Help with Italy itinerary please

How many nights do you have devoted to staying in Italy?

I guess (and hope) you have around 10 nights.

Drive to Tuscany , a few nights they’re staying at a B& B and taking day trips to towns & excursions.

Florence is in Tuscany, it's the administrative capital of the Region. If you want to roam around the rural countryside you see on Instagram, you should drive towards Siena and the Orcia Valley.,

as far as we can go ,

That would be La Spezia, where you can take a local train to each village,

Train to Bologna? Maybe visit Modena and or Parma ?

Your choice. You can compare driving times and train schedules using viamichelin and trenitalia.com/en.htm Each village has a train station, so you must pick one where to stay before looking up the train schedules. I'd train directly from Monterosso to Venice via Milan, and visit Modena/Parma/Bologna on the way back to Florence.

then drive to Mestre and give up the car

Why giving up the car on the mainland (Mestre) and not in Venice itself? You can drive up to Piazzale Roma (google it) and then either walk or take a water bus to your hotel on the "floating district" of Venice

Local ferry to Venice for a few nights

No need to take a ferry to Venice if you drop the car off in Venice

Local ferry out of Venice
Train to Florence

High speed trains depart from Venice, you don't need to take a ferry to the mainland. Find Venezia S. Lucia on Google Maps.

3 cents:
- You'd better google ZTL and Tutor System in Italy
- Try not to leave anything in the car, especially close to tourist attractions like the tower of Pisa.
- check the price of an open jaw ticket, if you could fly into Venice and back home from Florence you would avoid backtracking. The opposite would mean departing from Venice at 4 AM.

Hi there and welcome to the forum!

Additional question?
Why would you start your trip in Florence, and then backtrack to Florence if flying out of Venice? Why not put all of your time in Florence/Tuscany on the front end? Or was that a typo and you thought you'd fly home from Florence?

Even so, you might consider a Tuscany/Florence up front plan with a flight home from Venice or the other way around; no backtracking needed and no need to jump right into a rental vehicle right off a transatlantic flight (never a good idea). Actually, in to Venice and out of Florence might be the better idea as flights often leave Venice at inopportune times in the early morning.

Yes, you'll want to use the trains in the Cinque Terre Region.
Yes, how much time will you have for this trip?
The Cinque Terre will likely be HEAVING with tourists June-Sept 'cause it's high season.
Yes, if planning on renting a car, pay heed to Dario's thoughtful cautions about driving in Italy if you've not driven there before. :O)

10-14 nights available

Thanks for the good advise

It sounds like the consensus is more train and less driving.

Where is a must or advisable for driving?
Where is it greatly advisable to train or other non driving transportation ?

Thanks

J

Where is a must or advisable for driving?
Where is it greatly advisable to train or other non driving transportation ?

I consider a car the best way to see rural Tuscany. Find a home base, an agriturismo and explore the countryside. I would recommend at least 3-4 days. For instance, it takes a full day (at least) to visit San Gimignano/Volterra. It takes another day to drive the Chiantigiana road. We also spent a day exploring the countryside and visiting the Abbey of Monte Oliveto di Maggiore, including staying in the evening for Vespers.

Of course, driving in cities should be avoided. We stayed just outside Greve and took a bus into Florence for the day.

How much time do you have? You proposed trip covers a lot of sites and distances. I wouldn't try to do all you have listed in less the 4 weeks. Also keep in mind that moving from place to place is a major time suck. Just checking out, traveling a couple of hours and checking in can easily burn half a day or more each time.

10-14 nights available

If you can do 14 nights, then do 14 nights. More time is always better.
with 14 nights you could do 4-5 locations, with just 10 nights 3-4 locations

Fly into Venice- much easier than OUT of and a great place to get over jet lag.
Venice 3 nights
Train to Bologna
Bologna 3 nights with 1 day trip, consider Ravenna
Train to CT- this will be your longest travel day
CT 2 nights- expect massive crowds
Pick up car in La Spezia as you leave CT
Tuscany hill town 3-4 nights
Drop car either in Siena or in Florence
Florence 2-3 nights- 3 if you are art lovers
Fly home from Florence

There are many many threads here about driving in Italy- do your homework. Driving in Tuscany is fairly easy and the only place you would need or want a car.

What plans shall we make for parking. That is, do we park outside the
Tuscan towns and ? Bus into center of town??

Make sure that your lodgings (wherever you chose to base in Tuscany) has easy accessible, legal parking.
You will NOT be driving into any of the hill towns. parking is outside the walls, either walk in, ride escalator, etc. Once you have settled on towns you'd like to visit we can give you more specifics.

Hello JS,

This plan sounds doable you just need to decide on how many nights/days you have and start to make a plan on when and where.
A couple of points:
-You only need a car for the smaller Tuscan hillside towns. A rental car is expensive and generally a hassle in larger cities so I would plan all your driving and then get rid of it ASAP. You could easily rent and return a car in the same place - Florence airport maybe - and then train to La Spezia/CT if that's what you want to do. It's usually cheaper and easier to do rental/return it in the same spot. It will take longer than driving but only you can guess how comfortable you are driving in Italy.
-Train to Bologna and day trip to Modena, Parma, Verona as desired and then train into Venice (1.5 hours)
-You can train/drive into Venice directly (no need for a ferry)
-Train from Venice to Florence (2.25 hours)

CT will busy with tourists and it's up to you whether the crowds are worth it. You could check out the southern side of La Spezia bay - Lerici - which is 'resorty' but attracts Italian tourists and Tellaro a little CT-like town and the beautiful coastline in between. I think these could be as popular but they have no train service so they are harder to visit. There is a Lerici > Porto Venere ferry a couple if times a day that docks the same place that the CT ferries dock so you could visit them by ferry if you wanted to.
The lakes are another beautiful and relaxing option to visit at if you just want to continue your countryside mellow trip before tackling the big cities.

I'm going to assume you mistyped Venice for Florence for flying out or we should discuss rearranging your whole schedule.

Sketch out your time, come back for more advice and create a plan. Don't forget to include rest/down days and room for people to do different things - especially when traveling as a group.

Have great trip,
=Tod

Hello from a friend you’ve never met!

14 nights won’t do justice to what you have planned.
First-drop CT!!
Second-trains definitely once you drop the car IN Florence after touring through Tuscany. I like what DougMac suggested for the Tuscan countryside.
If you want to see Modena and Parma then train to Bologna.
Train to Venice.

Possible itinerary:
Arrive Florence, pick up car and drive sleepily to your accommodation-5 nights or stay in Florence a couple of nights to acclimate, then off to Tuscany. Combination of 6 nights.
Drive back to Florence and drop car.
Train to Bologna-minimum of 4 nights
Train to Venice-minimum of 4 nights.

That’s 14 nights and that’s still a lot to accomplish especially with day trips.
Research, research, research. Can’t be said enough. Long gone are the days of just showing up and hoping everything will fall into place. Even though you aren’t suggesting that, having a definite itinerary in place when moving from one to another is really needed.
Warning: the research will only add places you want to see and visit!

Good luck and enjoy!

If you decide to keep a car the whole trip, recommend staying in Levanto which is one town north of Cinque Terre, then taking the train or ferry south to each of the towns (or hiking between them if the trail is open). We loved Levanto as well as Porto Venere which is south of Cinque Terre the best. Much less crowded and imho, just as beautiful.

Thank you all for your wise input

I will take your sage and fun sounding advice and substitute the less touristy nearby town.

I will skip the Florence backtracking

I will do more public transportation and less drivinig

And I will do more research ;(

Thanks Loads

J