2 wk in Italy-Venice/Florence/CT/Pisa/Rome
 

First trip to Europe. I'm looking for some suggestions. Arrive in Venice 5/21pm, have 3 nights booked at an Airbnb. Train to Florence....
thinking 3 nights Florence
partial day trip to Pisa on way to CT, staying in Manarola
? stay 3/4 nights in CT
? stay 5/4 nights in Rome, depart Rome early afternoon 6.4
We enjoy outdoors and hiking, and thought 4 nights in CT would be good since we'd be seeing a lot of museums.
Are 3 nights sufficient for Florence, 3/4 for CT, 4/5 for Rome?
Any experience with the Airbnb (my daughter booked it for us)?
Would the best time to see Pisa en route from Florence to CT?
Departing CT to Rome, I saw a high speed train from Florence. Should we return to Florence, or take the other train that follows the coast? I don't know travel time/duration for either.
Thank you for your suggestions!

You have listed this as a trip report which will limit the number of people who will look at it. You should ask the editors to remove that symbol.

I can't give you a fair assessment for CT since we are not hikers and have no interest there - one day was plenty - no need to return. But I would always go back to Rome, Venice or florence.

For train schedules look at bahn.de it provides train schedules for all of europe that will help you organize your schedule.

We loved CT and didn't hike at all. We took boat to each village. We drank our fair share of Sciacchetra and had delicious boscotti, pizza and fresh anchovies. We stayed 3 nights in apt in Corniglia. It was fabulous.

Train schedules here:

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

Look up your CT town to Pisa Centrale, then PC to Roma Termini to see the options.

booking.com, known for how they do reviews, is a good resource for hotels.

We did a couple of things similar to this trip in Sept 2014, in reverse, and we went to Tuscany instead of Florence.

We stayed 2 nights in CT (Riomaggiore) and we both decided 1 more night would have been ideal for us, though we are not hikers and just caught the boat between towns. So I would think 3/4 nights would be good.

We drove from La Spezia to Tuscany and stopped in Pisa on the way to see the Leaning Tower so I think you would be fine seeing it from Florence to CT. You would need to check the trains though. We arrived mid morning but I had pre-booked tickets to the tower so we had set time to go through it and we didn't have to queue.

We were supposed to catch the train from Rome to La Spezia (our accommodation picked us up from La Spezia to take us to the CT - about a 10 in drive from memory) and it was direct. Though there was a train strike that day so we ended up on a bus on some point, who then drove us the rest of the way to La Spezia. Make sure you check for upcoming train strikes (apparently they are common in Italy, but at least they provide prior notice). Our accommodation in CT was just lovely and we really appreciated that they went out out of their way to communicate with me during our disrupted train trip (they already knew there was a strike to we stayed kept emailing each other for the 4 hour journey so they knew when we would arrive to be picked up at the station).

We stayed 5 nights in Rome and thought it was good amount of time. Of course it depends on what you want to see and do.

We also stayed 3 nights in Venice and again thought it a good amount of time. We used our time there as "down time" and planned nothing. We ended up just walking the streets, going to Doeges Palace, eating and drinking. IMO it's good choice to fly into so you can recover from jet lag.

We used Airbnb a few times on our 6 week Europe trip and found them all good (though the only place we used Airbnb in Italy was Tuscany). We chose places that had positive reviews.

Happy planning.

Thank you for your comments and links to the train schedule. I appreciate the feedback as I finalize our trip.
At least I think I'm on a good track!