Day trip to Urbino from Bologna - advice sought
 

We will be based in Bologna next March for a few days. We have for some time wanted to visit Urbino and are making plans to do so. It's not the easiest town to access by public transport (without using up too much of our limited time), so Plan A is to hire a car for the day and adopt a DIY approach.
As an alternative, does anybody know of an individual or company that provides an organised day trip which would suit our needs? Also, particularly if we follow Plan A, does anybody know a recommended guide who can assist us in Urbino for a few hours?

If you can get yourself to the station in Bologna in time to catch the 6:35 train to Ancona, you could be in Urbino by 9:40, catching an express bus from Pesaro station that departs at 9. Unfortunately, later buses don't make such good connections with the buses.

Driving would take you about the same amount of time. On Sundays and holidays the bus leaves later (9:15) and makes more stops, so you'd get there half an hour later.

Here is a website for registered tour guides for Urbino:

http://www.urbino.com/urbino-tourist...rbino/?lang=en

I have no personal experience of these guides; I live near Urbino, so I have no need.

Here are the bus schedules between Pesaro and Urbino:

http://www.adriabus.eu/viewdoc.asp?CO_ID=9291

Route 46 has the weekday schedules between Pesaro and Urbino. The Sunday and holiday schedule is at the bottom (page 6) of the CD schedule. The stop you want is Pesaro stazione.

The bus usually leaves you in the large parking lot at Borgo Mercatale; an elevator takes you up to the town. If you drive, this is also the best place to park.

>>>If you can get yourself to the station in Bologna in time to catch the 6:35 train to Ancona,<<<
>>>catching an express bus from Pesaro station that departs at 9. <<<

Doesn't that bus also depart Bologna auto station (near Centrale) at 6:45 am? Perhaps you are talking about a different bus?

http://www.viaggiruocco.com/web/wp-c.../04/Linea3.pdf

Why Urbino? If you have not been to or are not planning to go to Ravenna, I would suggest that day trip over Urbino (been to both).

Since you want to take a guided tour, you might see if you could arrange with the tour company to pick you up at Pesaro station in Urbino, and drop you back off at the end of the tour. Or see if the guide would arrange transportation with a local taxi driver.

One of the problems with renting a car and driving is getting back to Bologna to drop off the car before the rental office closes, or dropping it off at Marconi airport after hours, or paying to park it overnight in Bologna so you can return it the morning. So if you do continue to think you'd rather drive yourselves, consider renting the car in Pesaro and dropping it back off there. I've rented a car in Pesaro, but the rental office I used was a hike from the station, so get a taxi to take you there.

But personally, in March, I would not want to be up at 5am to catch a 6.30 train (walking around Bologna at that hour is safe but it is freezing cold, so get a taxi if you do this), nor would I want to be committed to driving in March, with the possibility of not just storms, but fog belts. So I would take a later morning train to Pesaro and get a ride from there, and be taken back to the Pesaro station later in the day (unless there is a nicely timed bus one can catch).

Having recently spent over a week in Bologna and environs, I would have to ask "why go to Urbino, quite far away actually from Bologna, if there are so many beautiful and wonderful places to visit in the E-R region"? Why not save Urbino for a different trip when visiting that region - Le Marche? I so much agree with Michael above - RUN to visit Ravenna - personally one of our favorite days there.

I was actually just in Urbino last month. Had wanted to visit for years, but I have to say I was a bit disappointed. The view of it from outside is pretty amazing, but the town itself (and the Ducal Palace) just didn't do it for me. I am very glad I didn't try to do it by public transportation from Bologna. Would not have been worth it. As it was, we were sort of passing through the region and had a car. And really, our favorite thing about our visit to Urbino was the day trip we took FROM Urbino to Mondavio and Corinaldo - THANK YOU SOOOOO MUCH BVLENCI for that suggestion!! I'll be posting a trip report and link to photos in a few weeks if you are still considering going to Urbino you might want to look for it.

I've been to Bologna a couple times and did enjoy the day trip I took to Ravenna as the others said. But in fact there are numerous day trip options from Bologna that I enjoyed more than Urbino, including Modena and Ferrera.

Ravenna is a magnificent site and well worth visiting, but whatever Isabel's personal disappointment with Urbino, Urbino is one of the most influential towns in Europe for the overall aesthetic of Europe -- in fact, of more enduring importance than Ravenna ever turned out to be. The external architecture of the town and the ideas represented by the Ducal Palace are inseparable from the topography and culture of the university town itself.

I haven't any opinion about what you should make the effort to see while you are in Bologna, but if you have long wanted to see Urbino because you understand what it is, then I hope you won't be discouraged by others if you if are willing to make the extra effort this trip. It is certainly true there are a dozen sites with magnificent art and history within reach of Bologna that are much easier to get to for a day, like Mantova, Ravenna and Parma (the last of which, as I recall, "disappointed" Isabel too). Not everybody goes to Italy for the same reasons or appreciates the same aspects. For what it's worth, if I never saw Ferrara again I wouldn't care -- and that has really very little bearing on how you will feel if you see Urbino.

