Italy and Greece in May/June
 

This past week, besides celebrating Christmas, my daughter turned 21 and she finished her BA. I have long been promising her an adventure to Italy--an art, archeological and architecture tour--and this seems like a perfect time. So we bought her a Rick Steve's Europe Through the Back Door and a map of Italy and put it under the tree. Now I have 6 months to plan a trip for the two of us.

We plan on buying Eurrail Passes and spending two weeks in Italy, then taking the ferry and bus to Athens for a few days before returning home to Los Angeles. Rome, Venice and Florence are musts, as well as Pompeii. I am overwhelmed by all of the info I have collected this past year. Any and all advice from those who have done it is greatly welcomed!

We really don't want to book hotels in advance, as we want the freedom to stay an extra day in Venice, if we wish. And we are not looking for a luxury hotel experience--we'd be happier staying at smaller places with more local flavor. Has anyone done this kind of trip? Is there anything you can recommend that we not miss?

Also, any airline suggestions? Is it possible to fly into, say, Rome or Venice and then return out of Athens, or would that add surcharges?

And is anyone familiar with Tour Crafters or other tour companies that go to Italy? We have considered booking a four nights and airfare and then hitting the rails. Has anyone ever done this and extended the return date beyond the inital booking?

I know, lots of questions! Take your time--I'll be right here waiting for your replies! Grazie!

Two thoughts. First, go to your local library and read about the places where you want to travel, the history and culture and tourist attractions. Second, the olympics will be held in Greece next year and that will impact your plans, perhaps positively. I would probably tour Italy only for your 16- 20 days but that's just me. Have a great time!

Make sure and checl www.railsaver.com with a representative itinerary to see how/whether a "rail pass" will (probably NOT) save you money.

Anf for art, archeology and architecture (plus a whole lot of other wonderful reasons), I would suggest 3 days in the south of France as a good substitute for 3 days in Greece. Or, as was suggested above - - spend the wentire time in Italy.

Best wishes,

Rex

Thank you for your responses. I hadn't even thought about the Olympics in Greece thus summer, but we are plannnig on going at the end of May and into the first week of June, so I am not sure how much that will much affect our trip. As for substituting southern France, this is not a option. My daughter has already plotted out the overnight ferry trip (she is especially enamored by the idea of the on-board disco!) and the archeological sites she wants to visit. And my husband has made me promise the south of France is for the two of us next summer. And as for the research, my degree is in art, so I have spent the past 20 years researching what I want to see! I was hoping to perhaps hear some personal trip stories from those who have done Italy before. Where did you stay, what did you enjoy seeing, what could be skipped, logistics. I have been reading through the older posts and have found some hotel recommendations for Venice that I have put on my list to research.

Rex, Thank you so very much for the Railsaver link! I have been trying to price the ground transportation on my own, but this was so easy. And, yes, you are correct that I won't save with the pass! The itinerary I entered from Venice to Athens comes to half the cost of the pass I planned on purchasing.

Here_today_gone2Maui, consider going to Ostia Antica, 16 miles southwest of Rome, instead of Pompeii. Ostia Antica is one of those under-appreciated gems, it would be much easier to fit into your itinerary, and it would accomplish for you many of the things that a visit to Pompeii would accomplish. Pompeii would involve either a VERY long day trip from Rome or an overnight stay in Naples or somewhere else like that, which would involve yet another change of hotels, etc.

Also, I admittedly am a risk-averse traveller, but I definitely would not head for Italy in May-June without accommodation reservations all the way.

From which port do you intend to catch the ferry for Greece?

Thank you for that tip! I just did a quick look at Ostia, and maybe we will add it in addition to Pompeii. My daughter has a fascination with the death casts and the tragedy that was Pompeii, and I doubt very much I can get her to take it off of her list. We had planed on spending the night in Naples and then heading out from Naples to Brindisi for the ferry. Have you done this before? I would love to hear stories--good or bad--about such a trip.

As I understand it, the high season does not start until the second week of June. Do I have wrong info here? We plan on leaving in mid-May and do plan on having reservation in Athens. We would just like the freedom to explore Italy, to not be locked into any itinerary per se. We are kind of hoping that with a cell phone and some good info in advance we can make this an adventure with some flexibility. We might get to Florence and decide to stay an extra day, or decide we are done there, time to move on to Rome.

>>>>>>We had planed on spending the night in Naples and then heading out from Naples to Brindisi for the ferry. Have you done this before? I would love to hear stories--good or bad--about such a trip.<<<<<<

Heh, heh, heh. I've never been to Italy. Looking at the Trenitalia website, I see Naples to Brindisi is 5 hours by train. All of the journeys I found involved a change of trains somewhere, most commonly at Caserta.

Switching to northern Italy for a moment, if you're an art buff, you no doubt are aware of the Giotto fescoes in the Scrovegni Chapel and Donatello's bronzes in St. Anthony's Basilica in Padua. For these reasons Padua is high on my wish list. I'm hoping that my husband and I will be able to stop there on our train journey from Venice to Florence. I'm in the process of looking into the logistics of parking our luggage in lockers at one of the train stations in Padua while we go sight seeing. Also, I've found out that the Scrovegni Chapel has an incredibly rigorous advanced booking system. Exactly 25 people are allowed into the Chapel for exactly 15 minutes at a time. This has something to do with protecting the frescoes from the moisture in people's breath. They have some high tech climate control system or something.

In theory it would be nice to travel around Italy and deciding what to do on the spur of the moment. This is easier to do, I think, when one is driving through the countryside and stopping to see whatever village takes one's fancy at a given moment. Indeed, many travellers report that these impromptu stops have turned out to provide some of their most delightful memories.

