beverlyrossio

I know you have been waiting for someone to ask your advice!
We are asking..My husband and I want to travel to Northern Italy to the small towns of
Pont and Locana. We are flying in and out of Rome and need some ideas
for an itinerary. We want to see the Vatican and the towns his family are from, Pont and Locana and would like to know when to rent the car and how many days to travel?
We have allowed 16 days for the trip... So how/what/when to make the most
of our trip and still get some rest along the way?
thanks in advance!

TDudette

Well, you need to get a book and start reading!

ellenem

For those who want to help . . .

Pont and Locana are in the mountains of the Parco Nazionale de Gran Paradiso, north of Torino and south of Aosta. Pont is particularly remote.

Since we don't know your interests (hate/love art, museums, food, hiking, shopping, and so forth) nor what time of year you plan to take this trip, it is difficult to suggest a good plan for you. There are many different possibilties depending on your interests given the good 16 days you have. (Does the 16 days include your travel days to and from home?)

My biggest question: Why are you flying in and out of Rome? Can you change your flights? Since you have mentioned wanting to see the Vatican, you could fly into Torino or Milano to be close to your family interests and then travel south to Rome to visit the Vatican and return home from there (or reverse into Rome, out of Milano).

greg

Unless you are using awards miles or something else that ties you to fly in and out of Rome, you probably should think about doing a multi-city flight option when you are putting together an itinerary.

According to your description, you are traveling to Northern Italy as well to Rome.

treplow

I have found Locana on my road atlas but not Pont. I assume you are talking about Locana northwest of Turin. It is fairly close to the A-5 Autostrada.

If that is correct, why fly into and out of Rome? You would be better off either limitng yourself to northern Italy, or at least fly an open jaw, starting in Milano if you want to Locana first, or Rome if you want to do it last.

Part of the fun of Italy is to live la dolce vita, i.e. do your travel in a relaxed way and not rush from one city to the next.

Thus, I probably would start in Milan, drive from the airport to Locana, and then work my way east along the Italian lakes to Venice. Drop the car off there, and take the train to Florence and Rome.

But as <TDudette> says, do some of the work yourself first so that you can give us better parameters of what you want to see, how often you want to pack and unpack, etc. And tell us where to find Pont. I suspect it is one of the many Pont -????

ellenem

I found Pont using Googlemaps. It is much further into the mountains just across the Piemonte-Aosta border.

ellenem

From the satellite view on googlemaps, there is very little in Pont . . . a mountain village really . . . but it does have this hotel:

http://www.hotelgparadiso.com/introen.htm

lovisa

Google Maps shows a "Pont Canavese" about 12 km from Locana. "Pont" is on the other side of the mountains. People from "Pont Canavese" might just call it "Pont". So which one is it?

beverlyrossio

You all are great.
Here are more details:
Have already purchased round trip to Rome using frequent flyer miles so that part is not changeable. We are going in May and the 16 days include travel days so that's really 14 in Italy. I'm thinking arrive, take a domestic flight to Milan or Turin, and drive to Pont (near Locana but pretty small itself). So we have the car at that point... our main interests are scenery (outdoor beauty as opposed to indoor beauty). We could go to the gulf of Genoa or east along the lakes as treplow suggests.. So if we spend two days
with the family then we are free. We will have time for
Florence, Venice and Rome but what about those gems that
the tourist books don't tell you about?

lovisa

To elaborate on the above, my husbands 4 grandparents who emigrated in the teens and twenties, all came from an area within just a few kilometers of Quinto di Treviso. His parents and the relatives have never refer to the town as anything but "Quinto".

If your husband's forebears emigrated very long ago, it seems unlikely that somebody from Locana would get together with somebody from Pont, which is 148 km away by road around the mountain. The nearer location just seems more plausable.

ellenem

On the other hand, I know a family whose grandmother and grandfather are both from the same obscure northern Italian town in the Tyrol. However, they met and married in the U.S., their common background adding to the attraction.

I suspect lovisa is correct as to which "Pont" it might be. Meanwhile, to best help the OP, we do need some more information about their hopes for this trip.

Zerlina

You have 14 days on the ground, two with family. That leaves you with 12 days. If you want to visit Florence, Venice and Rome, it doesn't give you that much time for undiscovered gems, of which there are not all that many. Some villages in the Lakes region, on the Italian Riviera or in Tuscany are more undiscovered than others, but the areas themselves are trodden ground. There are relatively less travelled areas of great beauty in southern Italy, but speaking realistically, you don't have the time to get to them.

It will take you the better part of a day to get to Venice, the logical next stop, in any case; the Lakes are (more or less) on the way. If you prefer the Italian Riviera, do it between Venice and Florence. The Tuscan countryside near Florence has great outdoor beauty.

Tweak the number of days you spend anywhere to suit your interests, but choose a maximum of four among the five: Lakes, Riviera, Venice, Florence/Tuscany, Rome. Anything more, you'll be spending more time in transit than actually enjoying the places you've gone to Italy to see.