Hi all, I just got back from my first trip to Italy and thought I?d post some observations. First some background. I was traveling with my wife and 14 year old daughter. Our itinerary was to fly into Rome, stay 3 nights, CT for 2 nights, stopover in Pisa, Florence for 3 nights, Venice for 2 nights, and then flying to London for 2 nights prior to returning home. We try to travel cheaply, but being in Italy in the summer I decided A/C in hotels was a must. My budget for hotels was $150/night (all triples). Our budget for food was $100/day.
In Rome we stayed at the Hotel Sonya ( near the Termini). A lot of people recommended staying away from the Termini, but we found the hotel acceptable both from quality and location. The room costs us €140/night and had free internet access. I found Rome difficult to navigate. They don?t like to mark their streets with signs, and what you think (from the map)is a major street is about the size of my driveway. It took me a couple of days to figure out the bus routes (would it kill the city to give out decent bus route maps?) All in all we had a great time in Rome. Saw the Vatican, saw the Coliseum, didn?t have to wait in lines anywhere. (I?m wondering if tourism is really down or if I just got lucky). I didn?t run into any Gypsies or pickpockets (I think). If I was a pickpocket I would hang out in the busses or on the subway. A typical Roman bus has about 80 people crammed into it about 6 of whom are actually able to sit. It was amazing to me that all the fountains in Rome have drinkable (not recirculated ) water. Sitting by fountains was a favorite thing of ours to do. Rome felt Hotter than it was, probably all the cobblestone and concrete reflecting the sun. After 3 days we were ready to head to the beach in Monterosso.

Hi,
Thank you for your observations.

Your post would have been much easier to read if you provided spsce between paragraphs.

Sorry for the typo. That's "spaces".

We loved Monterosso! After 3 days in Rome looking at art, we were ready to laze on the beach. We stayed at the Hotel Pasquale €150/night. My daughter loved the beach, my wife loved the shopping (fun resort stuff). On the second day I almost killed my family by hiking the Monterosso to Vernazza trail. But it was worth it! The views were awesome. We spent part of the afternoon in Vernazza and then my wife and daughter went back to the beach and I explored the other CT towns. Some people think Monterosso is the most touristy of the CT towns but I like touristy. I think I may have found Maranola and Riomaggoire somewhat boring if I had stayed there. In Monterosso I had the best meals of the entire trip by far.

Our plan for leaving Monterosso was to get on a train for Pisa, stop in Pisa (see the tower) and then go on to Florence. We missed the direct train to Pisa. This was my fault. My best tip for Italy is to have your departure strategy set up when you arrive at your destination. By just missing the direct train to Pisa we had to wait an hour for the next train to La Spezia, and then wait an hour for the train to Pisa. This shortened what was already a short stay in Pisa. Pisa was full of tacky tourist stands and people posing to hold up the Tower. In short we loved Pisa.

That day was a very stressful day for us. Apart from the transportation connections after we had been off the train in LaSpezia about 20 minutes I realized I did not have my backpack. While it did not contain passports or credit cards, it did have my Digital Camera and info on hotels and transportation connections for the rest of the trip (as well as our train tickets). I had no Idea where it was. I was heading toward a tourist information and my daughter realized I probably left it on the train. Luckily the train hadn't yet left (CT regional train) and my daughter found the backpack where I had left it. Also my daughter had developed a rash from too much sun in Monterosso ( we had to find a Farmicia that was open). By time we finally got into Florence we were beat.

Love your unabashed love of touristy things. In my experience things/places don't get to be touristy for nothing.

ditto, you are a refreshing read! More, please, and sorry about the backpack episode. J.

Florence tuned out to be my least favorite city. Maybe it?s because we had been running pretty hard for a good week, and maybe I?m just not that big an art buff ( I prefer history to art). We had reservations at both the Uffizi and Academia for Sunday (our other day in town was Monday when Museums were closed). Again no line at all for the Uffizi, although we were there fairly early in the morning. We had a 2PM reservation at the Academia and there was a line about a block long. The rest of our time was spent shopping and taking it easy as my daughter got over her rash.

We stayed at the Tourist House Duomo (a B&B we found on Venere.com). €130/night with no breakfast. Location was good, about a block from the Duomo. The room was somewhat noisy being on the 1st floor facing the front near a busy street. The map the hotel sent was inaccurate making the place hard to find. It was a very large room though, and the A/C worked very well. All the TV channels were in Italian (no CNN or BBC).

