Monday, August 6, 2012

Buyer Beware - Tours of the Roman Colosseum, Palatine Hill, and Vatican

There are at least two companies with similar names that offer tours of major attractions in Rome. One is called Special Quality Rome - SP.Q.R. Tour and the other is SPQRome Tours. During our visit to Rome several weeks ago, we had a very disappointing tour of the Roman Colosseum with the first - Special Quality Rome" - http://www.specialqualityrome.com) tours, which offers large-group tours of the Colosseum, the Palatine Hill, and the Vatican. (I have no experience with SPQRome Tours (http://www.spqrome.com/)

(Both take their names from the abbreviation from the Latin "Senatus Populusque Romanus" which referred to the ancient government of Rome and is used by the modern government of the municipality of Rome.)

Normally, I do research in advance of our trips. In this case, I fell down on the job. After returning home and reading Wikipedia articles on the Colosseum, the Palatine Hill, and the Roman Forum, I've decided I could learned more and saved money by just printing out a couple of Wikipedia articles and a few others, and taking them with me.

As we walked out of the subway station across the street from the Colosseum, we found a woman who was selling guided tours of the Colosseum and the Palatine Hill. The tours, which were conducted by SP.Q.R. Tours cost €28 per person, with a tour of the Colosseum in the morning and a tour of the Palatine Hill in the afternoon. The cost included the entrance fee of €12 per person for both venues and the Roman Forum. She said that an added benefit is that we would be able to avoid the general admission lines.

We decided to take this tour. That turned out to be a mistake. The Colosseum portion of the tour was terrible. On the other hand, the afternoon tour of the Palatine Hill was decent. The tours we took in Florence and Pompeii were far superior.

There were a number of problems with this tour:

First, we were told that the tour would help us avoid the general admission line and that we would get into the Colosseum quickly. It turns out that we had to wait 25 minutes because it took a while for one of the SP.Q.R. employees to come to purchase the entrance tickets. We probably have gotten into the Colosseum just as quickly with the general admission tickets.

Secondly, our guide in the morning was terrible - a caricature out of a Chevy Chase vacation movie:
a. She was very amateurish. Her English accent was often incomprehensible. I have studied a number of languages and speak decent Italian. I am used to understanding English spoken in heavy accents. Nonetheless, I often had trouble understanding her. Another guest on the tour, who spoke English as a second language approached me and asked me if I could understand her. Her conversation was sprinkled with "allora" and "dunque" and other Italian interjections. She mispronounced words like "weapons" as "weeponse." She used the Italian version of the names of Roman emperors instead of the English versions.
b. Importantly, her explanations were brief and shallow. She also passed by areas, such as statues, which deserved explanation. From the time we entered the Colosseum until that tour was finished was only 40 minutes, only a few minutes of which involved explanation, much of which was unintelligible. She also spent an excessive amount of time in front of a diagram of the Colosseum.

Additionally, from the time the Colosseum tour ended until the Palatine Hill tour started was 90 minutes instead of the 30-60 minutes advertised in the SP.Q.R. pamphlet. Consequently, we had to kill time waiting on a day when we had a lot to see.

On the other hand, the afternoon tour of the Palatine Hill with a Romanian guide named Mircha was good. He was very knowledgeable and enthusiastic. His English was superb. However, in reading about the Palatine Hill afterwards, I have come to the conclusion that he had not really given us as good an overview of the Palatine Hill as he could have. For example, he could have done a better job of explaining the palatial structures on the hill and suggesting places on the hill we could have visited after he finished his tour.

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