Rome & the Amalfi Coast

My Mom and I had the opportunity to visit Italy this summer on the 9 day Rome and Amalfi Coast Tour. Italy is a beautiful country and everyone needs to see and experience it before they die. However, I would NOT recommend Perillo Tours (PT). Here’s why: Introductions of group members were not done at the orientation. There are still people on the tour that I did not meet or know their names. And, we were only given the first couple of days of our itinerary, which was VERY broad and lacking detail. I am still in shock that it was HAND-WRITTEN and lacking so much important information. For example, it would say that Breakfast was at 7 and we would depart at 7:30, we would tour the Coliseum and the Roman Forum, have lunch, and we would return to hotel at 5:30. I had so many questions: Where is breakfast located? Where do we meet to depart as a group? How long is each part of the tour? How long will we be on our feet/in direct sunlight? Will bathrooms be accessible on the tour? What time is lunch? Where is lunch? How long do we have to eat lunch? In my opinion, these are valid questions that should have been written down on the itinerary that was given. I will say that some of these questions were addressed verbally, but it would have been more relaxing for me to have at least had approximate plans written down on the itinerary. In our orientation, we were told that water was provided on every bus. NOT TRUE. I asked for a water bottle and was told that only the bus ride to Amalfi would have water bottles. So yes, you guessed it. My Mom and I went most of the day without water. This was frustrating knowing that we had perfectly good water bottles in our room and that we were misinformed during orientation. I think that it is also important to note that on the tours you don’t always get to jump the lines. At all of the tour sites, we still had to get in the “tour group line” and wait our turn to go. Most of the time, we were standing in direct sunlight for 30+ minutes. Specifically, while we were waiting to tour the Blue Grotto at the Isle of Capri, we had to wait in a rocky boat for 45+ minutes. Keep in mind the conditions. It’s hot, humid, loud, and the fumes from ALL the boats is almost unbearable. Then the captain of the boat randomly decided to jump out of line and move our boat closer to the cliffs for some reason. This area of the water was full of waves and not an ideal spot to anchor a boat. Accurate time frames or time estimates are almost nonexistent with PT. Not only is this confusing and not helpful, but this was a trend of the entire tour. No one knew any answers and it almost felt like we were being misinformed or dare I say lied to. My Mom and I decided to do one of the optional tour add ons. We understood that it was at an additional fee, but thought it would be worth it. Long story short, it was not. This tour started at 2, so we had a short window to rest, eat lunch, and regroup. We were told the walking tour would be 2 hours. It ended up being 3.5 hours in the heat of the day, direct sunlight, with no bathroom breaks, and only two stops at fountains to refill our water bottles, per my requests. At this point, my Mom becomes ill. She is light headed, nauseated, and no longer able to walk at the pace of the group (probably due to the heat, lack of water, and fast-pace of the tour, but that’s just a wild hunch). I informed the tour guide of this and he responded loudly in front of other group members, “Well, what do you want me to do?!” I suggested that my Mom and I end the tour early and head back to the hotel in a cab. He told me that this was a pedestrian only part of town and that we would have to walk to find a cab pick-up area. He also made it very clear that PT would NOT pay for the cab ride. I was shocked to say the least that he did not seem to care that my Mom was sick and did not offer to help us in any way. When we arrived back at the hotel, we were given less than an hour to rest and get ready. So at this point, we had been up and moving in direct sunlight, with very little water for about 8 hours. Sounds relaxing and fun, right? My Mom was still feeling ill and was not able to go out for dinner with the rest of the group, so I asked PT to please send a meal from room service, so she could have dinner. PT would not accommodate this request because hotel room service was too expensive. Instead, they sent up a bucket of ice to our room. Confused about this? Yeah, we were too. At the restaurant, I was handed a to go bag of food to give to my Mom, but we didn’t arrive back to the hotel until 10 PM and in my opinion, mozzarella cheese and prosciutto was the last thing my Mom needed to eat that late. If a person cannot go out to dinner because they are ill from the tour, then room service should be provided by PT to help them feel better. I have so many more things to add, but not enough character space to do so. In summary, do NOT book with PT!

It was my dream to go to italy, we went 2019 Perillo Tour and Angelica made my dream so memorable loved every minute. We are planning to go back 2022 Can’t wait!

We took the North Classic Tour in Sept 2019. It was the dream vacation we had been hoping for and planning for 15 years! We added Sicily at the beginning and my grandparents’ hometown outside Milan at the end, using all of Perillo’s recommended hotels and drivers, etc. We cannot say enough about Perillo Tours. All of their personnel from Devin in the office who helped us plan and patiently & cheerily worked with us and answered our many questions, to Daniela, our tour host in Italy, who I never want to visit Italy again without! She is just so wrapped up into my memories of Italy that I can’t separate her from our trip. Her knowledge and help and professionalism were top-notch! She was fabulous. We absolutely loved our trip: every hotel, every restaurant, every excursion (we took them all!) and all local guides were excellent, and our tour bus comfortable and tour bus driver was the incomparable Stefano! I could go on and on. Our personal local drivers hired by Perillo to escort us through our grandparents’ villages were fabulous, and not only drove us, but educated us the entire time about everything we were seeing and were totally Invested in our finding family and any info we could find. And I cannot finish without saying, although we planned to keep to ourselves, we met four of the dearest friends we’ll ever have on day one of this trip. So much so that everyone thought the 6 of us came together. Every single thing went perfectly and smoothly and it was a dream come true. Thank you, Perillo!

Took the Perillo Marco Polo Tour in May of 2018. It was the best. The 10 days were really exciting, Loved the tour guides. We had Sandra as our main tour guide. She was substituting for The original tour guide. She was so knowledgeable and caring, it was like getting world history lessons but better than you would have gotten in school. The other tour guides were also great, they care about you and make sure your trip was totally enjoyable. I took over 600 pictures and can't wait to go back to add more to our collection. Perillo Thank you for the great memories.

We Loved our Hawaiian trip....Bert was awesome ❣I highly recommend that tour! We started our vacation on the north shore of Oahu for some alone time before and ended in Kauai with another night to ourselves....definately recommended taking some time before the group tour - afterward, we missed our family too much! All of the hotels were topnotch- excursions were the perfect length- not exhausting. We saw the highlights of each island, but made me want to return. One thing I might skip was the Polynesian cultural center. Best excursion was haleakala! So much to go back for!

My husband and I took the 14 day North Classic Italy tour October 2018. It was our dream for a long time. Perillo did not disappoint. Everything was taken care of from our luggage, hotels, transportation and our fabulous tour guide Antonio. Oh and the food, the sights, the others traveling with us. All great. How lucky we felt to experience such a wonderful trip. We are still friends with some of our fellow travelers. Weather was perfect. Dreaming of another trip someday hopefully to Southern Italy and we will book with Perillo again.