I am in the beginning planning stage of my and my wife's first vacation to Europe in France and Italy. We are back from honeymoon this past December so our budget is tight for this trip. I researched this board and found many useful info, but I still need some help.

We leave NY and arrive Paris on May 20 around noon. We return home from Rome on May 30.

5/20, 5/21, 5/22 - Paris 3 days, 3 nights
5/23 - Morning, fly to Nice arrive Nice noon time. Explore Nice area in the afternoon, overnight in Nice
5/24 - Explore Nice area all day. Take overnight train to Venice (there are no budget flights from Nice to Venice)
5/25 - Venice all day, overnight in Venice
5/26 - Venice sights until 3 pm, rent car drive to Florence, Florence night sightseeing, overnight in Florence
5/27 - Drive early to Pisa for Leaning Tower, come back to Florence, return car, afternoon sightseeing, overnight in Florence
5/28 - Florence sightseeing morning to afternoon, take train to Rome, overnight in Rome
5/29 - Rome sightseeing, overnight in Rome
5/30 - Leave Rome


Here are my questions.
1. I plan to take 2 train rides, Nice to Venice and Florence to Rome, how much do these tickets cost and what is the best way to book them? I tried trenitalia.com, raileurope.com and other sites without any success. Also is the train same sex only or can I stay with my wife, on the 2nd class?

2. Nice area - Is it easy to explore the area without a car or should we rent a car for 1 day? Also is the train station Nice Ville, Nice City or something else?

3. Is Rome in 1 full day doable or should I leave Florence earlier for Rome (which means I have to cut down time in Florence). Which city will you pick?

4. Does it make sense for me to buy France 'n Italy rail pass or is it cheaper to buy the individual tickets?

5. To get to Nice from Paris, I plan to fly EasyJet. They go from either Paris Orly or CDG, which is more convenient?

6. How much toll should I expect from driving from Venice to Florence/Pisa?

I know we are trying to do so much in just a few days but since it is our first time, we want to visit all these cities. We can always go back to a place we liked the most the next time.

Thank you for your assistance and please let me know if you have any suggestions. Also any info on budget stays (B&Bs, 3 stars, $100 - $150) would be appreciated.

Sorry to tell you this but I think your itinerary is beyond help.

This is way too much ground to cover in such a very short time.
For example, you do not have 3 days and 3 nights in Paris. You have 2 1/3 days and 3 nights. The first day will be almost all eaten up with travel and getting settled (not to mention exhaustion/jetlag). Likewise for mostly all your other "travel" days.

I understand the urge to try to see as much as possible on a first trip but really, this will be a test of your very new marriage, and you seriously will not end up seeing much at all.

Why don't you make it easier on yourselves, and on your budget, and do 2 locations only? As you say, you will go back another time.

I agree, our last trip to Paris/Italy was 17 days and we didn't cover half as much. I would cut out Nice, spend the 3-4 full days in Paris, then get yourself to Italy from there and do the Venice/Florence/Rome part. Nice is just a big beach with a lot of congestion and traffic. There are much more charming places to go along the French Riviera (which is what we did last time) and it would be a whole other trip. Plus, once you're in Venice, it's my understanding the train from Venice-Florence-Rome is quite easy.

Your itinerary starts off nicely, but almost instantly implodes. The logistics involved in your proposed plan are as complicated as the logistics I might be looking at for a month-long trip. If, as you say, your budget is tight, consider that you are making this trip far more expensive than it need be. For example, the cost of a one-day car rental is generally very high. And every time you DON'T take off for another venue, you save transportation costs.

I would urge you to rethink your plans and narrow it down to three destinations.

Hi yoonny,

I like to move around when I travel (witness my Spain trip report), and even I wouldn't move around so much. Really, I would cut out a city or two.

Personally, I would skip Nice (at least) this trip.

Spend 3 days in Paris, 2 in Venice, 2 in Florence (can still do day trip to Pisa, but there's plenty to see in Florence), and 3 in Rome.

