My wife and I are planning a 2 week trip to Italy during the Spring of 2008. We have already been to Rome, Tuscany and Florence.

We are thinking of spending about 4 days in Venice and the remainder of the time making day trips from a single location. What are your recommendations for a picturesque place from which to make day trips? We have thought about visiting the Amalfi Coast, Liguria, or Umbria. When we stayed in Tuscany, we stayed in the hilltop town of Pienza and made day trips from there. We loved it.

We would love to hear your recommendations for your favorite place to spend a week in Italy. Jim

Stay at the Amalfi Coast, you won't regret it. I preferred Positano and Amalfi town to Sorrento. I stayed in a tiny village called Conci dei Marini, which was very tranquil. Theres masses of info on here to search regarding the Amalfi Coast.

Hi J,

>We have thought about visiting the Amalfi Coast, Liguria, or Umbria. <

I think that 10 days on the AC would be a bit long.

You might want to split your 10 days between the AC and U or L.

You could also consider 3 nights in Naples and 6 on the AC.

We enjoyed Umbria last year and stayed at an agriturismo named La Ghirlanda. I can't say enough wonderful things about it. The rooms were lovely and quite large, and the food and wine were the best of our two week trip. The Sagrantino wine is to die for. It is centrally located for day trips to Todi, Montefalco, Assissi, Perugia, Deruta.

How early in the spring?
If May, I would stay north and split your time between a lakes location and the Ligurian coast, flying home from Milan.

We could have easily spent a week on the Amalfi Coast, but 10 days might have been a tad too long, since spring is still a bit chilly for sitting by the pool or on the beach. Maybe stop in Umbria for a few days and then travel on to the AC and fly home from Naples.

For the Italian Riviera, you could base in Santa Margherita Ligure and travel to Portofino, the Cinque Terre, Camogli, and Genoa, using trains and boats. This coast is closer to Venice than the Amalfi coast and presumedly would be a shorter trip.

For the Amalfi coast, the best place to base is actually Sorrento (which is on the Gulf of Naples, not the coast). From Sorrento there are good transportation options to Capri, Pompeii and Herculaneum as well as Positano/Amalfi/Ravello.

For both of these trips you'd be better off without a car. For Umbria you'd want a car. Don't know your budget but we stayed at the Relais Il Canalicchio: www.relaisilcanalicchio.it. It was very well located for touring Umbria. However it broke my rule of staying within walking distance of a small town with a choice of restaurants.

If you stay on the Italian Riviera, you can also easily get to Pisa and Carrara for a couple of day trips. Pisa is obvious -- in Carrara you can drive into the hills and look at the marble quarries, which look from the seashore as though there is snow on the mountains. We also went north from Carrara a short distance just over the river that comes in there, turned out along that little peninsula, and found a wonderful restaurant that had a room built over the river, and had divine fritto misto di mare (squid, baby octopus, tiny little fish with a very light coating and deep fried) that was to die for. And at the very end of that peninsula another little town has some good restaurants right on the shore where you can look back at the white-marble mountains.