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21-day Italy Trip Summer 2016

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I need some assistance in planning a trip to Italy during the summer of 2016. We plan to travel there in July. There are 6 people in our group (2 adults and 4 teen girls). My husband and I have been to Italy previously so we are familiar with the cities we want to visit. We want to visit: Milan, Venice, Lake Como, Florence, Verona/Sierra, and Rome. We would like for this to be a tour of Italy but also relaxing for the group.

I am trying to plan this trip without the help of a travel agent and would like to take advantage of Home Exchange and have a couple of home bases so that we can minimize hotel cost. Another concern is traveling from location to location (we have too many people to travel by car) but not sure how convenient train travel will be.

My initial thoughts is to fly into Milan and have a base home in the resort area of Lake Como (area) so that we can tour Milan, Lake Como, and (travel by train to Venice???) Venice before moving on.

Possible itineray
- Fly into Milan
- Travel to base home in resort area (Lake Como)
- Spend 5 days in this area touring: Milan ( 1 day), Resort area, possible travel into Switzerland) travel to Venice and spend one night in Venice

Move base location to Florence area for 3-4 days (travel via train??)
Rent a car in Florence (???) Tour Florence, Verona, and Sierra, Tuscany and Cinque Terra

Move base location to Rome (Travel via train???)
Spent 3 days in Rome

Travel via train back to Lake Como for a few days of rest before flying back to the states

I know this is a long post but I am trying to map out our trip, the stops, the best way to travel through the country and locial places to create base centers. Please let me know if anyone has done this before, has any advice or tips. All comments are welcome.

Posted by
16775 posts

Hi -
The headline on your post indicates that you have 21 days for this trip but I'm only seeing 12-14 in your itinerary. Are you planning on doing Verona, Siena (not Sierra, I'm guessing) and the C.T. in addition to your 3-4 days in Florence? Can you clarify the number of nights you plan to spend in each location?

Just a couple of initial thoughts:
I wouldn't backtrack to Milan from Lake Como: do that one enroute to Como.

I'm unsure why you want to return to the Como area after you've already been there? Any reason you don't want to fly home from Rome instead of backtracking?

If you were planning on day-tripping to the CT from Florence, it's a good 5-6 hours RT from there: too far. I'd give it 1 full day/2nights, and I'd give Venice 1 full day/2 nights too.

Personally, I'd take the trains everywhere. They're easy, relatively inexpensive, and you won't have to hassle with all the ZTLs (no-drive zones). The train stations tend to be in the city centers so they're very convenient to access. The only caveat would be the location of the home exchanges - which may not be close to a station. We've never done those so I'm afraid I'm not much help to you there. I'm also unsure how that going to work with so many different locations? Most exchanges I'm aware of are for longer stays in just one spot.

Posted by
8293 posts

It is hard to see how you can do a Home Exchange when you plan on being in 5 different cities. How will that work? Will you have 5 different families in your house in exchange for 5 houses in Italy?

Posted by
663 posts

Why not save Cinque Terre for the final destination instead of going back to lake Como? Or start there, and then do lake Como last?

Posted by
5295 posts

One night in Venice is not nearly enough in my opinion. But then I really love the place. Also, why do Verona as a day trip from Florence? Much easier and quicker from Venice. TC

Posted by
2 posts

Thanks for all of the information. My trip may be 21 days but not sure, it may be shorter if we don't fill up the itinerary.

For the home exchange, my goal is to hopefully do two exchanges, one in Lake Como and One in Florence/Tuscany area which would be about one week each (more or less). For the shorter stays, we will stay in hotels or rent apartments (because of the size of our group)

I am not sure about the Cinque Terra location, my husband and I haven't been there before but it sounds beautiful. But I am not sure if there is enough activity for our group (teen girls) Maybe too chill for us.

I am truly at the beginning stages of planning this trip and trying to map out the best foot print (minus a travel agent)

Posted by
15799 posts

There was a recent thread about the difficulty of finding home exchanges in Italy.

Posted by
16775 posts

I'm also thinking that home exchanges - the way you want to do them - is going to be a challenge. Besides the issue of needing to find multiples to swap with, do you live in a desirable area that foreigners will be interested in? August also tends to be the holiday month for many Italians.

As far as the C.T. being too "chill", I'm not sure what sort of activities you're looking for?

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