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25 Days - Itinerary Shaping Up for October

Posted by (Portugal) on

After getting some advice and help here, we (wife and I) have pulled the trigger and bought our plane tickets (through United) and here is "the plan":

9/29-Depart SFO

9/30-Land Munich, Depart for/arrive in Venice

9/30-10/5 - Venice (staying Dourosouro)

10/5 -Travel via train to Florence and pick up rental car, drive to Noce (between Greve and Certaldo)

10/6-8 - Explore Tuscany (Siena, Volterra, Montepulciano, etc.) using Noce (agriturismo w/ pool) as base (have some concerns about where to eat dinner)

10/9 - Drive back to Florence and drop off the car

10/9-14 - Florence (have bicycles here too, if that will be useful) (staying near Palazzo Medici Riccardi, between train station and Accademia Gallery)

10/14 - Train to Naples and Circumvesuviana on to Sorrento

!0/14-18 - Sorrento (considering renting a car for two days here - use it for Pompeii, Herculaneum one day and Paestum the next)

10/18 - Train to Rome

10/18-24 - Rome (staying near Forum)

10/24 Fly back to San Francisco

Thoughts? Suggestions? Restaurant recommendations? I will probably also be asking some questions on car rental details or train tips at some point, but there we are for now.

Posted by
186 posts

Just a bit more info and some questions to add. We are fairly fit (for example, I rowed a raft down the Colorado through the Grand Canyon for 17 days in summer of 2013) at 61 and 57. We climbed inside the dome of St. Paul's in London a few years back. We want and expect to walk a lot in Venice, Florence and Rome. We are interested in history, art, food and wine. We will each have one carry on and amybe a small "personal item" bag that could fit under an airplane seat. Every place we are staying there is access to a washing machine.

Although booked through United, the flight from Munich to Venice is on Air Dolomiti. Anything I should worry about there? I am assuming the return flight will not be problematic (again, though booked through United, the return is Air Canada Rouge and Air Canada).

Help/suggestions on how best to spend our days in each of our stops is also welcome. (I saw some great pointers in another thread for five days in Rome, but that one involved children.)

Posted by
663 posts

Your plan looks good, in fact I'm really sorta jealous! You won't need a car for Pompeii, the train take you within a few hundred feet of the site entrance. So just one day car rental should suffice, if you have the nerve to drive the Amalfi coast and on down to Paestum. The road is very old and very narrow, perched high on the cliffs above the sea.

Posted by
186 posts

Thanks for the suggestion about only getting a car for the day. Does the train stop near Herculaneum as well? As for the drive, I was thinking we would take the autostrada to Paestum (RS says it is about a two hour drive that way) and then either return that way or drive up the Amalfi coast from Salerno, maybe stopping in Ravello or Positano for dinner. (I have driven some pretty hairy stretches of Highway 1 out here (think Big Sur, Marin, etc.) as well as down the Moki Dugway road in southern Utah (google it), so I am hoping I'll be up for the Amalfi coast.

Posted by
11613 posts

Ravello is beautiful but you may want some daylight while you are there for the views and gardens.

The Circumvesuviana train stops at Ercolano. For Pompeii you want the Pompeii Scavi stop.

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