maria0522

My son (24) and I will be traveling from NJ to Italy for 10 days in April to visit my daughter who is studying abroad in Florence. It will be our first time visiting Europe. I am trying to create an itinerary around her spring break plans so she will be able to join us for part of our visit. While my dates can be somewhat flexible, she is available April 13th - 17th, so I would like these dates included in my 10-days. I'm considering doing a bike tour (one of the easy ones that lasts a few hours and serves as an introduction to the city) and maybe a pasta and pizza cooking class. My daughter may not be interested in these things so we can do them on days she is not available. I am typically very good at planning a trip, but I don't even know where to begin! I will consider any itinerary suggestions and advice on how to travel between the cities we visit.

I think I may need a travel agent to help me, but I was hoping to have some basic knowledge before I visit one. Thank you in advance for your help!

MmePerdu

You won't need a travel agent and will, in fact, get closest to your personal preferences if you make your own plans, once you define what those preferences are. When you say, "how to travel between the cities we visit", does that mean you know and haven't mentioned them? Or are they yet to be determined?

Your trip is a short one, so if you don't yet know where exactly you want to go in the time you do have, and want recommendations, try to say as specifically as possible what you might enjoy. With what you've said already (bike tour & cooking class) I believe you'll want to choose 1 more location, not "cities" (plural).

Do your 10 days include travel from and back home?

Christina

If you are going to cities, I would recommend you travel by train.

Holly_uncasdewar

You will be there over Easter. Trying to move around by bicycle in the city will be nearly impossible (think: crowds). A walking tour might be fun, but the city is small and compact, and you really can arrange your own itinerary once you decide what sites you want to see. Some of the nearby cities you might want to visit include Siena, Lucca, Pisa - these can be done as daytrips by train or bus, or for an overnight, which I find to be much more enjoyable than a daytrip. You definitely do not need a travel agent to plan this trip.

bvlenci

Do you know yet which cities you want to visit? Ten days is really very little time. If you want to see the classic Venice, Florence, Rome, I would suggest visiting one of them during the time your daughter's school is on vacation. Probably Rome would be the best choice, because it really needs some time to even scratch the surface, and your daughter may not have another opportunity for a visit of more than one or two days. In that case, you could fly into Venice, then arrive in Florence at the time of your daughter's vacation (or a day or two before if you plan activities there that don't interest her) so that she can show you around Florence for a day or so. Then you could go to Rome for the rest of her vacation and fly home from there.

This can be done easily with a multi-city ticket, which you can buy through Expedia, through the airline websites, or almost any other air booking site.

You can very easily travel between these cities by train. You can save a lot of money by buying your tickets well in advance one of the two main rail companies:
http://www.trenitalia.com/tcom-en or
http://www.italotreno.it/en .

The discounted tickets can't be exchanged or refunded, so plan your itinerary before getting the tickets. You need to use the Italian names of these cities: Venezia, Firenze, and Roma. Both rail compamies connect these major cities, but only the first operates local trains. For local tickets, you shouldn't reserve in advance. There are no discounts on these trains, and they never sell out, so you're best just buying the tickets at the station. Local train tickets have to be stamped in a little machine near the track just before you board the train.

I would not advise a bike tour in Florence. The streets in the touristic center are really too crowded for bikes. We've just returned from a few days in Rome (showing the sights to my American son-in-law). We encountered several bike tours, which were a menace to pedestrians, and a danger to themselves. There were always people who had got separated from the group because of the crowds, and were struggling to catch up. In my experience, the streets in central Florence are even more crowded than in central Rome.

My granddaughter was nearly knocked down by a bike in Rome. In many of the streets where the tour groups were biking, basic safety sense would have dictated that they should have been walking the bikes, but what fun would that be?

With such a short time, I also think a cooking class is not a great idea. When you have only ten days, you should try to do things you can't do at home, and you can't learn enough in a few hours to justify the cost of these courses. You live in a part of the US where it's easy to get authentic Italian ingredients, and there are some good Italian cooking classes in New Jersey. It might be best to take one of these courses, preferably a two-or-three-day one, before your trip. It would also be an opportunity to educate yourself about the regional cuisines of the cities you plan to visit. (Just ask the teacher if he or she doesn't offer the information spontaneously.) This would help you a lot in making good choices from menus in Italy.

While you're in Italy, a wine-and-cuisine tour might be a very nice way to spend a day, and you'd also get to see some of the countryside. Since I live in Italy, I've never taken one, but I have relatives from the US who have taken such tours and enjoyed them very much.

I think you'd do better without a travel agent. They mostly know the large chain hotels where they get commissions for sending guests. For booking hotels, I recommend www.booking.com , which has a wide selection in all price ranges, and unbiased reviews from people who have actually stayed in the hotels. You can specify a specific neighborhood as your destination, such as "Rome Trastevere", or if you don't know the neighborhoods, you can specify "Rome (for example) city center", to avoid lodgings in the boondocks. For transportation, I've already given you the links.

By April, your daughter will be able to offer you a lot of help and advice for your trip; she'll probably know more than a travel agent. It's very easy to travel around Italy, and I'm sure you'll have a wonderful time.

Twenty-two years ago my oldest daughter was studying in Rome, and I went to visit her, and I loved the city and the whole country. The next year, I heard of an Italian grad student who wanted to rent a furnished room, and I offered him one of my empty-nest bedrooms. His dad came to visit him, and, long story short, that's how I ended up in Italy. It was just like the Brady Bunch. I had two daughters and he had two sons and a wise and witty housekeeper. No dog though.

annhig

There are a number of strategies you could adopt; arrive before her time off [which is over the Easter weekend itself] and leave at the end if it, arrive when her holiday starts and put the rest of your time afterwards, or put her time off in the middle.

