Help planning route to see sites when in Rome and Florence

Have a nice old-fashioned paper map and mark the places you want to visit. That's they way I did it in Rome. In Florence it isn't necessary: the city centre is too small to loose much time.
Beware though for churches. Many of them are closed between 12.00 and 15.00 or 16.00.

When are you planning to go? How long will you spend in each location?

We leave tomorrow for Tuscany. I've bought the RS guidebooks, watched the videos on YouTube and bought a detailed map of Florence.

We decided to sign up for two tours led by Walks of Italy. They offer an all day tour, starting with the Duomo and Academie in the morning and the Uffizi in the afternoon. You might consider doing this day 1, then deciding what else you want to see the rest of the time in the city. The big advantage of taking the tour is that it includes admission to the museums. You don't have to stand in line.

When we return to Rome to fly home, we're taking the Walks of Italy Evening in Rome tour. It's advertised as a great orientation tour of the heart of Rome, including the Pantheon, Spanish Steps and Trevi fountain. If we only had a little longer, I'd love to take their VIP tours of the Coliseum and Sistine Chapel.

Here is a link that will help you organize Rome. It all depends on what your priorities are and how much time you have. Rick lays these our logically so you are more efficient in your travels.

https://www.ricksteves.com/watch-read-listen/read/articles/planning-your-time-in-rome

And this one for Florence.

https://www.ricksteves.com/europe/italy/florence/planning-your-time

Thank you Stephen, this is what I was looking for. :)

My pleasure!

Paper maps are great. I also use one on my iPad called City Maps 2 Go. I can pin the places I want to see - I colour code my stars into restaurants/food, sights, shopping and a red star for where we are staying. You need to get on wifi once when you first arrive in the city, then it does a fairly good job of showing you on the map where you are while offline (sometimes it can take a while to 'catch-up if you've been using the subways). I can look at the map and see everything in the area that I might want to see...it was great in Paris, especially since I wanted to find some pastry shops that I had pinned - may be a little harder to do on a paper map. Also great in Rome because I had I think a half dozen gelato places pinned that I wanted to try!

The Rick Steve's Guide Book is what I have used both in France and Italy, invaluable IMO, and of course this forum.

My process is:
1. Figure out what I want to see
2. Figure out what requires reservations
3. Figure out what is open late
4. Figure out what is closed and when

Plan to visit places when they are the only thing opened in the evening or on a particular day.

Plan to visit things when reservations are confirmed.

Loosely plan on order to visit other places.

Keep some free time for local or seasonal events.

Be flexible and enjoy the ride.

We always take a Free Walking Tour of any major city we're visiting, as their licensed tourguides work for tips. And we often take their nightlife tour of the city that night.
When in Rome, we get all of our travel information at RoninRome.com. He covers every tourist sight, accommodations and every item you will need to know--including getting train tickets out of a vending machine.
The best way to get around Rome is using public transit--buses and the subway system. Otherwise, you'll walk your legs off.
We're returning to this great city the end of April, 2016.

In Rome (best over 3-4 days) ...
1) South to north
Colosseum > Forum > Campidoglio > Vittorio Emmanele > Trevi Fountain > Spanish Steps > Piazza del Popolo > Borghese
2) West to east (loosely)
St Peters & the Vatican > Castel Sant Angelo > Piazza Navona > Pantheon > Campo de Fiori > Trastevere

We just use good old-fashioned paper maps as we don't want to haul electronics outside of cameras around all day. I make a list of what we want to see, sticker their locations on a map before we go, note opened/ closed days, and then sightsee by grouping what's in individual areas. You do want to be flexible, though, so you can do attractions which are mostly outside on dry days and museums/churches on wetter ones.

Neither of us are fans of pre-determined routes as much of the fun in Rome and Florence is just seeing what you run into along the way...whichever way that is. Florence, as mentioned earlier, is not really very large at all, and we've never found Rome to be overwhelmingly expansive either. I think we've hopped a metro just a couple of times in Rome over several trips, and haven't at all in Florence.