Hi!

I'm not sure if this is the right place to ask, but here goes!

Me and my girlfriend are thinking about going to italy from october the 1 to the 10, and have 7 days to do stuff. We don't have any tickets jet, so we can pretty muck go anywhere, with comming in at on place, and leaving another, so to not backtrack our rout.

We really want to se Rome, but not to much, cause we are really into the sceenary and countryside of travelling, and not so much the culutal side of it all. Anyway, I know that a week is a really short time, but we are trying to make the best of it!

so basically I'm asking where to go in one week in italy to see beaches, countryside, (maybe) hiking, and smaller places than the big cities (but we have to do rome!)

Thanks!

Fly into Rome, after a few days take the train to the Cinque Terre. Nice place to relax after Rome's hectic big-city pace. It's five (cinque) little cliffside towns/villages), and by early October you should still have the fairly long evenings (it's still daylight saving) that make the after-dinner strolls etc. a relaxing option. During the day you walk to a neighboring village, get back by boat or train... Nice.

When you take the train from Rome, take a very early one, via Florence, interrupt the journey in Florence and walk to the Duomo and down to the bridge and have lunch and get back on the train, it will be the train to La Spezia via Pisa. In Pisa you can walk to the leaning tower. It's quite something.
In La Spezia you change to the local train to whichever of the five C.T. villages you picked.
Eventually fly home from Pisa or from Genova.
Book a multi-city air ticket that lets you do that.
Trains are at www.ferroviedellostato.it

or fly into Naples, go to Amalfi Coasts for better beaches, then go to Rome and fly home from there.

Or fly into Pisa, tour the Tuscan country, then train to Rome and fly home from there.

If you MUST do Rome, then fly into Rome, spend however many days you think are enough there, but if no interest in cultural stuff, what is it that interests you in Rome?

I could spend all 7 days there and still not have enough ... the Forum by itself, the Vatican, the narrow streets, the fabulous food, the historic center ... - you get my meaning...

beaches? I guess Cinque Terre, which would give you that (beaches) and sort of countryside, definetely hinking, in smaller towns as opposed to big cities.

check out this report for a taste of the area,

http://www.fodors.com/community/euro...t-to-italy.cfm

and this slide show, from the same poster,
http://www.flickr.com/photos/debands...32316280/show/

wherever you end up going, you will want to return