Hello- Have booked Venice and Rome In October, total of 12 days, excluding travel days. Does anyone have any suggestions of a small town to stay on way from Venice to Rome, for a day or two, to break up trip- preferrably reachable by train. Thought we would skip Florence this trip. GRAZIE

I have have done this open jaw itinerary twice - once I went from Venice to Ravenna and the other time from Venice to Lucca. Many others do this with Florence in-between. I went to Ravenna to see the mosiacs - they were wonderful but the town was not too charming - stayed there two nights. When we went to Lucca we stayed three nights - there are no big "must sees" in Lucca but it is a very pleasant town with a large city wall that is fun to walk around or ride a bike. We did a (long) daytrip to the CT from Lucca. Florence would be an easy datrip if you wanted to just hit a museum or two and return to Lucca for the night. You might also want to check out travel times to Assisi - that is on my "next time" list as a town to spend a few nights in. It is a gorgeous hill town and the catheral with frescos is just amazing. Have a great trip!

Perugia's nice and is on the line between Florence and Rome. It has a wide range of hotels from cheap to luxury.

http://www.sangallo.it/perugia/

What about Orvieto? It's only about an hour north of Rome but it's worlds different from Venice and Rome in style - certainly smaller, with an incredible setting, magnificent Duomo, underground Etruscan caves,lovely shops, wonderful dining (from what I hear on this site - we went more low key in our choice - and loved it). At night when we tourists thin out, you can almost feel like a native and part of the passiagiata. It may well be our favorite city in Italy.

Hi SS - My suggestion would be Cortona or Assisi.

Hope this helps ...

Steve

P.S. Kaneda - Perugia isn't directly on the Florence-Rome line. It's a detour (- like Assisi) on the Terontola-Foligno line.

Was thinking of renting car in(airport?) Venice, driving to Lucca for an overnight, then to Assisi for an overnight and leaving car in Chiusi(or Orvieto, is that possible) and training to Rome- what do you think of that plan???

We stayed in both Ravenna and Perugia last October. I actually found Ravenna charming, not just mosaics, and the food wonderful. However, Perugia is drop dead gorgeous, and close to Assisi and lots more. Also easy to get to Rome from there. [I've travelled to just about every corner of Italy in the past bar Calabria and Sicily, so have a lot to compare these places with.]