Rank these places in Italy
 

I know everything is looking for something different out of a trip to Italy, but just generically rank the following in terms of your preference:

Florence
Venice
Coast( Amalfi, Capri, etc)
Cinque Terre

Feel free to add any other places except for Rome and Tuscany.

Thanks!

There is no generic experience of Italy.

Are you really going to spend time and money based on responses of people assigning number ratings to destination?

Do you normally like to do the same things people who post on the internet do?

You can't be this desperate. Italy is not as alien and indecipherable as you imagine. Do you enjoy artistic and historic pursuits at home? Do you mind crowds? Or cities and traffic? Do you like to swim? Walk? Hike? How do you feel about climbing staircases all day? Boat rides? Bus rides?

Is there some particular aspect of Italy's loooooooong past you would like to explore?

This trip is going to cost you so much money you really shouldn't be influenced into picking an itinerary based on message board games.

The first three are fine for me, Florence and Venice both appealing. The "Coast" is too. I am not that enthralled with the Cinque Terre.

To add a few more thoughts:
The Region of Veneto
The Region of Piedmont
The Region of Molise
The Dolomites
Sardegna

It sounds like you are planning a trip to Italy!

After 16 trips to Italy, my top 5 are:

1. The Lakes [really, more than one destination]
2. Tuscany hill towns
3. The Amalfi Coast
4. Venice
5. The Ligurian coast[ more than just the CT]

My best davice is to always plan 3 trips to Italy in advance so you can plan each trip geographically.

Thanks for the responses. I am not going to base an entire trip around this I was just curious.

Are you curious about the people who respond are? I don't know what the information means if you don't know the source and whether you have anything in common when it comes to taste in travel destinations.

I'm worried it actually will influence your choices, even if you don't base an entire trip around it. There is no wisdom on the internet. (Nothing against the people who've already posted, just a reality check for melmcc.)

Yes, and as always, consider the source.

Well back in the 70's when we took our first trip to Italy for two months in that we had lots of family members and good friends either from Italy or that had relatives in Italy we consulted them regarding their suggestions as to what areas they liked. We got wonderful feedback and ended up in places most visitors to Italy still don't seem to think about visiting. I don't see the difference between face to face conversations or phone conversations to melmacc asking here on Fodor's. And melmcc knows I am sure that he can click on Fodorites screen names to read their trip reports and/or posts to others regarding Italy which would help him determin the value of those thoughts versus what he is looking for with his/her trip to Italy.

Point taken Zeppole. I appreciate your comments. We are doing a ton of research and I really just meant this as a light hearted poll but I See your point. I am interested in some art, some culture, good food, beautiful scenery and people watching. Thanks again.

In case you haven't noticed, people are not light hearted about their favorite Italian destinations on Fodor's (and it's not just me!). You can follow Love Italy's advice and click on screen names and you'll see all the arm-twisting that goes on to have people re-live posters' favorite trips. And people get FIERCELY dogmatic about where to go in Italy. (And London for some reason.)

Anyway, I probably should have written there is no *collective* wisdom on Fodor's (and there are other travel message boards with different posting cultures which you might find useful to visit.) It can be profitable to use the boards for discussion in the way Love Italy described she did above with her friends. But be aware that different people post at different hours on Fodor's. I've watched people book trips or hotels based on the collective advice of 4 posters. Had they posted 8 hours later, a different group would have warned them not to.

Hopefully your posts will attract a few people who have taken trips like the one you want to take in Italy. Some art, some culture, good food, beautiful scenery and people watching. To me, all the places on your poll list are too much on the tourist track to give you what you are looking in terms of good food and people watching. You might really enjoy spending part of your time in Umbria or Emilia-Romagna.

It doesn't have to be on the tourist track. Umbria is definitely already on the list!

I have never been to Italy but if there are some gems out there that are off the beaten path I would love to hear about those too.

Cinque Terra
Florence
Assisi/Umbria
Amalfi coast

I think you need to rank YOUR top 5 sights in Italy - then you can easily build a trip around them.

Check out guidebooks with lots of photos and bus tour books as guides - but realize you can;t cover the amount of territory the bus tours do in the same time.

