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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.
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Originally Posted by fluff224
(Post 17220059)
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.
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.
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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!
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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.
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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?
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