Honeymoon in Italy - need help

Congratulations on your impending nuptials, and best wishes for a happy life together.

Can't go wrong with Italy for your first trip to Europe. Especially for romantics.

If your plan is to leave home on May 26 and return home on June 8, that really only gives you 11 full days in Europe (your travel days will be consumed and upon arrival you'll be wiped out, so don't count those days as usable). With 11 days, I'd stick to 2 or a maximum of 3 places. Venice, Florence and Rome make sense. Each is unique, there's plenty to see and do, they're reasonably well connected so you can try to be efficient.

Since this is your first time to Europe (never taken a 2 week trip before, too - wow, your world is about to get a lot bigger!), you should expect that you won't be terribly efficient, that's OK, embrace it as a learning experience.

You'll get lots of advice here, Here's the first one: fly "open jaws" - fly in to Venice and fly out from Rome (or vice versa), rather than a "round trip" in to and out of one city - this saves you money and (more critically) time because you don't have to circle back to your arrival city.

End of May/early June should be plenty warm in Italy. A good time to go.

Great advice from David, but from what I read from fellow posters, fly into Venice and out of Rome. If you do your research, flights out of Venice seem to be very early in the morning. My cousin flew home from Venice thus past Sunday via Air France at 6:00 am. Not a direct flight, ugh. Rome probably has more direct flights.

Best wishes!! May you love long and prosper. I agree totally with David's post "...I'd stick to 2 or a maximum of 3 places..." Personally, I'd only do two -- Venice and Rome. After the stress associated with even small weddings, you'll want to have a relaxing time and not be subjected to more rush, rush, rush. Every time you change locations you will lose more time than you anticipate. Not just the travel time itself, but time checking out, getting to the train station, finding the right track, and on arrival getting to the hotel, checking in, unpacking, and etc. Not sure what the budget is, but flying from Venice to Rome might be worth considering. We've been to Venice and Rome numerous times (as have many on the forum) so feel free to pick our collective brains about specifics.

Late May, early June is an excellent time. Weather should be good and the tourist season just starting to pick up. There is no way anyone here to lay out the plan you are asking for. Good to your public library and check out guidebooks and especially DVDs for Italy. That will give some overview of what you might finding and wanting to do. Swimming is going to be a problem since you are nowhere near beach areas. And your budget doesn't allow for five star hotels with pools.

Fly into Venice and home from Rome. Will be the most convenient and probably cheapest. For 14 days, 5 to 6K is tight but adequate excluding flight costs. Another thousand or two would make the trip very easy.

This site works best when you can return with specific questions. Right now too broad to be of much value to you. You might consider reading Rick Steves' "Europe Through the Back Door" to set the framework for your discussions.

PS A number of posting were at the same time. Just read the other responses. It will be cheaper and quicker to take the train between Rome and Venice if you buy the Super Economy ticket or even the Econ ticket.

Congratulations!! Italy is an excellent choice and the weather should definitely be warm.

Since this is your first trip abroad - here are my suggestions for what they are worth:

Get a couple of guidebooks and start reading up on what Italy has to offer. This will help you decide where you want to spend your time based on what you want to see/do. Venice, Florence and Rome are good first choices IMO.
If you decide on those cities, I would start with Rome since it's easier to navigate than Venice for first timers IMO - and as the other poster has indicated, definitely fly into one city and out of the other to save time. Since you will want to take the train between cities, try and pack a only a carryon bag and personal item each. Large suitcases (25 inches and above) are not great on the trains and for a two week trip, you honestly don't need more than a carry on each!
Also bear in mind that each city change will eat up anywhere from 1/2 to 3/4 of a day between packing, checking out, getting to the train station, travel time and finding your new accommodations. This isn't meant to discourage you from visiting more than one or two cities, but only as a guide to help you with the trade offs involved when planning a trip!
In general, I tend to plan one thing for the morning and one for the afternoon and note other things in the area that we can do if time/energy allows. When coming up with your plans, do check the opening times for the sites - nothing more frustrating than planning to visit a site and finding out when you get there that it is closed!
Once you have a tentative itinerary the fine folks here can help you with the details. As for budget, it really depends on what your preferences are in terms of accommodation. Staying in hotels means you will need to eat out for most meals (although some hotels do include breakfast) - if you choose an airbnb, you can eat in several nights. In order to come up with a budget, I'd look at flight and hotel costs for the type of accommodation you are looking for as a starting point to see if you are in the ballpark.

Yep, good advice above.