You (and perhaps others!) might find this a valuable read

http://whc.unesco.org/en/list/828

It is the very nature of social media and soliciting vox pop advice that everybody should chip in their honest opinion, and the honesty of it is what the value is, so I don't want to discourage it. But I also think "Fodorite" advice needs to be put into the context of many, many, many if not most of them coming to Italy only looking for towns and sites and food that "does it" for them, processing the country and culture through a narrow personal lens that gives a one-shot "thumbs up, thumbs down" to this, that and the other, which really may be totally irrelevant to other people's desires to understand Italy and Europe as cultural developments, in and of themselves.

I am not a fan of day trips in Italy, and I don't go for guided tours. But I wouldn't question someone's decision to see a UNESCO world heritage site like Urbino if they had develeoped an interest in seeing it. I'd try to see if I could help make it happen for them.

I think a lot has to do with expectations. I had very high expectations of Urbino based on what I'd read so was more easily disappointed. The same was true with Parma. Also, both of those has specific things they are known for, in the case of Parma it's food and Urbino it's historic 'ideas'. Not that either of those is un-interesting to me, but they not my priorities. I'm a photographer so the visual aspect of a place is the thing that most 'does' it for me, along with the general ambiance. Other people are the opposite.

I don't live in Italy like some of the posters here, but I have been there eleven times and my trips are generally much longer than the average person (at least on this board)- this most recent trip was 5 weeks, so I have seen a lot of Italian towns and some places need to be near the bottom of the list, Urbino and Parma are those towns for me. Doesn't mean I disliked them. Although in the case of Urbino we had scheduled three nights and after two decided we'd rather have an extra night in Rome (despite having been to Rome many times, most recently in March so there weren't things we wanted to 'see', we just felt we'd rather 'be' there than Urbino).

Both Ferrara and Ravenna are also UNESCO world heritage sites and are easier to get to from Bologna than Urbino. Just saying.

Thanks for the responses, bvlenci, sandealist, isabel at al.

Food for thought here.... Our current plan (after 4 days in Venice) is to catch a train to Bologna for 3-4 days. Maybe we should look at Ravenna as well as (or even instead of) Urbino.

instead of Urbino.

OK, based on the feedback, and following consultation with higher authority, it looks like Ravenna instead of Urbino, which will await another trip. We will definitely go to Urbino sometime. I made that resolution after seeing the terrific portrait of Federico da Montefeltro and his wife in the Uffizi:- http://bit.ly/1NM2sDK

If time permits, we might also do a daytrip to Mantova/Mantua.

Depending on your interests and how busy you like to keep, you probably have time for a couple day trips from Bologna. I do agree that Ravenna is spectacular, and I'm glad that I made the effort to get there last year.

But I've always wanted to go to Urbino too, for a reason similar to yours: an art history class when I was an undergraduate. I'll visit someday.

Autodidact,

The main reason I ever wanted to go to Italy was to see Ravenna, after having read about the mosaics in an art history book. My first trip to Italy was planned around going to Ravenna, but I became ill enroute and got no further than Bologna, and ultimately had to head home on doctor's orders. I did finally make it to Ravenna just a few years later -- and after fulfilling my long-standing quest, I drove directly the next morning to Urbino! Had a fantastic time in both places for sights, food, views, everything. Now I live in Italy, and I still have reasons to go many places. I finally made it to Mantova just last year. Have a wondeful trip and many more.

Thanks sandralist.
Let me ask you: if you had 3 full days based in Bologna, and allocating one of them to the Ravenna daytrip, would you spend all the remaining time in Bologna or instead include a daytrip to Mantova?

Isabel, I'm glad you enjoyed Modavio and Corinaldo, and I'm sorry you were disappointed in Urbino. I myself like Urbino quite a lot; its art museum, for a small museum, has some very interesting works in the permanent collection, such as the "Ideal City", which is practically an emblem of the Renaissance.

I live very near Urbino, as I said above, so I've always gone there for a few hours at a time. I've never spent a night there, so I don't know what it's like after sundown. I would imagine it's pretty lively during the university term.

The view of the ducal palace from the park above Urbino is wonderful. I once took a photo when there were wisps of fog around the towers, but I can no longer find that photo. When there's no fog, there's a splendid view of the countryside from there.

bvlenci - not being terribly into art history I probably didn't appreciate it as much as some. I agree the "Ideal City" was beautiful. And we did get to the park you mention, late afternoon the light was gorgeous. We also enjoyed the view from the parking lot below the Ducal Palace (by the gate). Parking lot itself not very atmospheric obviously, but the view was great (and we got some wonderful gelato there). I'm working on a trip report and posting my photos, but since the whole trip was five weeks long, there are a LOT of photos to sort through so it's taking a while. Again, thank you for all your suggestions.

autodidact - the beauty about planning day trips is that you don't have to actually decide whether or not to take them until you get there. Both Ravenna and Modena are reached by regional trains so no benefit in booking ahead. I usually do a bit of research on several day trips knowing that once I'm there I often don't get to them all.