Advice Needed: How to spend 11 days in Italy
 

I am flying in to Venice and flying out of Naples. I have 11 days to spend and just realized that I have 1 extra day to stick somewhere. Where/how do you think I should spend this 1 extra day? My current itinerary is below.


2 Days - Dolomites
2 Days - Venice (usual Venice city tour)
2 Days - Florence (usual Florence city tour day 1, do Pisa/Tuscany day tour on day 2)
2 Days - Rome (usual rome city tour)
2 Days - Sorrento (Travel to Naples, see Pompeii, travel to Sorrento on day 1, Amalfi day tour day 2)

So where should I spend my 1 extra day?

Cinque Terre? Lucca? Capri? More time in Dolomites?

Seriously, your itinerary looks crazy busy. Are you on a pre-booked tour? Or are you doing all this moving around by yourself? Do those 11 days include your arrival and departure days?
All the places you have planned are worth another day, IMO. Forget trying to cram one more location in. Slow down, enjoy it.

sorry escape traveller, I have to agree with txgirl that your itinerary is seriously over-full already.

not sure what time of year you are travelling [this may affect your trip to the Dolomites] but your trip seems to consist of checking in, doing "usual city tour" [whatever that is] then checking out again.

And you have 2 whole day tours in Florence already, with no time to get there - it'll take at least 3 hours to get from your hotel in Venice to your hotel in Florence.

A good rule of thumb is that it takes at least half a day to get from one destination to another - then you need to orient yourself, work out the local transport/best walking routes, find cafes, bars and restaurants that suit you and your pocket - and that's all as well as sightseeing.

Do that every 2 days and you will soon get fed up.

where is the time to sit and have a quiet drink, absorb the atmosphere of the places that you have travelled so far to see, and chat to people you meet along the way?

If you like traveling on trains more than walking around cities then go for it - one full day in a Venice or Florence or Rome will at least let you see those cities - quickly - I would advise also to slow down a bit - put the extra day in Rome at least - drop the Dolomites which are rather hard to reach by train from Venice

you are landing in Venice then going straight away to the Dolomites - where in these extensive mountains are you going? And then back to Venice.

No scratch the Domomites perhaps and spend 3 days in Venice, Florence and Rome and still do a Pisa day trip if you want and even then it is rather fast.

anyway I assume you are taking trains - driving in Venice of course is problematic at best and also in Florence and Rome as wide swaths of city centres are off-limits to private vehicles, parking can be hard to find - many hotels do not offer it and expensive once you do garage the car.

Trains are great - even to the Dolomites - depending of course on where you are going - Merano is easily accessible by train.

anyway for loads of great info on Italian trains check: www.seat61.com - good info on discounted ducats you can get IF you book way in advance as they are sold in limited numbers and I believe are also non-changeable non-refundable but much cheaper than walk up fares (if doing walk-up fares the Italy Eurailpass may well be cheaper than buying individual tickets) - other sites for general train info: www.budgeteuropetravel.com and www.ricksteves.com.

Less can indeed be more IME!

Cheers!

Reality check:

Drive time between Venice and "the Dolomites" (let's say Ortisei) is 3.5-4 hours each way. All you could really do in 2 days is drive a circle from Venice to Cortina to Ortisei to Bolzano to Venice and spend the night mid-way. If you took the train to Bolzano or Bressanone rather than drive, you wouldn't see the spectacular mountain scenery.

Your two days in Florence don't seem to include the travel time from Venice. If you do a full-day tour of Pisa and "Tuscany" (whatever that means to you), you have only an afternoon and evening to see Florence.

If you're already committed to flying into Venice and out of Naples, I definitely wouldn't add any destinations but rather drop one. I'd skip the Dolomites and add the days wherever you have the most sightseeing goals. You don't say what time of year this will be. High temps and humidity in summer would slow me down considerably.

Remember that two nights is just one full day and little bits of two other days. You don't have enough time to do the things outlined in your itinerary. You have apparently forgotten that it takes time to get from place to place - not just the train ride, but figure from the time you check out of accommodations in one place until you are settled into your accommodations in the next place.

