style they meant. They did live up to the advertised extra leg room; the coaches were very comfortable which was good because we spent a lot of time on them. Insight advertise that all their coaches are fitted with toilets, they forgot to mention that we were only allowed to use them in an emergency, they were not for general use because they did not have tanks big enough for all the passengers to use them. Our only alternative was to pay to use the toilets at various places where we stopped for breaks, these tended to be filthy with most unpleasant smells; it sort of takes the edge off the holiday.

We had hoped to see some interesting places but found that most of the included visits were to churches or showrooms that wanted to sell us their expensive products. If we wanted to see anything worthwhile it was generally a rather expensive optional extra. The tour was advertised as having English Speaking Guides; most had an annoying habit of adding a hard A onto the end of each word “weA willA nowA goA toA theA VaticanA”, this becomes quite tedious to hear for a couple ofA weeksA.

We perhaps made a mistake in deciding to travel at the height of the holiday season. We had spoken to others who had been on this tour and found that we were being accommodated in different hotels; ours were not exactly to the standard that we expected, seems that lesser hotels had been used to overcome the peak season surcharges. Most were well overdue for refurbishment and many of the rooms had maintenance problems like lights not working, leaking showers, safes that did not lock and similar, we did report these problems but hardly any were fixed. The breakfasts were of poor standard; we were often segregated from the other guests and seemed to have lesser quality food. These tours are arranged for Australians and everyone should know that Australia’s favourite breakfast is, Weetbix. Wheat biscuits were available in the local shops but only in two of the hotels. We got sick of rice bubbles and cocoa pops so ended up buying our own cereals and taking them in with us, just using the milk provided by the hotel.

Anyway the holiday did get off to a good start; we flew Singapore Airlines via Changi Airport. It always amazes us that that airport gets better every time, it is always a pleasure to transit there so we will start of with of few pictures of the airport.

If you have a fair bit of transit time there is plenty to do, how’s this, three different types of garden to stroll around and all for free. Similarly if you haven’t had enough of movies on your flight they have free cinemas for you.

The arrival halls at most airports can be quite intimidating after a long flight. No complaints about this, better than some luxury hotel foyers.

We had arrived in Rome a day early to give us time to adjust to the time change. Our hotel was not far from the Vatican, we would be visiting there as part of the tour so we took a leisurely stroll round some nearby points of interest.

The Insight tour started with a visit to the Colosseum. These pillars seem to have supported something at some time but whatever it was is long gone.

Those pillars can be seen on the left hand side. The Romans often used ducts to heat buildings and we did wonder if the pillars were chimneys but they did seem to be solid.

Next we passed this archway on our way to the inside of the Colosseum.

The inside of the Colosseum was fascinating. It was quite a structure with passageways below the floor where the gladiators, animals and other involved would enter the arena and any deceased participants would later leave.

Next a bit of fresh air before we enter the Vatican Museum.

This is really the way to the Sistine Chapel, highly decorated ceilings to view. Photography is not permitted in the Sistine Chapel so at the end of this walkway we had to put our cameras away.

This door is only opened every twenty years or so.

We always find the war cemeteries rather depressing; we look at the stones and see 18 and 19 years olds who had gone before they even had a chance to start their lives. There would be many unknown graves and some older soldiers in the 22-23 age group, still too young to die.

We would soon learn that this tour would include visits to lots and lots of churches, cathedrals and chapels. This one Palationo Palermo was originally built as a private chapel, probably some sort of status symbol but at least it did provide some work for the local community.

POMPEII - A really interesting place and one of the few guided tours where we did not have to pay extra.

This would have been a fairly busy street. We wondered why some of the stones protruded above the road surface, turns out that they are stepping stones. Chariots would use these streets and even during dry weather the horses would make quite a mess. The stones are placed so that the chariots can pass over them and pedestrians can cross from side to side using them as stepping stones.

Ever wondered who invented ‘take-away’ food? Here we have the very latest Bain Marie hot food servery. Our guide told us that if they were next to the roadside it would be a take-away, if it was at the back of the building it would be a dine in restaurant. Don’t know if he was pulling our leg but it seemed a good story.

These murals have lasted very well considered that they are almost 2,000 years old. They now need some funding so that preservation work can be carried out.

This area shows some of the items recovered from the volcanic ash. Research work is being carried out on them and eventually they may be displayed in a museum.

We did not visit Mount Vesuvius but did see it in the distance; Vesuvius is an explosive volcano similar to Mount St Helens in the USA so keeping it in the distance does seem to be a good idea. If the wind had been blowing in the other direction we could easily now be touring the ruins of Naples with Pompeii being a modern thriving city. Anyway this was a highlight of the tour and we found it to be a most interesting place to visit, thoroughly recommended.

We now visit the Villa Romana del Casale which was built in the fourth century on the site of a previous villa, it remained in use until the twelfth century when it was covered by a landslide. Excavations did not begin until 1929 and these works are still ongoing. A famous discovery was made around 1959 with the excavation of the Chamber of the Ten Maidens often referred to as The Bikini Girls.

The villa contains many mosaic murals, glass houses have been erected to protect these, unfortunately it does get rather warm and the frames cast shadows on the mosaics which rather takes the edge of any photographs.

This model of the villa gives some idea of its size. It seems to have been both the residence and the administration centre for the owner of the estate.