Italian honeymoon- train&hotel help?
 

Hi, all - this is my first post, so beware the newbie :) I have garnered so much wonderful information off this board that I'm hoping a few souls will offer advice on our Italian honeymoon plans for Sept. 7-19.

Our itinerary is set like this:
Sept 6: leave San Francisco area for Rome, San Jose Intl to FCO.
Sept 7: Arrive in Rome around 11am. No set plans, probably just wander around and re-adjust internal clocks!
Sept 8-10 in Rome
Sept. 11: leave Rome for Florence (or Siena?).
Sept. 12-14: Florence. Day trips to Pisa, Siena. Maybe Lucca?
Sept. 15: leave Florence for Cinque Terre (half day trip?)
Sept. 16: CT
Sept. 17: Leave CT for Venice
Sept. 18: Venice
Sept. 19: Afternoon flight out of Venice

Questions: Where should we get train passes? Are any of these routes going to be tricky on the train (the trenitalia website has confused me so far, but I will keep trying)? And if we buy them in Italy, should we get them all at once upon arrival, or wait to buy them until the day before each trip?
-Should we use Florence or Siena as a home base in that area? We would like to avoid a car rental, so I'm thinking Florence has more transportation options for day trips, etc.
-is Lucca the town where you can rent bikes and ride on the city walls? Where can I find info on renting the bikes, etc?

Any mid-priced hotel suggestions are much appreciated. Thanks for all advice in advance!

For a newbie, that's an excellent first shot! If you don't want to have a car, then I think Florence is probably your better choice. I would only make one change. Take a day off Florence and add it to Venice. By the time you transit from CT to Venice, you're only allowing one day there...your last day. You'll be busy with preparing for the trip home. I think you need the extra day there.

Oh my goodness, we almost have "twin" honeymoons! ;-) My husband and I spent 3 nights in Rome, 3 nights in the Cinque Terre, 1 night in Florence, and 4 nights in Venice!

Good idea for your first day - try as hard as you can not to give into the temptation to take a nap. You will adjust much faster that way! Wandering around the Via Imperial (sp?)/Colesseum/Forum/Capitoline Hill area would be a great way to spend the afternoon.

Don't buy a rail pass - your train travel will not be expensive enough to warrant it. Go to the train station a day or two before you are leaving that particular city and use the yellow ticket machines - just press the British flag and instructions will appear in English. They take credit cards.
For the Cinque Terre - you can get a "Cinque Terre card" in increments of 1 day, 3 days, etc. that allows you free access to all the trains running constantly between the 5 villages as well as the hiking trails between the 5 villages. The 3 day pass is around 20 E and a lot of the proceeds go toward the maintenance of the natural park (Cinque Terre is a designated park) so it's a good cause :-)

I will go find the thread where I did a hotel review of all the hotels we stayed at - with one exception, they were all fabulous and very mid-priced.

http://www.fodors.com/forums/threads...p;tid=34510188

Here is my review of our hotels

No train &quot;passes&quot;. You just need train <i>tickets</i>. Get them at the train station(s).

Sep 17 is a long day of traveling, will leave you not much time in Venice, and yet the high cost of lodging in Venice to sleep there that night. But you know what you are likely to enjoy, probably.

I might favor going to Lake Garda instead - - but that is nitpicking.

Whatever your choices, congratulations on your new life in marriage... and...

Best wishes,

Rex

Congratulations on your upcoming wedding...and a honeymoon in Italy is a great choice.

If this is September 2004, you shouldn't wait much longer before making hotel reservations.

Your plan is good, and the only chage I would suggest is to add more time to Venice. One day is not nearly enough.

Have a wonderful honeymoon! I stayed in both Florence and Siena, and I found Siena, which is more tranquil and has a medieval atmosphere, to be much more romantic. I would recommend that if you have a car, stay at the beautiful Palazzo Ravizza hotel in Siena, which has free parking available. I don't know where their parking garage is, but the hotel itself is within the walls of Siena, a wonderful location. Get a room on one of the upper floors overlooking the garden...You open the shutters and there's the lovely garden, and you can see over the walls of Siena and out into the beautiful green Tuscan hillsides! Great breakfast too. From Siena you can drive to florence. I didn't like staying in Florence, too much traffic, smog, crowded, too much like another big city.

Gotta go now or I'd probably go on and on!

Have a great time

Congratulations on your honeymoon! Lucca is the town where you can bicycle on the walls...we enjoyed that very much, and information regarding the bikes is available at the tourist info office in Lucca, where you can rent the bikes. In the Cinque Terre, we stayed at the Hotel Pasquale in Monterosso at 135 Euro per night, a wonderful yet simple hotel, with a gorgeous view on the water and very convenient.

Thanks, everyone. I'll probably post another message about getting from Cinque Terre to Venice - I figured it would be about a half-day trip, but sounds like it might be longer than that.

TexasAggie, thanks for the link to your thread - your CT hotel sounds great! Funny, I'm an Aggie too - but I went to UC Davis... we're not exactly &quot;the&quot; Aggies everyone knows, but not too shabby ;)

I'm wondering if maybe we should stay in Siena one night and head to Lucca from there, then go from Siena to CT instead...

And thank you for the happy wishes - we're looking forward to the trip and beyond!

Congrats...we are honeymooning there Sept 1 - 14th (well, and getting married there too!). Last time we went to Italy we just printed off some of the train schedules off the Trenitalia site before we went so we knew roughly how long it took to travel and what times Eurostar trains left. We just went to the train station early on our first train trip and bought tickets and made reservations for the rest of our trip. It was less expensive that way and we avoided waiting in lines every time we were traveling by train. I personally prefer having reservations on each train. If you are traveling during peak times it can be hard to find a seat - we got stuck in smoking last time! Have a great trip.

As far as hotels, we stayed at the following last year. All had NEW bathrooms (a clean bath is very important to me!!!).

Rome: Hotel Barberini
Florence: Hotel Hermitage (some rooms have jacuzzi - great after site seeing all day!!!)
Siena - Santa Caterina
Venice - Antica Locanda Venezia

For CT - we only took a day trip there from Camogli (right next to Portofino). It's about an hour by train. The hotel there was great....check out their website. THe hotel was the Cenobio Dei Dogi - we booked on expedia and it was a very nice hotel.

Have a great trip! Congrats and good luck!

dear ez062718

In a later message in this thread, you mention using Siena as a base and going to Lucca from there. Please be aware that Lucca is very easy to get to from FLORENCE by train, and difficult to get to from Siena where you must use buses to get to the train station outside town, or use buses to get to Lucca, which is a hike and I think may need changes buses.

If you want to see Lucca, do it from Florence.