Hi -
I'm trying to plan a trip for my family (2 adults, a tween and a teen). It's the family's first trip to Italy. We're thinking at least 2 weeks, but we might be able to squeeze out another few days. We want to do a lot so plan to fly into Milan and fly out of Rome because it's the most cost effective. We do not plan on spending much (or any) time in Milan before heading to Venice. We would like to stop in to Verona for the opera festival and can go either on our way to Venice or as a trip during or after our time there. We would then like to head down to Florence and Rome as our home bases for the rest of the trip using both of those cities as our home base while we do other side trips too (Assisi, Pompeii, Montepulciano, etc.). My question - we know that a car offers us more options in terms of those side trips, and possibly going from city to city, but we also know that sometimes train is better. Does anyone have advice about whether or how to grapple with both a car and the train? Or if we rent a car in Milan and then use it for Verona and to get to Venice, do we park it somewhere? Return it for our Venice leg and rent another later? Maybe after getting to Florence/Tuscany via train? Just trying to get down to the brass tacks of the least pain in the neck way to do things. And the answer might be car only. Or a combination - but what would that combination look like?