chandsri81

Hi all

This may be a crazy schedule but regardless I wanted to get advice here. I do not have too many days in Italy and just trying to cover highlights , may not have time to soak in each city or place. ..Maybe another time in my lifetime if possible!

I will be leaving Rome on September 15th, to head to Amalfi. Need to be back in Rome evening of 17th as my flight out of Rome is morning of 18th.
I haven't decided where to stay or what to do in Amalfi....options are endless and time is short! Both Positano and Capri are top of my list, but I don't know if I will really be able to do much on my own (family of 4 : 2 adults and 2 kids), or am I better off using NAples or Sorrento as a base and book day trips. any experience or advice appreciated here ! First time In Italy and don't want to spend time "figuring things out"

Thank you so much in advance!

Rubicund

Rome to Sorrento by road is 4 hours, by train to Naples then on to Sorrento isn't much less. Two nights on the Amalfi Coast is one full day and you certainly won't have time for Capri, so choose how you get to the AC, maybe private car hire , spend two nights in Positano IF you can find a hotel, then back to Rome.

chandsri81

Thank you! Do you know how I can find private care hire and approximate cost of this?

alandavid

Not the desired pace, but we did about the same thing our first time in Italy.
Based on your dates, I'd do this:
9/15:
Take the non-stop train from Rome Termini station to Naples Centrale station. In Naples, down the stairs to the Circumvesuviana (local train), buy ticket there for Sorrento (if Campania Express is running choose that option-fewer stops).
Book a hotel in Sorrento. Take a swim and walk around Sorrento in the evening.
9/16:
Book a guided car service to take you down the Amalfi Coast. It's the only way to see it in a day & the local driver will know how long to stop in each town. Make sure it includes Ravello to visit one of the villas there. Driver will have a great dinner rec in Sorrento when he drops you off. We've used Amerigo car service and Sorrento First Choice in the past. Still one of the best vacation days ever with our 2 kids.
9/17:
Check out & take the Circumvesuviana to Pompeii Scavi station, they have safe & easy luggage storage right there. Short walk to Pompeii entrance
Pre-book a guided tour of the ruins. If you want a full day, store bags in Naples & visit the Archeology Museum get some pizza before returning to Rome.
Local train to Naples, then train back to Rome. Either stay near Rome Termini, or better, near airport for morning flight home. Leonardo Express train from Termini to airport (only a few direct Naples>FCO available)

ellenem

Can you move all your time in Rome to the end of your trip? Then you will not have to relocate for one night on the last day, which will mean one less hotel change and more ease at the end of your trip.

SusanP

Take an early fast train from Rome to Naples (only 1-1/4 hour), Alibus from the train station to the shore for a ferry to Capri. If you leave Rome very early, you'll have a good part of the day in Capri.
Late afternoon, ferry to Positano. Yes, this will be a long day, but going to Capri first is more efficient than doing a day trip there the next day.
Two nights in Positano.
Last day late afternoon, get a driver to take you back to the Naples train station, fast train back to Rome.
This gives you an evening plus a day-and-a-half in Positano.
Very quick, but you said you just wanted a taste.

As mentioned above, if you can flip things and put all the time in Rome at the end, you get rid of a hotel change.

chandsri81

That is possible too, just that we chose to do Rome first because our first entry point to Europe would be Zurich/Interlaken, and from there, Rome seemed easier to get to than trying to go all the way to Naples/Amalfi.

chandsri81

This is great, tHank you!

chandsri81

Pinning this one! Thank you!

janisj

Not that much difference traveling from Zurich to Rome vs to Naples. Naples would be much more efficient since you could put all the Rome days together. With such a short time you really don't have the luxury of throwing in an extra hotel stay. You can fly from Zurich to Naples.

chandsri81

So this is our full Itinerary. WE went through a lot of back and forth and elimination to get here... May not be ideal and we know it will be super fast paced/rushed, but we still wanted to hit the highlights . Flight tickets are booked but nothing else so far since we are still trying to finalize the stops in between. Any more inputs , ways to make transportation faster/more efficient, places to stay etc. will be really appreciated. Maybe If life allows it I will go back to all these places to truly sit back and soak them in, but with our schedule and budgets this is all we are able to do right now.

