Feedback on late November travel itinerary

You definitely need at least 3 nights in Rome. By the time you check in and out of hotels and travel to another city, at best you will only have 2 1/2 days per city. You definitely don't have time to add any more cities to your itinerary. I don't understand why Monaco and Lucca are priorities for you-most people would use those 3 nights for Venice. If you do that, I suggest you fly from Paris to Venice. If you skip the destinations between Paris and Florence, you can also fly from Paris to Florence and do a day trip from Florence to San Gimignano. I will say that San Gimignano wasn't as special as I expected. I also don't like Venice, but you'd have a hard time finding anyone else who feels that way.

If it were me, to save time and energy, I would focus on London, Paris, Florence, and Rome and do some day trips from those cities. What do you want to see/do on this trip? Museums? Churches? Food? the top tourist must-sees?

Let me start by saying this is not how I choose to travel. I like to pick a country or region and spend enough time to really see it. I prefer 5-7 nights for major cities like London, Paris and Rome. I also don’t like to spend a lot of time on transportation. But that’s me.

It seems like you are looking to sample a lot of places. That’s okay if you enjoy fast travel and aren’t interested in seeing a lot of sites like museums and churches. If that’s your style, I would fly from Paris to Venice and spend three nights there instead of going to Monaco and Lucca. Then train to Florence for three nights and to Rome for three nights. You could even do two nights in Venice and four nights in Rome. Two nights in Rome would be crazy with all their is to see there, IMHO.

I agree with the above regarding length of stay and number of stops, but if you like a quicker style, that’s your choice. Remember that the hours of daylight will be short in November. You can google the amount if sunlight you will have for each city easily. Also, check the opening hours of attractions you might visit. Hours are often longer in summer months.

Practically speaking, 2 nights equals one day, an overnight may be less than 2 half days. You should check transport routes and times now as you plan. You may find that the "fast" trains are not as fast as anticipated.

Hi Erin -
Oof, yours is definitely a more rushed itinerary than I'd personally like to take on: too much time gobbled up with location moves, and not enough for exploration of some cities with a LOT to offer.. The whole packing up/dealing with train stations or airports/sitting on trains and planes/locating hotels/checking in/unpacking process can burn more valuable sightseeing time than you might think!

If it were me, I'd scrap Monaco and Lucca right off the bat: that gives you 3 extra nights.
Add one night to Rome: it really needs 4 nights/3.5 days.
Add one night to Florence: with 4 nights/3.5 days, you could day-trip Lucca without moving hotels. If you've a deep interest in what Florence has to offer, I'd add yet another night.

Otherwise, take that 3rd night and add it to Paris or London. Both of these cities are more spread out than Rome or Florence so it can take a bit of time to cover ground. Then again, you should add time to the places which interest YOU the most. :O).

If you can add more time, then spend a couple nights in Venice but I wouldn't do it if you can only give it one night, especially if coming from Paris.

Someone above beat me to it, 2 nights = 1 full day. That means you only have 2 full days each in London and Paris. Have you made a list of what you want to see and if it works for you? Paris to Monaco by train is going to take 7-8 hours plus the time to pack and get to and from the train stations, so you'll have no time in the south of France. I could easily make a case for 5 days each in London, Paris and Nice/Monaco region.

My advice is to make a list of must-see sites in each place and also consider the travel time between destinations. I think you'll find that your 16 day trip only includes about 10 site seeing days.

For your itinerary, I would drop the Monaco & Lucca stops. It looks like it’s faster to fly from Paris to Rome (I’ve used Easy Jet in Europe) & take the 90-minute train up to Florence. That could give you more days for Florence for options to take the bus to Siena, the train to Lucca/Pisa, the train to Bologna, etc. or a mini-van tour of some of the Tuscan villages.

Just for reference, I took the train from Paris down to Nice, and I was tired by the time I arrived in Nice even though it’s just riding the train. Wasting two days of 6-7 hour train rides in a row would not be something I would suggest.

“Once we get to Italy it’s a struggle so many great places to visit.” Unless you have a health reason or known financial reason that this will be your only trip to Europe, please consider what you’re saying. Italy easily has 16-17 days of wonderful locations just to begin to get a taste of Italy. France & England are also worth many more days. Maybe consider covering these countries in Part A & Part B trips. I see your earlier post now about Tuscany. Will you be happy staying in an agriturismo in Tuscany in November when the fields have all been harvested?

Erin, maybe this could help. I took my adult daughter to Italy last year for her first time to Europe. We were there for two weeks - about the same amount of time as you. You could switch out our time at Salerno/Amalfi for your wish to be in the Tuscany area. Our longest train ride was the 4-hr Florence to Salerno ride which you wouldn’t be doing. Otherwise, all of the train rides were in the 1-2 hr. range.

https://community.ricksteves.com/travel-forum/trip-reports/mother-adult-daughter-italy-trip-aug-sept-2022