If you go to the centre of Napoli, it is like living in village. It is very noisy, but everybody who lives there has family that lives there for many many centuries, so it is like an old village. It is never boring to be in Napoli and if you begin to know the people who sell you food and you see them every day, it feels like you live in a village. If I say that, my friends in Napoli are not happy because Napoli is a great city with great history and art, the very greatest city in Italy they will tell me. ;) That is the truth and they are correct. But to me, it feels like a village because people all know each other and they see the same people all their lives.

The food in Napoli is the best. When I go Napoli and eat the food, I am sad I do not live in Napoli. :(

Venice has many things for the tourist but Bologna is very interesting if you wish to have a nice experience of Italy.

Lago di Como is only a nice place to go if you appreciate this beauty and are not expecting tourist entertainments. It is difficult for many tourists to understand why it is special. It is like you need "the ears' to understand.

Vicenza.

If planning on the north, I also recommend Padua...very nice town with some amazing things to see, and on a convenient train line for a number of interesting places:

1:37 to Florence
0:27 to Venice
0:42 to Verona
0:57 to Bologna

You could even do a weekend in Rome -- train takes 3:17.

ssander

Santa Margherita Ligure is the town in Italy I would move to if I could! Who knows? Someday we might!

Massimop the best thing we did in Lago di Como was to climb up to the little church of San Martino. The views are stupendous! But I wouldn't want to spend 2 weeks there.

Did you ever go?
 

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did you ever take this trip? Where did you end up going. Thinking about doing this also.




QUOTE=kas238;12897755]Hi everyone! Hearty thanks for the ideas! I thought I had responded to this thread last year, and it appears I did not. We ended up not taking our trip in 2016 due to work commitments, but are now planning for a September 2017 trip. I came back to this thread to re-visit the excellent ideas. At present I'm leaning toward Venice or Bologna for the north, and a small town on the Amalfi Coast for time in the south, perhaps two weeks in each. I'm intrigued by all the recommendations for Naples...I'm not sure such a big city makes sense for us given our desire to be in a small town, but now I'm reading a lot on Napoli to see what all the love is about :) Thanks again![/QUOTE]