home base and itinerary

1) It depends, as transport options and how much time you like to travel per day will differ.
2) This is always down to personal preference. I'd rather move accommodations than be on a train for two hours in a day. Others will vary.
3) Almost always train for Italian cities; only car for rural areas and village travel.

You have traveled before so you likely know the drill already--don't over do it. For two weeks, I would choose no more than four bases--your list cut in half would make a great two-week trip--either Milan/Lakes/Venice OR Tuscany and CT. If you choose one or the other, you could add some smaller places in, which is always nice but especially in summer.
Enjoy!

I agree you have two trips here. We took the first one with our young adult children in August of 2021. We flew into Milan and out of Venice. We went from airport into Milan, stashed our baggage at train station, and went to see the Duomo ( I had bought tickets ahead of time). We did some more looking around and then caught the train to Lake Como.

We spent 5 nights in Bellano on Lake Como, 3 nights in Verona, and 4 nights in Venice. The five nights in Lake Como was our children’s choice. We would have done 4-4-4. We ended up doing a day trip from Verona to Lake GArda mostly to escape the heat we had mid trip. This gave us less time than we would have liked in Verona.

If you have a few more days than we did, you could stay in Milan a couple of nights.

We had 7 of us and rented apartments in all three cities.

We did the trip entirely by train (and ferry at Lake Como). It was a marvelous trip.

PS. I chose Lake Como over Cinque Terre with no regrets.

Depends on how tolerant you are of crowds. Given that June is high season and it’s a Jubilee year, to me a northern itinerary is a good choice (further from where Rome Jubilee pilgrims might travel). Milan, Lake Como, Verona, Venice.

Venice will be plenty crowded but if you can stay 4 nights you will get to experience the magical early mornings and later evenings and have time both to see the famous sights and get off the beaten track.

Lodging on Lake Como is in short supply. Start looking now. Booking.com is a good starting point, but not everything is listed there. If you find something that seems suitable, you can try to find a website that allows you to book directly. You'll want to be somewhere with good ferry service, which means the mid-lake area, ideally with easy access to a ferry stop.

Florence can be surprisingly hot in June, as can Siena.

Florence weather -- June 2024

Florence weather -- June 2023 << Late June was really miserable in 2023.

Use the pull-down box to the right, just above the graph, to check some additional years.

With other attractive options I wouldn't choose that part of Italy in late June, but anything is tolerable for two weeks if you're determined enough.

Temperatures in Milan and Verona look a bit better but still quite hot.

Check hotel reviews carefully to be assure you choose places with decent air conditioning.

We stayed in Bellano which is one train stop from Varenna on Lake Como. We made reservations at the last minute and had a large group and there wasn't any availability in the mid lake towns. It isn't as convenient as the mid lake towns for ferry service but we did it well without a car. One day we returned to Varenna and had dinner and then took the train one stop.

It has it own charms too as it is not as touristy and has multiple grocery stores, the best restaurant of our trip, and a nice local beach.

Hi. In most cases I have found that staying in cities with good transportation hubs are the easiest options to use as home bases. Given your priorities, you might want to consider:
- Fly into Venice (4 nights with day trips to the islands and/or Verona)
- Train to Lake Coma town (4 nights with day trips to other villages via ferry). I didn’t check the trains so you may have to go through Milan to change to local train.
- Train to Milan (1 night to see major sites) note that if you are interested in visiting a cosmopolitan city you may want to add nights here.
- Train to Florence (5 nights with day trips to Siena, Pisa or other Tuscan towns). Sienna is easily accessed by bus. There are many small group day tours leaving from Florence that might meet your interests as well.
- Fly out of Florence