Hi,
Thank you in advance for the great advice you will provide me for my honeymoon plans in Italy.
My husband and I will be flying from Sydney to Italy for a 4 week honeymoon. Our focus in mainly on food and wine with a bit of history, walking and beach time thrown in. Oh and a fair amount of relaxing, if possible.
Our only set plans are to be in Verona for a wedding towards the end of our trip. We have been to Italy before and have seen the big cities of Rome, Venice and Florence so we are leaving these off this holiday. I have tried to make it so we are spending approx one week in each of 4 areas - Cinque Terre, Amalfi Coast, Sicily and Verona area.
Itinerary
Arrive Jul 10 in Pisa or Milan. Train to Levanto.
We are arriving from Australia so factoring in an extra day/night for jetlag.
5 nights in Levanto, seeing Cinque Terre, spending some time doing a hike or two, seeing some of it from the water.
Long train trip to Naples
2 nights in Naples - visit to Pompeii and/or Herculaneum and eat pizza.
4 nights in Amalfi or Positano
Hire a car
7 nights in Calabria/Sicily area - have yet to do a lot of research for this area yet. My husband's extended family is from Messina and I'd like to see the Aeolian Islands, possibly a day trip. Probably take a day or two to drive through Calabria and then spend most of time in Sicily
Fly from Palermo to Verona
3 nights in Verona - the various wedding celebrations will take up most of our time here but we are planning to go to the Opera as well.
Hire a car again
3 nights in Lake Garda
2 nights in Milan, fly home from Milan in early am
My main question is whether the amount of time spent in each place will be enough. I think 5 nights in Levanto may be more than we need but I want to factor in some time for jet lag. However it may be useful to take a night from here and add it to Naples. I have already taken out a few days in Bologna as I didn't want to overcrowd our honeymoon.
I am going to book the flights in the next day or two. I have looked at various open jaw options however I think it may be most feasible to fly in/out of Milan. The flight arrives early in the morning (6-8am depending on the airline). We can jump on a train and 3.5 hours later we are in Levanto. The flight to Pisa arrives at 1-2pm and it's a 1.5 hour train to Levanto. So Milan seems just as good.
I have put Cinque Terre at the start of our trip as it seems that early June will be better than later.
Thanks for any help you can provide.
Rachel