9/8 - Flight from Boston to Zurich
9/9 - Land in Zurich 10:30 am. Head straight to Interlaken/Grindelwald. (quick lunch near airport to takeout?) . Also not decided if we want to stay in Interlaken or Grindelwald yet. Spend time in the hotel that evening/rest.
9/10 - Jungfrau/Top of Europe Day trip ...Been looking at that for a while now, Any tips, is it worth it etc. will be great.
9/11 - Leave late morning to start journey towards Rome . From what I see, it will take roughly 7-8 hours, through Milan. One consideration here was if this was too crazy a trip, we would split this journey and spend one night in Milan. Go to Rome the next morning.
9/12 - Rome! Either we would have already arrived the previous night, or the afternoon of 9/12. Spend this day walking around..maybe cover Pantheon, Trevi etc.
9/13 - Colosseum , Forum , ANcient Rome.and spend rest of the day again at leisure. We will book skip the line tours.
9/14 - Vatican. Will book a Skip the line tour again, seems like we need 3 hours .
9/15 - LEave Rome to head towards Amalfi. Spend night in Amalfi.... As mentioned previously, still deciding if I should stay in Sorrento or Positano. Positano is already looking like impossible to find hotels...
9/16 - Spend in Amalfi
9/17 - Leave Amalfi in the morning to head to Rome. Spend the night in Rome near airport.
9/18 morning - Early flight back to Boston

Call that crazy ??? )

THank you!!!

bilboburgler

I like Milan but one night there is not worth it go straight to Rome or Naples (I'd try for Naples)

bakerstreet

I can help with the Amalfi Coast portion of your trip. We were in a similar situation with our late April 2019 trip (with 2 adult children) and found Francesco, a private driver, to meet us at the train in Naples (we were in Rome before that). His vehicle is very comfortable and he is a great driver-guide. He dropped us off in Pompeii and waited while we toured (we had to hire a Pompeii-specific guide for that), and then he took s to a winery for lunch and then to our hotel in Sorrento. He is a Sorrento native and recommended a restaurant for dinner that was lovely and we seemed to be the only Americans there. Early the next morning he picked us up, and expertly drove us along the Amalfi coast, stopping at every town we wanted to visit. He would call ahead to restaurants to make sure we had a table, and he would call ahead to garages to make sure a spot was saved for him to park. He had all sorts of connections and as we drove he told us a great deal about the places we were visiting.

We spent a very long, very wonderful day seeing Positano, Amalfi, Ravello, and the other towns of the Amalfi Coast, and I can't image going any way other than being driven in comfort in a private vehicle by a knowledgeable, experienced, friendly English-speaking driver/guide who could simply drop us off at the best places and pick us up when we were ready, given that our time was in short supply. If we had longer to spend, it would have been fun to stay in some of the towns; my preferred way to experience fabulous places is not as a day-tripper but that's what worked for us on that trip. Sorrento was a good base for us with that driver.

At the end we took the ferry to Capri and spent two nights on Capri, and that was delightful.

It was a wonderful trip and we were able to see so much on the Amalfi portion because of Francesco. I think he's the one listed as Francesco Marrapese Tours under Tripadvisor. Have a great trip.

bakerstreet

And you asked about a Jungfrau trip. We went there (2 couples and our two teen children) in 2016 and based on excellent advice from Fodors posters I planned what was turned out to be the most delightful hiking day of my life, especially a segment from Mannlichen to Kleine Scheidegg (and not the other way around). That day we went to the Jungfraujoch on the Jungfraubahn. I wrote everything down afterwards for a friend (and so I'd remember exactly what we did), and I'll copy and paste it below. NOTE that the weather that day is very important; no point in going to the top if you don't have a clear day, and we lucked into a clear day. I hope this works for you."My primary objectives were to get to the Jungfraujoch (“Top of Europe”) – taking a special train, the Jungfraubahn -- and to hike (the easy downhill way) the path between Mannlichen to Kleine Scheidegg, and to see as much as possible of the spectacular Berner Oberland area as possible in our ONE day there. There was a little back-tracking involved in this plan, because I wanted the downhill route (Mannlichen to Kleine Scheidegg, NOT KS to M, which would have been mostly uphill).

