Advice needed for 5 weeks France,Spain, Portugal & southern Italy
 

Prior to 2020 covid we had a well planned trip through France, Spain, & Portugal. Trains from Paris to Provence, to Barcelona & Seville. Flying from Seville to Porto, train to Lisbon, return home. Now that we are vaccinated we are looking at planning that same trip for 2022! That was all well & fine until Stanley Tucci came along with his show In Search of Italy. Watching that made us decide we want to do southern Italy & especially Sicily! While we’re there why not make it a 5 week trip? We could reverse the trip starting in Lisbon & ending in Paris. From Paris fly (nonstop) to Naples, tour Naples & surrounding area, Amalfi coast working our way by train down to Reggio Calabria, & ferry to Sicily. Fly from Palermo to Naples, train to Rome, fly home. I haven’t seen a direct flight from Palermo to Rome. Flying home is 1 stop from Rome & 2 from Naples, I try to avoid 2 stops. How crazy does this sound? Any thoughts or suggestions? I’d like to hear from you.

It sounds feasible when it comes to the connections. It's the amount of time that might be a problem, depending on how much outside the big cities you wish to travel. It does not look as if you want to rent a car, which makes traveling time much more efficient. I have not seen the Tucci presentation, but places like Villa Casales would require getting to Piazza Armerina (somewhat off the beaten track), and from there a taxi; and that represents a loos of time compared to driving directly to the site.

https://flic.kr/p/8hReHh

I’ve read pros & cons on driving in Italy. That’s something we’ll consider. We like taking trains & hire drivers as needed.

If I've understood you, your proposal is Lisbon - Porto - Seville - Barcelona - Provence - Paris - Naples - Amalfi coast - Reggio Calabria - Sicily - Naples - Rome. My view is that that is waaaay too much for five weeks. Several months, maybe. I suggest choosing between five weeks France/Iberia or five weeks southern Italy. Apart from time, I feel that you're buzzing around too much and there will be too much to absorb. You have single stops in whole regions. For example, Seville but nothing else in Andalucia. Two towns in Portugal. Personally, I would find it more rewarding to visit places which are closer together and enjoy a particular region or two.

As planned from last year we had 3or 4 nts in all our stops, except Seville which was 2 nts. So we figured 2 weeks in southern Italy should work. Stay 2 or 3 nts Naples, 2 or 3 Positano then down to Sicily. We realize we add in travel time. Ending in Rome just to fly home, not staying other than maybe the nt before staying near the airport to fly home. Again, we are just trying to work out the framework to see what works. We’ve discussed possibly eliminating Paris as we’ve all been there several times. That would open things up a bit. I’m not 100% sold on Barcelona to Seville, that’s a 5 hour train ride if I remember correctly. Lisbon , Porto, and Provence are my preferred places. Spain just happens to be in the middle!

I agree with dreamon. I suppose you could get away with that little time for Naples/Amalfi Coast, although I certainly wanted more, but you need at least two and preferably three weeks for Sicily. My TR is dated, but should give you an idea of what there is to see: https://www.fodors.com/community/eur...sicily-367548/

Wherever we go & no matter how much time we allow, it will not be enough!

Thanks, Thursdaysd, I’ll check out your trip report. You had me at cannoli!

fluff224, given your priorities, I suggest ditching Paris, Spain and Rome. Then I would choose between Provence and Portugal. Assuming the latter, then you could perhaps fly into Lisbon and explore Portugal (10nights) - fly to Sicily (15nights) - Amalfi coast (6nights) - Naples (4nights)? Assuming Provence, fly into Nice - Provence (10 nights) - fly Nice to Sicily (15nights) - Amalfi coast (6nights) - Naples (4nights)? Of course, that's just ideas and you'd have to check fight availability (which won't be published yet).

For myself, I'd still choose either southern Italy OR Portugal/Provence. Nice to dream though.

I would look at www.skyscanner.com before deciding there are "no direct" or any other kinds of flights anywhere. Of course, flight schedules are going to drastically change whenever Italy FINALLY gets vaccinated. I applaud you for not even considering this trip until 2022.

I know we are planning this trip for spring of 2022 is WAY far in advance. But, my friend & I are planners & love researching & reading. We like to put everything into our bucket list & then eliminate places as we start putting it all together. Id completely forgotten about Skyscanner! I usually use Kayak as a resource for flights. I’ll definitely add that to my travel apps.

As Dukey wrote, there are plenty of direct flights in normal times between Palermo and Rome (and more from Catania and Rome). Frequency increases per the season as well. Some do not run every day of the week, and outside of summer. As others have said, dropping one or two regions (at least) would improve your enjoyment. Dropping Paris will leave you with needing to find a flight to Naples (from Marseille or Nice). These are more seasonal and non daily as well. Along with skyscanner, there is whichbudget to identify soutes -- some of these routes are serviced primarily by budget airlines.

As a note, driving in Sicily is easy, except for Catania. Palermo is also more difficult, but not as much as Catania.

I'd suggest using Google Flights instead of Skyscanner. Skyscanner is more limited. Picking a random day in June I'm seeing three flights per day with Ryanair and even more with Alitalia.

I think you have too many destinations planned for 5 weeks!

For example, you mention originally planning 2 nights in Seville, which is not nearly enough time. We had 4 nights in Seville; it's a gorgeous city with many important and beautiful historical and cultural sites. And since you are going to be in Andalucia, wouldn't you want to also visit Granada to see the Alhambra (absolutely stunning), and Cordoba to visit Mezquita??? So I agree with Dreamon's advice in post #4.

