Help!! planning first trip to Italy
 

Hi all travelers!
We are planning our first trip to Italy. We are a family of 5..Our sons are all in their 20's.We are flying into London and taking Ryan air to Rome where we will stay for 3-4 days. Then we want to spend a week in a Tuscan town where we can do day trips to Siena, Pisa, & Florence. We didn't want to take on renting a car and were planning to use train and buses. From there we would fly out of Pisa back to London for 2 days and then back home to Saratoga Springs, NY.
Our dilemma is where to stay, San Gimignano,Lucca, Orvieto, etc. We are an active family who enjoy food, wine, meeting people, etc.
Any help is most gratefully accepted!
Nancy

La,

I personally would not recommend trying to do a week's worth of day trips out of a small Tuscan town without a car. I think you will be frustrated. You really shouldn't be hesitant about driving in the countryside. It's a breeze, actually very enjoyable!

If you must use public transportation, you will need to stay in one of the larger towns, like Siena, in order to have good bus options to other towns. Or, just stay in Florence where you will have many train and bus options.

Remember, that for the hilltowns, buses usually go closer to the towns. Train stations are usually down in the flats and not very near the smaller hilltowns. You would need to take a taxi, bus, or be willing to do a serious hike up to most of the towns.

Rent a car! Buon viaggio!

Have you booked your flight through London on your way to Rome? I would investigate flying from home to Rome, then Pisa to London, then London to home.

I agree. If you plan to stay in a "Tuscan town" you need a car. If you plan to stay in Siena, a good Tuscan bus transit hub, you can visit Pisa and Florence and other hill towns by bus or train. Orvieto is not in Tuscany.

With 5 in Tuscany you want a van or large wagon.

Thank you so much!! We have decided to stay in Rome for 4 days/nights and Florence for 7. From Florence, we will take day trips to other cities via train. We are currently looking at VRBO to find rentals in FLorence! :)

Your plan sounds excellent, especially for a first trip to Italy. Have a wonderful time.

If you decide to take Ryan air be sure to read the weight on your luggage .Cost me e200.00 extra from Ireland to Scotland .Your trip sounds wonderful Italy is a beautiful country.

Thanks everyone! We are going to arrive In Rome July 1 for 4 days/nights and then head to Florence for 8days/nights, then back to Rome and stay at the airport hotel and be ready to fly out on July 14th. We found wonderful what look like wonderful apartments through VRBO for our time in Rome and Florence. I will let you know about those when we return. :)
I had a few more questions for all.. we want to take a train to Florence and then also be able to do some day trips to Sienna, Pisa, and maybe even Venice by train. Which train is best? Are there passes to buy ahead of time for the whole time period instead of purchasing tickets each time we want to travel? Of course, we'll have to take a train back to Rome as well.
Also, which sites are the best for securing tickets to tourist sites such as the Vatican, David, etc.??
Any recommendations as to which Tuscan cities/towns to see, restaurants, activities to do ? All ideas are greatly appreciated! Our group includes my husband and I both active and 57, and our 3 sons, ages 23 - 27.

Thanks so much for your amazing help and kindness!
Nancy

Hi Nancy,

some of the best day trips from florence are best done by bus -

Fiesole just north of Florence makes a good 1/2 day or evening trip by bus from piazza san marco, [round the corner from the accademia],

Siena [bus or train, but the bus gets you closer to the centre of the town; the bus station is about 100 metres from SMN railway station in florence] and

San Germignano. [no train, bus from the same place].

Here is the official site for getting tickets for the uffizi and accademia museums in Florence:

http://www.firenzemusei.it/

for the vatican, it's this one:

http://biglietteriamusei.vatican.va/...?weblang=en&do

have a great trip!

Nancy,

Venice is not a day trip - especially from Florence.

Plan to do your daytrips to towns closer to Florence. There is plenty to see! You don't say what your main interests are, but I think you could do a day trip to Assisi fairly easily and maybe take time for at least a 1/2 day in Orvieto on your way back to your Fiumicino hotel.

Buon viaggio!

Just a note to examine bus schedules carefully - especially on Sundays - since to some towns the schedule is very sparse. You can easily get to Siena but smaller towns may have only or 2 buses a day. (You really need a car to do this properly. We have done it twice and seen many of the mid sie and smaller towns - and have the freedom to move on when ready and stop to et anywhere we like.)

With 5 drivers don;t know why you're against a car.

you don't want/need a car in central Florence.

possibly if you want to have one, look at staying on the outskirts, but that rather defeats the object of staying there.

