Transcript with Show Notes Embedded:
Angelo Carotenuto: At LivTours, we pride ourselves to make sure that the dreamer, the traveler, can live an experience, a destination from every angle.
Kathy McCabe: This is Kathy McCabe. Welcome to the Dream of Italy Podcast. You know me from the PBS travel series, Dream of Italy and the award-winning website and publication. Join me as we explore the sights and sounds of bella Italia. From the canals of Venice to the piazzas of Puglia, from the fashion houses of Milan to the vineyards of Tuscany. Ciao bella. Hop on. It’s going to be a great ride. Okay, well, I’m thrilled to be here today on the Dream of Italy Podcast and video podcast, we’ll be showing you some great pictures of Italy and Rome if you’re watching this. But if you’re not, you’ll get to imagine. I’m here with Angelo Carotenuto. Did I say that with enough of a little accent?
[01:09]
Angelo Carotenuto: You sure did, Kathy.
Kathy McCabe: No matter how much I try, I have Italian blood, but I’m very American. He’s the founder and co-owner of LivTours, which started life and how I first knew you as LivItaly, and that’s still, I know your main passion, but you now have more than 350 tours throughout Europe. And thank you so much for joining me today to talk about something I think is kind of interesting: how to see Italy now.
Angelo Carotenuto: Well, first of all, thank you for having me, Kathy, and it’s always a pleasure to speak to your audience and anything that I can help with, I’d be happy to be your resources and your audience’s resource.
Kathy McCabe: Well, I think that people, and even myself, and going back to Italy, I went to a couple of the big cities this summer in high season, and usually I try to avoid it a little bit, but traveling to Italy I think has changed and the way that we approach travel planning. You can’t just wing it anymore. You used to be able to just show up and walk into the Vatican, walk into St. Peter’s, see what you wanted to see. Now it takes a lot more thought and you need to book tickets. So I’d love to talk to you. In all the years I’ve been doing this, 22, you’ve been doing this 14, 15 years, people are planning way ahead and you have to.
Angelo Carotenuto: Yeah, the booking … Now, mind you, there’s always the client that waits the very last minute, the client that is out to dinner in a beautiful trattoria in Trastevere and is with his wife maybe browsing the internet and finding a last-minute tour available for the next day. “Hey, what are we doing tomorrow? Let’s go there.” That still happens. But the booking window, the average booking window right now is four to six weeks. But as I just tried to explain, we’re seeing people, more and more people getting interested in acquiring and even finalizing a conversion, finalizing a booking of any tour for the following year, months in advance. They just want to make sure that they have it all set up for themselves. And a lot of people, even righteously believe the sooner I book, the better service I’m going to receive when I actually finally get there, believe it or not.
Kathy McCabe: Well, there’s only so many tickets. So now you need tickets, you need to book ahead to go to most of the major museums, the major sites, the things that are on the bucket list for people?
Angelo Carotenuto: Yeah. I don’t want to make a generalization, but first of all, I think you have to book a little bit of everything. Yes, museums are the most sensitive because there’s only a certain capacity for each museum a day, even though a lot of them are changing their policy and how they release the ticket, how they allot partnerships, how much direct consumer volume they want to receive versus tour operator volume they want to receive. But in reality, any experience at some point is going to have its max cap.
[04:23]
Kathy McCabe: Yeah. A great guide is … Right.
Angelo Carotenuto: So we got to make sure that if that’s your dream, that you want to make sure it comes true, you do have to book it as soon as possible. But part of it is a little bit of, and you do an amazing job at this to be completely honest with you, Kathy, and it is our responsibility to sort of evangelize that there is so much more than what people are convinced that that is their dream. That is their dream, to be there, to explore, to be fascinated by, to smell, to touch, et cetera. But oftentimes people are convinced that, “Oh, I got to go to Rome and do the Vatican and Coliseum. I got to go to the Venice and do the Doge’s Palace.” Yes, you may have to because it’s your first time, but Italy is so much more.
Kathy McCabe: Oh I know.
Angelo Carotenuto: We got to evangelize the rest.