You can do it either way if you really want to, but I'd agree that flying in to Venice and out of Rome (rather that the other way around) is better. Venice will hit you like a ton of bricks - your first destination in Europe. You will love it. You might find Rome a little more challenging (axiom: as you go south in Italy, things become increasingly chaotic and more, well, Italian). You'll do better at Rome after having a chance to get used to Italy/Europe for a few days in Venice (and possibly Florence).

Take the train rather than fly between Venice and Rome (and of course to Florence if you decide to include that - I think you do have enough time for a short stop there but yes, slowing down is a good idea so consider that carefully). The train is fairly cheap but to get the good prices you need to book far in advance, so don't wait too long.

Before you nail down your plans, start reading the books, and watch the Rick videos on these places.

Thank you all for the kinds words and advice!

I was getting frustrated at first because i was trying to leave in and out of the same city. After playing around on google flights, its going to be about 1k each to fly into Venice and fly out of Rome. That seems to be the cheapest option and in agreement here.

I definitely need to do more research, we just decided and i just found this site, so I will check out all of the guides this weekend.

Very excited to go!

Something else you might want to do to see what you might be interested in doing is to look at travel scrapbooks. On this site in the upper left hand corner is a search box. If you type in “scrapbooks” you will see lists of prior entries to a scrapbook contest Rick Steves sponsors. While entries are limited to people who participated in organized a Rick Steves tours, some of the entries are stunning.

Another way you can use the search box, once you decide on exactly where you are going is to type in search terms related to questions you have. You will see a variety of prior threads that may give you the information you are seeking based on prior questions and answers.

Something about money — you’ll find it easiest to use your ATM once you get to Europe to obtain euros. This is far less expensive than buying euros ahead of time in the US. But check with your bank to ask if they have foreign transaction fees. If they do, you might want to look around for a different bank for your European travel funds. A lot of credit unions offer accounts with no fees.

Depending on where you live, 1K for ticket probably is reasonable especially for that time of year. Probably should not wait too long on buying the tickets. People like to boast about hailing 500 and 600 dollar tickets but that is rare and often involve special circumstances. You should pin down your airline tickets and then move forward.

Congrats. I would also suggest besides RS books which are most helpful to read trip reports on this site. Another option is taking a RS tour. Small groups and you will see a lot. Not sure if it is your idea of a honeymoon but there is something to be said for someone taking care of the logistics. Enjoy planning is half the fun

Hi, sent you a PM with ideas for slightly different location

There's a big difference between "traveling" and "taking a vacation" and between "taking a vacation" and "going on a honeymoon".
Traveling is grueling, vacations can be relaxing, and a honeymoon should be special. This being your first trip to Europe, I'd highly recommend taking a tour to assist with logistics and identifying decent accommodations. You can spend WEEKs, on your own, searching for hotels within your budget. Tour agencies have done the homework for you and usually include tried and true hotels with relatively big breakfasts which you might like to start your busy day.

Yes, you can find a decent tour package in the $5K range. If you plan a trip on your own, you will spend considerably more on airfare than if you booked with a tour, and will probably end up spending as much on hotels, even it you think, at the onset that you won't. If you'll be on your honeymoon, you don't want your memories to be of some surprise hotel. My partner is a professional photographer, and believe me, photographs always look better than the real thing. So if a photo looks bad, the place is likely worse. Many tours fly into Rome and out of Venice, but you will pay more doing that if you book airfare yourself.

Tours will keep you busy, but you are young so GO, GO, GO. Like others said, just do your research ahead of time regarding WHERE you would like to go and WHAT you would like to see. Then find a tour that is aligned with your goals and budget. If you plan far ahead, you can MONITOR tour package prices. Take a few months to learn the average costs - then be prepared to JUMP on a good offering the DAY it's offered ( like with Gate1 offerings). RS offerings are reasonable too.