A better idea might be to stay in Siena - a lovely town which makes a very good base for day trips, but has plenty going on in the evenings in the way of restaurants etc. also the parking /driving is nothing like florence. you could always get the bus/train to Florence for a day trip to avoid driving there. I repeat - you REALLY don't want to drive in Florence.

Train schedules for summer don't start until mid-June and aren't posted yet. The schedules/prices won't change much so enter a date within the next 7 days for all trains/prices to show.
http://www.trenitalia.com/cms/v/inde...0080a3e90aRCRD

As said above, bus is often better than a train as for Siena where the train station is outside the historic center and the bus will drop you at the center.
http://www.sitabus.it/sita-toscana/Firenze-Siena06.pdf

Some of your train rides will only be 5-10€ (Florence/Pisa or Florence/Lucca), but you might want to check buses for these also as some of these towns are only served by the older slow R trains and might not have AC. The buses typically have AC and it will be hot in July. I think Lazzi bus goes to Lucca.

If you want to get a car and stay outside of Florence, you might try these apartments.
http://www.letorri.com/index.php?dis...hianti-tuscany

If you chose Siena as your base, it's easily reached from Rome by Sena bus.
http://www.sena.it/

For other buses in the Siena area which covers much of southern Tuscany (that is what you see on many postcards):
http://www.sienamobilita.it/mappe/Mappa_EXT.pdf

WOW!! You folks are amazing!! Thanks for all the wonderful "homework" you have given me with insights to consider and websites to check out!! I'll keep you posted about our family adventure!
Sincerely,
Nancy

IMHO, Florence is the ideal place to stay if you don't plan to have a car. You can take a number of day trips easily and there is enough to see and do in Florence to fill eight days easily. Without a car, you will miss most of the small towns of Tuscany but some towns such as San Gimignano, Fiesole and Greve are easily reached by bus.

Hello all,
We are about 6 weeks away form our Italian vacation. We are currently looking into rail passes/ train schedules etc. as we will be traveling from Rome to Florence, then using Florence as our base for the last part of our trip. Anyone have any recommendations about whether it is better to buy a Eurail Family Pass/ Saver pass or buy tickets individually. Also, we can not figure out how to use it/ what exactly the price is. On their website it is very confusing as it says one pass can be used for up to 5 people, but when you get to purchasing page, it doesn't allow you to buy one pass.
We are looking to take day trips to Cinque Terre, Pisa, Venice (possibly)Perugia (possibly...love their chocolates!! :)
Any other suggestions for ANYTHING you think we'll need for our first visit. We are so WET behind the ears!! :)

I suspect those day trips are too short a distance to make the price of a pass worthwhile. Try pricing the tickets at www.treitalia.com, the official rail site. You might get some good discounts at this site if you purchase ahead.

Also keep in mind that for all but R (Regionale) trains, you will be required to pay for a reserved seat, as much a 10€ extra per person per ticket above the cost of the pass.

Your daytrips are a bit far for my taste.

La4 - ditto what ellenm has said. Unless you are staying a very long time, you'll never have time to do enough trips to make the cost of a pass worthwhile. you are unlikely to do more than one day trip and one half-day in a week in Florence - there is so much else to see and do in the city itself.

the seat reservations do bump the price - the Freccia bianca train that I was on today was more than 2x the cost of the regional train I'd caught in the opposite direction, but OTOH it was a lot quicker, less crowded and cleaner. [apart from the toilets]. but even on the fastest trains, you'll be hard-pressed to do day-trips to all the places you mention. Better train options would be Pisa [which you have mentioned] and Bologna, both of which are no more than an hour away.

Hi again LA,

I would strongly suggest waiting to buy train tickets for your "day trips" until you have been in Italy for a few days. First enjoy Rome, then head to Florence, do a day trip by bus to Siena. Then plan from there.

I think once you are there and have learned just bit about the actual time it can take to get around, you will realize that Venice and Cinque Terre are NOT day trips from Florence.

Spend some serious time checking out the trenitalia web site. Remember you need to put in the Italian city/town names. Look at the schedules, see how long the various types of trains take. Then add a minimum of 1/2 hour on each end for getting to the station, finding your track, etc. Calculate how much time you would actaully have at your destination vs. travel time. This will help you decide whether a certain location is, in fact, a day trip.

In Italy, it's all about enjoying where you ARE.

Buon viaggio!

We loved Volterra, home of huge alabaster quaries. We brought back lovely bowls, vases, etc in alabaster and there's a fantastic museum of exquisite artwork/sculpture in alabaster. We had a car but am sure Volterra has bus service.