Final Itinerary

I would consider taking a day away from Rome and spending it in Venice.

Souds like a great trip! (It's actually very similar to ours, but we have only 15 days, so we're not doing quite as much.)

All you have is very doable by train or bus. You have plenty of Time in Rome, Ostica Antica is really just a morning and easy to do. I am a bit worried about day 6, If you figure train to Naples, then train to Sorrento, bag at hotel, back on train to Pompeii, it's already afternoon, so besides looking at Vesuvius from a distance you are running out of time. If you could leave your bag at Naples Station, you could hit the Museum, have a quick pizza, maybe see if you can check your bag at Pompeii and do enroute, then hit Sorrento in late afternoon. So other than fine tuning your days, looks good.

You probably don't need to do both Ostia Antica and Pompeii. If you will be making the trip to Pompeii, use your time in Rome for other sites.

As long as you've checked where you want to go and availability of public transportation, you will be fine with bus/train. It can be frustrating waiting for transportation but when you're driving it's easy enough to lose the same amount of time finding your way.

When we did the underground tour of Orvieto, it was later in the day (near sunset). I can't recall them having tours all day. I'm probably wrong because it seemed like there were multiple tour operators (other than the one at the VI we took). It's worth checking out to make sure since you are planning to travel that day. Orvieto is one of the better Cathedrals to visit.

Thanks for the feedback. I have been lurking around this site for about 2 months as well as reading the RS and Let's Go books, so I should be fairly prepared!

For the Sorrento part - I actually plan to leave my bag in one of the train stations (Pompeii or Naples).

One of my concerns is just having the one day in Venice. However, I have looked at the train schedules and there are some early (6 or 7 am) trains from La Spezia to Venice that get in around 12 noon - so that would give me an entire afternoon - instead of getting in at night like most would suspect. I work an early shift (5:30 am) so getting up early isn't a problem for me.

My other thing is that I have family is Rome so while I could do one less day in Rome schedule-wise, I'd like to keep things open to potentially have a low key day with my relatives.

I actually scheduled the time so that I'm not doing museums (Rome, Florence, Venice) on Mondays. I assumed that Saturdays and Sundays were fine, right?

Naples probably has a bag check, Pompeii maybe not at the train station, but I believe they do at the ancient site.