Help with Italy Itinerary
 

We fly into Rome at 9:00am on Wednesday. We plan to spend 2 nights in Rome. Then travel to Venice for 2 nights. We fly out of Venice to Brindisi on Sunday night for a week in Puglia. We would like to see Parma/Modena/Bologna area also. Should we use Venice as our base with a day trip to the Emilia Romagna region? Is this type of itinerary too ambitious?

How long overall do you have - if never been to Rome or Venice - 2 nights -really 1.5 days with relocation is not much especially for Rome.

Bologna would make a great base for those other cities - too far from Rome or Venice to do easy day trips and Bologna IMO is a fantastic city in itself.

Book trains early for deals- www.trenitalia.com or www.italotreno.com -www.seat61.com is great on telling how to get discounted tickets; www.ricksteves.com and www.budgeteuropetravel.com also have great train info.

Your routing is not straightforward.

If, for example, you take train from Rome to Venice, your train stops at Bologna on the way. And then you spend additional expense and time later on to come back to where you could have just hopped off at no cost, no travel time?

Then you travel from the North in Venice to all the way South in Brindisi then travel North back to Bologna?

Also, from where are you flying home? If it is different from one of your destination, you are probably consuming yet another day to a city not on your destination list.

As Pal and Greg say, we need to know how much time you have and which nites you are planning to stay in Rome and in Venice. Then we can help you decide on whether this is too ambitious or not.

Two nites = one full day, and that's not enough time for Venice, let alone for Rome, which can repay months of exploration.

From Rome you can take a night train to Brindisi or Lecce - ultimate time saver.

We currently have nothing booked other than flight and hotel in Lecce. We fly into Rome on Wed 9/13 arriving 9:15am. We only care to see Colosseum and Vatican in Rome. We have to be in Lecce by Monday 9/18 at 11:00am. We would like to see Venice but not sure it makes sense to travel that far north. Other option would be to change our flight and fly into Venice and then head south. We would like to see Venice, Florence and Rome in between 9/13 and 9/18. I know this would be a full itinerary in a short time, but our week in Lecce will be VERY relaxing.

If you can change your flight to land in Venice, it works better. If you do not have a lot you want to see in Florence, then when you travel by train from Venice to Rome you can get off the train in Florence, store your luggage at the train station, and go sightseeing, then get back on the train and go to Rome.

Leave plenty of time to retrieve bags at Florence station -often long lines many say.