What about Trento? Sorry people because I'm mixing you up, but I'm still undecided about the first part..what I'm looking for is something nice as a base in nice scenery and some mountains that is great to make day trips to other places with public transport.

That is your problem---public transportation.
With that limitation, I suggest Bolzano is still your best bet.

So you think that I can do it in Bolzano?

I think Bolzano or Trento would be better for public transportation that Lago di Garda. The boats on Lago di Garda can be slow going. For cultural reasons, I would probably prefer Trento to Bolzano, and in late September, I would probably base in Trento because if the weather is lousy, a day trip south might give me a sunny day, while a day trip north on the same day probably wouldn't but no guarantees.

I am sorry that when I first read your post I didn't grasp that you were going in the first half of September. I thought it was the second half. Regarding historic weather averages, it really is close to meaningless. Even more so is one traveler's testimonial that they loved the weather when they went in September. I headed there on September 6 2010 and ended up taking a huge detour to avoid a fewl days of rain. I circled back a few days later and enjoyed i2 days of very nice weather, and then left the area as clouds lowered and rain was on its way again.

But like I said before, you are unlikely to get 7 days of unfavorable weather in your time frame, and you may get picture perfect weather for 7 days straight.

Have a great trip!

I did some small readings on Trento, looks to be interesting and it is placed in nice scenary. Any one been there? Is public transport to other parts for day trips good? I read somewhere that there is a cable car that takes you to a mountain for some walks..am I correct?

I've been to Trento -- it is a lovely small town with great views, a nice old town center and Dom, great for walking around in. There are some terrific restaurants.

It is easy to get to Trento by train from Venice/parts south. (I spent my days attending a conference, though, and wasn't able to get out and about much -- can't help with transporation questions. )

Trento is considerably smaller than Bolzano, though -- probably more to do in the larger town.

Hmmm..ok I will do some more research on Bolzano.

Hi again,

as i mentioned above, my interest in Bolzano was piqued by the work we did on it on our last italian lesson, so I thought it might be interesting to find the tourist office website, which i did via google:

http://www.bolzano-bozen.it/index.php?lang=en

if you look on the RH side of the page, you'll see a box called mobility [ "buses etc"] - click on that, go to the link to bolzano - the region, and you will find this:

http://www.sii.bz.it/en/siipdftimetables

it looks as if there are loads of places you can go from Bolzano. and the timetable is in english, though a knowledge of german would also be useful - it really is bi-lingual.

you could e-mail the tourist office if you have specific queries.

Good luck!

I think I will be makeing my first base Bolzano, will do some day trips from there..my primary idea about this base is so that we stay for some days in the heart of scenary and mountains and we can then do some day trips from there, the first part of my holiday I just want to look more into scenary and nature rather then culture as then I will have a good dose of culture once i'm in Florence (Tuscany) and Rome.