Kathy McCabe: I know. And that is my whole purpose. And one thing that you helped me with is in our Travel, Transform and Thrive special, we interviewed various expats, one of whom lived in Rome, and we wanted to do something different with her. And we did the sidecar, the Vespa sidecar tour of Rome, which you set up. And I was so blown away by it because it was completely … I’ve been going to Rome for 25 years or more. I hadn’t done the math, and I had never seen Rome like this. And even looking up, being in the sidecar, looking up at the Roman pine trees, it was surprising and new and different to me. And you offer a lot of experiences like that. So if you’ve already seen … I think people, even if it’s your first time in Italy, you should always try to do that combination.
Okay, I’m going to go see those things that I’ve always heard about, but then have a totally unique experience, something that you can tell a story about when you get home. You are at a party and you’re like, “Wow, I guess I went in a hot air balloon,” or “I went and made pizza.” It doesn’t have to be like crazy James Bond. But those are a lot of the memories. So I’m so curious because you’re always adding these unique experiences, what are some of the interesting things you’re offering in Rome and around Italy right now?
Angelo Carotenuto: Yeah, you’re absolutely right. At LivTours, we pride ourselves to make sure that the dreamer, the traveler, can live and experience a destination from every angle, and that is physically, but also metaphorically. So we sort of vertically grow our portfolio so that every single stereotype or dream you may have about that destination, we have created a service around it. So yeah, it could be as beautiful and as enchanting, as romantic, as telling at a party that you’ve seen Rome from sitting in a sidecar on a vintage Vespa that was custom-made in the beautiful Italian flood colors to zip around the city. And yeah, you say you’re at a squirrel level, but you’re going through the traffic and you’re seeing the city from a different perspective. Absolutely.
Kathy McCabe: I do a lot very cool things, but I have thought of it, recommended it to people when I was just in Rome a few weeks ago doing … I was with a … A family vacation with a family, and it was their first time in Rome with the kids, so we did the usual. I’m like, “Damn, we should have done that.” Sidecars but it makes an impression, but what are some of the other things you’re offering in Rome and Florence, Venice to give people some ideas of what they can book?
Angelo Carotenuto: Absolutely. The list was long, so I’m going to go with the most particular ones, just so I mean, not the old traditional. For example, in Rome, we’re very proud of our golf cart tours that are … We have daytime golf cart tours and evening golf cart tours that include an aperitif, a glass of wine, a little bit of food. These are tours that are fantastic, both for people with limited walking abilities or families, but even couples who just want an orientation experience as soon as they come-
[08:43]
Kathy McCabe: -Take it easy.
Angelo Carotenuto: And take it easy. Exactly. Get over their jet lag and so forth. We have created a series called the Women’s Tours where-
Kathy McCabe: I saw those, and I’m really intrigued.
Angelo Carotenuto: Yeah. Where I created the series actually during COVID. And we’re right now in ancient Rome at the Vatican, and Florence, and Venice and the Louvre where the basic instruction is in places where you generally speak about the male protagonists, my dear tour guides, you’re not allowed to talk about any man for the next three hours. So imagine trying to enter the Vatican museums and having to discuss only female artists or female protagonists in paintings and statues or wives or lovers for that matter of certain very famous individuals that you are obliged to talk about it or same goes with ancient Rome or Catherine de’ Medici and the Medici family and their women in Florence. So that was a theme tour that we’re really connected with.
Kathy McCabe: I love it.
Save 10% with LivTours with Discount Code: DREAMOFITALY10
Angelo Carotenuto: Otherwise, in Rome, for example, in preparation for the Jubilee Year.
Kathy McCabe: Yes. We have to talk about that. 2025 is big and what do you have planned? And then we’ll talk about the bigger picture.
Angelo Carotenuto: Absolutely. We created a tour. People are going to be interested in seeing the four major basilicas of Rome, St. Peter’s Basilica, you generally see thanks to visiting the Vatican museums, but the other three basilicas, the people either generally don’t know of or have a difficult time getting to or don’t know how to access our St. Paul Out of the walls, Santa Maria Maggiore, St. Mary and St. John. And with St. Peter’s, these are four major basilicas of Rome with the Four Holy Doors. So we created a tour of the three major basilicas of Rome, excluding St. Peter’s with incredible accesses.
