Fodor's Travel Talk Forums - Trip Report: Venice, Florence, Rome

I will organize this report with some background information, then break it into sections by city, then finish with my advice based on our experiences.

Group Description: Family of 4 with 2 teens and my in-laws who are in their mid 60s and in reasonably good physical shape.

Background: My husband and I have been to Europe previously, but never Italy. It was the first trip outside of the US for my in-laws and the first trip to Europe for my children. None of us speak a bit of Italian. It took doing lots of research for me to feel comfortable organizing this trip. Many thanks to people on this board that gave great advice and answered questions. I must say I was a little rattled when the first question I got from people after telling them that we were taking a trip to Italy was "Oh, so you're going on a tour?" When I said no, I was doing all the planning, I got mostly looks like, "Wow, are you brave." Not only were we taking this trip without a big tour bus and guide, but I had decided that staying in apartments would work well for our larger group. Could we pull this off without the help of a concierge and some handholding? I hoped so. I was the sole organizer of this group and I felt that the best way to remain confident in my choices was to be highly organized and put together an itinerary. This helped me feel better and also communicate the plans to the group.

Restaurants: I won’t have any suggestions because we mainly ate pizza, pasta and panninni’s and were happy with that. We went to a highly recommended restaurant in Rome and weren’t as thrilled as the reviewer. I found that it was more work to try to locate the great recommendations rather than just eat when we were hungry at a place that looked good. We tried to avoid the heavy tourist areas and never had a bad meal, except right outside the Vatican.

I started planning this trip about a year and a half out, hoping to be able to use frequent flyer miles with Delta. Even after calling at midnight on the exact day that the seats were supposed to be available I was very disappointed in not being able to use the standard 50,000 points per ticket. Instead we spent 100,000 points per ticket for 6 coach seats and got the flights on the days we wanted.

VENICE:
After arriving at the nice and easy to manage Venice airport we got about $800 euro from the ATM. There were several currency exchange booths, but we had to ask for the location of the ATM. It was good to get that first transaction over with and know that we would indeed be able to get the cash we needed from ATMs.

Venice Hotel: This is the only city that we stayed in hotel rooms. My first choice was the Orseola based on all the great reviews. Imagine my disappointment when it was already booked over a year in advance. I actually met the woman online who beat me to the reservation for the quad room. Many of the Venice hotels are so small that the rooms book up quickly. We ended up at the Ca' Amadi, a very nice small hotel located in a former residence of Marco Polo. The name recognition went a long way with impressing the group, especially the teens. It seems like for the money this hotel is a great value. It couldn’t have been cleaner and the bathrooms are brand new. I think the hotel is only about 3 years old. The only downside may be the lack of variety in the breakfast, certainly not a deal breaker for us.

Getting to the Hotel: We took a private water taxi for $115 euro for the 6 of us. Even with getting dropped off at a canal close to the hotel we had a hard time finding our way. If I were to do it over, I would take a waterbus for much less money and walk a bit further. Eventually you'll find the hotel. I must say I was a bit nervous when we walked down narrow passageways lined with graffiti to get to the hotel (it’s sad to see the amount of graffiti all the 3 cities we visited). But the hotel was great and as we learned in a very good location. We all felt very safe in Venice, even letting the kids explore a bit on their own after we felt comfortable.

VENICE SITES:
**We all fell in love with Venice. I’m so glad we kept this city on our itinerary. Picture perfect views at every turn. I enjoyed just wandering around more than touring anything specific.

**San Marco Square: pigeon feeding was a big hit with my son.

**Bought the water taxi 72 hour pass, although I think we used it only 5 times, breaking even.

**Did a gondola ride. I highly recommend this. We weren’t going to do it because of the cost, but we are so glad we did. You get a completely different perspective of things and it was so relaxing. We paid $100 euro for 4 people for about 50 minutes. Most rides were closer to 25 minutes for $60-70 euro. We bought a glass of wine from the bar across the street to take with us.

**Visited St Marks Basilica with a reservation www.alata.it/eng/booking/sanmarco.asp

**Afternoon trip via waterbus to Burano, then Murano. We REALLY enjoyed the quaint town of Burano and had a nice lunch there. We arrived in Murano too late to visit the glass museum, which we heard was worthwhile. We did buy some nice glass jewelry here. This trip is very easy to do with your standard water taxi pass. I wish we had gone first thing in the morning so we could have had more time in Murano.

**Secret Itineraries Tour of the Doge’s Palace. This was very interesting, especially to hear about Casanova. You get to see the cell where he escaped. One caution: it is very hot in the summer on this tour and even though I’m not real sensitive to the heat, it did feel very stuffy. No one from our tour had to bale out, but the guide said usually one person from each tour in the summer heat doesn’t make it through to the end and has to be led out the back way. I tried calling a few times to make reservations without success. Our hotel was able to make them for us.

**St. Maria dei Frari Church. We enjoyed the walk here and the musicians in the area. The church contains artwork by Bellini, Titian, and Donatello.

