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Your favorite museums, gardens, and trattorias/osterias in central Italy?

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Hello---we will spend two weeks in Italy next June with our two young adult/older teenage daughters. We are going to Verona, Firenze, Lucca, Cinque Terre (Monterosso al Mare), Varenna, and Milan. Hotels are booked and I have a pretty good sense of some of the things we want to do in each place.

We will be staying inside the city or town center at each place (inside the walls in Lucca) and will not have a car.

I'd love to hear your recommendations for places to eat lunch and dinner. We prefer small, friendly places with a warm welcome, moderate prices, and casual or rustic ambiance (and great food). We don't need menus in English.

I would also love your suggestions on things to see and do that I might have missed. So far I have planned an opera (Aida) in the Roman arena at Verona, the Accademia and Galileo Museum in Firenze, hiking at Cinque Terre, the Silk Museum at Como (from Varenna), the Duomo roof at Milan, and maybe the ballet at La Scala.

We like art in small doses; love science, natural history and antiquities museums..
We particularly enjoy exploring on foot, and I feel compelled to climb every bell tower, church roof access, or other viewpoint I can find.

We'd love to see a lovely garden or two, take a half-day bike ride (maybe from Lucca), and find a half-day cooking class somewhere.

Thanks for your help!

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