Underground Archaeology Tour: Layers of Rome with Vicus Caprarius and Exclusive Piazza Navona Access

We've had excellent experiences with Context in the past and had just taken a fantastic Context tour in Barcelona four days earlier; unfortunately, I'm sorry to say that the Underground Rome tour disappointed on several levels. First, the visited sites just didn't excite the imagination. We've been to the Mithraeum at S. Clemente before and expected to see something equally stunning here. But the stops here (S. Lorenzo, the cinema museum, Crypta Balbi) just didn't have that same "wow" factor. Perhaps this was a function of the spaces themselves (there's not much there in terms of dazzling mosaics or frescoes or mysterious altars). Or perhaps it's reflective of the other problem: that Erik needs to improve his guide skills. For our untrained eyes, ruins are not easy to decipher at first glance. Past Context guides have brought along visual aides, handouts, illustrations, and other tools to help us picture the spaces as they were used, bring the spaces to life, and give context (a-ha!) to what we were seeing. Erik had no additional materials to offer, and he tended to march us into a space, talk about what interested him, and blow right past maps and descriptions at the sites (particularly at the cinema museum and Crypta Balbi) that explained the layout and functions of the spaces around us. We frequently had to hang back and steal time to read the wall cards and maps, which we found much more helpful and intriguing than anything we'd been told. Meanwhile, Erik sometimes seemed in a hurry to get back above ground. He's obviously knowledgeable, but he doesn't (at least on our visit) convey any excitement about the spaces. Past Context guides have projected an enthusiasm that made this seem like a calling for them; with Erik, we felt like he was marking time at a job. (Sorry, I know that's harsh, but it's how disengaged we felt on the tour.) That brings us to our other concern/complaint: we spent more time traipsing around above ground than we did in the underground sites we thought we'd come to see. Much of our walking took us to utterly common destinations: Piazza Navona, the Trevi Fountain, the Pantheon -- seriously? Anyone taking an Underground Tour of Rome is obviously looking for something off (under?) the beaten path -- NOT the Trevi Fountain! I know Erik went there because he was trying to use Roman water supply as connective tissue for his tour, but find a more surprising and unexpected example for us. Take us somewhere that every single tourist hasn't visited in their first three hours in Rome. Finally, Erik needs to pay more attention to and be more engaged with his guests. When he'd go marching off through the streets, threading his way through scooters and parked cars and moving traffic, he'd never look back to see if people were managing to follow okay. We're young and pretty agile, but sometimes we got cut off by traffic or fell behind for one reason or another; several times we had to shout ahead to ask him to slow down or wait. We'd also have to yell for him to double-back and answer a question about something we'd seen; that kind of discovery should be part of the fun of a walk like this, but those opportunities were few. Thanks for taking the time to read all this. Hope it helps. (We still love Context.)

Philip was excellent. So much information and ability to get us to see how the people of the past lived.

The initial meet up of the group was a bit confusing. We ended up asking various people in the square if they were with or waiting for the tour. Eventually we all came together. It would have been helpful if Philip had shown up a few minutes early with some indication that he was with Context.