We like Venice – have spent some time there, and will return this November for a couple of months. Side trips to Bologna (where we’ve never been). And Rome maybe, for a couple of days – there’s a restaurant there that we rather enjoy, and a guy who sells watercolour paintings on the street who we want to track down – his stuff is pretty good – and we’ll chuck more coins in the Trevi fountain. Bassano di Grappa is a day trip that we might make.

I will be travelling with my wife and her mother (MIL with us for 2 ½ weeks) and they will visit Assisi, Florence and Verona, taking about a week for the trip. While they are away, I’ll visit Trieste, Chioggia, Vicenza and maybe Padua. The planning mainly happens “on the fly” – there’s no very set agenda.

The coastal towns don’t do it for us much, probably reflecting that we travel in the European winter. For the same reason, Como was a bit flat in January, and we should have anticipated that. The scenery was pretty spectacular when we took a ferry trip up the lake.

We’re not much into Art (with a capital “A”), so have not visited too many of the great galleries. For me, art is enjoyable when it gives context to the places that we are visiting. So the Academe and Ca’ Rezzonico in Venice were galleries that we enjoyed. In Florence, in January ’07, we did not visit either of the Ufizzi or Pitti, and our happiest memory of Florence was a long walk we took up to the Belvedere, under a sky of the most perfect, Fra’ Angelico, blue.

For us, Venice is mainly about being there, pretending to be Venetian – the pretence fails when I open my mouth, as I speak almost no Italian. Lou will paint watercolours, I’ll write a little.

I’ve written a trip report, and you’ll find it if you click on my user name. It certainly lists some things in Venice that are off the well trodden tourist trail.

Light-heartedly:

1. Venice
2. Amalfi Coast
3. Umbria
4. Anywhere in the Alps

Florence is way down somewhere.

zeppole - I'm sorry, I thought these boards were about getting information about a trip---or just learning more about a destination. I don't think the OP needed a response that belittled the question. If you can't figure out how to respond,don't!

Our desires when visiting Italy are food and wine coupled with the everyday pleasures of visiting public markets, stopping for a cup of macchiato or a glass of wine and getting lost in the back streets.

Of your four, Florence is the only one on my personal list of favorites. Having been to all and Venice a number of times, they simply are not what I look for when visiting Italy.


My personal list would differ by season and would include:

The Ligurian Coast (and not the CT but towns of Rapallo, SML, Portovenere)
The Dolomites
Emilia-Romagna
Tuscany

"Feel free to add any other places except for Rome and Tuscany"
Can we assume this is already in your iternary?

(zeppole: Normally, I enjoy your informative posts on topics, but you're way too amped up on this. The OP is looking for a few opinions to supplement other research, not choosing a lifemate based on Fodor's posts.)

Anyway, of course a lot depends on your interests -- art,scenery, history, etc.

If you ask my wife, you can never get too much of Venice. She loves everything about it and the surrounding area. And it is unique, something you can't say often.

Cinque Terra has nice scenery, but I was a little bored by it. I think it's because I'm a city guy. Of course, if scenic hiking is your specialty, you'll like it.

Florence is a compact, has great art, and is a great place for walking around.

I've spent limited time on the Amalfi Coast, so won't comment.

None of the cities mentioned on these posts are in Italy. If NAPLES is not included, the others are nothing but couterfeit!

I mean COUNTERFEIT

Ok, my light-hearted response:

Venice
Bologna
Cinque Terre
the Piedmont
Umbria
Florence


The coast (Amalfi, Capri) doesn't even make my list.

Now, here are the explanations and qualifiers:

If I was "allowed" to include Rome and the Tuscan countryside, Rome would be at the top of the list, and rural Tuscany would be up there with Venice.

We love great Italian food (most regions, any price range), lots and lots of art (primarily painting) and history spanning the eras, love to sit at cafes and people-watch.

Venice is not known so much for its great food, but everything about the city is so magical, that we love going back there. Florence has fabulous art, but the city just doesn't "click" with us so much; we've been to Italy a bunch of times, and pretty much visit some "old" places and some new places each time, and have only been to Florence three times.

We loved the food of the Piedmont; it's perhaps my favorite regional food of Italy (another very personal opinion). And if you're a wine lover, it's an important place to visit. But not high on the list for art and culture.

Why Amalfi, etc. doesn't make my list: I don't like southern Italian cuisine (obviously, a very personal preference). Also, I have a fear of heights, so even the thought of the road along the cliffs makes my stomach quiver.

