One Step Closer Travel Planners

One Step Closer to Your Dreams

Travel planners for a wide range of itineraries across Tuscany & Italy

If you're on Discover Tuscany, you are at one stage or another of your travel planning to Tuscany. Whether your trip is next month or 9 months from now, you're hopefully finding many ideas of what to do in Tuscany. If you need some help in making your plans definite, you can request assistance from those specialized in this area.

I recently met the three ladies behind One Step Closer, Valentina, Antonella and Camilla, to learn more about what they do. As travel consultants, the two sisters and cousin dedicate themselves to making your dream vacation in Italy come true, offering complete flexibility in satisfying your requests for a special travel experence, whatever they might be.

Private wine tastings and winery tours

Concierge service for discerning travelers

What does One Step Closer do? Since they do not offer any set “packages” for vacations to Tuscany and Italy, I asked to meet with Valentina and Antonella to learn more about what precisely they do and offer. Their website has a lot of ideas, but remains pretty vague. The reason for this, I soon learned, is because they can pretty much do anything!

Special dinner in museum room

Let me give you a few examples of what they told me they organize to show you what One Step Closer is about. They organize:

Half day and full day tours of Florence and any other city in Tuscany. Tours are of any kind, from museum to walking tours to visits in artisan workshops in the Oltrarno in Florence, just to give some examples.
Cooking classes for you and your family or group of travel partners at your local or at a school.
Wine tastings and guided winery tours in Chianti, Montepulciano, Montalcino or any other wine region in Tuscany and Italy.
A special, private visit or dinner at a museum or villa for your group.
Small group vacations where everything is taken care of, from transportation to activities to villa rental. I thought the help of One Step Closer in this case is really ideal when your group is not super big but not small and when the logistics of getting around starts getting complicated.
Weddings, from just a few details (like getting documents or just the cake) to taking care of all the details of the special event.
Pretty much anything your heart can desire, from fishing, hot air balloon rides and special dinner setups, such as proposals at very romantic locations with all of the details taken care of ;).

They do this in Florence, across Tuscany and in other cities in Italy, from Rome to Milan, from Venice to Naples and Sicily. You can have them help you organize your entire trip to Italy.

Watch art restorers do their work

Personal attention and flexibility

Contacting and asking for assistance from either Valentina or Antonella is getting personal attention from them: they are directly involved in all of the planning, from the first email you send to ask for assistance to the first day you are in Florence when they'll personally be there to meet you.

Visit artisan workshops

They can organize just about anything both in Tuscany and in Italy given the 15 years of experience they have in working in the field. If you're planning a special event or vacation in Italy, that includes Tuscany as well as Rome, Venice, Naples or Milan, for example, One Step Closer can be your consultant and partner in organizing as little or as much as you need help with.

They work with a select group of professionals, be they art historians and tour guides, chefs and cooks or babysitters, who have many years of working with them in providing high quality services in their respective fields. The added benefit of having Valentina or Antonella help in your programming is that they know which are the right guides for your group, and which ones are not, in terms of character and personality. If you were to want a guided tour for the adults and a separate one for the kids, you want one who loves and connects with kids, right?

Assistance in every sense of the word

One Step Closer is not a travel agency, so while they won't book plane tickets or hotels for you, they will offer you their years of experience in suggesting the best ones for your travel plans and help plan your itinerary from A to Z, taking care of the logistics. They can and will offer suggestions, especially if you're trying to do too much for the days you have available, as well as offer ideas of activities you might not have even yet considered.

Valentina and Antonella want to have happy clients who love their experience in Italy. For that reason, they have chosen to offer personalized services based on specific requests rather than create “cookie-cutter” tours and services.

Private concert in front of Botticelli's "Venus"

I could hear the passion and dedication they have given to their job and how they offer it to anyone who chooses to use their travel planning services. Valentina says she loves the “challenge of meeting special requests” and organizing activities a “bit out of the ordinary”, such as a private concert at San Galgano at night or a wedding on Elba or a dinner at the Accademia Gallery. Antonella loves organizing the longer itineraries over several days or even weeks, “adding and finding the right combination of activities for a group are fun”.

While Valentina is a licensed tour guide, she often doesn't get a chance to lead groups anymore but she and Antonella love meeting clients and putting a face to the name behind the emails and phone calls. This is where you can be assured of the best personal service. While you're in Italy, you can contact them for anything, including knowing that they are your emergency contact if the need were to arise.

While I personally also offer lots of suggestions and advice on itineraries in Tuscany on our forum, I cannot offer this type of service to all those who would like the extra assistance in their travel planning. From now, whether you've already bought your plane ticket or booked your hotels or are at the very start of your planning and wondering what you're going to do in Italy, I will recommend Valentina and Antonella at One Step Closer. They will indeed bring you that one step closer to making your vacation turns out to be one of the best travel trips ever!

I suggest you take a look at their website at http://www.onestepcloser.net/ and contact them directly if you're in the midst of planning your vacation or a special event in Italy to make it easier, memorable and fun ;-).

Private dinner in monastery cloister courtyard

Images of all events provided by One Step Closer.

About Lourdes Flores

An American living in Florence for over 11 years, Lourdes continues to explore and discover new places in Tuscany with the eyes of a tourist but with the experience of living in Italy. She shares her experiences on this website, blog and offers travel planning help on the Forum! If you have questions for Lourdes, post them on the Forum.