Honeymoon Advice PLEASE!!!

Congratulations! I love that Australians spend a good chunk of time on holiday and do not try to "do" Europe in 2 weeks!

That said, I do feel you are moving too fast and spreading yourselves thin.

• Give Venezia at least 3 nights, then take the train to Padova for a day trip, if you m,ust. It is much easier and more relaxing to do your itinerary by train.

• Skip the Cinque Terre in favor of the Amalfi Coast. 2 nights in July will just make you crazy in the CT. It will be hot and crowded and not charming. Really one seaside location will be a better experience. You can hike on the Amalfi Coast, too. Add one night you have earmarked for the CT to Venezia and the other to Firenze.

• Skip Bologna and Parma. Neither is as remarkable for a first-time visit as the other things you will do.

• Assuming 4 nights in Firenze, having skipped the Cinque Terre, you can day trip to Siena. I love Assisi but a day trip from Firenze is a long day of driving, at least two hours each direction. Two full days in Firenze and one day trip to Siena would eat up your whole stay of 4 nights. And you do not need a car in Firenze, in fact it is a hindrance.

• I don't know how to efficiently visit Assisi this trip. MAYBE take one night from Amalfi Coast? Train to Assisi from Firenze and spend one night, then on to Sorrento? That would leave you with only 4 nights on the Amalfi Coast.

• A car is a hassle on the Amalfi Coast, especially in the summer. Driving the coast highway is not advised in summer, IMO. You will be fighting with tour buses and not able to enjoy the views. Take the train to Sorrento and base there. Your proposed drive across the country as a day trip is a 6 hour RT drive. Do you want to do that? I supposed you could rent a car just for that. I found Capri a bore and very expensive.

• If you are going to Pompeii, do it from Sorrento or on the way to Roma. Much more efficient than from Roma. If you want to enjoy the city and take your time, you will need all 3 days there, and then you will have just scratched the surface.

You will save a lot of money if you take trains and the occasional bus instead of renting a car. Enough to pay for a good tour guide in Pompeii: Gaetano Manfedi. Well worth it!

Forgot to mention, the site Rome to Rio can help you with transportation times and options.

Thank you so much for that response!!

In places that cars are a hassle I would drop them off and pick them up when needed to travel to next town/city. Definitely would not be driving every day. Mostly travelling to different towns.

Bologna or Parma was just going to be travelling between town to town.

I was thinking about adding one night to Florence in place of the CT and then doing a day trip from Florence. But friends that have visited CT have enjoyed it, compared to Venice.

Assisi seems to be about 2 hours each way from most cities we would be in. So I guess any town I choose to do it from maybe considered a 'hassle'.

Driving to the Amalfi I would drop car off in Naples and get to positano/sorrento another way from there.

THANK YOU SO MUCH

Lia,
Your itinerary sounds very ambitious IMO.

I presume you will be flying into Venice?

First off, you can easily travel via public transportation (mostly by train) to all the destinations on your itinerary.

Keep in mind that each time you relocate, you will lose about half of that day (packing/unpacking, checking-in/out, traveling, getting situated to new location, etc, etc...)

It's would be more efficient to travel taking this route:
Fly into Venice=> Florence => Cinque Terre => Rome=> Amalfi Coast=> fly out of Naples.

I'm confused by this statement:

Florence - 3 nights
- Spending two full days in Florence. One day visiting the town of Sienna. The other day visiting Assisi.
Do you think I have left enough time to explore Florence?

If you plan to stay 3 nights in Florence that's equivalent to 2 full days,
but if you are taking a day to visit Siena & the other day to visit Assisi, when will you visit Florence?

I'd probably omit the Amalfi Coast on this trip & add those nights to the other cities as follows:

• Venice (3-4N) with day trip to Padua
• train to Florence (5N) with day trips to Siena &/or Assisi.
• train to CT (3N)
• train to Rome (4-5N)-fly to next destination.

You can check train schedules here:http://www.trenitalia.com

Enjoy your honeymoon trip!

