Our 1st visit this June will be a long one for my 11 yr old daugher and I. In hopes of experiencing the people as well as the art and history, we are thinking of doing the B&B route for the entire trip.

One of our priorities is to visit Calabria where all of my grandparents were born (San Mango d'Aquino & Nicastro). We will be flying into and out of Rome. An open jaw was a bit too expensive from our airline.

Here is our preliminary itinerary:

Day 2-5: arrive in Rome, rent a car and drive to San Mango d'Aquino. Stay 3 nights.

Day 5-9: Amalfi coast area for 4 nights. Possibly use Positano as our base. At least 1 day on Capri.

Day 9-13: Tuscany/Chianti area for 4 nights. Possibly use Siena as our base. Will visit a whole bunch of towns.

Day 13-16: Cinque Terre area for 3 night. Do a lot of hiking between towns...and by water.

Day 16-20: Venice for 4 nights

Day 20-24: Florence for 4 nights

Day 24-29: Rome for 5 nights and leave from here.

Some questions I have are:
1) I want to minimize car rental. Should I change my itinerary any to optimize this? Calabria and Tuscany/Chianti seem like a must for car rental.

2) I'd love to visit the lakes area but that might be too much and cause us to rush things. Do you agree?

3) What do you think about the full B&B route?

4) Best towns to use as base in Amalfi Coast and Tuscany/Chianti?.

Thank you in advance for any help you can provide.

Hi I,

Interesting itinerary.

You won't want a car on the AC, CT or in Florence, Venice and Rome.

San Mango d'Aquino is 5hr by car from Rome. Are you sure that you want to make that drive immediately after getting off a plane?

From San Mango d'Aquino you can drive to Sorrento or Salerno to drop off your for your AC visit. There is also train service to Salerno from Lamezia Terme Centrale, if you can drop the car there.

You might like the Le Sirene hotel in Praiano. www.lesirene.com

From Sorrento, pick up another car for your drive through Tuscany. Drop the car off in La Spezia for the CT visit.

For the rest of the trip, take the train.

Are you sure you can't fly into Naples and out of Rome?

See www.kayak.com

See www.autoeurope.com and www.novarentacar.com for auto rental.

Thanks Ira. Do you think it would be better to put the Amalfi Coast 1st on our itinerary and take a train there? Then rent a car from there to San Mango d'Aquino and Tuscany? What do you think about my length of stay at each location?

All you Fodorites out there....I'd greatly welcome your suggestions here. Thanks.

ianni

I do think it would be easier to travel less far on your first day. You could train to Naples, and get to the AC from there. Then you could pick up a car in Salerno to drive to Calabria.

Just a thought. I totally agree with Ira that you should only have a car for the Calabria and Tuscany legs of the trip.

While in Tuscany I highly recommend a farm agriturismo very near San Gimignano called Fattoria Poggio Alloro. They have a website www.fattoriapoggioalloro.com We have stayed there many times and it is heaven and the food is heavenly! It is in a great location to tour Tuscany and your daughter will love seeing all the farm animals. Have fun!
Regards,

Wouldn't you rather relax in a train than drive to Calabria? I would take the train to Lamezia and rent a car there. In fact, there's a station called Lamezia-Nicastro, so you could start your holiday in Nicastro, rent a car in Lamezia (www.autoeurope.com), and return the car in Lamezia.

Take the train to the Amalfi Coast and then on to Chiusi. Rent a car for your time in Tuscany in Chiusi; return it in Florence. Spend your time in Florence before you go the Cinque Terre and Venice. Take the train from Cinque Terre to Venice (it'll be long; 6 hours or more) and then back to Rome.

It sounds like a wonderful trip, and the lengths of time in each location sound good to me (that is, assuming your interests are the same as mine!)

I have two conflicting pieces of advice. One is that you currently have all of your big-city time grouped together (ok, Venice isn't a big city, but it is busy with people like a big city). If there's a way to break up the city time with some countryside time, it might be more relaxing.

But on the other hand, you want to bunch together the time you'll have a rental car; it seems you're on the way to working that out. One viewpoint I differ on is having a car in the Cinque Terre. We've always found it easier for us to drive to the Cinque Terre, park, then do our visiting in the towns by foot, boat, whatever. It just seemed to me like getting there by train from wherever we were before and after was too big a hassle. But you can make that decision for yourself after looking at the train schedules. We've stayed at the Villa Steno, in Monterosso, two times, and enjoyed it very much. They are one of the few hotels that have parking, and that's (relatively) easy to get to by car. We like Monterosso for staying in because there's a larger selection of restaurants.

When you say "B&B," what do you really mean? B&B as a concept is not a really common thing in Italy; not like it is in Germany or Austria, and not like it is in the U.S. (where it seems to be an upscale couples' getaway sort of thing). Many of the hotels and inns in Italy are small, or smallish, and may fit what you're thinking of when you say B&B.

Also, one of the things I enjoy about traveling in Italy is going to a bar for breakfast(yes, they're called bars, but in the morning they're more like cafes) for a nice cappuccino (hot chocolate for kids) and croissant/brioche/cornetto. If your breakfast is included, you miss out on the bar people-watching scene!

My cousin has stayed in a wonderful place in Tuscany, called villa di pizzano om Umbria...you might check it out. We are gong there and they have been very helpful by email. Also have a question. Where is a good place to pick up a car outside of florence, as we also want to rent a car for Tuscany? Thanks. marilee

Thanks for the great inputs. I like the idea of alternating between city and country through the itinerary. I came across a place in Manarola (CT area) that seems nice at a good price: www.baranin.com . Anyone have any experience with it?

I will also look into the feasibility of taking the train to Nicastro and renting a car from there.