I am planning a trip and will be traveling between Florence (Vinci) and Rome in the month of March 2011. I have a few ideas/recommendations already like - Montalcino, San Vivaldo, Pietrasanta, Bolgheri, and Lucca. Any other must see's would or no need's would be greatly appreciated! I plan to spend a night in Montalcino - any suggestions? Also - in Rome would you have any day trip ideas as I will be in Rome for 5 days.

As to the drive, you can pretty much do the same trip without the hassles or cost by using public transportation. Various bus and train combos can get you to every place you want to go.

As to what to do in Rome, you can check out my website and download my free Rome tour guide book and MP3 files. This gives you 6 tours of about 1/2 day each. You can figure out which you like and check out the GoogleMap area for the actual routes. The book and audio files are in the Library area. You don't have to sign in or anything to get access to this stuff.

www.passagetoroma.com

A couple of great day trips from Rome would be to go to Ostia Antica and/or Hadrian's villa.

dave

How many days do you have for your drive?

Montalcino and/or Orvieto.
I trust you mean 2012.

I actually meant next month May. Thanks.
We are going to Florence for a wedding then going to drive to a friends house in Rome to spend approx. 5 days so we can take 1 or 2 days to get to Rome from Florence. Thank you so far for your advice.

Stay one night in a town conveniently located on your route to Rome. Montepulciano or maybe Orvieto.

uflecku offers good advice with Montepulciano or Orvieto. Arrive early enough at either of these to enjoy some walks through the town. Both are charming.

If you have a day or two in the area, stay in Montepulciano instead of Montalcino. You can drive to Pienza, San Quirco D'Orcia, Montalcino,Monticchiello, and back to Montepulciano, or do it in reverse from Montalcino. This jaunt would give you a good small hill town experience. Plan it well for eating etc and it will be a full, full day trip.

For all your days there: enjoy what you see, but don't attempt to see everything, in doing so, you'll see little!
Check out some last minute apartment searches using www.vrbo.com. Have a lovely time!

Not trying to hijack this thread, but we are doing a similar thing on Saturday, July 9...Montepulciano to Rome...and I could use some opinions if you don't mind.

The original plan was to drive to Orvieto that morning, drop the car off, spend a few hours exploring Orvieto and take the train into Rome.

I realized today that if we drive to Rome instead of dropping the car in Orvieto, it will cost the same for the car - we'd add an extra day for the same price as as we will already be paying the weekly rate and this would put us at 6 or 7 days. If we drop the car in Orvieto, we will pay train fare for 4 people to get directly into Rome (we'll be staying near the Piazza Navona). If we drive, even though the car will cost the same, we will have gas costs and possibly transportation into Rome if we drop the car at the airport. We usually don't mind driving in Europe and could drive into Rome, but have read about the ZTL (if I have those initials correct), the crazy drivers, etc.

The questions:
what is the drive to Rome like from Orvieto? Pretty/industrial? Very busy in the vacation season? Should we take the A1 or stick to the smaller roads paralleling A1?
Should we avoid that drive despite having no change in cost of the car? Would it be smarter to take the train anyway?

What would you do?

Thanks!

Do not drive into Rome---airport maybe!

(Wow the famous bobthenavigator! I'm honored. )

thanks Bob - I was thinking about driving to the train station (Termini) because it looked pretty simple with mostly main roads, but your answer sounds very definite about that. We've driven into Paris with no problems, but this sounds much worse. Thanks for that advice.

If you were deciding, would you drive to FCO or just take the train from Orvieto? Now I'm thinking that the train from FCO into Rome for 4 of us would put the price over the top anyway and it might make the most sense to stick with the original plan to just drop the car in Orvieto and take the train into Rome.

The train from Orvieto is only 14E on the IC train or 7E on the Regional train--not a big deal.

...and by driving to FCO, it looks like it would cost us 40 - 50 Euros total to go from FCO into Rome, so along with gas to get to FCO, it would cost around the same either way, or even be cheaper to take the train from Orvieto. In addition, we'd be able to relax on the train on the way to Rome instead of the hassle of driving to FCO.

Thanks for helping!