europeannovice

Hi all,

I am in the very early stages of planning a trip to Italy either next year or the year after in the peak season of summer to accommodate school schedules. We will be two adults and a teenager. We are thinking of 14 touring days and want to cover a huge area. I need help narrowing it down and having it make sense without exhausting ourselves in the process.This will be the first trip to Italy for all of us.

Idea is to fly into Venice and out of Rome. We want to cover Venice-Florence-Tuscany-Amalfi Coast-Rome-in that 14 day time frame. Is it too much to cover? Is it doable?

I know this question has been asked so many times but how many days is good for Venice?

Venice 2 or 3 nights?
Florence 2 nights
Tuscany--Siena? 2 nights
either train from Florence to Sorrento or Salerno or drive from Siena to Sorrento or Salerno--what do you recommend?
Sorrento or Salerno as base for Amalfi--3 or 4 nights?
Rome 4 or 5 nights--which do you recommend for a first time visit?

In Tuscany--would like to visit Lucca, Pisa, San Gimignano, Siena, Montepucliano. Can Lucca and Pisa both be done in one day? Should we skip one of these? Which one?

In Amalfi--want to visit Pompeii and Herculeneum, Ravello and Positano, maybe boat to Capri? Paestum? how many nights needed? Where is the better base?

I heard many negative reports about Venice--smells of the canal in summer, expensive, crowds, pigeons etc. However, the architecture looks stunning.

I appreciate your feedback as I go through this process

nytraveler

Sorry - but you are trying to squash 20 pounds of stuff in a 10 pound bag.

You must remember several things:

Two night in a city means on day there

It typically takes 1/2 a day to get from one city to another (even if they are close) and can be more - and this time needs to be removed from you r itinerary

Often less is more - spending several days in a town gives you a much better feeling it for than spending half a day and then half a day there

If you want to go to 8 places in 15 days (and how many nights do yo really have on the ground - yo have only 1/2 day jet lagged the day you arrive and you can't count the day you return home) and deduct 4 days to get from one to another you have 1 and 1/2 days at most in each place. So if you want to spend 4 in Rome and 4 in the AC that means you have to drop at least 3 places.

What you are trying to do is the classic mistake of a first trip to europe and will likel end up a very expensive, exhausting (esp in the high heat of summer) and blurry tour of the train stations of Italy.

Please lay out your trip day by day - where you will start, what you will do, what travel you will have (use bahn.de for accurate schedules) and where you will sleep. I think this will give you a much more realistic view of what is possible.

(Do NOT model your itinerary on a tour brochure unless you plan on rising at 7 every day and being in your car - with private driver experienced in the area by 8 am with long days on the road, short stops at a couple of places - and spending a huge amount of money).

europeannovice

The idea was to base ourselves in 4 locations with day trips to visit the other sites not spend the night in each of the places mentioned.

For Florence and Tuscany--either base all 4 nights in Florence or somewhere close to Florence so we can visit the museums of Florence in a couple of days and do a day trip to Pisa and Lucca and another day trip to Siena and San Gimignano. Is that not doable? Is that too rushed?

Same with using Sorrento or Salerno as a base for 3 or 4 nights and then doing something different each day. One day Pompeii, one day Positano and Ravello etc.

traveller1959

Your general approach to travel is too hectic. I understand that you have been to Europe and you seem to think that each place has a small number of attractions and that you fly in, take a photo and fly out to the next destination.

You won't neither enjoy nor understand Europe by this way of travelling. And you underestimate travelling times, even between places which are geographically nearby. And your teenage will be complaining all the times.

Travelling in Europe means leisurely walking through historic towns, getting lost in mazes of medieval streets, making discoveries at corners and in hidden courtyards, sitting in a café and watching people, listening to guide telling stories from two thousand years ago.

Cut half of the destinations from your list and make your itinerary.

For Venice, you need at least 3 nights to have 2 days. Never been there in summer, but in the rest of the year it is magical.

Florence, the same. Three nights for 2 days. No need to change accomodation to Siena. I would base myself on a beautiful fattoria in the countryside, somewhere near San Gimignano or Volterra, and do daytrips from there into the cities.

