My wife desperatly wants to go to Italy. We are thinking of September, she wants the usual suspects, Rome, Florence, Milan, Venice. I want something a little less well known, but still city like with great architecture and night life. After a little bit of research I came up with a Zurich-Milan-Florence-Rome itinerary that seems to make us both happy. Does anybody know what the train travel would be like for such an excursion, how long, scenery etc.? Any reccomendations of travel agencies to help plan such a trip? As you can probably tell, I am new to this, neither one of us has been to Europe before.

Putting Zurich in the mix adds a very different time and distance dimension to your itinerary. Would your time in Switzerland be only in Zurich before heading to Italy? If so, would you consider flying between Zurich and Milan? This would save you one very long train ride. Or is the point of adding Zurich the train ride through the Alps?

Many people travel to the "usual suspects" (Rome, Florence, Venice, Milan) because of the relatively short distances between destinations and easy, frequent, non-stop train options.

If your trip is for two weeks or less, I would drop either Zurich or Rome. In any event, I would not drop Venice if you're interested in great architecture.

Hi cire3,

Just to give you the Swiss rail website, www.rail.ch. You can use the site to plan all your trips in Switzerland and Itay (just for Florence use the Italian spelling of Firenze because there's a Geneva suburb called "Florence&quot.

s

Jean. Thanks for the response. Part of the reason I picked Zurich was the train ride through the Apls, I had hears that it is only a 3-4 hour ride to Milan. Is that not correct? The other reason is I just wanted to do something different, and visit as many places as possible. Who knows when we will ever get back. With that being said, I do not want to spend the whole trip traveling around either. I want to enjoy my time where ever we end up going. Maybe we just spend the time in Italy for now

That's correct - the train from Milan to Zurich is anywhere from 3 and a half hours to 4 and a half hours depending on which train you take.

I have prepared a list of places, for you,in Italy.
Depending on what you prefer (fashion, entertainment, art, history, summer vacation, food, trend) I have made a note, next to each city, where you can have any of the above.

Supposing you begin visiting Italy from the northern part (near the Swiss border), here is the listing of cities/towns I prefer:

Milan (fashion, entertainment)
Turin (history, art)
Portofino, Rapallo (summer, trendy)
Lake Como, Lake Maggiore, Lake Garda (summer)
Genoa (history, summer)
Verona (history)
Venice (history, art)
Parma, Modena, Ravenna, Ferrara (history, food)
Bologna (history, food, entertainment)
Florence (history, art, fashion)
Pisa, Lucca, San Gimignano, Arezzo (history, art)
Forte dei Marmi (summer, entertainment, trendy)
Chianti Region (food)
Perugia, Cortona, Gubbio, Siena , Spoleto (history, food, art)
Rome (history, art, food)
Naples, Caserta (history, art, food)
Capri, Ischia, Sorrento coast, Amalfi coast (summer, food, trendy)
Palermo, Syracuse, Agrigento, Trapani (history, art, food)
Costa Smeralda (summer, entertainment)

Obviously the food is excellent anywhere in Italy, and in any city you walk through history. This is a simple guideline, in order to give you an idea what you can find, depending where you go.

For your hotels, I definitely recommend you to visit the following website: http://www.italyvip.com

For more informations or tips about Italy, you can contact me at: [email protected]

Buon viaggio

What a wonderful "problem" you have!

Be aware there are (at least)TWO different rail routes you can use from Zurich to Milan.

The festest route would probably be from Zurich down through the St. Gotthard Tunnel which is quite scenic.

But if you want to take a little more time and see a lot MORE great scenery you could route yourself down through Lucern and then over the Brunig Pass to Interlaken and on to Spiez, then through the Lotschberg Tunnel and the Rhone Pallisades to Brig and then through the Simplon Tunnel to Domodossola and Milan

OR you could travel from Lucern to Bern and then down to Brig and into Italy.

It all depends on how much time you want to take and how much scenery you want to see.

The Brunig Pass route is wonderful but it would mean several changes along the way; the Zurich-St. Gotthard route would be faster and with fewer, perhaps no, changes.

Oops..just realized there is yet another route:

Zurich to Chur to St Moritz; change for the Bernina Express over the absolutely spectacular Bernina Pass to Tirano in Italy and the train from there to Colico and along the east shore of Lake Como through Varenna to Milan.

Boy, are you lucky!!!

We've taken the train from Interlaken to Milan with a change of trains at Spiez and Brig. It was a very memorable train journey, and the scenery was pretty decent as well. Check www.rail.ch and http://www.trenitalia.com/en/index.html for more information on connections.

Thanks for the information, everybody. I think we are going to go with the Zurich-Milan-Florence-Rome itinerary. Anybody have any suggesstions of hotels in these cities? I will be without a car, so I will need to be near public transportation and hopefully in the thick of the activity.

Unless I missed it, we still don't know how long your trip is. With limited time, I wouldn't stay in Zurich. Instead take the train from the Zurich airport to Lucerne. Spend a few days there.

The train should be fine for this trip. We Fodorites tend to be obsessive planners and don't rely on travel agents. We can help you with details if you give us a time frame and budget.

Meanwhile for train schedules for all Europe, look at reiseauskunft.bahn.de/bin/query.exe/en; trains in Italy are at www.trenitalia.it. For hotels www.tripadvisor.com and venere.com.

And you don't need to buy train tickets ahead of time -- unless you're buying a pass, which I doubt would be cost-effective in your case.

Our trip would be about 14 days. I have heard great things about Zurich (perhaps they were wrong), so we were thinking about 4 days in Zurich 3 in milan, 3 in florence, 4 in Rome

I wouldn't spend four days in Zurich and/or three days in Milan. I enjoy both cities, but two well-planned days in each would provide enough time.

Either take one of the longer train route options or add time to Florence/Rome.

Hi all

We are planning a Switzerland stopover and thought we should cover the following:

2007/06/02: Zurich (14h00) – MT Pilatus (overnight)
2007/06/03: Mt Pilatus – Wengen / (Overnight)
2007/06/04: Wengen – Brig / Eggishorn (overnight in Brig)
2007/06/05: Brig – Domodosola – Lugano (overnight)
2007/06/06: Lugano – Milan (11h00)

We are age 37 & 39, would like to avoid big cities. In short we land @ Zurich 2007/06/02 and need to be in Milan 2007/06/06.

Please advice.

A2

A2, you'll probably get more help if you start a separate thread. Title it something like "Switzerland Four day Stopover advice"

Personally, I don't like changing hotels every night. Too much time wasted packing/unpacking, checking in/out and getting to/from hotels. I'd suggest you either spend all four nights in one area and day trip from that base (e.g., stay in Berner Oberland) or two days in Luzern and two in the BO.

a

A2---if you want to avoid cities, why not stay up at Fiescheralp on the 4th instead of Brig? You would have more time to enjoy the Eggishorn and the beautiful views from the area. There are several hotels right by the cable-car station:

http://tinyurl.com/3y5kyu

It's a short trip from there back to Brig to continue your journey the next day.

Yet another VERY scenic route would be similar to Dukey's but it would bring you to Milan rather than Tirano and be more convenient for the rest of your travels. Also, not as many hours in the train.

Take the train from Zurich to St. Moritz. Than the Swiss post bus to Chiavenna, Italy. Than back on the train to Milan.

Thanks all, much appreciated.

A2