First trip to Italy, itinerary help
 

Me and my partner are starting to plan our first trip to Italy. We want to go in September. We will depart LAX. What will give us the best trip for 10 days? Where to fly in to and where to depart from? We want to visit the following places; Amalfi Coast, Naples, Rome, Florence, Cinque Terre, Venice. I know that is a lot in 10 days, so we will probably need to cut something out. And of course, any help on best and affordable flights.

dumb question, what do you like to do?

For flights, look at a site like google flights.
To me best = a) non-stop, b) preferred airline for FF miles or free baggage/boarding group perks

From LAX, non-stop means Alitalia or Norwegian to Rome. Those flights might get into Rome very late in the evening. If you want to arrive earlier look into connecting somewhere in the US (eg Chicago), or in Europe (Frankfurt, Amsterdam,London, Paris)

If you connect in Europe it gives you a lot more options for an open jaw ticket. Into Naples, out of Pisa or Florence or Venice. That will save you most or all of a day backtracking to Rome if you book roundtrip there.

With 10 days (only 9 if you have counted your arrival day as a real day) you have enough time to actually see and enjoy 3 locations

eg
Naples/Amalfi ; Rome ; Florence
or
Rome ; Florence ; Cinque terre
or
Rome ; Florence; Venice
or
Florence ; 5T, Venice

Sure, you can argue "I'll just squeeze in one more destination" and that is obviously your call. It's not my style, but if you want to check them off your "been there, done that" box it's ok.

We are both in our late 40's, we like to sight see, art, historic buildings, landscapes. We like to eat of course, so authentic foods is a must. We are not big on nightlife or partying; neither of us drink.

J62 is giving you very good advice. It's what I would say.

since you are new to Fodors (welcome aboard) I believe you are limited to 2 posts in the 1st 24hrs. (anti-spam measure they recently put in place).

Based on prior / similar posts I expect you'll get a lot of similar replies. Come back tomorrow with more / specific questions and we'll try to help you out.

We want to visit the following places; Amalfi Coast, Naples, Rome, Florence, Cinque Terre, Venice. I know that is a lot in 10 days, so we will probably need to cut something out.

ax Amalfi and Naples and yous still have a lot on your plate - land in Venice
Venice 3 nights Train to Florence

Florence 3 nights train to Rome 4 nights.

can do day trip from Florence to CT - I've done it but could skip this really mobbed seaside place and concentrate on big 3 - use later trips for other places.

Trains are great - check www.trenitalia.com or www.italotreno.com - two competing railways using same tracks and stations- www.seat61.com has great ideas on booking own discounted trains online - general info trains- BETS-European Rail Experts and www.ricksteves.com.

A simple way to see what can be done is to look at some 10 day itineraries used by group tours. I am definitely NOT recommending such a tour, but this will show what can be done where everything is arranged and booked and pre-tested. If a commercial tour won't do more than three places in 9-10 days, you shouldn't try it either.

I also fly out of LAX, so I know your only non-stop options to Italy are Rome (daily) and Milan (less frequently). In a relatively short trip, you can't afford any flight glitches at the start, so I would fly directly into Rome and not use connecting flights. If you can accept the chance your return home could be delayed, then consider flying back from Venice (the flight will likely depart at a painfully early hour) with a connection somewhere. We once spent an entire day (24 hours) getting from Venice to LAX when our flight out of Venice was delayed, we missed the connection in Europe, and the airline's re-routing cascaded into other problems/delays. We've also had trouble more than once getting home when we had connections in the U.S. Bottom line, IMO journeys with connecting flights always have increased risk for delays, so I like to fly direct on the outbound.

I also suggest you limit your destinations to 3. I think the Cinque Terre is hard to combine with Venice which would involve a 6-hour train ride and multiple connections. If you would have to return to Rome after Venice, that would be another 4 hours on the train.

When we were planning our first trip to Italy back in 2011, I found the below site and found it tremendously helpful.

https://www.italylogue.com/planning-...ect-two-weeks/

We ended up flying open jaw (highly recommend) into Venice and out of Rome. 2 nights Venice, 2 nights Bologna, 3 nights Florence, 5 nights Rome. That's 12 nights, so 2 too many for you. You could skip Bologna, or shave a couple of nights off elsewhere - depends on your interests and travel style.

Venice - Florence - Rome is the perfect first trip to Italy -- they are the heavy hitters for a reason. Whatever you decide, I recommend booking accommodations soon - September is still very busy in Italy!

Have a great trip!

I'd be lazy on your first trip and do all the movements by Train, very easy and low-cost city centre to city centre. That makes the visit to Amalfi a little harder but all the rest will be easy and you don't have to the whole "what do you mean I'm not allowed to drive there" conversations to a madly waving Italian driver.

If it were me I'd knock Amalfi and Napoli off the list as you have a load here that will fill up the time, open jaw it and get booking. Do try and stay in each centre, it is often cheaper to stay on the outskirts but since all of these places will be busy it is sensible to see them in the evening when the pressure is off.