Personally, I think that I might fly into Venice, spend a few days there, then arrive in Florence the day before her holiday starts, [the trains are very easy and quick] and finish your holiday there. She can then have the fun of showing you the city, and when she goes back to college, you and your DS will be able to fill the rest of your time in and around Florence.

But if you decided just to stay in Florence and do day trips, I don't think that would be a bad choice either; I would still time my arrival to coincide with the beginning of her time off for the reason given above.

For flights, you can either do a round trip flight [into sound out of the same airport] or an "open jaw" or multi-city flight which is into one airport and out of another. These are not the same as one way or single flights [which can be very expensive] and shouldn't cost you much more than a round trip. You may need to play around with a site such as Skyscanner or Kayak in order to get the best combinations of departure airport, flight times, arrival airports etc.

what you do not need, IMO, is a tour - that wouldn't fit with what you want to do which needs to be flexible around your DD's holiday - something tours rarely are.

Holly_uncasdewar

What a fun story of how you met your Italian husband, bv! Maybe I should start renting out my spare bedroom.

kybourbon

I'm not sure why you need a travel agent when you don't have very many days and intend to spend most of it with your daughter.

You can take the train to Rome for a day (90 minutes) or Pisa (60 minutes). Bologna is another option easily reached from Florence.

You can take the bus to Siena for a day (about 70 minutes).

The tourism office in Florence with have information and companies that offer bike tours.

http://www.firenzeturismo.it/en/

maria0522

Thank you for all your great advice! I realize that 10 days isn't a lot of time, but I am working around my son's work schedule. He has a limit to how many days off he can take. I think you talked me out of the bike tour. I like the idea of arriving at one airport and leaving from another. I can get a direct flight from JFK to Milan, so that may be an option for one of my flights. I definitely have more research to do! As far as where to go and what to see, I am open to suggestions. My daughter will definitely be able to offer some insight once she gets settled. Ultimately I am looking to see and do things that will appeal to me and my kids who are both in their 20's. I considered the cooking class as an option because it was something to do besides touring, and not because I need to learn how to cook. There seemed to be several places in the Tuscany area that offered them. Some included shopping in the market for the ingredients. It would be a different way to see a particular area, and I enjoy doing things that are not so "touristy".

MmePerdu

Maria, maria, maria! Don't let you son's limited available time limit yours. It's ITALY! If traveling around on your own seems an impediment, don't let it be. There are any number of us here on Fodor's who routinely travel all over the world on our own. At the end of your 10 days you're going to wonder why in heck you thought you should go back home with your son, especially given your daughter will still be there. Do consider planning a longer stay. Let the boy go back to work and have a worthwhile amount of time there. PLEASE!

marvelousmouse

Actually, I know of at least one biking tour that heads out of Rome into a more rural ride. But it sounds like you want one that would introduce you to the city? One of my roommates did one and she loved it, but I passed because I somewhat agree with the advice above. I think actually touring the parts that you probably want to see would not be fun on a bike.

I get enjoying nontouristy activities but before deciding on something, I really recommend getting a good guidebook. 10 days is nothing in either Florence or Rome. And I think once you research it, your problem will be that you have too little time to explore off the beaten track!

I would travel by train. You don't want a car. What are your kids' majors? Because Florence definitely has a wide range of museums, and at least one would probably interest them from an academic standpoint. And there are a lot of specialized tours too that might be of interest. Instead of a cooking class, you could take some kind of food tour.

Jean

I would also argue against a car for any part of your trip. You would have to do all of the driving, which for a first-time visitor to Europe is a lot of pressure, and you'd need to do some studying on local laws, signage, routing, etc. Adding either of your kids to the rental agreement would trigger an under-age surcharge. If you can't drive a stick-shift car, you'd likely have to go to an airport rental office to pick up an automatic transmission car.

Although you can travel quite easily between big cities using trains and buses, most small towns and rural properties in Tuscany are difficult (or time-consuming) to reach and travel between, which is why some of them are advertising cooking classes to draw visitors.

It's not clear to me whether you want to travel outside of Florence with your daughter or stay in the city during her free days.

bvlenci

There's nothing more touristy than a cooking class in Tuscany. If you want to do something non-touristy, take a train or bus to some small town that's <b> not </b> listed under suggested day trips in your guide book. That's something I often do. I think Pistoia might be a possibility. I've never been there, but I've heard it mentioned as having a nice medieval center. Arezzo is also easily reached from Florence, and is a small city I like a lot; I've been there several times. In the Church of San Francesco there is a famous fresco cycle by the Renaissance artist Piero della Francesca. The center of town strikes me as being the epitome of a Tuscan town. There's an open-air antiques fair there on the first weekend of every month (actually, the weekend of the first Sunday).

When we were in Scotland, I wanted to visit Loch Lomond, because my father, who lived in Scotland throughout his youth, used to talk about it a lot. I read about suggested towns to visit on the loch, and then looked on the map and found a town near the towns that were suggested. I remember one suggested town was Luss, which almost all the bus tours visit; obviously, in a small town that means the tourists outnumber the residents. I instead visited Tarbet, which neither of my guide books mentioned, and it was great: a beautiful little park on the loch, with one little tour boat that didn't seem to be busy at all, and a little restaurant where we were the only diners. We chatted for a long time with the owner and her son.