Don't worry about visiting, or not visiting, touristy spots on your first trip to Italy (depending on the time of year that's you'll be going). There's a reason certain places are full of tourists - there's a lot of wonderful things to see in those places! Even in Venice or Rome, or in San Gimignano in the middle of the day, you can easily reach quieter spots that have (or seem to have, to tourist eyes) more local people going about their daily lives. And if you walk or bus even a little out of the tourist flow, you can easily end up at a restaurant where you're the only group speaking English, or in a piazza full of parents watching their kids ride bikes or kick a soccer ball.

I'm not saying that places off the beaten track aren't worth it - they definitely are! It's just that you can't do it all on one trip. Just assume you'll have plenty of vacations to Italy in the future to explore the places that you can't fit into this trip!

I admit that "light-hearted polls" are not what I'm usually participating at, but somehow I think this one could make a fine counterbalance to those zillions of "Rome-Venice-Florence" itineraries that quite everybody seems to be invariantly following (and I'll admit that they're already tiring me when just reading them). Not that Rome, Venice, Florence are no great places to visit - of course they are (and seasoned Fodorites know that I'm going to Venice all the time). It's just ridiculous to which extent Italy is being reduced this way, and actually: belittled. There is SO much more to this amazing country...
So what I'm doing is posting a ranking of all the regions I know (and I know all Italian regions except for Sardinia, Trentino and Calabria); that's 19 regions, plus separate entries for, yes, Rome, Florence, Venice (actually three worlds apart, not least because of the tourist numbers), and two more for splitting each Tuscany and Lazio in north and south (I happen to think those respective parts of the two regions have nothing in common). Making a total of 23 (sorry, melmcc, this only makes sense if I DO include Rome and Tuscany); my strictly personal ranking:
1. Rome
2. southern Tuscany
3. Venice
4. Umbria
5. Piemonte
6. Sicily
7. northern Tuscany
8. Abruzzo
9. Emilia-Romagna
10. Lombardia
11. Veneto
12. southern Lazio
13. Marche
14. Florence
15. northern Lazio
16. Puglia
17. Friuli-Venezia Giulia
18. Molise
19. Liguria (which included the Cinque Terre)
20. Basilicata
21. South Tyrol
22. Campania (which includes Capri and Amalfi)
23. Valle d'Aosta

Thanks for all the great responses! Rome and Tuscan countryside are already on the itinerary, just trying to decide where else we want to go.

...Liguria INCLUDES the Cinque Terre... of course! Excuse the typo.

We love Sicily and we love Bologna just for the eating.

And although I have soft spot for Brunelleschi,as an architect and a prickly man of principles, the crowds in Florence drive me nuts.

" the crowds in Florence drive me nuts."

We like Italy in late October but it is even busy in Florence then. November through mid March are the only break from the crowds these days. And we stay out of the center near Piazza della Liberta most of the time to avoid the hordes.

It was much more pleasant 25 years ago. :)

bookmarking

Melmcc - Umbria is a little slice of heaven, less crowded than Tuscany, and some of my favorite place are Citta di Castello (which is quite close to San Sepolcro on the Tuscan border - very charming little town), Gubbio, Norcia, Montefalco, Spello, Spoleto, Umbertide, Todi and Orvieto. I've always stayed in Ronti, and apart from Orvieto, everything's within an hour or a little more from there. I wasn't crazy about Perugia any of the times I went, nor Assisi though it is certainly worth seeing the basilica and then the very top of the town - the middle is a bit much with every incarnation of St. Francis the brain can conceive. But to answer your original question, my list would be Ronti as a base in Umbria, Florence, Venice and Le Marche.

How long will you be traveling since you are already going so many other places?

It was much more pleasant 25 years ago.

The first time we were in Florence was either 1979 or 80. I remember we stayed in the Floretine version of the Bates Motel. I could have sworn the mother was dead and hidden in another room.

Florence-2
Venice-1
Coast( Amalfi, Capri, etc)-3
Cinque Terre-4

These are my rankings based upon gut reactions to these places the first time. I returned to Venice and Florence again and again for the magic and art.

I know you said not to mention Rome-have you been there? It ranks up there also for me as a place to visit first in Italy. DH and I returned there after a 10-year hiatus and it was like coming home. We returned to a restaurant and they made the same dinner we'd had there 10 years before.

When are you going? And, please let us know where you end up.