EDIT: I was writing my post not knowing Laurel had already given you such great advise!

It looks to me you have taken a standard tour, a-la-Rick-Steves, and trying to superimpose your Catholic tour. In a limited time frame, you will be driving too much and do neither; and it is a pity, as if you research a bit deeper you can probably come out with a personalized tour much more original than the usual stuff.

For example, it makes little sense to stay in Amalfi to visit San Giovanni Rotondo. It will be four hours driving in each direction and the driving will take out any spiritual consideration out of you. Research beach towns on the west coast - Peschici, Vieste are the first coming to my mind - and you will have your seaside time while being close to your interest. You could even end, at the very last end of the trip, in Otranto where there is a very beautiful Cathedral where Crusaders were blessed - and all the people of the city got martyred in 1480. There are ferries from Bari or Brindisi to Dubrovnik.

Italy is so full of Catholic interest places (in my parish we can afford to have our own little saint!) that a bit of research could unearth a full world. Some time should be spent in Umbria - Assisi may be worth its time on its own, not as a day trip; you are skipping Orvieto, where the Cathedral is a living memory of the Bolsena miracle. In Florence you should visit the S. Marco museum where fra' Beato Angelico painted all the monks' cell with a sacred fresco - and home to the stern fra' Savonarola that got burned at the stake as an heretic. It would be a luxury to most travelers to devote one day driving to La Verna, a mountain place absolutely in the middle of nowhere where St. Francis got his stigmata, but maybe you could be interested. Or you could visit St. Francis' church in Siena, where a few hundreds of consecrated hosts that were stolen and found again in 1730 are still kept (usually hosts dissolve in a few years, but these ones managed to keep intact for almost three centuries, and nobody can explain why - they have even given a sample to microbiologists that found them to be sterile).

And so on. Have a deeper look to Italy.

Ken has also given you a good itinerary and asps some great insight.

I do want to offer this advice on a car. Traveling between major cities, in particular, is best done on a train. It is faster for one. Many people, especially those of us from places with vast distances to cover (U.S., Canada, Australia) believe a car is the only way. I have worked mightily to convince a visiting relation (not my DH!) that a car is not necessary in many instances. On one occasion where we were planning to travel together as two couples, I acquiesced to his desire to have a car for part of the itinerary -- in Dubrovnik -- after spending several car-free days in Croatia. In less than 24 hours after renting the car, he realized it was a mistake, but we were unable to return it without penalty so were stuck.

Just because you need a car if you live in California, Calgary or Melbourne does not mean you need one in Italy with the exception of getting to some towns in Tuscany and Umbria, and most of Puglia and the far south. We even did Umbria without a car and loved it!

I would suggest dropping Cinque Terre and only rent a car for the Florence - Amalfi Coast section of your trip.

Arrive in Venice - 3 nights
--One full day in Venice
--Day trip to Padua
Train to Florence - 4 nights
--One full day in Florence
--Day trip to Pisa & Lucca (home of Saint Gemma Galgani)
--Day trip to Siena
Pick up rental car and drive from Florence to Assisi - 1 night
Driving from Assisi to San Giovanni Rotondo - 1 night (visit Saint Padre Pio and Saint Michaels Cave)
Driving from San Giovanni Rotondo to Amalfi Coast (Sorrento) - 4 nights
--Day trip to Capri
--Day trip to Pompeii
--Day trip to Amalfi and Positano
Return rental car and train to Rome - 3 nights
--Two full days in Rome
Fly to Dubrovnik/Split.

CONGRATULATIONS !!

Your suggestion of an hour in Bologna is unrealistic. The city is worth days, not hours, for its history, architecture (more than 40 kms. of archways covering the sidewalks) and food. It's also big enough that it will take more than an hour just to drive in and out of the core. The centre is subject to strict parking and traffic restrictions, which you should be aware of for many Italian cities.
More generally: Slow down and smell the incense. Better to spend a couple of days getting to know one interesting location rather than coming home with a load of photos showing only the surface of places you rushed past.