It's also possible to casually walk around the great art cities, stopping for a gelato when one feels like it, and so on. However, my reading of the guide books has demonstrated to me that a certain amount of planning is mandatory if one wants to see formal art collections. First of all, the handful of art galleries that have mandatory reservations systems are all on my wish list. Secondly, even in cases where museums and galleries do not take reservations, they almost always are closed one day of the week. The most common closing day is Monday, but that is not universal. Sometimes the closing day is Tuesday or some other day. Some museums and galleries are closed the 1st, 3rd, 5th Sunday of the month and the 2nd and 4th Monday of the month, or something like that. Heavily visited churches also have times when they're open to the public. I sat down with a list of the galleries, museums, churches, and gardens I wanted to see in Venice, Padua, Florence, Rome and Naples and also those in some smaller towns, e.g., Asissi, Orvieto, Tarquinia (Etruscan necropolis), etc. From what I could tell, it wouldn't be possible to see what I wanted to see if I was doing it spontaneously. Well, that's my take on it anyway.

More philosophy - - and an acknowledgement that only you can really know what you like. Planning and lots of input here is sure to help you reduce the number of things that you later say "if I had only known".

I tend to think that picking a place to stay, on the fly, is always a bad idea. Especially for Rome, Florence and Venice. Unless you don't mind getting half the quality at an inferior location at twice the price.

It's a personal opinion, I know - - and a biased one, based on having done the majority of my (24) trips to Europe with (more than 2) other people who were counting on me to make sure we didn't have to worry about finding the place to stay.

You have all these months to research hundreds of places, of which you will probably only choose 4 to 6, ultimately. How much of your time THERE do you want to give up to make the same decisions - - based on what's left - - at the end of (some of) your days?

Which is why I am asking for input here from others. This is not my first trip done this way, albeit my first to Italy. Not having reservations does not mean not having some ideas as to where we might want to stay. Hence, being armed with a cell phone and good information. It's a road trip! It's part of the adventure of exploring new places. We don't travel with strict itineraries, rather we complile a wealth of information and then take each day as it happens. As a result we have had to opportunity to go off the beaten track and experience many things that most travelers never do. You may think that picking a place to stay on the fly is a bad idea-we have found it be most interesting and have met some wonderful people in the process.

Here_today_gone2Maui, an idea that you might try on for size is to reverse the order of your travels, that is, fly into Athens, ferry to Brindisi, train to Naples, and so on up through Italy, exiting Italy via Venice. I'm not saying this WOULD be better, but it MIGHT be. It's worth checking, I think.

Conventional wisdom is to travel from south to north in the spring / early summer and from north to south in the fall. In this case it may not make much of a difference, as you won't be covering a very broad range of latitutdes, and you're only going for a couple of weeks.

Still, from the point of view of getting the best deal on flights, I think it's worth checking both combinations.

If you do your home work, you should be able to get open jaw flights for only minimally more than round trip flights. You may even be able to get them at the same price. I'm not sure. However, with the fairly tight time line with which you're working, I think the added convenience of open jaw travel would count for a lot.

If you do see Pompeii, your experience will be enhanced if you also can see the archaeological museum in Naples. Each makes the other more meaningful.

You asked for other's experiences, so here's mine.

We did three countries in two weeks (5 different areas), and if I had it to do again, I would follow the advice of the Fodorites who say "less is more". We trained from Rome to Brindisi (8 hours), followed by an 8 hour ferry to the island of Corfu, Greece. We then had the same trip back to Rome, so we spent a lot of time traveling that could have been spent sightseeing if we had trimmed our itinerary.

Since you don't want to drop anything from your itinerary, I think you will find, as we did, that you won't have time to see all that you are planning to see. On a positive note, that gives you a reason to go back!

here today--
I think you can travel, picking a place "on the fly" but you should always have a backup plan (or two) ready once you make a choice.

We did a trip like that in June 2001 in northern Italy and it worked fine for us. But we were experienced Italy travelers and had no must-sees to check off. We DID reserve our arrival hotel in Venice, and from there we just went, calling ahead the day before. The "high" season may not start till mid-June, but Italy is always a popular destination. Also business conventions, festivals, and other holidays may make hotels scarce at any time. As long as you are ready and willing to deal with possible difficulties, you'll be fine.

My husband and I did a similiar trip, but we had hotel reservations for some cities and did not for others, the biggest issue is that you waste valuable time looking for a hotel in each new city. So, instead of checking into our hotel and enjoying the city we spent the first 2-4 hours in the new city trying to find a hotel. Just something for you to consider. Also instead of wasting time with a ferry we just booked tickets through europebyair.com and flew between Venice and Athens in less than 2 hours.

I've been this route!! We stayed in Massa Lubrense and left early in the morning for Pompeii until noon and then on to Bari(near Brindisi) to catch the overnight ferry to Greece. You board the ferry around 6pm and it was really a cruise ship not a ferry. It was a greek line named the Superfast II. If you do a google search you will find it. We had cabins that were like the ones you would find on any cruiseline. Yes they had a disco!!! They also had a small casino, movie theater, shops,etc. We docked in Patras around 10 or 11 am and took another short ferry ride(real ferry this time with turkish toilets) to head to Delphi. Spent the night in Delphi and then on to Athens. I loved Delphi!!! If you get the chance try to visit on your way. It's a tiny town with lots of little restaurants and shops. It seems like it was a long ride from Delphi to Athens but I don't remember how long.

If your daughter really wants to see ruins she shouldn't leave Delphi out!!! After all it is the center of the universe!