So either rush and squeeze in CT or remove it and don't rush.

Yeah it's the classic Big 3, Rome, Florence, Venice, the three most popular destinations. Good way to get an introduction to the country and you get to see a bit of everything.

OP said 10 days but do they include the arrival and departure days or is it 10 full days in Italy? If the former it's only 8 full days.

Also consider that there are long train rides, taking luggage aboard. I guess the trains between these 3 cities are direct so at least the OP won't deal with changing trains. In any event, the train travel eats into some of their time for sightseeing.

If it's only 8 full days, it may even make more sense to split it up between two cities instead of 3 and do some day trips out of each. Florence seems to have more half-day trips than Rome or Venice because it's surrounded by Tuscan hill towns, Chianti towns for wine tastings, etc.

Also if the OP is serious about art, it should be noted you can spend several days just visiting museums. In fact don't these cities have museum cards which are valid for at least 3 days? You can spend at least half a day in the Uffizi for instance and there are still other museums in Florence to see. So that might argue for spending more time in fewer locations than trying to cover a lot of places in limited amount of time.

May be better to consider this as an introduction to Italy and based on this first trip, plan future ones.

The first thing I would suggest is to drop either the Amalfi Coast or the Cinque Terre. Both are beautiful seaside locations, but both are out of the way and not very easy to get to. Choose one or the other. In fact, you might want to skip both unless you can extend your trip a bit. If you must visit at least one of these places, I myself would choose the Amalfi Coast.

In the 10 days, are you counting your arrival and departure days? To have ten full days in Italy, you need to spend 11 nights there. Of course you'll also have part of the arrival day, but that's usually pretty much a wasted day.

Assuming you have 11 nights in Italy,and assuming you visit the Amalfi Coast, I would suggest that you head straight there on arrival. I would fly into Rome and take a train to either Naples or Salerno. If you go to Salerno, you can proceed by boat to one of the Amalfi Coast towns. You can walk from the train station to the port. Of course, it's better not to be overburdened with luggage. If you take the train to Naples, you can get a private driver to take you to an Amalfi Coast destination. It's expensive, but you'll surely be tired from the trip. I would spend three nights on the Amalfi Coast, otherwise it's not worth the long trip to get there and back. You really don't have time to see Naples, unless you stay only two nights on the Almalfi Coast and give a night to Naples.

Next I would head to Rome, taking the train from Salerno or Naples. I would consider four nights a minimum for Rome.

Finally, I would go to Venice and spend the rest of your nights there, and fly out of Venice. If you want to see a bit of Florence, you can take an early train there, leave your luggage at the left luggage facility, and spend five or six hours there before catching a train to Venice. The train station is very near the center of the city, and you can see a good deal in a short walking tour. I would forget going to any museums. You can see a deal of Renaissane art by visiting a few of the churches that have masterpieces on display.

September is one of the busiest months for tourism in Italy. Many people prefer September and May to the summer months. Since you'll have a short time in each place, I'd skip many of the most famous (and crowded) sights. Look up the hidden gems in each city. Sometime in the future you can return to your favorite city and spend some quality time there. One of the problems with flying visits, though, is that if you spend most of your time in overcrowded tourist hotspots, you will hate the place and never want to see it again.

Thanks to everyone for their feedback. Looks like an open jaw ticket is going to be best for us to fly into Rome and out of Venice (or maybe reverse). We are going to stick with Rome, Florence, Venice for now. We have 10 total days, so two of them are scratched for international travel. Now I need to look into accomodations, hotels, airbnb, etc. Thanks again for all the advice.

Again book trains ASAP - info at sites I mention in an above post. flying into Venice for some reason experts recommend over flying out - not sure exactly why.

Have a train trip coming up in a month. Tried Trenitalia app and website, currently offline.

Just to be clear, it's not required that you purchase train tickets in advance. You can buy tickets when you get to the station to leave. If discounts are important, buy tickets as soon as you know your exact itinerary and what time you want to leave each city. If you want to maintain spontaneity to do a little more sightseeing before leaving, buy tickets when you have a better idea of the time you want to spend everywhere. Having not been to these cities before, you may find it hard to know how much time you need/want in each.

You can do some fare comparisons at Trenitalia's website. Use Italian spellings and these train station names: Roma Termini, Firenze S.M. Novella, Venezia S. Lucia.

https://www.trenitalia.com/en.html

The reason many recommend flying into Venice and out of Rome (rather than the opposite) is because most flights from Venice to the U.S. leave very early in the morning. But if you're flying from/to LAX and want to travel on an open-jaw (multi-city) itinerary, I prefer to fly directly into Rome and have the journey with the higher risk of delays at the end of the trip. You could also fly into Rome, see Venice next, end in Florence and fly home from Florence or Pisa. Your return flight will involve connections from Venice, Florence or Pisa, so dealer's choice.

Italotreno.com - competitor to Trenialia.com - may well have cheap tickets right up to a day before the train