We have a partnership with Santa Maria Maggiore where we get to see the domus, the underground. They found an ancient Roman home under the main floor of Santa Maria Maggiore. You can go see the crib of Jesus Christ or a piece of the crib whether you want to believe it or not. We go to the loggia, we go up to see the Bernini staircase that connects the loggia where the cardinals used to live to the sacristy of the church. So these are very special accesses that we have gained through partnerships with Santa Maria Maggiore. And then we’re in a beautiful private car, we take our clients to St. Paul Out of the Walls. Also very hard to reach on your own generally. You don’t think about going off the beaten path that much.
Kathy McCabe: No, people don’t. It’s not their first … Right.
[11:23]
Angelo Carotenuto: Exactly. But I mean St. Paul, St. Peter, exactly. It’s a beautiful cathedral, and there’s an underground sacristy there as well. And then we turn back and then we come towards the city again and we go see St. John the Lateran, which was the seat of the papacy until St. Peter‘s and the Vatican was made the seat back again. So St. John the Lateran has enormous influence. It’s a beautiful church, and was the Cathedral of the Bishop of Rome, the Pope, for several centuries. And people don’t realize that until we bring them in and they see the grandeur of such a church. All of this in preparation of maybe side experiences or maybe shouldn’t be side … Necessary experiences that people are going to feel the urge of doing if they decide to travel in 2025 to Rome.
Kathy McCabe: What are the pros and cons of that? So I was just in Rome, there’s a lot of construction. They’re really getting ready, they’re expecting, do you know how many million? I don’t remember the number, but it’s crazy. So what would you recommend to people if they want to come to Rome or Italy in 2025? How to navigate that?
Angelo Carotenuto: So we’re at business level, we’re comparing it to what’s happening in Paris with the Paris Olympics right now.
Kathy McCabe: Right.
Angelo Carotenuto: And we’re having to kind of realize, well, the magnitude of the impact. Now, the Paris Olympics are only few couple of weeks including the Paralympics, and they’re happening in the city. So they involve the infrastructure of the city very, very much. And a lot of people are traveling for that event, and the people that were traveling for that event may feel disrupted at some point. I think the experience of the Jubilee Year in Rome or in Italy in general, will be very different. It will not be as disruptive as the Paris Olympics. We’re talking yes, about millions of people that are planning on coming to Rome to walk through the Holy Doors and or see and hang out with the Holy Father or assist to any of the ceremonies or masses. But these are spread out through the entire year, both in winter and in summer.
Kathy McCabe: Right. At least it’s not like a two-week thing. Yeah.
Angelo Carotenuto: Exactly. And these are people that most likely will not interfere with your desired things to see. These are people that are going to go to set up events. They may fill out public buses and metros if you tend to get around like that. But to walk through the city, to visit a museum or a site, take a train to Florence or to the rest of Italy, I don’t think people will really realize the difference. Yes, we’re talking about some few huge events with thousands of people, but we’re having one tomorrow. Tomorrow there’s 5,000 people coming to see the Pope for an event, private event of his, and they’re everywhere in St. Peter’s Square, and they’re just there hanging out, waiting for the event to happen. It’s like waiting for a big concert to happen. And you just imagine that happening several times throughout the year.
Kathy McCabe: Yeah. So it seems like if you want to do it, you can do it. You can do Rome. Book ahead for the Jubilee, but I think it’s a great time also to go to other places in Italy.
Angelo Carotenuto: Absolutely.
Kathy McCabe: So obviously you do the big three, but what are some of those other places that you offer tours or unique experiences? If somebody, maybe they’ve done a trip or two, they’ve seen the big things and they’re looking for something a little different?
[15:05]
Angelo Carotenuto: So if you’re planning on getting out of the city of Rome, regardless of the possible disruptions and LivTours is proud to say that we’re basically everywhere from Milan all the way down to Sicily. So we have a good amount of options, both major sites, major cities that you want to go see, but also minor. If you want to take an hour train ride up to Florence, I would strongly suggest, speaking of alternative routes, speaking of alternative experiences, we have a beautiful artisan tour where we take you into these very local shops, a leather shop, a paper shop, and a rock shop, a stone making shop. And we get to have you experience, not hands-on, but sort of sit next to the local craftsman, the local artisan, and learn and understand these century-old traditions, Florentine traditions that-
Kathy McCabe: Oh, I always love that. And it’s so-
Angelo Carotenuto: Yeah.
