Rome Luxury Fullday with Professional English-Speaking Driver

The driver couldn't really speak English. Car was comfortable and roomy. We booked this tour because we had one day in Rome before returning home and there were several things we wanted to see before we left. We had already spent a few days in Rome over the Christmas holidays but many things were closed so we planned one more day in the Eternal City to end our holiday. We could have taken cabs to the places we wanted to visit but we decided to spend the extra money so that we could have an English speaking driver who knew the city well. Our driver was very pleasant and polite and he did seem to know the city reasonably well. Unfortunately he spoke very little English and since we speak even less Italian, it was not the experience we had hoped for. The biggest problem was that we wanted to see the places that Mussolini had built, particularly Il Foro Italico , the sports complex with the 60 statues. We told the driver this several times and he happily nodded his head and drove us to the EUR where Mussolini's Palazzo della Civiltà del Lavoro or square colosseum is found. Unfortunately, Il Foro Italico is half an hour away from the EUR. When we asked about Il Foro Italico, the driver appeared confused and said he didn't know we wanted to see it. We didn't have enough time to travel there and back to Rome in the time remaining. We would have preferred to go to the Foro Italico rather than the EUR. I am convinced that had the driver been able to speak English, this misunderstanding would have been avoided. Having said that, however, the driver was able to offer little bits of information about various monuments and landmarks in the city I was not expecting him to be able to do that since that seemed to fall more within the purview of a guide and we had elected not to hire a guide, so that was a nice bonus. Also, we decided to spend our remaining time shopping. I had read about a little street where there were 6 little leather goods shops it was Via Francesco Crispi and because it was a holiday, only 4 of the stores were open but we did get some lovely purses! Our driver patiently waited while we went shopping and made no fuss at all when we were 5 minutes late getting back to the car. He could easily have refused to take us back to the hotel given that we were late but he graciously took us anyway. If the driver had been able to speak English fluently, I would have given this tour a 5 star rating. The best part of this tour was that we were able to hop out of the car for a minute or two, snap some photos of ourselves in front of various landmarks and then hop back in the car. If you don't need an English speaking driver, I would highly recommend the tour.

Driver was great and added interesting tidbits. Guide, Leah, was ok but not as in depth as we would have hoped. We learned more from eavesdropping on other tour guides!