Amalfi Coast will be crowded in summer and it won't be fun driving the incredibly scenic coastal road because it will be one solid string of congestion. One base on the peninsula is sufficient, travelwise, I would choose Amalfi, Positano or Sorrento as a base, also for trips to Pompeii. Take your car to the Amalfi Coast, you will need it to move around there. Or drop the car in Florence, take the train to Naples and rent a car there.

tonfromleiden

Keeping the Amalfi coast for a next time makes - in combination with Naples and a second leg for Rome - your schedule a lot more realistic.
Venice needs at least two full days, which is three nights.
The same is for Florence. I've once use Prato as a base (15 to mins from Florence). From there you can easily do Lucca 1 to 1,5 hrs) and Pisa (another 30 mins) as a day trip.
For Siena, Montepulciano and other places in southern Tuscany it's necessary to change place and to rent a car. Choose something central to use the opportunity for beauties like Orvieto and Cortona.
The remaining three nights or so are for a first glimpse of Rome.

Jean

Doable, but very rushed IMO.

For example, if you spend 4 nights in Florence, you have 3 full days not impacted by coming/going. In those 3 days, you've given one day to seeing Florence, one day for Pisa/Lucca and one day for Siena/SanG. Doable, but you won't have seen much of Florence, but perhaps that's enough for you. Just don't try it on a Sunday or Monday when many museums are closed.

Montepulciano isn't convenient to your itinerary without a car. Your entire list of Amalfi Coast sightseeing would take 6-7 nights.

I would start by listing your itinerary day by day, noting travel times between points (including getting to/from train/bus stations), the things you want to see/do in each place (only you can decide) and how much time you think that sightseeing will take (only you know your level of interest). Include the days of the week so that you can check to see what things on your list are open/closed when you're there.

If you're concerned about huge crowds, you should be going to different places or at a different time of year. You've picked the most popular places in Italy in high season.

zorrosf

In addition to the well-considered comments above, please consider:

1. It will be HOT, HOT, HOT. You will not feel like rushing from place to place. We visited Pompeii in July one morning and spent the rest of the day at the pool recovering.

2. It will be crowded. San G is one of the most popular towns in Tuscany and once the tour buses start arriving, it can be difficult to even walk around. Best times to see the small villages are very early in the a.m. and late afternoon-early evening. This means finding "something" worthwhile to do during the heat of the day.

3. You may wish to involve (or at least offer involvement to) your teenager in planning activities that would interest him/her. A 6 hour trip to Pompeii may not be every teenager's idea of heaven.

4. If you have spent any time on this Forum, you will see literally hundreds (well, maybe dozens) of questions like yours: "Is this too much to try to cram into the time available?" Inevitably, the answer is: "Yes, WAY, WAY too much."

5. Remember serendipity. Things will happen that require more time than your rapid pace may allow. Imagine if you are enjoying an impromptu street concert/dance, but you must hurry off to see some "important site" when you would really prefer to linger.

6. Think about planning some time to stroll, wander, get lost, inspect a small intriguing shop, enjoy a glass of wine/beer from a sidewalk café, etc.

7. It may help to repeat the mantra: "Less is more."

RonZ

Train schedules here:

http://www.trenitalia.com/tcom-en

Train journey plus and hour on either end when changing hotels. For day trips, you double the journeys and add 4 trips going back and forth from stations. I would include the Amalfi Coast only after ruling everything else out due to travel time and crowds.

Lets say 3 nights Venice and 4 Florence. Possible day trip to Pisa and Lucca. That leaves 2 days for Florence proper. If 1 is enough, Siena is a popular day trip also [1:20 by bus]. Then Rome for 4 nights.

That leaves 3 nights. You could pick up a car at the Florence airport, stay in the Chianti area or in Southern Tuscany [say around Pienza]. For the latter you could drop the car at the Chiusi rail station [Hertz] and head to Rome.

As to driving in Italy, this is helpful:

http://driventoit.blogspot.com.au/

europeannovice

Ok so sounds like it is too much to see without rushing through and not enjoying it. We are limited right now to the peak season due to school schedules.