Visit countries that are close together. So, for example, I think you could do Portugal, Spain (Andalucia and Barcelona), and France (Provence and perhaps Paris, or Provence and French Riviera).

First off, I enjoyed reading your trip report, thursdaysd. Lots of good info that I’ll save for later. I’ve been using Google flights, RometoRio, Skyscanner & Kayak to see what possibilities there are at this point knowing it could look a lot different next year. I’ve worked out several different itinerary options that I’ll share with our travel friends.
1) Omit Portugal & Spain altogether. Start in Paris working our way down to Provence & flying to Palermo from Marsielle, working our way to the Naples area, train to Rome for flight home (no sightseeing there)
2) Omit Paris. Start in Barcelona & area, train to Arles & Provence,fly Marsielle to Palermo, Naples, & Rome.

Im having fun reading various trip reports & blogs & getting lots of good ideas! Who knows what this trip,will look like when we’re done??

Thanks, fluff, good to know you enjoyed it!

I am a big fan of Portugal. Another option is Portugal and Spain, then ferry to Genoa or Rome, train to Naples and area, finishing in Sicily.

Ferry to Rome or Genoa? Hmmm, that’s interesting, thursdaysd! Tell me more.... Would it e possible to get a ferry from Marseille or Nice? That might be more time consuming than flying. I love hearing different options!

I would suggest looking at any reviews you can find on the Barcelona/Rome ferry very closely. In general it's not looked on positively.

The ferry ride is long,expensive and not exactly a luxury cruise. The flight is short and cheap.

I'm a big fan of not flying when there are options, even if they take longer. That said, I do get bored on boats, but on an overnight ferry that shouldn't be a problem. This site is a good one for finding ferry routes and companies: https://www.directferries.com/

100% agree with thursdaysd about avoiding flying whenever possible. You could have an adventure and take the ferry from Nice to Palermo.

Well, dreamon & thursdaysd, you got my interest when you said ferry “adventure” from Nice to Palermo. Sounds different. I’ll be sure to check out directferties.com! Met with our friends for margaritas & Mexican. I think we are pretty sure that we’ll eliminate Paris. But still Portugal & Sicily are important to us. I started putting together travel times between each location so we have an idea of how much time will be needed. I love researching timetables for trains & flying. Now I’ll add the ferry into the mix.

You know that CNN won't air the Sicily episode of Stanley's show until a week from this Sunday right?

Also it's called Searching for Italy:

https://www.fodors.com/community/fod...tucci-1695758/

5 weeks is a lot of time but it's still a lot of ground to cover. Maybe make it a 3 week trip and cut down the itinerary, with the plan to visit the other places another time?

Ferries burn up a lot of time. Unless you don't mind sleeping overnight in them. You can take an 1-2 hour flight between most of these places and be able to sleep in a hotel bed, which is likely to be a lot better than being on overnight ferries.

I brought up the idea of taking a ferry. The general consensus was that it was too long since there are options to fly from Marseille to Naples, less time & less costly. I tried! We do t know what the beginning of the trip will be like, but have decided to eliminate Paris almost for certain & we know we want to end up in Sicily via Naples & Positano. Portugal, Seville & Provence are still on the list. I’m making a chart of all the travel times for each train & flight.From there we will look at the number of days we have & how many travel days are needed. We all agreed on no less than 2 nts/ location preferably 3.

scrb11, We have been following Stanley Tucci each week as he visits places we’ve been. This week is Tuscany, ahhh, & then ending in Sicily on 3/21. I’ll be sad when it’s over! I read that there will be a 2nd season sometime next year. Something to look forward to!

I'm not trying to sway you one way or the other but Paris might end up being the airport with the most/best flights for you. It's also very well connected to the rest of Europe by plane or to the rest of France by train.

You do have a good point, traveler Nick, I agree Paris has lots of flight& train connection options. Paris would be a good place to begin if we would save Portugal & Spain for another trip. I know we are pushing it to do it all in one trip. But, our hubs have both said “whatever it takes.” I was on it in a flash. I missed not having a trip to plan. We lost last year & this year & realize we’re not getting any younger! During the lockdown we reflected on how lucky we’ve been since retirement to travel as much as we did. We are hopeful that we’ll be healthy enough next spring!

Well LHR also has great direct flights to a lot of non hub cities as well.

At least before Brexit and the pandemic.

A number of years ago we flew into Barcelona, I'm a huge Gaudi fan and I think we toured 3 appts, plus the Sagrada and Park Gruel, we also did the gothic quarter and rented a car to see amazing Gerona and the Dali Museum up in Figueres. Then we drove up to Couiza, France and visited the surrounding towns (Rennes-le-Château,Carcassone, Limoux & Lagrasse). We then did Florence and south by train to Rome. Just a beautiful trip! On a separate occasion I have been to Naples and that is a great city, despite the garbage strike (piles of smelly trash on every curb for days) - I highly recommend all of these places.

So, I’ve let things drop for awhile waiting to see how things open up before doing any further planning. I read that Rick Steves had 7000 bookings recently. If he’s confident then it’s good enough for me! Anyhow, we are still going to pursue our trip starting in Lisbon & ending in Sicily omitting Paris. Our DH’s are open to 5-6 weeks giving us flexibility in our itinerary to add extra days as needed. We’re going all out until they rein us back in! We are thinking that we might like to spend 2-3 days at a resort on the Mediterranean between Barcelona & Arles that would be app 12 days into our trip. It would give us a chance to get reenergized before pressing on. I thought of Valencia, but then we would have to backtrack to Barcelona to get the train to Arles which is not ideal. Any suggestions?