Week in Italy
 

Hi All:

I'm drafting up the second leg of a European vacation which includes 7 full days and and 7 nights in Italy. It’s the bare bones of a plan – so any information/critique is helpful.
Overall Timeline:
Night 1, Day 1, Night 2, Day 2: Rome
Days 3, 4 and 5: Florence
Day 6 and 7: Venice
I’m going to bullet our main questions here. Please answer any and all that you can or feel free to offer extra input.

1) Is two full days in Rome enough to do the following: Vatican city/catacombs/Colosseum/forum and nice walk around Trevi Fountain/pantheon etc.? Would this be pushing it? Personally, Rome ranks last in our list of cities desired to see and the spots mentioned above are the top things we want to see there.
2) Is there an a better way to travel from Rome to Florence to be able to see the countryside in between? Should we drive ourselves or any recommendations for a bus or train?
3)Would you recommend staying in florence and then staying in venice - or picking a spot in between to stay at?
3) We want to spend the last 5 full days between Florence and Venice. Ideally we'd like to spend one of those days on seeing the countryside around florence. Is this a viable option? A bus tour or something of the like? Or some kind of scooter tour.
4) Other ideas for the itinerary that would make it easier to accomplish? What are we not thinking of? Ways to make it easier?
5) Rent a car or use public transport?

Thanks for any/all help you can provide.

You are being too ambitious. Any of the three cities merits a week's stay. You definitely won't have time to see the countryside, and you should use train for inter-city travel (pretty fast, frequent and comfortable).

You don't seem all that interested in Rome. Is there a reason you aren't just doing Florence/Venice for your 7-day plan?

The way to make it easier is to pick two places at most to visit and take the train between them. Fly into one and out of the other to avoid backtracking.

You will want to take the train between destinations. Cars are problematic in cities as there are large areas where cars are not allowed (and if you do stray into an area where cars are not allowed, you'll get an expensive ticket (though you won't see the ticket until you are home).

I agree with the idea to choose two cities - it will give you more time to explore the things you are interested in, and you'll waste less time getting from place to place.

1. You could totally do that in 2 days with time to spare... The line at the Vatican will take a lot of time though
2. Trains are your best option and you'll be able to buy tickets on the day of

Besides that I agree choose two cities, and take public transport