What would be better then for a first time visitor skipping the Amalfi Coast or skipping Tuscany?

Sounds like we can stay at an agriturismo for a few days with a pool and relax and enjoy the villages at a more leisurely pace and commute into Florence as one option and leave out Amalfi this time.

Or focus on Rome and Amalfi and leave out the villages of Tuscany?

Which place would be more appealing for a teenage boy?

Would it be too hot in the south and better off in Tuscany?

So I gather Venice requires a minimum of 3 nights. I just read so many negative reviews about Venice that time of year and am debating how many nights we need. Don't want to skip it having never been to Italy before and this will be our first visit and also don't want to short change anything either.

What do you reccommend as a good split of time? How many days in each place as a base?

bilboburgler

Go to Tuscany as Amalfi will be wall to wall coaches, get a place with access to a pool and a stroll to supper. With good walks and maybe some bike hiking the teenager should have a good time. Day trips into Siena etc will be fine. Out of the Florence bit you will probably need a car to enjoy most of Tuscany, but just about everything else can be done by train, and if booked early, can be in first class air-con style for not a lot of money.

Florence in August, I'd keep it short and just a focused visit, the place needs a few weeks so focus on the Duomo, the Baptistry and the Uffisi say. Oh and the park (in the heat you need to visit the Boboli gardens). If you are going to do the commute to Pisa/Lucca (easy to fit into one day) then stay another night in Florence. So either 3 nights or 4 depending on if you add in the P/L trip.

Venice in August, might be an issue and while I think the place is great the other tourists will be a pain. I've been for two nights at a time and yes it is a rushed visit but you could do this. Alternatively you might stay on the Lido or at Chiogia though the Chiogia water commute is fair trip http://europeforvisitors.com/venice/...nformation.htm

If you are doing this sort of Venice trip then you could manage on 2 or 3 nights to get the best out of it and if you are doing the Lido stop then the kid could have a day on the Beach.

Rome will be hot but the good thing is the water in most of the fountains is free and drinkable (really) the obvious things in town will take up 3 whole days (4 nights) (the Forum and central Roman buildings need 1 to 1 1/2 days) the Vatican buildings and the better churches need a day, the art galleries and museums need a day. Then there are day trips out of town like to Ostia Antica but I'm not sure I'd drag a teenager across a commute train to see how the Roman port worked.

So, does that leave you any time, yes it does, and that should be part of the Tuscany or Venice/Lido trip, hire bikes head to the hills, eat well, sleep well. You'll love Agris in Tuscany or you could even spend serious money and stay in a geo-thermal spa in the area.

GarrettD

Hi Europeannoice! I realize some people here have a blunt way of talking ("your travel schedule is too hectic") but just remember they're here to give you their advice.

Honestly, scrap Amalfi. The rest you can do in 14 days and have plenty of time to savor the experience. Take the time you'd spend in Amalfi and add it to Tuscany.

nytraveler

Only you know your son and I would ask him which he would want to do. We took out DDs to europe several times and they would have been bored stiff in an agriturismo - but they were city kids (not outdoors ones - no hiking or biking in 90 temps) and liked cities and seaside resorts and trendy cafes and shopping (even if window) and sitting by a luxurious pool in the afternoons due to the heat.

But your son may feel completely differently. If he isn;t involved yet I would do so immediately (any kid over the age of 9 or 10 can do plenty of searching online to see what interests him - or let him check out the Let's Go Student guides).

But agree that you need to decide between Tuscany and the AC - and you are the only ones who could do that.

