Italy for a week
 

Hello, We are heading to Greece in Aug/Sept. I want to travel to Italy from Athens, we will only have a week to spend in Italy, so I would love some help in where to go, what to visit and stay etc. There are 4 of us, our daughters are 13 and 8 respectively. I was liking the idea of Rome/Florence and somewhere else??? Hope someone out there has some suggestions for us? I'm guessing to fly from Athens to Rome first or is there another option???

Look at Aegean Airlines for your flight to Rome.
http://en.aegeanair.com/?gclid=CK6Mg...FaFk7AodzAKNFg

You can day trip to Florence by train from Rome as the travel time is only 90 minutes, but since you have a week, you might as well spend a few days there. From Florence, you can day trip to Pisa, Siena or a smaller hill town or two. If you want to stay somewhere else besides Rome/Florence, Orvieto might be fun for the kids. It's on the slower train line between Rome/Florence and you take the funicular up to the hill town. There are underground tours.
http://www.orvietounderground.it/

A 13 year old might be interested in Volterra if she is into the Twilight books/movies (it filmed there). I'm sure you could find a day tour from Florence.

You could take a ferry to Venice and then a train to Florence, but for a week in Italy visiting both Florence and Rome is a lot to do. I'm not really sure you will have time to see a third city.

I'd suggest four nights in Rome, and three in Florence but if you really want to see more of Italy you could overnight in Siena between the two. Remember, Italy isn't a small country and every time you move between cities you lose most of a day to travel.

Taking a ferry would eat up a lot of time. You would have to first get from Athens to Patras to catch the ferry. The ferry would take anywhere from 18-24 hours depending on which Italian port you chose. To get from the ports to Rome would be several more hours. I think that is too much with younger kids and limited time.

Is your flight home out of Rome?

After we visited Rome we visited a lovely country inn about 40 miles from Rome (easy to get to - we rented a car at the airport but there are probably other ways). It's within walking distance to Lake Bracciano - has a pool, tennis court. The owners are fantastic and the rooms are lovely ... it's a special place and I think kids would have a blast there. There's a very cool castle (where Tom Cruise and whootiss-don't-remember-her-name) got married. For us it was perfect because we got to wind down after a lot of sight-seeing, etc. Super good food.

Ah.....the name of the place: Villa Clementina in Bracciano.