Spending most of July in Italy alone, first visit, simple, not hostels, one bag, train travel, flying in/out of Milan. General itinerary all the big cities, museums, etc. Any suggestions on clothes and small, boutique affordable hotels, great little cafes, bars?

This July? I bet a lot of people are going to say you're very late in planning places to stay for this July. Sounds fun, though! We stayed at Hotel Abaco in Florence. I'd say it was Boutique-ish.

Clothes: comfortable sandals and shoes. Dress for hot weather, pick fabrics that can be washed out in the sink.

Hotels: www.lacalcina.com in Venice is nice solo, but it may be too late to snag a reservation as they are deservedly very popular.

I never bother researching cafes or bars, just keep your eyes open in whatever neighborhood you end up in, in the various cities. My thinking is no sense knocking myself out figure out each and every possible great cafe in Rome... when you will only likely be in small specific parts of the city.

I would get a couple guidebook for your possible itineraries.

Hi S,

>Any suggestions on ... small, boutique affordable hotels,

See www.venere.com

Also enter <(Name of City) and Hotel> in the "search this forum" box.

Suzeeq-July is actually low season in Italy-the second half particularly, so you'll get better rates on hotels than you would in June or Sept.-Oct. I would suggest looking at the Fodor's destinations guide on this site for cities like Milan, Rome, Florence Venice-to get an overview, then looking at hotels on www.veniceby.com, venere.com to check availability on hotels that are recommended. Then if you see some hotels that interest you, go to tripadvisor.com to check on the reviews of those hotels.

A good guidebook to Italy should be your first point of reference-then you can come back and ask more specific questions.

I spent most of July 2004 doing a solo trip in Italy - sounds like same travel style. I landed in Milan, took the train to Florence for 6 nights (Hotel Desiree, was 45€ for a single - "special price" found on a booking website but emailed the hotel and got the same price). I did day trips, by train to Pisa and Lucca, and by bus to Siena. Then I took the train to Venice for 3 nights (Hotel Violino D'Oro - also got a great price - 60€ - since it was "low" season). Then, since I'd aready done Rome, Tuscany on a previoius trip, I wanted a change so I flew to Prague for 5 nights then flew back to Milan and took a bus to Lake Como for 3 days before flying back home out of Milan.

I loved that trip, one of my all time favorites. If you want to stay in Italy the whole time, you could easily substitute Rome/Tuscany for Prague. I wanted to get away from the heat for a while, but it turns out it really wasn't all that uncomfortable - just a couple of days in Venice were very humid. Tuscany is hard to do well without a car but the day trips from Florence were great.