RonZ

http://wikitravel.org/en/Italy

Hotels on booking.com

Have a great trip!

bobthenavigator

Drop the AC--it will work minus the time you project for it.

austinfamoffour

My family of four did almost exactly what you want to do last summer in Italy for two weeks. We flew into Venice on July 20 and out of Rome on August 3. We spent 3 nights in Venice, took the train to Florence and spent one night there, rented a car in Florence and spent five nights in an agriturismo in Tuscany (in Castellina in Chianti, good central location) saw all of the Tuscan towns you mentioned and then some (including Pisa and Lucca in one day, Lucca was our favorite), and then took the train from Florence to Rome, spent five nights in Rome and while there took a day trip to Pompeii and Positano. It was a long trip and we hit the ground running every morning (usually around 8am), but my kids (ages 9 and 14 at the time) had a fantastic time and we loved every minute of it. Yes, it's a lot to do in a relatively short amount of time, but it CAN be done. We may not have done an in-depth tour of every town/church/cathedral we saw, but we saw and did a lot. Because we went to so many places, we now know what we want to go back to see in more detail next time.
I will caution you that it is HOT in Italy in July/August. I am from Central Texas and was still not prepared for how HOT it is and the general lack of a/c in Italy. Apparently it was a bit of a record-breaking summer for them across the country, but temps approached 100 degrees in Venice, Florence, and Rome. Tuscany was more pleasant but still very, very warm.
Because we were cramming so many sights and so much ground into two weeks, I made the most of our trip with ruthless planning on the front end. We reserved private tours in advance, reserved entry into the most popular sights when we could in advance (for example, St. Mark's in Venice, for only an extra .5E, let us skip the LONG line that stretched across the square to the bay), and paid extra for the Firenze Card in Florence to make the most of our less-than-24-hours there (We saw all the major sites, the best of the museums, and climbed to the top of the duomo. It's amazing what you can accomplish when you don't have to wait in line.), and we knew every day what we were going to see that day. It was an amazing trip that my kids are still talking about, and we are planning to do something similar in London/Paris this summer.
I think you really just need to think about how your family likes to vacation. If you want to sit by the pool and sleep late every day, then no, there is no way you can see everything we saw in Italy in 14 days. But if you want to immerse yourself in Italy and see everything you can while you are there, it can be done and you can still have a great time.

Lexma90

Any chance of taking your trip at the very beginning of the summer, right after school gets out? We've done that several times, and it's a little less crowded then.

Talk to your teen about what interest him. Our kids, now almost 21 (gulp) and 17, have liked pretty much the same activities that we do for about the last 7 years. They would be bored at an agriturismo. We did stay at one in Le Marche when DD was 10, but we were out and about each day visiting castles and historic sites.

Where to spend the most time depends on you and your son. For our family, we love cities, art and history (and live in a part of the U.S. where we can go hiking or biking in the mountains every weekend), so we usually spend most of our time in cities, though I like to mix that up with some time in a more rural area. Of the "big 3," DD said she liked Venice, Rome and Florence, in that order.

bvlenci

Florence is very, very crowded in the summer, and it's usually hotter than either Rome or Venice. Both of those cities are near the sea, while Florence is inland, in a bowl which gets little air. I wouldn't advise entering the Duomo. It always has a long queue to get in, and there's not a lot to see inside. Instead admire it from the outside and go to the Museum of the Opera del Duomo, behind the cathedral, which has a rich collection of art works that used to be in the Duomo, plus a lot about the history of the building and its construction. It also has the original bronze "Gates of Paradise" doors from the Baptistery; everyone is crammed around the copy that's now on the Baptistery. The Baptistery itself is well worth visiting. It's much older than the Duomo, and has beautiful golden mosaics.

I also would skip the Uffizi, unless you and your son are passionate about Renaissance religious art.

There are a few wonderful museums (other than the museum of the Duomo) and churches that will be nowhere near as crowded as these. San Marco is a convent/museum that has monks' cells frescoed by the Beato Angelico. Santa Maria Novella, near the train station, has several major works of art, and the beautiful Tornbuoni Chapel, which the young apprentice Michelangelo helped to paint<, it also has a beautiful cloister. The Bargello is a wonderful medieval hall with great works of sculpture.

I once went to the Boboli Gardens on a very hot August day, and, believe me, it was extremely hot even there, and the walk across the garden and up the steps to where I could see a bit of shade, was just altogether too much, so I left and went to the Pitti Palace museum instead.

If your family isn't much into art of any kind, you can consider spending just one night, or part of a day, in Florence.