Kathy McCabe: Important. It’s not just like, “Oh, we’re going to go see this.” Doing these tours, buying their products is helping them survive, and it is so needed.
Angelo Carotenuto: Creating awareness is making them survive, yes.
Kathy McCabe: Yeah.
Angelo Carotenuto: It’s a little bit-
Kathy McCabe: This is in danger that you kids when they come to Florence or Rome-
Angelo Carotenuto: Exactly.
Kathy McCabe: Are not going to have that. And I hope that is a … You’re seeing just massive amounts of tourists coming Italy, and it’s wonderful for the economy, for our own businesses, but it’s all for nothing if we can’t use it in a way to preserve Italian culture.
Angelo Carotenuto: Part of our mission is to help the client understand how to visit and not just come and exploit. So come and live the locality in the most transcendental way and bring back memories and emotions that you can then evangelize with your family and friends and not just come through without making any sort of impact on yourself. That’s a little bit … Slow travel is a little bit what we’re getting at, but I don’t want to use that because sometimes often people get turned off when you use that word.
Kathy McCabe: Right.
Angelo Carotenuto: And slow travel doesn’t mean that you have to do things slowly. It means that you have to do things meaningfully.
Kathy McCabe: Yes.
Angelo Carotenuto: You can still go to out at 100 miles an hour because you want to see a gazillion things, you want to see and do a gazillion things within the very limited time or budget that you’ve dedicated for that vacation. But you have to do it in a meaningful way. Another tour that you’re making me think of is, for example, take another train, another fast train and go to another big city or big Mecca, which is Venice. So we teach people how to row in Venice.
[18:07]
Kathy McCabe: I’ve done that. I love that. I’ve done two rowing lessons in Venice, one with a real gondolier, which I’m not sure they all are allowed to teach that. I was on the real gondola, but also I think it’s called voga alla veneta, the rowing instructor. And again, the sidecar, you see the city. Sorry to jump in without you explaining, because I’m so enthusiastic about this, you see Venice from the true Venetian angle. Everything is the water, all these gondolas, these boats have been used for years, and it’s like you’re experiencing Venice as it was meant to be experienced. So I’m so glad you offered that.
Angelo Carotenuto: Yeah, yeah. I mean, sometimes people, it’s kind of cute in a way, and people really don’t realize that there are no cars in Venice until they actually are in Venice and that-
Kathy McCabe: And there never have been and never will be.
Angelo Carotenuto: And we’re Westernized. So we’re Westernized, in the occidental world, especially in North America, we live in cars. We do. And so to go in a place, and so we’re like, “Wait a minute. So these people walk everywhere.” Yeah. Well, okay, people walk everywhere in small towns, et cetera. But actually almost every resident Venetian now, quite a few are … Not very many are left. It’s a declining population. This is true. But all local Venetians have a little boat, a little boat maybe with a small engine or a rowing boat, and they see their own city, they use their own transportation as much as we would … Maybe not as much, but they do it just as much as we would use a car to go around and go grocery shopping.
Kathy McCabe: But one of those, I hate these, but those scooters, the little private one person sort of transportation that we have in a bunch of … You don’t have scooters in Rome, do you?
Angelo Carotenuto: No, no.
Kathy McCabe: You know what I’m talking about? I hate them.
Angelo Carotenuto: Yeah, I do. I do. I do.
Kathy McCabe: Oh, please. I hope they don’t come to Rome. But what I mean is it’s like your own little personal transportation. But again, I’m thinking even almost when I think of the footage that we shoot or when I was doing it is you’re seeing the city from … You’re not seeing it from a vaporetto. You’re seeing it from a totally different angle. You’re going around these little corners and these little canals that you wouldn’t on a vaporetto. And that’s a chance. We always worry about Venice and will it remain what it has always been, or just be like this Disney World? But I think in having an experience like that, it’s not, it’s the real Venice.
Angelo Carotenuto: Yeah. Well, and it’s funny you say so because speaking of the survival or the impact you want to have on the local community, the trainers that we collaborate with are part of a women’s only sports association.
Kathy McCabe: That’s who I did it with. I know them.
[21:12]
Angelo Carotenuto: Exactly.
Kathy McCabe: Yes. And they’re fabulous.
Angelo Carotenuto: They’re fabulous people. And all their money goes back to the women’s association to support women in sports.
