tfrank

Our family is traveling to Europe for 10 days in November. Venice, Florence and Rome. We are all set with hotels. We need a little help with budget for spending, transportation and rail between cities and food. If anyone has any recommendations on tours for a family of 5 and if we should book tours in advance. Also, any restaurants. We love good food and my husband is a real foodie!

2 days Venice, 3 days Florence, 3 days Rome.

Any information would be helpful

Thanks!

drchris

I can only suggest how to find the cost of your train travel. Visit he trenitalia website, put in your trips and number traveling, and it will give you the cost, which varies by time of day and type of train. My husband and I are planing our trip to Italy and have found that train fares are very reasonable - although multiplied by 5 it may be a bit of a shock. If any of the travelers are very young, look for youth or family discounts.

There are a lot of trip reports on the forum that you can read that give information abiut tours and food, and I'm sure you'll get responses to your post.

Enjoy your travels!

PalenQ

www.trenitalia.com is the site of the Italian State Railways and has all the schedules and fares - may get some kind of family discont depending on kids' ages - if there are any kids or perhaps for being old fogeys! And there are discounted tickets available to anyone but they are sold in limited supply, can sell out weeks before the train and typically cannot be changed nor refunded but they can save you money and time of not having to go to the train station in each town to buy them and you'll have the mandated seat reservations well ahead of time so just bop over to the station for your train.

Full-fare tickets are always always available once in the town but you can save time and money by booking online and I think you can select your own seating when booking - that said www.trenitalia.com can be very fickle for novices but there are always helpful Italian train experts like kybourbon lurking around to inevitably help newcomers figure it all out!

So for a train budget check www.trenitalia.com. For lots of good info on Italian trains I always spotlight these IMO fine sites - www.seat61.com (good info on discounted tickets); www.ricksteves.com and http://www.budgeteuropetravel.com/id12.html.

Ciao, ciao!

PalenQ

Restaurants like in much of Europe I'd say across the board are more expensive than back in the U S - the Value-Added-Tax of 15-20% (not sure of Italy) being a reason perhaps along with higher wages and benefits that most works automatically get (I believe)- but mix in picnics and eating deli fare from supermarkets or small food shops in to bring costs down.

Discretionary spending can really boost up costs - five gelatos a day for each will seriously dent your budget!

annhig

tfrank - we took our 2 kids to Rome, Florence and Venice on separate visits of a week each, so I think that I've got a pretty good idea of what living costs are going to be.

Food - a decent evening meal is going to work out at about €20 each, depending on the age of your kids, how many courses you have, and whether they drink water or wine [cheap] or coke and suchlike - more expensive.

snack lunch [eg a panino or cichetti] and a beer/coke will cost between €5-€10 each, depending on where you eat it, and whether you sit down or stand up.

drinks - water and wine are reasonably cheap, ditto an expresso cafe, beer a bit more, coke and suchlike more again. BTW, take empty water bottles to Rome and fill them up from the water fountains, it's potable and extremely good. Sadly the french family who saw me doing this didn't know this and told their son he must never drink from the fountains. the tip to use the supermarkets for buying drinks and suchlike is a very good idea; save the small size bottles to decant drinks from the large ones you buy at the supermarket.

gelato - can vary hugely in price. buy it on the main tourist drag and it'll cost twice as much as it will down a side street.

you will probably be surprised that prices vary between these 3 cities - IMO Venice is the most expensive, followed by Florence with Rome the cheapest.

thursdaysd

"Restaurants like in much of Europe I'd say across the board are more expensive than back in the U S - the Value-Added-Tax of 15-20%"

But then you don't add a 15-20% tip...

jgg

You don't mention the ages of your kids, are you looking for group tours or private tours (sometimes better if your kids are younger.

I would recommend a tour for Vatican/St. Peter's and one for Colosseum/Forum while in Rome. Our first trip to Rome our kid's were 9 and 12 and we did a private Context Rome tour of Vatican and one of Colesseum/Forum. Our Vatican guide was great with the kids, but Colosseum/Forum guide maybe a little to esoteric for the kids.

We were just back in Rome in March and did a Colosseum/Forum tour with Alessandra Mazzoccoli ([email protected]) as my parents came with us and they had never been. She was excellent (and much cheaper than the Context Rome). I think she would be good for all ages. She also does Vatican tours. I booked a group tour for my parents with Walks of Italy to see the Vatican which they enjoyed very much. They also did a tour of Florence with Walks of Italy and enjoyed it very much.

With 5 of you, you may find that private tours are not any more expensive than the group tours and allow you to go at your own pace.

I am a planner so definitely like to book tours in advance. You are going at less busy time of year, so maybe able to do "on the fly", but with only 3 days if you really want to do any tours, I would book them before you left just so you had a good plan each day. This most recent trip we did a night Segway Tour of Rome that was a ton of fun with www.RexTours.com but the min. age is 14, so not sure if that would work for you.

Here are some links to my trip reports along with pictures:
http://www.fromhometoroam.com/catego...eflorence2005/
http://www.fromhometoroam.com/2012/06/rome/