7 Days in Italy With Kids

Welcome to the forum!

How many NIGHTs will you actually have in Italy?
If it’s 7 or just 6 you hardly have time for 2 of your locations

If yoi must
Fly in to Venice
Venice 2 nights
Train to Florence
Florence 2 nights
( Florence is in Tuscany but you don’t have time for countryside)
Train to Rome
Rome 2-3 nights
Fly home from Rome

Book a multi-city ticket ( not 2 one ways)

I’d suggest dropping Florence unless your kids are big art lovers
Venice and Rome will have more to offer them

What ChristineH said. With a week, you should limit your destinations to 2, Venice and Rome. If you truly try to “see it all” meaning more destinations, you will spend much of your time seeing the inside of trains and train stations.

Hotel rooms for 5 are difficult to find, so you should be looking at apartments.

For Venice, I can recommend Venice Red House or Views on Venice as reputable agencies that offer a good selection of apartments and services, such as “meet and greet” upon arrival to take you to the apartment and get you settled. Many of the apartments will have a 3-night minimum, but you should spend that amount of time in Venice anyway, then move straight to Rome for you next 3-4 nights.

Here is an example of one of their apartments that will sleep 5 comfortably, in a great location in Dorsoduro:

https://veniceredhouse.com/apartments-in-venice/mansarda-magritte-apartment/

We had this apartment booked for a stay in March 2020, but of course we were unable to go.

Sorry, but with only 7 days try to limit travel. Pick two cities.

7 days with kids (teens)
Looking to see as much as we can in a week. Hoping to see Venice, Florence/Tuscany and Rome.

You don't have much time...probably best to pick two of those destinations and enjoy them rather than doing a Bataan Death March of a trip and make everything a tiresome, blur. Are you on vacation or on a checklist march?

Is your time allocation 7-days and 6nts? So the two end-days are really travel days which means you really only have 5 full-days of enjoyment. Please clarify your time schedule and posters can provide some suggestions.

Agree that you should limit youselves to only two locations. Suggest Venice (great for recovering after a long flight, and a really unique place), and Florence (great for art and history). Rome is pretty hectic even when you have lots of time. Not, in my opinion, a good choice for only a couple or three days. But, see what the kids think. They might have some good ideas also.

Echoing what others have said to limit your destinations to 2. I’d choose Rome, and then either Venice or Florence depending on their interests.

We spent 5 nights each in Rome and Florence and had a great time. Florence was more relaxing and we loved just wandering around. Rome was very busy, but nothing can compare to seeing some of the legendary sites they’ve always heard about!

I'm going to suggest a different approach to your itinerary. with only 7 days, look at where you can get direct flights to ( if any). Then pick one of the big 3 if you can get direct there ( the big 3 being Venice, Florence and Rome). Spend 1/2 your time there and 1/2 in a smaller town near there.

For example if you can fly direct in and our to Venice, spend the rest of your time in the Veneto ( Verona , Padua etc). Or for Florence you can pick one or two Tuscan towns. My reasoning is that you will otherwise spend most of your time travelling between the cities, or battling the crowds at the big sites in those cities. I also think that Italy is often at its most charming in its smaller towns. The direct flights mean that you will not waste as much travel time.

Tongue-in-cheek:

Stay four nights in Venice, rent a car and go to https://www.italiainminiatura.com/en. There you can see the rest of Italy in a day.

We are doing Venice, Turin, and Rome with our 9 and 11 year old boys in July. We are there for 11 days and I expect even that amount of time will be a whirlwind! I would think 7 is not nearly enough time for 3 cities when you consider the time needed to travel between them.

I would be happy to post an update on what worked and what didn’t after our trip!

The RS tour that covers Venice-Florence-Rome, spends 3 nights at each stop.

Look at the "Itinerary" to see what is feasible in that time frame. Be mindful the tour is more time efficient than you would be because of the dedicated bus for door to door service and a guide who won't get lost or need to find the way from place to place.

If your time available is fixed, then the advice to 'pick two' is the advice I would concur with.