Kathy McCabe: That is amazing. And so if you go and do LivTour‘s tour, you’re actually doing it with the same people I did it with.
Angelo Carotenuto: Exactly, exactly.
Kathy McCabe: That’s great. And again, they’re like locals banding together to preserve their culture. They are their own community, and Venice is alive and well. It’s just in these pockets we often see the doom and the gloom, but there are lots of people working to preserve and to share. And I love going. I think an interesting tour always is the Jewish ghetto in Venice for people. It’s always fascinating, I think gives people a new perspective.
Angelo Carotenuto: Absolutely. And speaking of different perspectives, we’re proud partners of Saint Mark’s Basilica, and with whom we collaborate in an after-hours visit. So people are always concerned about the crowds and seeing it during the day or potentially standing in line or not having the time to have their own spiritual time, for example. Because at the end of the day, it is a church. We have a slot in the evening reserved just for us, literally just for us, just for LivTours. We meet our clients half an hour before the slot on the other side of the square. We do a beautiful introduction of the square that is now kind of turning off, turning on its light. The snack bars, the local bars are having their orchestras outside play.
Kathy McCabe: Oh, I know that is beautiful. Yes.
Angelo Carotenuto: And we walk through that square. We talk about the facade of the church, and we go to the side and there’s a small little gate on the side of Saint Mark’s and it opens from inside, and there’s one custodian that opens the door for LivTours. We go in and we talk about the loggia and the entry away for a little bit. And then we go into the actual main floor of the church and it’s pitch dark. And we help people go into the main floor, sit on the peels, we sit them all down.
And that same custodian that allowed us in closes the gate, goes into the back of the church, goes to all the switches of the lights. And as you know, Kathy, Saint Mark’s Basilica has these beautiful golden mosaics in these circular and round and beautiful arched ceilings. Well, he turns on the switches one by one. So here you are in the pitch dark, sitting in the peel, waiting for something to happen. All of a sudden you have this light show. And speaking of experiencing something with meaning, if I were to say, this is the way to see Saint Mark’s.
[24:00]
Kathy McCabe: I think generally this, and I know you offer other after hours or early experiences, this is generally a great tip, an antidote for sort of all the other tourists you may encounter is to do one of these early or after hours or night tours. You can still get these places more to yourself.
Angelo Carotenuto: Yeah. I mean, in some cases you may require a little bit bigger budget but if you want to do do it-
Kathy McCabe: Yeah, you do to pay for access. But I think it may be worth it to pick and choose if there’s a certain place. It’s really important. Now, do you guys do the key tour, the early-
Angelo Carotenuto: The Key Master?
Kathy McCabe: Yeah, at the Vatican.
Angelo Carotenuto: In the Vatican Museums, yes, we will in 2025. But what we have done this year is something in between the Key Master and the actual official opening of the Vatican Museums, which is a 6:45 AM tour. And all in all is, I don’t want to say better than the Key Master. The Key Master is certainly an experience, meaning to go there with a guy that has all the keys and help him open up every door, et cetera is absolutely a fantastic thing to do. There isn’t much interaction with your tour guide though, in that experience. It’s all a show about the Key Master and about the ceremony of opening every door and turning every light on. And that’s the experience you’re paying for.
What we do at LivTours, what we’ve done in 2024, and we will continue to do in 2025 is an actual tour with an empty museum. So at 6:45 AM, Key Master’s gone. He’s done his thing. Now, the hallways, the galleries, the paintings, the statues, the courtyards and the Sistine Chapel are turned on, they’re all open, but they’re free for us and only us to give a tour. And we’ve been doing that very successfully. We call it a loan in the Sistine Chapel and the Vatican Museums, and people have been in awe with it.
Kathy McCabe: That sounds dreamy to me, it’s worth it. It’s so worth it to get up early and to see it. And to see it, we were talking about how has traveling changed or how has traveling to Italy changed when you were going 25 years ago, not that you were alone in the Vatican Museum. But you had more space. You could take things in a little bit easier. And so I think anything people can do and book to get that kind of access. One thing we haven’t talked about, which I think is fascinating, is guides. And you started as a tour guide in Rome and how much … I’m curious how you pick your guides, how you find these people, because the experience is so made by often the person who’s telling the stories, giving the context. And I always encourage everyone, whether you can’t … Whatever your budget is, to go on some kind of tour with a real live human being, because all of Italy is about context of the backstory. How do you sort of source these guides and look for people who really make the experience?