It's also hard to advise on Venice without knowing anything about your family's interests. I'll just say that it's also very crowded in the summer. We were there during a heat wave last July, and riding on the vaporettos, packed in like sardines, was not very much fun. Two nights (one full day) might be enough. However, if there are specific things you want to see there, you might want to spend more time there.

There are lots of things you can see in Rome that are not crowded, but usually people who go to Rome insist on seeing the most crowded and hottest places there (the Colosseum and the Vatican Museums/Sistine Chapel) and don't leave time for anything else. I realize that it's your first visit, and you may feel a strong urge to see these things.

For the Vatican Museums, I would suggest visiting on a Friday evening if you're there in June or July. They limit the numbers of visitors on Friday evenings. Otherwise, I would shell out for one of the expensive early entry options. The cheapest is offered by the Vatican itself, for about €65 per person.

For the Colosseum, the best I can advise is to go very, very early, well before it opens, because even with tickets in hand, you can end up waiting for an hour or more under a broiling sun. There is also a nighttime "event" called Luna sul Colosseo that lets you visit at night, with no queues or crowds. However, this option doesn't include a visit to the Roman Forum and Palatine Hill, as the regular ticket does. This year there's a separate "event" for a visit to the Roman Forum at night. These "events", not surprisingly, cost a lot more than a regular entry.

There are also some wonderful and relatively uncrowded museums in Rome, such as Palazzo Massimo alle Terme, the Galleria Doria Pamphilj, and the Villa Farnesina.

If you want to avoid crowds, I would suggest rural Umbria rather than Tuscany. A car would be almost essential in any rural area. In Umbria without a car, Spoleto or Perugia would be possible bases, with access by train or bus to other towns, such as Assisi, Spello, or Gubbio. Rural Le Marche and Abruzzo are even more pristine and uncrowded than Umbria. In Le Marche, Fabriano is a fairly good base for getting around by public transportation, at least for a few days. In Abruzzo, L'Aquila might be a good base.

I've never been to the Amalfi Coast in full summer, but I imagine it would be both crowded and hot.

By the way, Texas is effectively hotter than any of these places in Italy, but people who live in Texas usually aren't outside most of the day, standing in queues or pounding the pavement. That makes a big difference.

tongsa

Great advice, Fodorites. Taking notes!

Jean

Just so you know, if you pick small towns of Tuscany over the Amalfi Coast area... You'll need to plan your sightseeing somewhat around the 'riposo' in the middle of the day when many things in small towns are closed, esp. in summer.

If you stay in an agriturismo, you'll need to rent a car. Driving around Tuscany would be a bit of a challenge for a first-time visitor but very rewarding. As with any place, you'd need to learn the traffic rules and signage and understand where you can and cannot drive and park. The advent of GPS makes exploring pretty easy.

I agree with the suggestion to include your son in the planning.

Sassafrass

There is so much more to do in Venice than wander and look at architecture - though it is sublime - I recommend longer there.
Crowded during the day, and hot, but night is magical!
Let your son (perhaps you too) take a rowing lesson on a Gondola. That could be the ultimate experience of the trip! Book ahead.
Cool off with an afternoon of swimming on the Lido. Impromptu.
Go to Burano for a few hours for a look at how fisherman have lived and worked the lagoon for centuries. Just grab a vaporetto.
Day trip to Vicenza. No tour needed.
No need to plan ahead except for tours or rowing lesson.

The AC will be hot and crowded, but you could go with the idea of not doing most things on your list, only a bit in 3 nights, 2 full days. Forget a car!
Stay in Sorrento in a hotel up on the cliffs with a pool.
Day 1. Easy train trip to Pompeii. Get up super early, take water and plan on just the morning. See how you feel then. Back to Sorrento to relax by the pool or a couple of hours in Herculaneum or a museum and dinner in Naples.
Day 2. Take a boat down the coast to Amalfi and back. You will pass Positano with great views from the water, so you see the gorgeous coastline. There used to be boat tours from Sorrento that made stops and let you swim in the sea. I did it too long ago for my info to be up to date. Check it out. Your son might enjoy that if they still run.