The night before we went to the Berner Oberland area, we went to the train station in Luzern to buy the train tickets. I had done a lot of research and knew the best deal would probably be buying half-fare cards and traveling second class, and we did not buy any seat reservations. The cost for my family of 3, including the half-fare card, for the entire day of travel (including the train to the Jungfraujoch), was somewhere around $850; just under $300 each. And because we bought the half-fare card, any other train travel during the validity period of the card was half-price (such as our trip to Zurich). The gondola in Wengen was something like $12 per person. .

We found out the hard way we needed passports for each half-fare card we bought; my friend and I had left the husbands and kids to go to the train station to get the tickets, and when we learned we needed their passports we had to go find them, get all passports and go back to the train station. The PEOPLE didn’t all have to be present in the train station ticket office when buying the half-fare cards, but the passports did. And we needed to have the cards on us when traveling on the trains. One can buy a half-price ticket at the vending machines in the station without showing the half-fare card, so when we were on the trains and the ticket collectors came along asking for our tickets, as soon as they saw we had half-price tickets they wanted to see our half-price cards.

We took the 6:05 a.m. train from Luzern to Interlaken Ost, arriving around 8 a.m. Then we took a series of trains up the mountains, going via the Lauterbrunnen route, to Kleine Scheidegg where we got on the Jungfraubahn to the Top of Europe, arriving there around 10:30 a.m. We had plenty of time up top, got our passports stamped with the special “Top of Europe” stamp, went outside to see the lovely views and take photos, drank champagne and hot chocolate, and then took either the 12:30 or 1 p.m. train out (I think they left every half-hour). We then made our way by train to Wengen. While our train was stopped for a few minutes in Kleine Scheidegg on the way to Wengen, we dashed to the outdoor bar and quickly ordered sandwiches, chips and drinks to go so we could have a picnic on our hike. We got back on the train with the bags of food and continued to Wengen, where we got off and took a gondola up to Mannlichen. I think the gondola ride took about 10 minutes and it was fun. At Mannlichen we began the 90-minute glorious walk to Kleine Scheidegg and enjoyed the spectacular scenery and easy downhill (mostly) stroll amid the spectacular scenery, wildflowers, snow-capped mountains and beautiful skies. We were lucky in that the trail, which had been closed just the week before, was open. That day was Friday, June 24 and we were some of the only people on the trail going our way. We passed maybe 10 other people going the opposite way, which was uphill most of the way and I was glad we were going downhill. I turned around a few times to see the view from the other direction, and I preferred the view going in our direction -- it was simply magnificent. We stopped partway down and enjoyed our picnic and the incomparable views.

When we arrived at Kleine Scheidegg again (our third time there that day, but necessary to do the hike in the direction we wanted), we boarded the train back down to Interlaken Ost but took the OTHER route, on the Grindelwald side, so we could see the other side of the area. All beautiful. We arrived at Interlaken Ost in time to have dinner in Interlaken before boarding the last train out to Luzern at 8 p.m., finally arriving back at our hotel in Luzern at 10:30 p.m.

It was a perfect day."

chandsri81

Thank you all for the amazing responses. Based on the suggestions, I rearranged our itinerary to put Rome at the end, so I don't need a hotel change.

Now I am struggling with trying to find hotels in Amalfi coast. The original "wish" was Positano, but that has become unaffordable for me at this point with hotels ranging upwards $1000 a night. Nearby towns of Amalfi or Prariano aren't any cheaper either. bakerstreet suggested staying near Sorrento and doing a daytrip to the Amalfi coast. It looks like a good option considering I will only have a day and a half .... Any other suggestions on where to say ? Are there better towns/easier to get to etc.?

zebec

Maybe check out the 'Le Zinefra' apartment rental in Minori? Landlady owns a number of other rental properties, as does her property manager Mario Arzano (he's on FB: Take Amalfi Coast)
Fantastic value compared to more trendy locales.
I am done. the end

chandsri81

Thank you all for your awesome inputs so far. Took a lot of these tips to move my schedule around and also find a driver in Amalfi coast. Things are coming together, super excited.

I wanted to see if anyone has inputs on train tickets and discounts.

1) we will be taking trains from Zurich to Interlaken, take the gondola to Jungfraujoch, interlaken to Milan, Milan to Naples and Naples to Rome. These will be the big inter city ones.
2) do I start booking tickets now, and what are the best sites to book these in advance and get deals?
3) I see costs of Eurail passes, for the length of my trip is there any discount pass worth buying that will still save me money? Maybe the SBB half fare card?

thank you so much