[27:25]
Angelo Carotenuto: There’s a very important partner of LivTours who says, and I’ll never forget this phrase, who says, “The tour guide can make or break a vacation.” Believe it or not, you can be completely disinterested in seeing the Sistine Chapel for whatever personal reason, but you feel like you have to tag along with your family because you need to go.
Save 10% with LivTours with Discount Code: DREAMOFITALY10
Kathy McCabe: Right, many places.
Angelo Carotenuto: And a tour guide can … And if you don’t have a tour guide, you’re going to come in with that attitude, you’re going to come out with that attitude. But a tour guide maybe has the power, the storytelling abilities to change that point of view and make you treasure that moment, even though you may have been coming in with a different perspective. Yes, you’re right. I have been the tour guide since 2004, so 20 years. This year, we’re celebrating 20 years, and I come from a family of artists and I have acting and singing background. And my degree was actually in European art history and in acting from Los Angeles. So I had sort of a little bit of a path designed for myself when I decided to work in the travel industry, I felt myself very at ease and in the right place before me. Because at the end of the day, of course, the academic content is crucial and extraordinarily important, but it is a lot about how you say rather than what you say.
And I did a very good gym for the first six or seven years of tour guiding literally people who were just trying to wing it and skip the line last minute or pre-booked VIPs or cruise ship travelers who wanted to see everything in 6 hours, or I even toured high school children from North America who needed to see 12 capitals in 8 days or less.
Kathy McCabe: God bless you. It sounds like it’s this ability to perform and to tell the story in a way to keep the attention of teenagers, for instance?
Angelo Carotenuto: Teenagers or anybody else, Kathy. And that’s why when I started LivTours or LivItaly, it was very important that the tour guides that we first started picking were aligned with my style, were aligned with my vision and our values of essentially being honored to be called to become actors of that dream coming true. And a dream is made of emotions, it’s made of feelings. Play with me a little bit, indulge in this one.
Save 10% with LivTours with Discount Code: DREAMOFITALY10
Kathy McCabe: I will, yes.
Angelo Carotenuto: Imagine yourself being a lawyer in New York who is planning their Italy vacation, and for yourself and for your family, and you’re planning, you’re probably hoping, let’s go back to the Sistine Chapel since we’ve talked about it and you’re planning. You probably are cultured enough to see images and that dream of the ceiling of the Michelangelo, maybe the two fingers almost touching, maybe a few other snippets of things that you know of that you’ve learned from maybe in a college class or in high school art history or whatever.
[30:41]
And hopefully you see yourself in the Sistine Chapel with a tour guide. The tour guide is explaining to you the beautiful paintings and Michelangelo’s tragic making of the ceiling, of the Sistine Chapel and The Last Judgment day. Hopefully that tour guide is good-looking, but the most important thing is your emotional impact on that dream, and that emotional impact on that dream comes from the words and the storytelling that that person is, and you probably don’t see that person’s face in the dream. It’s probably all canceled up and wiped up, and that’s what we have to fulfill.
We find ourselves in a very honoring position of being that person that allows you to live. That’s why the name of our company, live as much as possible, relive as much as possible, those emotions you probably felt during your planning stages, during your dreaming stages, during your longing of being there stages. As we grew, clearly it becomes harder to find or discover people that are totally aligned with you. So I love workshopping them, I love giving them training. And because I come from that background, we talk about how important it is to spark certain hormones with different stories.
Kathy McCabe: This is fascinating, and I mean, it’s very similar, even though I don’t think about it to what I do more with the TV show, but also with the magazine and the website. It’s like it is such an emotional experience. And what you made me realize, which I kind of know, but to explain is when people go to Italy, they have certain expectations. Now they are dreams. But I don’t know if there’s any other place in the world, perhaps Paris, perhaps London, that you have a vision of what you think it’s going to be. You might be going to, I don’t know. From even the planning of it and you’ve seen it all your life. So you A, have to deliver. I think there’s a lot … And Italy always delivers, but this emotional … Travel isn’t really about just going to see a place and hear about things.
Angelo Carotenuto: No.
