Other than Florence and Assisi, does anyone have a rec for a day trip out of Rome that would be truly memorable?(and tour operator?)

Would Tuscany or Venice be unrealistic?

Thanks in advance, everyone!

Florence is in Tuscany. Using public transportation you would connect in Florence to another train or bus to Tuscan destinations other than Florence. This would make for a long day trip.

Venice is about 4.5 hours each way from Rome. A 9 hour round trip would give little time for exploring. Although the 9 hours on a train would be memorable but perhaps not the type of memory you have in mind.

How about something closer to Rome? Orvieto, Tivoli, Ostia Antica.

would recomend orvieto for day trip. about 1 hr north of rome and easy to spend a day seeing sights and dine well

I agree that Orvieto would be a wonderful day trip. WE were there only a few hours and wish we had longer.

Save Florence for a trip of its own, or at least an overnight.
Orvieto is a terrific suggestion.

We enjoyed our day trip to Ostia Antica.
http://www.ostia-antica.org/

I hope you have at least 5 days in Rome--it takes that.

hi ljv,

I've now spent 2 separate weeks in Rome [lucky me] and done day trips to tivoli, Orvieto, and ostia antica, but I'm not sure that counts, as you are really still in Rome and don't need to spend more than half a day on it if you don't want to.

either Tivoli or Orvieto would be very nice, depending on the time of year. the main sights in Tivoli are the gardens, for which noce warm weather is pretty important, whereas Orvieto can be enjoyed all year round - we went in February.

if you click on my screen-name you'll find my report from my recent trip which says how we got there and what we did. suffice to say it was a lot of fun and I'm still talking about the front of the cathedral which is wonderful.

Depending on the time of the year, Tivoli is terrific. Never seen anything like the fountains. See RoninRome.com for very detailed directions for the bus out and the train back.

We did Pompeii as a day trip from Rome in 2006. I have always had a fascination with Pompeii and it more than lived up to my expectations. It's only about 2.5 hours by train an easy trip. You have to change trains in Naples from the mainline train to a local one, but then that train stops right across the road so it's easy to get to. We took a 7am train down had about 5 hours in Pompeii and were still back in Rome by 6pm.

I should have added that for Pompeii we did this ourselves, no tour operator involved. I just got the train tickets in Termini (main train station in Rome), bought them the night before to save time having looked up timetables etc at home on the Trenitalia website. If I remember correctly they cost a little under 40 euro each return. Then in Naples we bought a combo ticket for 12 euro which included both the local train and entry into Pompeii.

Glad to hear you felt Pompeii was doable from Rome, KK_Cat. I was just about to ask!