tribi

My husband, 26year old son and myself, will be visiting Italy and Germany the last week of September and the first week of October of next year, we will start our trip in Rome and will stay there for 4 nights, the rest will be spent between Tuscany, Venice and Germany. We are renting a car for those days in Italy and will be returned in Venice where we will stay 3 nights. We have 2 nights between Rome and Venice and would like to visit these towns.
Orvieto
Montepulciano
San Quirico
Cortona
Siena
We know it might not be possible to do it in 2 days so I need help on deciding which town to use as base for day trips and which towns to choose or leave out. We will fly to Germany from Venice.

thank you

tuscanlifeedit

You can see Orvieto on your way north from Rome. Montepulciano, San Quirico and Siena aren't all that far from one another. Do you want one stop for both nights? Cortona, I think, would be the least convenient of the stops and I might omit it.

Leave Rome, spend the rest of the day in Ovieto (planning around mid afternoon closing times if you can), then drive to a base in San Quirico. This is a tiny town but nice.

The next day try to take in Montepulciano, but I doubt if you can squeeze Siena in there, too. For only two nights, with one day spent driving from Rome, you don't really need a base for day trips. You need a place to stay for two nights, seeing some things on the way and some things on the second day. I would stick to the southern area and take in Pienza, Montalcino and San Antimo Abbey on day two.

Go to mappy.com or michelin.com and play with the driving distances. You may decide on what you want to see based on the time it takes to get to the various places.

Siena is really a small city and needs a good deal of time to do it justice, and parking there is, IMO, almost always a pain.

macanimals

You will have a busy day picking up your car in Rome and driving to any of your destinations which are all reachable. I wouldn't attempt to visit more than one on that first day and perhaps two on the second with an overnight in it. You are going to have to prioritize your towns--perhaps an overnight in Orvieto then a visit to Montepulciano and Cortona on the second day. That would leave you a relatively easy transit to Venice. Your call. Paul

gard

Hi

It is a good thing that places are not that far apart in Tuscany The places I enjoyed the most in Tuscany were Siena and Montalcino but I guess you have to read up about the various cities and decide what you want to check out. Here is my trip report from Rome from a couple of years back: http://gardkarlsen.com/rome_italy.htm . I'm making a similar one now from Florence and Tuscany and hopefully I will have it ready soon.

Regards
Gard
http://gardkarlsen.com - trip reports and pictures

tribi

Thank you very much to all, I will continue to work on my itinerary.