Help and suggestions for creating itinerary- Italy

I would save at least half of that if you have ten days to work with. Roughly three days each for the "big three" (Rome, Florence, and Venice) would be a fine first trip. You could also do Rome-Florence-Amalfi Coast, it just depends on your priorities. Traveling from place to place takes more time than you think--time better spent enjoying where you are!
I plan by writing it all out day by day--Google can give you all of the point to point info you need for flights. Trenitalia and Italotren are the companies for city to city travel in Italy.

Check out the "itinerary" for this tour-- https://www.ricksteves.com/tours/italy/venice-florence-rome

I think you will realize trying to add 2 additional far flung places is not advisable or practical.

Short of having the Star Trek 'transporter' system to beam you from place to place, what you would like to do in 10 days is, even if logistically possible, a really bad idea.

Hi Dania and welcome to the Forum.... OK, I'm echoing what others have said & that itinerary of Rome north to Florence & Venice is a great outline of the time you'd need.

Is this a 10-day trip on the ground or are you counting arrival & departure day? Are you flying biz or econ because you may be completely frazzled on Day 1. Is this April INTO May? May 1st is a major national holiday in Italy, expect crowds & some things may be closed but trains & public areas will be very busy. Have you ever been to Europe? RS likes to say, 'Travel as if you will be back again'. What you've planned is POSSIBLE, (especially if you skip Paris) & plan everything out ahead of time and pay up for car services / bespoke tours for crammed destinations like the Vatican...

Why not put aside Paris & use ideas from the Forum to watch for cheaper prices & JUST visit Paris with a few day trips some other time. It's really a separate trip. Really.

Having said all that, if you were to start in Rome (minimum 3 days excluding arrival and departure), take the train to Florence (1.5 days) Then 2 nights in Venice ( and it takes awhile to actually get into Venice proper)... and Oops you're out of time. That's 9 days. So where or what would you give up / skip to make it to the Amalfi Coast?

I quite literally sit down, close my eyes and imagine the arrival. What do you do first? (Get bags, carry on only, grab a taxi or did you book a car?) And then... can you shower at hotel how do you react to jet lag, what do you really want to DO, did you allow time for lunch? How are your FEET?! Lots of cobblestones!! And do you actually want to take tours, go to the Vatican, see the sites or did you just want to stroll and absorb, maybe pop into a church? At this point, are you exhausted and need to put your feet up and BTW what time can you check in & are you doing a hotel or AirbnB?
Good luck with your planning, keep us posted & there are people here who can help with a more detailed plan!

It better to fly into Venice than out of Venice, so I suggest starting there. Early morning flights out of Venice can be a challenge.
I agree, you only have time for VFR.
Safe travels.

Keep in mind too that you don't have to necessarily give each place equal time--that should be determined by what is your your list of things to see, but you could spend all ten days in any one of these places and never run out of things to do. It's all about balance and not running around too much. If you have your heart set on Paris, then you might just pick one or two places in Italy. But that is going to eat at your time for sure. Think about what you most want to see and go from there.

Personally, I would not do this type of trip, but per your request, this is an option for most of it. This would give you a taste of four of the places you requested.

Purchase a multi-city flight of Houston-to-Paris; Rome-to-Houston

Fly Houston to Paris.

Day 1: Arrive in Paris in the morning.
Day 2: Paris
Day 3: 2-hr flight to Rome. Take the earliest one possible on Easy Jet or similar cheap airlines.
Day 4: Rome
Day 5: Rome. Stay in Rome to do a day trip to Florence (1.5 hr fast train both ways.)
Day 6: 9am fast train to Salerno. Arrive at 10:30am. Take a ferry to nearby town of Amalfi.
Day 7: Amalfi
Day 8: Amalfi
Day 9: Ferry & train back to Rome. Definitely stay in the city of your flight the night before you leave. Don’t depend on train transportation the day of your flight.
Day 10: Fly home from Rome to Houston.

To look up train options, here’s the Italian names of cities for Trenitalia.com:
Roma, Firenze (Florence), Venezia

This looks like it's your 1st trip to Europe. Assuming that's correct, there are parts of the Rick Steves website that would be very helpful for your planning.

They include the following:

Travel Tips -- explore all these sections. They are excellent for informing you about things you didn't know that you need to know: https://www.ricksteves.com/travel-tips

To help with what to see and do, go to Explore Europe, Italy: https://www.ricksteves.com/europe/italy Taking a close look at an itinerary for the RS Best of Venice, Florence & Rome in 10 Days tour can also indicate what might become priorities for you: https://www.ricksteves.com/tours/italy/venice-florence-rome

One thing I've noticed especially with new travelers to Europe is an unrealistic expectation of how close things are. Use Google Maps to check distances. For example, it's 271 km (168 miles) from Rome to Florence. As you can see if you click on the train only directions, the fastest way to go is to take a fast Frecciarossa with no train changes from Roma Termini to Firenze Santa Maria Novella. That hits speeds of about 300 km/h (190 mph) and takes about 1.5 hours. I love the fast trains.

