My friend and I are going to Rome Oct 1-12/10. So far all we have is our flight booked. I think we are going to wing it when we get there for tours. Is there any tours that we absolutely need a guide for? Vatican maybe?

Can we buy the Romapass in Rome or should we buy it before we go? Do we need to book museums before we go? Or can we do that when we get there?

We haven't booked a hotel yet, we are considering an appartment in the centre of Rome. Is an appartment better or a hotel?

We are also going to Flornece Oct 7 to 11. Pisa and Luca and hopefully Modena. We also want to go to Pompeii and Mount Versuvius. Should we use the train? Can we get around Pompeii without a guide?

Any tips and information would be helpful and appreciated.

Thanks.

You have a pretty ambitious itinerary for the time you have available. One suggestion would be to concentrate just on Rome and the Florence area, perhaps taking a day trip via train from each of them. If you really do want to see all three areas, then I'd suggest going to the Naples area as soon as you arrive in Italy. Stay there for a couple of days, visiting Pompeii and Vesuvius while you're there. Then go back to Rome and stay there until you leave for Florence.

The trains are terrific in Italy - fairly inexpensive and easy to use. You can buy your tickets generally from vending machines at each station (English instructions, click on the British flag on screen) and use credit cards in the machines. The only trick is, on non-reserved trains (if you don't have a seat reservation), you MUST validate your ticket in a machine before getting on the train! Otherwise, if an inspector asks for a ticket and its not validated, you will be fined.

Just go to the Trenitalia website to check train schedules.

Yes, you can get around Pompeii without a guide.

As Tom says, pretty ambitious but I understand that as I was the same way when I was young. You'll spend a lot of your time travelling between places but if you have plenty of energy and don't mind burning the candle at both ends, you can see a lot.

You can do Pompeii as a day-trip from Rome, catching an early train down to Naples and a late train back to Rome. This way you could stay in the apartment in Rome for the first week. You can get around Pompeii with a good guidebook and without a guide if you want, but it's a big place and you will probably get more out of your visit if you hook up with a guide for a couple of hours before exploring further on your own.

You might want to reconsider the visit to Vesuvius, unless it's important to you to be able to say you did it. IMO, the impact of Vesuvius is stronger when you see it looming over Pompeii and Naples as opposed to being on the volcano itself, and the trip up there takes extra time which you don't really have on a day-trip.

There are also coach tours from Rome to Pompeii available if you don't want to do it on your own: http://www.viator.com/Rome/Pompeii-Tours/d511-spoi

While in Rome, go for the hop on hop off buses, you'll get to see all the tourist hot spots and gives you the freedom to explore other areas as well.

Definitely head to the vatican for a visit - http://www.myworldwebcams.com/italy/vatican_city.html check ahead and see if the Pope will be in attendance.

Your itenary is similar to my road trip, we started in Rome, took the train (train is the best mode of transport in my opinion, we just turned up at the station on the day of travel and got our tickets then) to Florence, had a day trip to Pisa, train up to Venice, across to Verona and lastly Milan. We spent at least a couple of days in each place and it's a nice taster for the cities you might want to venture back to in the future.

Looks like you have six or seven nights in Rome so certainly a day trip to Pompeii is a good idea. Very easy by train to Naples where you then change to the local Circumvesuviana train to Pompeii. Rome to Naples time varies from one and a quarter hours to over two depending on the train and then it's a half hour more to Pompeii. But both trains are in the same station (one upstairs, one downstairs). Not sure you also have time to go up Mount Vesuvius (you can see it perfectly well from Pompeii) or the logistics of that. We spent about five hours at Pompeii but lots of people "see" the highlights in two hours. We had done a lot of research, plus the little book they give you with the map is excellent (and available on their website if you want to read it ahead of time) so you don't need a guide. In my mind the "best" stuff we saw at Pompeii was not in the few places the guides all go to (which therefore are horribly crowded).

You might want to buy your train tickets to/from Naples a day ahead of time. They do occasionally fill up and you'd have to take a later train than you want.

Looks like you also have about five days in Florence which is plenty to do day trips to Pisa and Lucca. Have you been to Siena? That's a wonderful day trip from Florence. Siena is best by bus, Pisa and Lucca by train.

In Rome you need to pre book the Vatican Museums and Borghese Gallery.

With that number of days you should be able to find apartments but if you want a hotel I can recommend Hotel Julia for good location, nice hotel at a reasonable price.