le_baron

TL;DR - Thanks for all your help and the number of great responses. We adjusted our scheduled and would like feedback on where to spend an additional day with our current itinerary.


Here's the long version:

After going through all suggestions, we reworked our itinerary and made the following changes:

- Removed Carcassone and Aix-en-Provence. We felt that we wouldn’t have enough time to explore and appreciate them. We’d also like to visit southern France during lavender season, so we’ll leave those for a future trip.

- Removed San Gimignano. Although we’d love to see it, we felt that it would be better to spend additional time in other cities during this trip. We’ll also spend a few days in Tuscany (Marciano) as we have family there, and although no two cities are the same, we felt that we would see similar architecture in the region.

- Replaced Riomaggiore with Monterosso (although we haven't settled 100% on the village we'll stay at Cinque Terre yet - we'd like to see them all).

- Kept San Biagio and Marciano to visit and spend time with family members.

- Added a day in Barcelona, a day in Nice and a day in Venice to better enjoy our time there. The extra day in Nice will also allow us to do a day trip by bus to the Monaco Grand Prix either on Thursday or Friday as we still haven’t settled on the exact day.

- Decided to fly from Barcelona to Nice instead of driving across southern France (€29.99 via Vueling Airlines).

- Decided to take the train from Nice to Milan, therefore including a stop in Milan for a night (where we could also visit a family member and a close friend) and allowing us to pass by the lakes on our way to Verona.

- With those changes, we’ll pick up the car in Milan instead of Barcelona and still return it as soon as we get to Rome. This will lower the car rental cost from €1400 to €400, reduce the number of driving days from 14 to 9, and reduce our total driving time by around 15 hours.

- Increased driving times by around 50% to allow for stops along the way.

- Adjusted the order of a few cities and removed a day (down from 31 to 30 days) due to a work schedule conflict.


This is how the itinerary looks now:

Day 1 - Barcelona (arrive in the morning)
Day 2 - Barcelona
Day 3 - Barcelona
Day 4 - Barcelona to Nice (by plane, leaving in the afternoon)
Day 5 - Nice
Day 6 - Nice (Monaco Grand Prix day trip by bus)
Day 7 - Nice to Milan (by train, leaving in the morning)
Day 8 - Milan to Verona (full day trip driving by Como and Sirmione)
Day 9 - Verona
Day 10 - Verona to San Biagio di Callalta (2-hour drive time)
Day 11 - San Biagio di Callalta to Venice (1-hour drive time)
Day 12 - Venice
Day 13 - Venice
Day 14 - Venice to San Marino (5-hour drive time)
Day 15 - San Marino to Imola (2-hour drive time)
Day 16 - Imola to Monterosso (6-hour drive time, stopping by Maranello)
Day 17 - Monterosso
Day 18 - Monterosso to Florence (4-hour drive time, stopping by Pisa)
Day 19 - Florence
Day 20 - Florence
Day 21 - Florence to Marciano (3-hour drive time, stopping by Arezzo)
Day 22 - Marciano
Day 23 - Marciano
Day 24 - Marciano (day trip to Siena)
Day 25 - Marciano to Rome (3-hour drive time, stopping by Orvieto and Orte)
Day 26 - Rome
Day 27 - Rome
Day 28 - Rome
Day 29 - Fly from Rome around noon

The question we have now is - we have 30 days available for the trip and our itinerary includes 29 days, so we're considering spending an additional day in a place where we wouldn’t stay for too long (Milan, Verona, San Marino, Moterosso) instead of cities where we’ll already spend 3-4 days (Barcelona, Nice, Venice, Florence, Marciano, Rome). Based on your experience, in which place would you spend one additional day?

Thanks again in advance for all your awesome suggestions.

annhig

- With those changes, we’ll pick up the car in Milan instead of Barcelona and still return it as soon as we get to Rome. This will lower the car rental cost from €1400 to €400, reduce the number of driving days from 14 to 9, and reduce our total driving time by around 15 hours.>>

yes - result! great idea, though personally I would avoid Milan and go straight from Nice to venice and do that bit of the trip in reverse order, thus obviating the need to put your car in an expensive garage in Mestre or wherever.

otherwise - love it.

as for your extra day/s [if you follow my suggestions] I'd add a day each to Barcelona and Venice or even spend a day actually on one of the lakes, doing a day or two of trips by boat.

Jean

On Day 8, "driving by Como" would be a big detour, especially if you were thinking of picking up the car at Linate Airport.

Days 14-15-16. With that much driving on back-to-back-to-back days and so little time in San Marino, I'd skip San Marino and head to Ravenna for 2 nights instead. See some of the stunning Ravenna mosaics.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=It3i-dKusIM

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yvnr0wnmoGY

I assume the Maranello stop is for Ferrari. If so, consider going to Modena instead. Do a little research on the Enzo Ferrari House and Museum near the train station in Modena versus the rather commercial Ferrari Museum in Maranello. Also, you'd be going through Modena anyway, and Maranello is a bit of a detour off the direct route to Monterosso.

Jean

And when I say "head to Ravenna for 2 nights," I mean skip the single nights in both San Marino and Imola.

f1racegirl

For your F1 activities in Monaco: Thursday is practice day for the F1 cars. I would suggest taking the train from Nice to Monaco. You can get tickets for practice on site. I paid 70.00€ this year. There's plenty of seating available.


There are no F1 cars on track on Friday. But there is a GP2 race. And it's free.

sandralist

Since you are not averse to taking an intra-European flight, check out the possibility of flying from Nice to Venice. The train ride from Nice to Milan is a slog. In fact, there is an argument to be made that if you don't want to fly, then take the train from Nice to Italy, pick up a car in Ventimiglia or San Remo, and drive le Cinque Terre. Much quicker. Then rearrange the rest of your trip from there so that you end up in Florence or Venice as your last stop with a car, and use trains from there to see Florence, Venice and Rome.

Another possibility to consider as you toy around with this is to go from Imola to Arezzo (spend the night there), then to Siena/Marciano, then to Florence, and drop off the car. Take the train to le Cinque Terre with a stop to Pisa en route (you can store your luggage in the train station), and then take the train from le Cinque Terre to Rome. (If you want, you could delay seeing Pisa until you are on your way to Rome).

If you very much want to see something of the lakes, then see if you can fly from Nice to Milan, pick up a car and then go to the lakes. From there I would head to le Cinque Terre, and do the loop so you end up with your last stop in Venice, so you can drop off the car (see Florence on the way to Rome, with a day trip to Pisa).

Hope that is clear -- but I don't know how to say it more simply.

sandralist

One more thought:

I assumed when writing my post that you had already purchased tickets into Barcelona and out of Rome. But if you haven't done that, your trip might be a whole lot simpler if you flew from Nice to Rome and ultimately flew out of Northern Italy.

I take it that one of you is a big car buff and wants to spend a lot of time behind the wheel in Europe. But some drives and destinations are really unrewarding concrete-ugly-straight-lines-filled-with-trucks or highly problematic with a car (and you pay through the nose to park the car, and risk heavy fines for making mistakes in urban areas), so you would do much better to cover some distances by plane or train, bunching together the destinations where it is wretched to have a car, but then pick up a car to use continuously for a chunk of time/geography in between where having a car is actually fun.

jfontao

I'd love to hear what you ended up doing and how your experience was.
I'm planning on doing something similar but I only have 12 days

annhig

jfontano - if you want some up to date information and to canvas as many views as possible, i suggest you start a new thread with your query.

Then you will get answers tailored to your situation.

If you decide to do that, do tell us when you are thinking of travelling, how any people, where you are flying into and out of, and those sorts of details. it just a saves us asking!