But, and it's a big but, the whole process for moving from any location to another requires having breakfast, packing up, checking out of your hotel, and getting to the departure train station early enough to get to the right platform, get on the train and then reverse that process when you arrive at your destination to settle into your new hotel. Like others have said, it ends up taking about half a day/4(+?) hours to do all that. To help with learning about train travel in Italy, go to the Man in Seat 61, A beginner's guide to Train Travel in Italy: https://www.seat61.com/train-travel-in-italy.htm

One thing to consider is that it's better to think in terms of the number of nights in a location rather than the number of days. Two nights allow you to have a full day of exploring a place between them, three means 2 days, and so on.

As you prioritize what you want to see and do in the locations you want to go, you may find that some have more or fewer priorities than you expected. Or you may be surprised by situations where the thing you want to see do is closed at the best or only time you have for it.

Have fun with planning.

The 10 day RS tour of Rome, Florence and Venice barely scratches the surface, and that's with someone else managing the logistics of hotels and transportation. Since you've only got 10 days, (and are 2 of those transportation days?) would you consider choosing two places and saving the others for another trip? There's soooo much to see in all of these, that squishing four (or an outlying fifth) into 8 or 10 days would really be a shame.

Thank you all for the responses and feed back! I appreciate it! As you can tell yes this is in fact my first trip to Europe lol. I could possibly extend my trip to 2 weeks instead of 10 days. ( leaving my 3 years old is mainly the reason i don't want to be away for so long; mom guilt sucks) The top places that I would like to go is Rome. Florence & Amalif Coast.( Paris also but due to the travel distance maybe is not a good idea like yall suggested). & well Venice would be nice but the only thing i would actually really like to do there is just see it and ride on a gondola. Ill keep in mind that May 1 st is a holiday in Italy , thanks for the tip!.

The main things i wanted to do in each on this places
Paris- Eiffel Tower , Arc de Triomphe,
Venice- Ride on a gondola
Florance - Piazza del Duomo
Rome- Colosseum , Trevi Fountain
Amalif Coast - Visit positano and go to the Beach

Have you considered taking the little one? It's a different trip to be sure, but if it got me more time, I'd consider it.
Even if you could swing two weeks, I would still stick to Italy. The way travel is these days, you want to make it efficient and easy. More time in fewer places is usually rewarding!

Hi Dania! Glad to see you're thinking this through in more detail... After your comments about priorities, here's what I would do on your first trip - Fly into Rome & out of Naples, (check 'multi city' on websites) if not much more expensive so you don't have to arrive back the night before departing flight, OR do Florence first, AC second & end in Rome, that way you could just do RT to Rome. And then aim for non-stop flights to prevent transfer issues if possible.

When you arrive, take train immediately to Florence. There's a lot on the Forum about this transfer to train. We've stayed at Hotel Hermitage, right by the Ponte Vecchio numerous times. And you'd be starting in the kinder, gentler north & progressing further south as the locals become more, shall we say colorful!
Florence - 3 nights, there's a LOT to see and to wander.

Rome- 4 nights, Colosseum , Trevi Fountain (Personally, I would pay up and stay in the heart of Old Rome). Here's a link about central hotels in Rome - https://community.ricksteves.com/travel-forum/italy-reviews/mid-range-hotel-in-rome-central-location-april. Book Colosseum tickets early, once you have your hotels & flights sorted. Ask again on Forum how / where to do that.

Amalif Coast - Visit Positano and go to the Beach.

• Not sure which beach?? I infinitely prefer the town of Amalfi to Positano, while the latter is beautiful to look at from the sea, it's all steep hills. A number of people are basing themselves south of Amalfi in Solerno, apparently the ferries from there are less packed. It's not that much further down the coast, might be worth considering & I'm sure there would be good train connections from Rome. Personally, I prefer the beaches of California! So maybe lower beach expectations until you head to Greece.

Since you only really wanted to ride a gondola in Venice, I'd skip it until you can give it 3 days, it needs more time. And it's not super easy to get in & out of, unlike Florence.

A 10 day trip in February for me would be in/out of Rome. 3 nights in Orvieto, 3 nights in Sorrento and the last 3 or 4 nights in Rome. 10 days is a very short amount of time and I would not want to waste it moving around. This trips gives a mix of city, ocean, hill town, without too much looking out of a train window. J

Welcome to the forum Dania.

