Mariella at Hidden Treasures of Italy did a great job with our trip overall. Every one of our hotels either met or exceeded our expectations. We had clean, working bathrooms everywhere and the people were always willing to help. The cooking class that Mariella found for us was amazing (more on that elsewhere). Given the logistics and complexity of our itinerary, things went rather well.
Collectively, we agreed that the baggage transfer from dock to hotel in Capri was the main place where Mariella could have been clearer. There was a baggage transfer service, but we did not know, and it wasn’t anywhere in our paperwork to expect it. It would also have been nice to have a heads-up about the difficulty of returning a car to Naples on a Sunday when all the gas stations are closed. Also, in Sardinia, the main attractions in Cagliari were all closed on Monday, so a heads-up there would have been nice to prevent us from wasting our time driving there. Our hotel in Guispini was perhaps a bit too posh and had many amenities that we didn’t exactly budget for. As nice as it was, we just didn’t make full use of it for such a short stay.
My own personal pet peeve was that Hidden Treasures seemed to be completely oblivious to any specifically musical offerings along our way, and did not go out of their way to make that info available. I realized that they were not a world music travel agency, but I just expected more. Next time I would seriously consider using Songlines Music Travel operated by The Tailor-Made Groups Company, which only recently formed after our plans with Hidden Treasures were made.