[33:23]
Kathy McCabe: It’s the connection you make back to your own life and something you take about greater humanity and your role in it, how you fit in that. So it’s really interesting to have this conversation with you because you often think it’s like, “Oh, here, go to this website and book this tour.” So much more.
Angelo Carotenuto: So much more. And you’re absolutely right. Yeah, we think of Italy as an amazing playground for that because yes, people have either … I don’t know, maybe Italy was the first influencer of all these countries. It was really good at influencing.
Kathy McCabe: Absolutely. From the movies, TV shows.
Angelo Carotenuto: Yeah, exactly. Immigration.
Kathy McCabe: Yeah. The Grand Tour, not just recent, but there’s a lot of … Everyone has a connection and a story, and then sometimes it takes that person. And on the TV show, I’m that person, at least for that time you’re watching when you have the guide, they’re that person who’s kind of bringing it home. And it’s a really important role. And I will tell you on this trip that I did, where we went to several places in Europe just recently, one of them, we had what I thought was not a good tour guide, and I will remember-
Angelo Carotenuto: Sorry to hear that.
Kathy McCabe: Yeah, me too. But when you have a bad one, it makes you realize how important … You almost have to have that in working in travel. And I’m always getting great recommendations, and I know great companies, and so I haven’t had a bad tour guide in a while. And it’s like having a bad meal in Italy, which is hard, but it happens and it makes you realize, “Wow, all those people I’ve toured with before,” and I had to quantify when I explained to the person who booked it, what was not so great about this person. And it’s that she didn’t connect at all with us, and there were other issues, but I realized we just felt no connection and how important that is.
Save 10% with LivTours with Discount Code: DREAMOFITALY10
Angelo Carotenuto: Absolutely. And I’ll tell you what. We’re all humans and we can all have a bad day.
Kathy McCabe: Oh, I’m sure you’ve had … Yeah, right. People with bad days-
Angelo Carotenuto: You know what I mean? Yeah, absolutely. But I’ll tell you what it is, going back to mass tourism, going back to diversifying your travel experience, going back to if you’ve been here once or twice, try and explore and experience something a little bit different and off the beaten path, whether it’s still within the same city or taking a day trip or going out in the countryside or elsewhere that is really not well known. But you’re going to find people a little bit more energized and passionate in … It’s easier that Marco is going to have a bad day giving you a Vatican Museum tour if that’s all he does, and that’s all they’re asking him to do. You know what I mean?
Kathy McCabe: This was a tour that I’m sure she does the same place every day.
Angelo Carotenuto: Exactly.
[36:46]
Kathy McCabe: And maybe on certain days she’s amazing, but this is why it’s important to seek out those. If you’re the only guy doing this tour or you’re in a part of Italy, people aren’t going to as much, it usually does shine through it.
Angelo Carotenuto: It elevates the experience. Exactly. For both the performer and the receiver. Absolutely.
Kathy McCabe: Yeah. Okay. So you’ve lived in Rome for a long time, and what are some of your favorite places to eat, to stay, to have a gelato? Give us the intel.
Angelo Carotenuto: I’m proudly born and raised in Rome.
Kathy McCabe: Remind me, you’re half-American?
Angelo Carotenuto: Yeah, my mother is Californian. Yeah, my mother’s Californian.
Kathy McCabe: I knew there’s … Yeah, you obviously have an American presence, so you were born and raised in Rome, so you’re a native. Even better.
Angelo Carotenuto: Even better.
Kathy McCabe: Even better.
Angelo Carotenuto: I come from a small little neighborhood, a residential neighborhood that is in the northeast side of the city called Monte Sacro. And generally speaking, I have to be completely honest with you, you can find really, really good refined food in the city center. But for the most part, unfortunately, it has become a little bit touristy. So if you have the opportunity of going a little bit off the side, Monte Sacro could be one, and Pigneto could be another one. San Lorenzo could be another one. Even perhaps Prati, for example, I lived in Prati for 12 years. Prati is often … It’s on the other side of the Tiber, it’s on the Vatican area, northwest of the Vatican going towards the Stadio Olimpico, and there aren’t very many hotels because it’s a good mixture between offices and residents. But it’s a gorgeous neighborhood. It’s really beautiful. And on the weekend it quiets down, and the restaurants and the shopping is really high level and local.