This changes your logistics (for example, can you take a train overnight from Paris to Venice, or should you just fly?), but makes it a little more manageable.

1) and 4) trenitalia is quirky but it can work for you. Can you explain what problem you are having, specifically. Cars are not same sex. You'll have to price out the individual tickets to see if it's cheaper to by a rail pass.

3) Can you see Rome in a day? Depends on what you want to see. You could visit the Colosseum and maybe the Vatican, but that might be all. Rome is quite big. I was there for 3 and barely scratched the surface. Florence is also worthy of at least 2 days, not including a day trip.

2) and 5) Skip Nice, go right to Venice.

6) I wouldn't rent a car. I'd take the train to Florence from Venice (about 3 hours), and also for the day trip from Florence to Pisa (about 1 hour 10 minutes each way).

If this is a budget trip, cutting out a city will help as well, by saving on transportation costs.

I hope this helps a little. There are people on this board who are much more expert on Italy than I am, but maybe I have given you some things to think about.

BTW - congrats on the recent marriage!

Karen

Hi yoonny,

I too like to travel a lot on my trips to Europe but I think this is a little much. You will be spending most of your time (and money) on transportation and you will end up seeing very little. I would cut out Nice and maybe one of the cities in Italy. As far as Rome is concerned, I've been there twice for 3 days each and I still have quite a long list of things I didn't get to see. For Pisa, it would be just as easy (and probably cheaper) to train from Florence. Trains run frequently and its only about an hour between the two. Same goes for Venice. Its easy to train between Venice and Florence and its about 2 1/2 - 3 hour train ride. I personally wouldn't want to drive in Florence anyways, even if it was only to park the car. The drivers I saw were crazy! If you want to see if a railpass is the best option, check out railsaver.com.

Congrats on your recent marriage and good luck planning your trip!

Tracy

Just one more opinion: With 10 days, I would choose either France or Italy. If you go to Paris for 5 days and spend a day traveling to the Riviera, you can spend 4 days in Nice. If I were going to France, I wouldn't include Nice but there are lovely places to visit in the area. If you go to Italy, you can spend 3 days in Florence and Venice and 4 in Rome. You will need to spend time getting from one to another so it really won't be 3 full days in each. All of these destinations are fabulous and you won't remember any of them with your current itinerary.

If trenitalia.com is not working for you, try uising the Italian names for your desitinations: Venezia SL, Firenze SMN, Roma Termini.

Hi yoony,

Good advice above.

I would go further.

10 days in Paris with 1 or 2 daytrips out of the city would be a very pleasant vacation.

You are planning an expedition.

Do you already have your airplane tickets?

If so, 5 days in Paris, fly ryanair or take the train to Rome. Fly home.

Go to http://www.voyages-sncf.com for the cheapest train fares. You can go 1cl for the same price as 2cl if you buy your tickets 60 days in advance.

I appreciate all your inputs. I guess all these cities are so beautiful that it's hard to cut any of them out. Based on your suggestions, I may skip Nice on this trip.
Only definite thing on my plan is the roundtrip flight between NY and Europe.

I am still having real hard time getting train information. Trenitalia does not give me price for trips. (I was able to get a price for Florence to Rome but it gives me 2 prices like "45 , 60&quot What do these numbers mean? sncf.com gets me nowhere. Railpasses seems reasonable until I add extra fees for overnight trains, reservation fees, etc. There must be an easier way to book train tickets in Europe!

i agree with the above. stay in italy or france. or if you haven't been to london you could always do london and paris together.

I'd skip Pisa, too. I mean, are you saying you're visiting Paris, Florence, Venice and Rome in 10 days? IMHO Pisa is not worth it for such a short trip.

I haven't been on the trenitalia site in ages (too darn long since I've been to Italy--I'll have to fix that), but are the prices you're looking at for 1st and 2nd class perhaps?

If you skip Nice you won't need sncf (fly from Paris to Italy).

By the way, I hope you have a wonderful time. It'll be a whirlwind trip, but those are amazing cities.