We took the Eurostar to Venice, a very enjoyable trip. In Venice we stayed at the Hotel Noemi. Actually the sent us to their annex which had a different hotels name on it which I don?t recall (ca a something). This was a really nice place located behind Piazza San Marco. Oddly the hotels website said we would not get a breakfast, but they did serve us one in the annex. Venice prices in effect €190/night.

The only real sight seeing we did in Venice was to go to the Peggy Guggenheim Museum (modern art), which we actually enjoyed very much. Mostly we just wandered. Venice at night was magical. Listening to the dueling orchestras in the PSM after dark was special. But Venice was EXPENSIVE. A very humble dinner could run over €60 really quick. I thought the day and a half I spent there was about right. Next on to London.

We flew Easy Jet from Venice Marco Polo to London Stanstead. The flight went without incident and for the price (under $100 with taxes for ALL 3 of us) I can't say a bad thing about them. After being in the heat of Italy for the better part of the last 2 weeks London was a Joy. 73F and sunny. (Actually weather was good the whole trip with only 2 rainstorms). We already had tickets to Phantom of the Opera for our last night, and after we arrived we went to the half price ticket booth and got tickets for Our House for the first night. My daughter loved Our House with its modern score. The visual effects in Phantom are awesome, though it's not my favorite Andrew Lloyd Webber musical. It was my first time seeing theater in the West End, I was surprised to find you were not given a playbill and that food and beverages were allowed in the theater.

We stayed at the Rembrandt Hotel in London ( 99GBP/night with full English Breakfast thru hotel-assist.com). Location was good (not as close to the tube stop as I had expected). The Breakfast was the best we had our entire stay. It was nice to be able to be able to go to the lounge downstairs and grab a nice dessert after the shows.

London was a great break at the end of our trip. The only tourist thing we did was to ride the London Eye ( I had not been on it though my Wife & Daughter had). Doing things again we would have taken a day from Florence and added it to London. We felt very comfortable there.

From London we were able to get a direct flight to our home near St. Louis. All in all a great trip. I'm one of the people who lurks on this board, I haven't asked a lot of questions, but I've found an awful lot of info sifting through the threads. Thanks to all who participate here. The final tally, Hotels came in a little over budget, about $2000 for the 12 nights of lodging. My food budget came in a little high also, The Dollar vs. Pound/Euro hurt me a little, but I'm not sure it wasn't responsible for keeping crowds down, which may have made it worth it in the end.

Hi,

Great report. How lucky that your backpack was still there.

Hi, the backpack thing still gives me chills. The most important thing I would have lost were my car keys, imagine getting home at the airport and having to send someone to get anothe set of keys!

Enjoyed the trip report! We are leaving next week and counting the days. Do you remember the name of the restaurant you in Monterosso where you had "the best meal."
Thanks

Do you have website info for the Florence museums for which you got advance reservations? Thanks.

Rearose,
The place we ate at in Monterosso was the Belvedere. its in the old part of town sort of under the RR tracks. I had a grilled fish, my wife had a pasta made with pesto and my daughter had a pasta with shrimp plate. As I recall it was very reasonably priced, but I was paying cash for everything and don't have a receipt.

JmVikmanis,
I called the Uffizi in Florence, phone call will be less than $1. They will answere in english take your reservation but ask for no payment. You pay when you pick up your tickets. The reservation fee is like €2-€3 per ticket. Because there was no line when I got to the Uffizi I just forgot my reservation and didn't have to pay the extra fee(the doorman at the Uffizi told me to do this). When I got to the Academia there was a line so I used my reservation (and paid the reservation fee). I got the phone number from this website

www.uffizi.firenze.it/welcomeE.html

For some reason the website seems to be down right now but there is a link to a phone number that you have to call on that site. Don't use a broker through an internet site as you will pay for the reservation fee and they add a hefty commission on top of that.

dsieve, re your backpack incident, here is one of my best travel tips:

Put all your trip information (itinerary, hotel locations, reservation numbers, airline info, etc) on your travel email account (hotmail, yahoo, or whatever). Then if you lose the paperwork you can still access the info from any internet cafe.