**We intended to have a drink at one of the tables in St Marks Square, however when we considered that it would cost nearly $100 US for 5 of us to sit and have one drink we decided we could do without it.

FLORENCE:

Travel by train from Venice. More on train tickets at the end of the report. The Venice train station had great sandwiches to purchase before your trip.

Where we stayed: In a great 3 bedroom apt in a very central location for touring. I would highly recommend it if you have a group like ours. I rented through vrbo #9714.

FLORENCE SITES:
**Uffizi Gallery *had reservations

**We decide to skip our planned day trip to Pisa and Lucca to spend a more relaxed time in Florence since we are only here for 3 nights.

**Visited the Pitti Palace and Boboli Gardens. This is nice, but if I needed to start pairing down I would start with this.

**Attempt a Rick Steve’s walk from the Ponte Vecchio to Piazza Michelangelo. The route takes you past an apt where Galileo once lived. The group is dragging after a jaunt around Fort Belvedere. We enjoy the views here, take a lot of pictures and sit down for a drink before returning on the same route.

**Visit the Accademia museum. David is amazing; I think this was my favorite museum outside of the Vatican. **had reservations

**The Duomo- an amazing site. Our family of 4 climbed to the top of the dome where you get incredible exterior views and walk at the base of the frescoes. This would have been difficult for Grandma and Grandpa so they shopped instead. I personally didn’t think the climb was bad, but others have said they ruined their knees climbing to the top of this dome.

**Visited the Central Market to look at all the different fresh meat, fruits & vegetables. We got beef sandwiches here, which seemed to be popular, but I thought they were way too fatty. The turkey sandwiches were good. This is where the best shopping is. We purchased high quality pashimas for $9 euro. We didn’t purchase leather, although there is a big selection here.

ROME:

Took the Eurostar train from Florence.

Where we stayed: In another incredible apt overlooking the Colosseum. I rented it through vrbo #32035. I wouldn’t say it was a luxury apt, but it was eclectic and the views were stunning. While it is not in the middle of the major sites, it is 2 blocks from the Colosseum and on a bus line. We stayed here 1 week.

ROME SITES:
** ½ day tour of ancient Rome with a guide (IMO interesting but not necessary)

**Visited Museo Nationale Romano ($7 euro). Our guide brought us here. There was a mixture of items including some incredible tile mosaics.

**Trevi Fountain both by day and night

**Spanish Steps area. Do people really pay this much money for designer goods? They are waiting in line to get in to a couple of the stores. There is a very cool McDonalds near here (more our speed I guess) that is a great place to use the restroom and grab a snack. They have gelato and a fresh food bar AND they don’t charge you to sit down! Watch out for the flower peddlers who try to force you to grab a flower and then put their hand out for money, usually to the male in the group. They get mad if you don’t want it.

**Scavi tour at St Peters. This was interesting and I thought worth the $10 euro. It is a lot of standing and breathing stale air. We didn’t have a problem with it, but I guess some people do. I tried to make a reservation for my 14-year-old son and they told me that kids had to be 15 – no exceptions! We did have a 9-year-old girl on our tour and the guide didn’t seem to care. If you really want to bring a responsible child under the age of 15, I would not give any ages when you request tickets. I emailed a request and then faxed a request after not getting a response for several months. One good thing about doing this tour is that you do not have to wait in the long security line to get into St Peters. You enter on the left side through a Swiss guard gate. They check your print out and let you into the excavations office.

**The Vatican Museum and St Peters. Wow, it’s hard to take it all in. We were told to go straight to the Sistine Chapel upon arrival. I’m glad we did this, because it’s hard to appreciate everything when you are seeing so much. Try not to eat lunch on the main route between St Peters and the museum. The food is mediocre and extremely high priced. We attended a papal audience on a Wednesday morning at 10:00. My father in law, who is catholic, requested tickets through his church. I think this got us in to a certain section. Anyone can request tickets in advance and I think there was an area for those that didn’t have tickets also. It’s pretty far back though.

**Day trip to Pompeii with a private driver and guide. Some people would not take this long trip, but seeing Pompeii was a must for the teens and Grandparents. It was a great day and very interesting. We paid $580 euro for the 6 of us to do this and felt it was well worth it, since the alternative was to travel to Sorrento for a couple of nights and then back to Rome to catch our flight home. We preferred not moving around so much.

**Visited the Circus Maxiumus where there was a large screen and several thousand Italians watching the World Cup victory that put them in the finals. This was very exciting, but outside of a soccer match probably not worth a visit.

**Colosseum

**Walk through the forum – easy to combine this with a visit to the Colosseum.

**St Peter in Chains Church to see the Michelangelo statue of Moses

**San Clemente Church – because it was on our way back to the apt. We stumbled upon a rehearsal for an opera, what a treat. The church is beautiful and very old, lot of frescoes like all the churches in Rome.