Enjoy your first (of many, many to come) European adventure.

Yoonny, Italy is amazing. Everybody tries to pack their first trip to Europe too full of cities, thinking they can't "miss" any. The truth is, you will actually be "missing" everything if you go too fast.

Trying to do Rome in 1 day is like trying to see a movie while blind-folded, and having somebody take the blind-fold off for 1 second, and put it right back on. You wouldn't be able to say you "saw" the movie at all!

With 10 full days, choose only 2 or 3 great cities to use as your base. You'll save money on transportation this way, and you will really experience these 2 or 3 cities, you'll even taste, smell, and feel them, not just see them.

The trenitalia web-site is difficult to use. You need a whole training course in how to use it. Unfortunately the training course isn't available all in one spot...you have to pick up bits of advice from here and there. There's another web-site, www.slowtravel.com, that has more info on how to buy train tickets. But be sure and come back to fodors and tell us how you're doing!

A few pointers, the trenitalia web-site works best during Italian business hours, on Italy time. You can only buy your tickets no earlier than 60 days in advance. There's an English section, but you can't buy tickets on it, you can only get prices. You have to use the Italian side to buy the tickets, and it's not easy. You can also buy tickets when you arrive in Europe. (But you may not get your first choice of times that way, some trains may be sold out.) If you decide to wait til you get to Europe to buy the tickets, you should still buy them as soon as possible after your arrival in Europe.

I recommend 4 days for Rome, and 3 days for Venice. We didn't care for Florence but I recommend 3 days for Florence if you want to see the art museums. We loved Rome and Venice and didn't want to leave. I haven't been to Paris yet...next trip maybe!

I also recommend you read a travel guide book. Choose the one you find the most entertaining. for our trip to Europe, I used Fodors and Frommers for reference, and I read the entire Rick Steves Italy guidebook. It was a fantastic family trip, our best ever!

Buon viaggio!

I understand your desire to see as much as possible on a first trip, I remember feeling that way myself on my first few European trips. I rationalized it by saying, "look at all those group tours that do as many cities in this amount of time". But the difference with a tour is that someone else is doing the driving, the bus goes exactly when the scheulde dictates it should, etc. I would never consider a tour, I much prefer independent travel, but you do have to take into account how tiring and time consuming either driving or taking a train can be. Listen to all the good advice you've gotten and cut out a few places.

I would skip Nice and Pisa. I do think the other four are doable in 10 days as long as you realize you will only scratch the surface of each city, and not see any of the surrounding towns. I would also not rent a car. Cars make sense if you want to explore small towns and villages. I'd split the time relataively evenly between the four cities, and take an overnight train between Paris and Venice to free up one more day of sightseeing. Even if you can get a flight, between getting to and from the airports and the city centers, waiting for the flight, and the flight itself, it will take up most of a day.

The trentalia site works well in Italian, the English version is very glitchy - sometimes you can get times and prices you but not usually. If you do it in Italian it works fine. Look up the few words you need to know to negotiate the site in Italian and try that. You also do not need to buy the tickets ahead of time (except probably for the overnight Paris to Venice). Once you get to Venice buy your ticket for Florence and once in Florence buy your ticket to Rome. I think the price for each of those trips is roughly €30 per person in 2nd class, which is more than fine for the approximately 3 hour trips.

Hi yoony,

>Trenitalia does not give me price for trips. (I was able to get a price for Florence to Rome but it gives me 2 prices like "45 , 60&quot What do these numbers mean?

I believe that the numbers are 29 and 42. You might guess that these are for 2cl and 1 cl.

>sncf.com gets me nowhere.

You can't book more than 60 days in advance.

Simulate buying tickets for May 4. You will see what is available.

yoonny,

It's way toooooo much. You are going to hate yourself when you get home. This isn't a vacation -- it's an ordeal.

You say<i>We leave NY and arrive Paris on May 20 around noon. We return home from Rome on May 30.
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Then park yourself in Paris for 6 days (hardly enough in my judgement) and fly to Rome for the rest. Two magnificent capitals in less than two weeks should be enough for anybody.

