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2 weeks in December or 1 week in April

Hello! We (my wife, two kids, and myself) are beginning to plan for our big trip next year (school year 25-26). We have to plan around school holidays, so we are limited in our options. For Winter Holidays we have two weeks which of course has us traveling in December. Spring Break is in the first couple of weeks of April, but is only one week. December brings some advantages in terms of Christmas events, but also cooler weather than April - it also appears to be rainier in December, but I'm not sure if that is true or just the average that is reported on other sites. And of course, it is usually more expensive to travel that time of year. That said, we'd have two weeks instead of one giving us more time to see things. We of course will spend some time in Rome and we want to stay in Tuscany for some of our time as well. If it works well, we'd love to see Venice, but my understanding is that December is often when it experiences seasonal flooding. We're open to other areas as well if we have time (which we would in December but probably not in April).

So overall, I'm curious about people's thoughts regarding these two options. We don't really have any other timeframes when we can go due to school and work. Thank you in advance for any advice/opinions.

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If you go in December you will have more time to see more places, but given the weather you should stay in cities, which offer more things to do indoor in case of inclement weather. In two weeks you can easily fit Rome, Florence and Venice. The Acqua Alta (high water) occurs when several,factors occur at the same time: high tide, abundant rain which swells the rivers pouring into the lagoon, and Scirocco wind (southeasterly wind) which pushes the Adriatic Sea waters toward Venice. There in no way to predict when that happens months in advance, but generally it lasts only a few hours and it affects only the low areas of Venice, such as near San Marco. Try to stay near the station, which is less affected, or maybe even in Mestre, in the mainland, which is less magical, but that way if you happen to experience very high waters when you are there you can simply take a day trip to Padua or Treviso or Vicenza instead.

April has better weather (although high water can happen in April too), but with only one week you can probably only see Rome and at most a couple days in Florence.