[38:58]
In Prati, I would strongly suggest to go to a restaurant that both Cristina and I consider one of our favorites, and it’s called Sorpasso. The good thing about Prati is that even though I just told you to get out of the city center, it’s really a hop and a jump to cross any of the rivers. Any of the rivers and you’re in Prati. And Sorpasso is a restaurant whose menu changes every day because they collaborate with local, we call them kilometer zero farms or entities that bring whatever was fresh, whatever was caught fresh on that day or raised. So it could be a cheese, it could be a ham, it could be a vegetable, it could be a piece of meat, it could be a pasta that they just made that day.
And their menu changes. And it’s always a little particular, a little refined and researched. It’s not necessarily always traditional. It’s not your carbonara, et cetera. But it’s really delicious and they have a huge selection of wines. So I strongly suggest Sorpasso. And always in Prati, I know, I’m sorry I’m being a little bit monothematic, but if you do want your carbonara experience off of a big beautiful square called Piazza Mazzini, there’s a restaurant called Cacio e pepe. Now don’t confuse that with the Cacio e pepe in Trastevere.
Kathy McCabe: Okay.
Angelo Carotenuto: This is the original Cacio e Pepe in the evening. They literally invade the whole block with small tables and chairs everywhere on the sidewalk.
Kathy McCabe: Oh my God.
Angelo Carotenuto: Even though it’s a small hole in the wall.
Kathy McCabe: Very Italian.
Angelo Carotenuto: You have to line up. You cannot reserve. Give you an idea. Yeah. It’s fresh homemade pasta. And their Cacio E Pepe is seven euros. So I mean-
Kathy McCabe: There’s something that’s still-
Angelo Carotenuto: Exactly. These places still exist.
[40:56]
Kathy McCabe: That’s a relief to hear that. So it’s wonderful. I think there’s a new hotel, the Hoxton in Prati. There’s a few more choices for people I know, a lot of expats, friends have lived in Prati.
Angelo Carotenuto: A few things are happening.
Kathy McCabe: And it’s, I think, a great idea for people visiting Rome or to try to stay in a different neighborhood, to feel a little more local, again, especially if they’ve been before. And a lot of the people who watch Dream of Italy listen to this, have been to Rome before. So they’re looking for something new. You’ve really brought alive, for me, what booking a tour really means, or booking a guide or choosing an experience. And so we have a code that you’ve provided if people want to book any of the experiences or look for other ones on your website, which is Livtours.com?
Angelo Carotenuto: Yeah. Save 10% with LivTours with Discount Code: DREAMOFITALY10
Kathy McCabe: And that will also be in the show notes for this podcast in a link. We will link up all the tours that you’ve told us about. Well, we have had quite the conversation. We’ve covered a lot. So if people want to find out more about your company, it’s livtours.com, and they can book and get 10% off with DreamofItaly10. And if you want to see the show notes, find out more about the episode, you can come to dreamofitaly.com/podcast and we’ll have all kinds of links, especially to really … We covered a great variety of the experiences that you offer. The rowing in Venice, the after hours Saint Mark’s, I really highly recommend the sidecar in Rome, the 6:45 AM Rome Vatican tour. I think we’ve given people a lot of ideas.
Angelo Carotenuto: Yes, we have. Well, thank you for the space. Thank you for having this wonderful, delightful conversation. I couldn’t be prouder of the dream enablers that Christine and I have surrounded ourselves with. Anybody from the tour guides, to the meet and greet staff, to our amazing team in ticketing and marketing and operations. So we’re very much looking forward to help you make your dreams come true.
[43:30]
Kathy McCabe: Yeah. I love how … I was really taken aback by how you reminded me and everyone that when we go to Italy, when we go for these experiences. I mean, I even forget, and the name is Dream of Italy, that it is more than a trip always. When it comes to Italy, there are so many layers. So I think people will find your offerings to be an elevated choice and give them something to talk about and remember and reflect on which is the best kind of travel. Transformative.
Angelo Carotenuto: Yeah.
Kathy McCabe: So thank you.
Angelo Carotenuto: Thank you.
Kathy McCabe: For more information about this podcast episode, show notes, and a discount on LivTours, visit dreamofitaly.com/17
Save 10% with LivTours with Discount Code: DREAMOFITALY10