Instead of flying you might want to take high speed trains via Geneva and Milan, and on to Rome.

I'm planning a European holiday trip myself -- my last was France in October, my upcoming one is in 3 weeks.

We have 18 days.

I am rueing how little time I will have to do justice to each destination.

I am visting Prague, Rome and tiny Montepulciano, Tuscany.

I agree with others about reducing the stops.But I'd go further and say; Choose Venice over Rome because you do not have time for Rome. Venice is small, intense, glorious and you can walk everywhere.

Why compound the stress of intercity train travel with the stress of a big city like Rome.

After all, you always have Paris

(With apologies to Bogart)

Yoonny-

I think your trip is definately rushed, but see our first trip to Europe below. I would say we were pretty pleased for the time we spent in each city (for a first trip). We will definately return to a couple of our favorites.

Night 1- London
Night 2,3 - Salzburg
Night 4,5,6 - Venice
Night 7 - Siena
Night 8,9,10,11 - Florence(+day trips)
Night 12,13,14 - Rome
Night 15,16 - London

We knew our trip was rushed, so we skipped Pisa. See my explanation below in my trip report during our Venice stay:

Another highlight was traveling to Murano, Burano and Torcello for part of a day. We didn't spend much time on Murano, since it wasn't our main mission for the day. We just walked the main street and stopped in a number of glass stores (and there are many!) Burano was really our mission. It is so unique with the colored houses and leaning bell tower. My hubby took the best shot of a row of colorful houses that I plan on enlarging and framing for our home. We knew we wouldn't have time to get to Pisa, so the Burano tower was a must for me... It is amazing it still stands. This thing leans! Torcello is tiny but has an amazing church with such beautiful mosaics! It was really easy to take the excursion and worth it for us. We used the 24 hour travel pass (10.50 Euro/person) to get between the islands and the pass got us back to the Tronchetta parking lot the following morning.

Have fun planning!

Don't do it.

Narrow down to 2 or 3 destinations.

We spent 10 days in Paris, Avignon/Provence and Cannes and the trip was fabulous. Doubling the destination would have halved the pleasure...at least for us.

Take the time to enjoy your destinations...and plan to come back in a few years to see what you &quot;missed&quot;.

Yoonny,

Way tooo much! You cannot do Europe in a week!
You don't say if your arrival and departure points are fixed i.e.
Paris &amp; Rome.

If they are then I would reduce my itinery.

1.Cut out Nice.

Spend first 3 days in Paris (DO NOT DRIVE IN PARIS) then fly to Venice this saves time,

check out www.ryanair.co.uk they generally do cheapest flights but do have tight luggage weight restrictions, also book as early as possible for best price and don't expect any frills! Note that generally Ryanair fly from smaller airports and you may need to organise transport for Paris this costs
13 euros per person each way and must be booked in advance check out web site

http://www.aeroportbeauvais.com/index.php?lang=eng).

Spend some time in Venice, You can then fly from Venice to Rome,(again Ryanair, make use of the terrorvision bus from Ciampino Airport, book in advance, the bus drops you in the centre of Rome at the Railway station) Rome is the worlds biggest open air museum and there is enough for a week, Trevi fountain, Spanish Steps, Colosseum, Vatican museums (a day on their own!) ancient Rome, modern Rome, Renaissance Rome! I guarantee you won't have enough time.

If you want to see Pisa (allow a day) or Florence (allow a very long day, the queues for the Duomo are always pretty long, you may want to stay over a night) you can easily go from Rome by train, There are automatic ticket machines in the station, also your more likely to find an english speaking clerk in Rome than anywhere else. By the way take a good phrase book, english is not as commonly spoken in Italy as you may think and a little effort is appreciated and goes a very long way, especially saying please and thank you.

Do not make the mistake of rushing, you will miss too much and although you say you'll return to see what you missed, you'll always find areason to put it off and regret it. Have a quality break and relax - it's a holiday.

Enjoy

Burty