**Piazza di Fiori – one of our favorite areas, kind of eclectic

**Piazza Navona -Another favorite. Had the best chocolate gelato at Tre Scalini café with whipped cream on top for $2 euro! Such a deal.

**Hard Rock Café because my daughter had to get a tshirt. Their clothing selection wasn’t great.

**Pantheon

MISCELLANEOUS THOUGHTS AND ADVICE:

** ATM fees. Our bank charged 2% on all withdrawals and VISA payments. Many banks do not charge a % for withdrawals and I was able to get our bank to reimburse us rather than opening up another account. It would have amounted to about $200.

** I highly recommend purchasing train tickets over the internet on the trenitalia site. I spent a lot of time making sure I was doing this correctly. It was so nice to just get on the Eurostar train with our confirmation number. We didn’t have to stress that the train we wanted would be sold out, we didn’t have to wait in long lines, or try to find an alternative place to purchase tickets. Once I figured out the process using the information on this site it was easy.
** 3 of the 6 of us kept travel journals. The trip would be a blur if we hadn’t have done this.
** I had a 1GB memory card for my digital camera. My father in law ran out of space on his smaller card 3 times. We found places to put the pictures on disc, but it took a while to get it processed. We paid between $3-$6 euro per disc. I filled my 1 GB card using a 7.2 mega pixel camera by the end of 2 weeks – about 200 pictures. It would have been much more expensive to purchase the memory card in Italy.

** Clothes: It seems like many people stress about having the right clothes. My advice is to wear what is comfortable for you. I brought 3 pair of shoes. My feet felt better when I alternated. I think we walked at least 5 miles a day, some days a lot more. We saw all kinds of attire in all 3 cities. My daughter wore short shorts in the extreme heat and we saw lots of camis and tank tops. My mother in law wore her Nike tennis shoes with a comfortable cotton skirt. We may not have been the most stylish tourists, but it didn’t matter a bit. We were comfortable and no one seemed to be paying attention to what anyone else was wearing. An umbrella comes in handy if you are in the direct sun like in Pompeii or at the papal audience in St Peters Square.

**Advance Reservations: Don’t miss this one. We walked past long, long lines of hot, tired tourists to gain immediate entrance into all of the places that would take reservations. The only museum I had to pay ahead was the Vatican for the Scavi tour. The rest of places you pay when you arrive. For instance I had a reservation at the Borghese Museum for one of our last days in Rome. Unfortunately our group had their fill of museums and didn’t want to go. We were not out a thing.

** Attire to gain entrance to Churches: Although we were prepared with our attire (pants for men, no bare shoulders for women) for the days when we toured the churches, we found that this wasn’t necessary. I think St Peters was stricter. At the papal audience I was amazed at what people were wearing (outside in the square, not in the church). While we dressed up, most were wearing their standard touring clothes. The rest of the churches had paper that you could cover up with. It is cooler and more comfortable if you bring a lightweight scarf to throw over your shoulders. Many churches didn’t enforce the dress code at all.
** Beggars: We saw the most annoying beggars in Florence. They were persistent in coming up to us, whining with their hand out. Sometimes persisting even when we waved them away. My son gave a shaking, kneeling woman in Venice money twice, only to see her pack up and go home later in the day, walking just fine. These people didn’t seem to be the thieves.
**Pick Pockets: We saw no problems in Venice or Florence (although I’ve heard you need to be careful in the Florence train station). However, be EXTREMELY careful in Rome. We were very vigilant in looking out after each other. It worked well to have a couple of us carry nothing so our sole mission was to watch the cameras and pockets of the rest of the family when on public transportation. We witnessed an American family get robbed on the subway. It was horrible. The little girl was screaming, “give it back!” and the mother was yelling about a vacation being ruined. An Italian man tried to help and there was a lot of loud commotion for several minutes while the train remained stopped. I’m not sure how it ended, but it was very uncomfortable. A man we met in Florence had his camera taken off his belt when the train lurched forward in Rome, losing all his pictures of Rome. Even with all our watching, my father in law had his backpack unzipped up to his hand (he was grasping it at the zipper). The suspect had his hand under his own pack and when caught simply looked away innocently. Many of the thieves are dressed so not to be suspicious. Be especially careful when people are getting on and off the train. Sometimes the trains get so full you get separated from your group and have to fend for yourself. We didn’t see any gypsy children and were told that the authorities have recently cracked down on them by taking unattended children away from their parents. Walking the streets of Rome, even at night, felt safe.

** Be very careful when walking, especially in Florence. It seemed like a sport to intimidate pedestrians. Rome was also busy, but the drivers didn’t seem to have a personal vendetta against people walking. It made us appreciate the pedestrian only traffic in Venice even more.

**We did fine with our limited Italian phrases we learned before going. However, I wish I would have known my numbers better at least to 10.

If you have any questions I will do my best to answer them. Thanks again for all of you who helped me plan this amazing trip!