Passport trip

Posted by Thomas Sprenkle on March 24, 1998 at 11:59:06:

My name is Thomas Sprenkle, and I recently particpated with my class from Friends School, a private school in Baltimore, on Passport's Classical adventure. Having travelled in Italy several times prior the trip, I must say that I was rather dissapointed by the performance and planning of the Passports organization. First of all, the Hotel in Rome stunk. We had been promised three and four star hotels, and Passports provided us with a list of hotels that they normally used in Rome, and I checked them up on the internet, and all were three/four star hotels, and rather attractive. However, we were assigned to the Hotel Archimedes, and if that was a three star hotel, then the local motel six was the Ritz. Our welcome dinner at the designated resturant was a disappointment in comparision with my past experiences with Italian food. Overcooked pasta with a bland tomato sauce and overcooked veal was the dinner.
Day three of the trip, we had a tour of the Vatican in the morning, then went to Florence. We were supposed to leave Rome at 11:30, but didn't until twelve fifteen, wasting forty five minutes on the bus. Our tourguide said that it would take us three hours to get to Florence, it took five. All the way, the tourguide, Frances, kept talking about how wonderful Italian food was, and for lunch we stopped at a roadsice convienience mart. She also spent hours talking about how beautiful the statue of David was, and guess what, the museum was closed, and we all knew this, because our guidebooks said that museums in Italy close on mondays, but Frances protested nevertheless and said that we had a tour arranged. We spent one hour in Florence before embarking on our five hour ride back to Rome.
The rest of the trip was a marked improvement over Rome, but I was still dissapointed as we never had an opportunity to expose other people to real Italian pizza and food. Every night was the same, same ol' pasta with a tomato sauce and overcooked meat for the second course. Altogether, too much time was spent on the motorcoach, and not enough exploring the cities. I do not recommend Passports to anyone out there.