If you are a visitor to Rome, or you want to get familiarized with the city then you may like to consider taking the hop-on-hop-off bus tour. By using these services, you can visit the various popular landmarks and sites in the city. While you are touring around the town, there will be an audio commentary that will guide you and provide plenty of information regarding the history of Romans.
Almost in all bus tours, you will find free Wi-Fi facilities and English-speaking drivers for the benefit of visitors from different parts of the world.
In this article, we shall try to do a brief review of a few of the best hop-on and hop-off companies. As the routes are more or less similar for all the companies, therefore we shall talk in detail about only one company the Big Bus, and use this as a reference for the rest of the other company’s offers.
Big Bus Tours
This Big Bus is one of the most preferred choices for most tourists and their services are much like few of their competitors. Big Bus also provides their bus tour services in many other cities and many other countries too and therefore most of you must be already familiar with this company and can easily recognize their buses too.
Their operations in Rome are considered one of the premium grade hop-on-hop-off bus services of Rome.
This company offers three different ticket options as well as routes for families, and adults, and prices for each. You can also get on their buses pre-recorded audio-commentary in nine different languages, a free smartphone app as well a Wi-Fi service. You can easily download the apps to see the bus locations in real time, which may help you to minimize your time of waiting at any stop.
Buses will be available daily right from 8:30 am to 7 pm with many different frequencies based on any particular day and the route.
Tickets and Routes for Big Bus
- One-Day Classic Ticket: for Adults €28.80 | for Children of age between5-15, €18.90 | for kids 4 years and younger it is free and €85 for the Family
- Two-Day Premium Ticket: for Adults €35.10 | for Children €22.50 | for Family €103
- Three-Day Deluxe Ticket: for Adults €43.20 | for Children €29.70 | for Family €129. The Deluxe Ticket also includes the Purple route with stoppages at Terme di Caracalla and Catacombs.
Please note family tickets are meant for 2 adults and 2 children and also all tickets include four free walking tours.
Gray Line
Gray Line is also known as “I Love Rome” and it usually gets 3.5-star ratings on TripAdvisor and routes and services are similar. Most visitors report that they got services exactly what they had expected, which means that they neither over-promise nor under-deliver too.
There are a few complaints too about their seats on their bus, however, most customers say that they provide quite decent transportation as well as an audio commentary facility.
City Sightseeing Tours
This company is also a familiar name to many as they provide services in many places all over the world. The local vendor who is running their tours in Rome is known as “Sightseeing Experience”. You can easily notice their buses as their busses of classic red- double-decker can be seen everywhere in the world.
The company will offer 1, 2 or 3-day tickets and also tickets that can combine their bus providing entry to places like the Vatican or Colosseum. Routes of City Sightseeing are almost the same as that offered by Big Bus except that they have no stop at the Catacombs or the Baths of Caracalla.