If you have 11 full days on the ground in Italy (that means not counting arrival and departure days) then you have enough time for 3 or 4 stops if you want to move very quickly. Five stops - which is what you have - will make for a very rushed trip, one in which you spend far too much of your time in transit rather than annoying what you came for.

As the others have said, less is more!

Spend less time clicking off items on a "to see" list. Spend more time exploring what you're really interested in.

A lot depends on your interests ... but here's an example of how I might pace an itinerary.


Day 1 — you're jet lagged, but get yourself to the Dolomites and relax.

Days 2 and 3 — enjoy the cool mountain air and beautiful scenery

Day 4 — travel to Tuscany, perhaps stay outside of Florence in Fiesole at a hotel like Il Salviatino (free parking) ... has a beautiful pool and great views of Florence

Day 5 — take the hotel's free shuttle into Florence and see the Duomo and museums

Days 6 — explore the hill villages of Tuscany

Day 7 — train to Naples, see the Archeological Museum, spend the night

Day 8 — visit Pompeii and Herculaneum on the way to Sorrento

Days 9 and 10 — day tour to Amalfi and Positano one day, Capri the other

Day 11 — back to Naples for your flight home

Everyone seems to have 11 days and want to see everything!
Do yourself a favor and pick the 3 you really want to see.

Can only agree that 6 places plus day trips i 11 days (and I suspect you cturally only have 10 days on the ground) means you will spend a very large percentage of your time sitting on trains (and some buses) versus actually seeing Italy.

Yes, You will be IN Italy - and will drive by a number of major sights - but you won;t hve really seen anything - never mind enjoyed even on evening of la dolce vita (the relaxed, luxurious pace the Italy is really about).

But your money and your time. I suspect you will remember next to nothing when you get home,

I am kinda disappointed that in so many places your plan is "usual city tour". What are you really interested in and excited to do or see in Italy? It's a wonderful country with so much to offer...don't race through it.

I agree you are changing locations too much. We spent 9 nights in Rome 3 years ago and still didn't see it all.

When you count days, you have to subtract your travel time. It will leave you with a lot less time than you have listed. When adding up travel time, you must include time getting from your hotel to the train station, the actual train time, and time getting from the train station to your next hotel. Even driving will take time getting to the hotel, parking, etc.

Unfortunately, your itinerary is totally unrealistic. What you really have with your itinerary is this.
Dolomites, 1 day and a few jet-lagged hours
Venice, 1 & 1/3 day
Florence, 1/2 day
Pisa and tour, 1 day
Rome, 1 & 3/4 day
Travel to Sorrento via Naples and Pompeii, 1day
Sorrento and AC, 1day
Departing from Naples, you should be in Naples the night before.

Lay your trip out in real time to see what you are doing.

Day 1, arrive Venice. Is this from an international flight? What time? An hour or so drive is OK, but 3&1/2 hours, jet lagged drive does not seem good. If you do drive to Dolomites, depending on flight arrival time, you may get to your hotel by early to mid-afternoon, max. relax
Day 2, Dolomites (1 whole day)
Day 3, drive (or train) to Venice. Turn in car, get to hotel by early to mid afternoon. 1/3 day max. Relax, walk
Day 4, Venice, 1 whole day
Day 5, Travel to Florence. Check out of hotel, walk or take vaporetto to station, min of half an hour. Fast train-two hours, half hour from station to hotel. So, min of three hours, Venice to Florence. Arrive late morning to early afternoon.
1/2 day Florence, max.
Day 6, Pisa and Tuscany tour, 1 whole day
Day 7, travel to Rome, arrive by mid-morning,
3/4 day in Rome, max.
Day 8, Rome, 1 whole day
Day 9, travel to Sorrento via Naples and Pompeii, will take 1 whole day.
Day 10, Sorrento and AC tour during day and back to Naples for night
Day 11, depart for home

You have no extra days. You do not even have the days you have planned. For example, you have only 1/2 day in Florence.

Give something up.

I haven't finished my trip report yet, but we just spent 11 nights in Italy - two in Milan, three in Rome, three in Siena and a Tuscan agriturismo, and three in Florence. We couldn't have fit anything else in, and we would have enjoyed more time in some of the places we visited.

Lee Ann