We are fortunate to be going to Europe again this June-- hurray! We will be in Florence for a conference June 12- 16, but will spend the week immediately preceding or following to visit elsewhere in Italy. We've never been to Italy, and are so excited. It will be just my husband and myself.
We know from past trips that a three-night stay is the minimum for our tastes, because we don't like the hassle of checking in/out of hotels, and wasting time in transit. We like to have some time to soak up the atmosphere of a place, and to get lost in it. Don't want to rush to and fro.
I'm suggesting to my husband: Venice, Florence, Cinque Terre, Tuscany. Not Rome this time, since we'd like to see smaller towns, the country and the coast. We'll have time for day-trips from Florence during the conference, too.
Anyone care to recommend an itinerary? For starters, Venice for three nights or four? Travel by train or car toTuscany, Cinque Terre?

All I can say about Venice is that, on our first trip there together, Mrs. Fly and I had 4-1/2 days. We found so much to see and do that we had to omit major sights like the Accademia and Guggenheim art museums and the other lagoon islands like Murano, Burano, and Torcello.

days trip from Florence might be:

trip 1: to Siena by train
trip 2: to Lucca-Pisa and back to Florence by train
- 2 nights/1 day in Cinque Terre, not more
- 4 nights in Venice rather than 3 !!

If you take a car in Florence you might add a nice drive to the tuscanian countryside to San Gimignano and Volterra as an additional day trip. If you limit to Pisa and Lucca you do not need a car as Florence to Pisa is just 50 minutes by train.

Train transfer from Cinque Terre to Venice might take a longer time and at least a train change somewhere as it is located on the opposite coasts of Italy.
The closest bigger train station to Cinque Terre is La Spezia. Check train schedule on www.trenitalia.com

For a fixed itinerary you should check if you can fly home out from Venice or if you have to come back to Florence !

Good point-- I forgot to mention we'll fly into/out of Florence and Venice.

Hi MaureenB:

If you have only a week before or after
your conference, I'd limit myself to 1-2 places besides Florence.

Tuscany & Venice:
Rent a car and make a base in Tuscany.
Drop car and train to Venice.

or

Add nights to Florence to enjoy this lovely city & train to Venice.

You said you enjoy a minimum of a 3 night stay so this would work for your plans.

Are your air tickets all set or can you fly out of Venice?

Di

Sorry MaureenB, our posts overlapped.

<flying out of Venice>

Di

I agree with adding a day to Venice and also think you should at least make a daytrip from Florence to Siena (the bus is better here than the train).

How much longer are you able to stay on this trip?

I'm hoping we can be gone two full weeks. Exact dates depend on a 2 week school trip my son will be taking, so we can be gone the same dates. His group is leaving between June 4- 8, exact date TBD. He gets to visit Italy, too, for the first time, lucky boy. A Theology class offered by his Jesuit high school, don't you know. Where were those classes when I was in high school??
I have to get out my map of Italy. Sienna is where?

Hi MaureenB. Sienna is only a 1 1/2 hour drive from Florence. Yet they are a world apart in atmosphere. We stayed in both cities and I much prefer staying in Siena. Next time I would do Florence as a day-trip depends on what you prefer though.

If you want to join a very interesting small tour in a minivan, check out Roberto Bechi's web-site. www.toursbyroberto.com He's a licensed tour guide and can take you from siena to see all sorts of wonders. His specialty is archaeology and history of the area. He has a great sense of humor and knows the good country trattorias to stop at for lunch!

Have fun.

Hi MB,

>I'm hoping we can be gone two full weeks.<

4 days are in Florence for the meeting.

I suggest adding 4 days to Florence to get a view of the city when you are not constrained by the conference and for a daytrip to Siena by SITA bus, a daytrip to Orvieto by train and a daytrip to Bologna by train.

Train to Venice for the rest of the visit.

You can daytrip to Padua and Verona.

Have a nice visit.

Thanks everyone-- I'm going to get a good map and a good book and research the towns you mention. The conference will allow time for at least one afternoon day-trip from Florence, and will be fairly low-key with short conference days, too. Fortunately, they realize people expect sight-seeing time built-into these boondoggles!
Keep the ideas coming, please.

Hi MB,

>..they realize people expect sight-seeing time built-into these boondoggles!<

Did you mean junket?

Ira, are junket and boondoggle the same thing? In my lexicon a boondoggle is a 'business' trip that's more fun than work, an excuse to get out of the office.

I suspect that junket and boondoggle are more or less synonymous.

Junket is the term I hear used most often when the so-called "business trip" is undertaken by politicians and/or civil servants at the cost of the taxpayers.

It appears that, according to the Merriam-Webster dictionary, junket would be closer to the intended meaning.

Main Entry: 1jun·ket
Pronunciation: 'j&[ng]-k&t
Function: noun
Etymology: Middle English ioncate, ultimately from (assumed) Vulgar Latin juncata, from Latin juncus rush
1 : a dessert of sweetened flavored milk set with rennet
2 a : a festive social affair b : TRIP, JOURNEY; especially : a trip made by an official at public expense


Main Entry: boon·dog·gle
Pronunciation: 'bün-"dä-g&l, -"do-
Function: noun
Etymology: coined by Robert H. Link died 1957 American scoutmaster
1 : a braided cord worn by Boy Scouts as a neckerchief slide, hatband, or ornament
2 : a wasteful or impractical project or activity often involving graft

Hi Maureen-
Throw in Rome, and there you have our honeymoon itinerary from a few years ago!

We did Rome-Florence-Tuscany daytrip-Cinque Terre-Venice-Rome.

Florence - we had 4 nights there, which was perfect for us (we usually move around a LOT). I wish we had time to stay in Siena, but we just went for the day. We also went to San Gimignano for the afternoon, which was spectacular as well.

Cinque Terre - 3nights there at Porto Roca, we had our private balcony on the top floor and it was magnificent! It will be packed in the summer but it'll be great! Definitely hike the goat paths if you can.

Venice - we only had 2nights. We would have done Burano and Murano if we had time, but the 2 days were perfect for what we did.

Keep us posted on your itinerary and good luck planning!

If you go to Tuscany, I suggest you email [email protected]. Allessandro Cammilli took us on a day tour out of Florence. It was a wonderful day. We could never have covered so much territory by ourselves, and he is very flexible with the itinerary. You will not regret a day in Tuscany with Allessandro.

Hi MB,

I think that a boondoggle is something wasteful and time consuming that I have to do to please someone else, as in, "I have been assigned to write the latest 5-year plan - another useless boondoggle".

I think of a junket as a pleasure trip, under the guise of business, funded by someone else, as in, "My boss is taking his secretary on a junket, while I have to stay here and write the 5-year plan".

Not that this has anything to do with Travel (and we clearly have too much time on our hands today!)-- but in my experience in the corporate world of advertising, we used the term 'boondoggle' to refer to a trip that was mostly a sham so we could have some fun under the guise of business. We all knew which seminars/conferences/meetings allowed plenty of free time in a great location on an expense account. (But those were the 80s, not today's world of much tighter budgets.) Anyway, it's just semantics, specific to a region and/or industry, I suspect. Six of one, half-dozen of the other.
Now, back to Italy...