A first trip to Europe is exciting and late April/May is a great time to visit (we went this year to Venice, Florence, Rome, and the Amalfi Coast). In addition to the 1 May holiday, the 25 April is Liberation Day and the 26 April. the feast of St. Mark in Venice. I found it was easy to travel on those days, but it was more challenging to get lodging in Venice, so book early for any holidays. If you are going to Paris, 1 May is a holiday there as well.

To help in your planning, I would recommend you get the Italy RS guide book which has an excellent planning map. That will help you visualize the distances and the time it will take to get to and from each location. A rule of thumb is changing locations takes about 1/2 day. Your travel day is not really a day for full sightseeing.

If you really want to go to all these locations, then I would recommend the following for 10 days. I tried to find a plan that allowed you to go to Florence as well, but it is a challenge. Getting from Rome to Positano is going to take a good 3-4 hours. It is also not advisable to try to get from Positano to the airport in Rome in one day. It may be possible for you to fly out of Naples and that will save you some time.

This type of schedule gives you a taste of each place.

• Day 1: Arrive in Paris in the morning
• Day 2: Paris
• Day 3: Fly Paris to Venice
• Day 4: Venice
• Day 5: Venice to Rome
• Day 6; Rome
• Day 7: Rome to Positano
• Day 8: Positano
• Day 9: Positano to Rome
• Day 10: Fly Rome to Houston

Welcome! We've been to everywhere you've listed except the Amalfi Coast.

There's always the tension between trying to see it all and being in one location long enough to do more than skim the surface. We've done both drive by tourism of these locations and deeper dives, such as spending 7 days in Tuscany staying in one agriturismo the entire time. Based on our experience, I have a few suggestions.

If at all possible, take on the extra days you mentioned. Even then, save Paris for another trip. I'd also suggest dropping the Amalfi Coast because the logistics of getting there can be challenging and time consuming. I think you'd get more bang for your buck by adding time to the big three. Moving from one place to another is a big time suck, having to check out, travel then check back in. If you can add the extra days, I also suggest planning in a down day mid trip. Some of our most memorable experiences are ones that were unplanned and free time allowed us to take advantage of them.

Happy travels! My wife and I have been traveling to Europe ever since our first trip together as high school students. We're heading to Austria and Slovenia this December.

Here's my two cents.

Venice - my favorite city in the world (well, maybe tied with Paris). If you go, take a gondola lesson instead of a ride - it's cheaper and more interesting and less touristy. Look into a multi-city ticket flying into Venice and out of Rome. Venice is romantic, Venice is magical in the early mornings and late evenings. And, oh, there's a beach - the Lido.

Amalfi Coast - wonderful scenery, the villages are just "meh" but very scenic from afar. Good hiking, lousy swimming (the beaches are small and mostly pebbly). The exception is Salerno which has a decent-sized (for Italy) sandy beach. I don't know where you live, but surely there are much better beaches near Houston. Italy's good beaches are on the islands - Sicily and Sardinia. If you go, stay in Salerno and use the buses and ferries to see the coast and stop to explore a couple of the villages. Salerno itself has a well-preserved historic center and is connected to Rome by fast train - about a 15 minute walk from the historic center. Getting anywhere else on the AC is not nearly that easy.

If your heart is set on Paris, then look into a multi-city ticket flying into Paris and out of Rome (or vice versa). Then find a budget flight from Orly or de Gaulle airport to Florence. Then take the train to Rome. Skip the AC.

If you were to follow SandyO outline I would modify it so that you went from Venice to Amalfi Coast and finish in Rome. Saves one hotel change.

Wise words are being shared with you. Personally, on a trip this short- even if you do add some days, the Amalfi Coast is not an easy place to reach and you'll waste almost and entire day getting there and going to your next destination. It's beautiful, but it will be rushed and not relaxing for a quick in and out stay.

Hey Dania, Would love to hear how you design your trip, given your later clarification that,

The top places that I would like to go are Rome, Florence & Amalfi Coast.

Since it will still be a busy trip, @Lo had GREAT ideas about how to research your destinations etc. We like to take a walking food tour the day we arrive in a new city (Rome & Florence would work), and enjoyed Eating Europe tours. That way you have some good ideas about local delicacies & can circle back to eat in fav spots during your visit. But frankly, there's so much more on the Forum about your chosen 3 destinations, let us know timing & further interests (beyond what you've said about the Coliseum, Trevi Fountain & the Florence Duomo piazza!) to get more detailed suggestions.