Finally, you might want to look "hot" or at least fashionable, but bring GOOD walking shoes, preferably running shoes. I've seen many young women with sprained ankles after their first day out. Don't ruin your honeymoon stumbling on cobblestones or street ruts. Look hot when you crawl into bed. LOL

hey travelbug
where will you be flying from, USA? there are lots of airline sites to look at: kayak, google flights, skyscanner, fareboom. put alerts on when you find a flight, look at arrival and departure times, layover times, too early you will have to wait for checkin with your bags for how many hours and leaving, get to airport by 4 or 5 am OUCH! give yourself time on arrival day for jetlag, don't plan much maybe walk around people watch have a meal. it's your decision on apartment (we like them) or hotels that has front desk to ask questions. like others have said decide whats important to see, guidebook, have a map out and mark where things are. are your dates set in stone? it will be crowded with school out and summer beginning, some heat. when you decide hotel/apt, where you want to stay, look at filters (elevator/lift, A/C not many have, breakfast, cash euros on arrival, security deposit, above a noisy bar/cafe, on a main street) book early and don't look back lots to think about but this forum will lead you to an enjoyable honeymoon. take it with a grain of salt what different answers you get, just have more info, do your homework then pick what's best for you.
aloha

Congratulations TravelBug on upcoming wedding. You have already received great tips, but a few other things to consider in your planning.

• You didn’t mention whether you were going on your honeymoon directly after your wedding or taking some time in between. If you are going immediately after your wedding you may want to factor that into your planning and how much you take on for your honeymoon.
• As you review the YouTube videos, scrapbooks, and read through the RS books (as others already mentioned are great resources), think about the type of trip you want to have: do you want to see and do as much as possible or do you want to savor a few things? Since you listed outdoors activities, food/wine as important, factor those into your planning.
• Venice, Florence, and Rome are doable in your timeframe. We went with family and friends (6 of us) during the same time frame that your traveling and the weather was nice, but you are places were already crowded. Make sure in your planning that you factor at least 1/2 every time you change locations.

Have a great trip,
Sandy

Hi there, Travelbug, and a warm welcome to the forum! Also hearty congratulations on your upcoming "I do's"!

I'll kindly disagree with lonekingfischer on booking a tour for this trip. Honeymoons tend to be times when the happy (and possibly tired) new couple want to spend time by themselves and not with a busload of other tour-takers. They also may want a more flexible agenda than a tour can offer. Italy is NOT a difficult country to figure out, and you have time to plan before next spring. You'll also find plenty of guidance and cheerleading here on the forum. :0)

Venice, Florence and Rome is the classic first-timers trip for good reason: all three are very different cities, all three are used to hosting travelers from all over the world, and there's frequent, efficient travel between them. I'd agree with flying into Venice and out of Rome because of those notoriously early flights out of Venice.

If you're flying out of the U.S, I'm guessing you'll fly overnight on the 26th and land in Venice on the 27th? Departing on the 8th, this will give you 11 FULL days and 1 partial arrival day in Venice. IMHO, that will give you enough time for a good look at all three cities. You might consider an itinerary like this?

5/26 - fly
27 - Arrive in Venice
28 - Venice
29 - Venice
30 - Venice
31 - Transfer to Florence (partial day)
6/1 - Florence
2 - Florence - day trip to Sienna or Lucca or a cooking class?
3 - Florence
4 - Transfer to Rome (partial day)
5 - Rome
6 - Rome - maybe a day trip to the beach in Ostia?
7 - Rome
8 - Fly home

Only you can judge how much charging around you want to do on your honeymoon and how much you want to spend leisurely wandering around or sunbathing reliving your happy day! If you might want a mixture of the two then I would suggest not trying to just hit the cities. Spend your first 4 nights in Venice, how about then a train to Verona for perhaps 2 nights, then Lake Garda for some relaxation for 4 nights and then train on to Milan for whatever you have left and fly home from there. This should make for shorter transition days whi,st getting a nice variety of culture and scenery.

We booked our flights, hotels and train travel between Venice, Florence and Rome through tripmasters.com, and were surprised at what a great deal we were able to get. I had researched how much the flights would cost by themselves, compared it to the package price, and found the package to be a huge bargain. You get to pick which cities and how many nights in each city and choose from many hotels.

We booked our flights, hotels and train travel between Venice,
Florence and Rome through tripmasters.com...

It's a personal decision to be sure but a fair amount of us prefer to book our flights directly through the airlines versus a 3rd party. The problem with 3rd parties is if a flight is canceled or rescheduled to the customer's disadvantage, one has to work through that 3rd party to rebook/reschedule. It can be a LOT easier/more efficient to be able to do that through the airline when placed in a bind, especially if it's a problem which arises very close to flight time. Just sayin'.

Congratulations on your upcoming wedding. Our first trip to Europe was to France and Italy for our 25th wedding anniversary, so I get the romance part. We looked at tours. However, we just wanted to be with one another instead of 20-30 newfound friends. I planned it all out after reading all the pertinent Rick Steves guides and doing some research online. There wasn't as much info on the web as there is now, so we made use of catalogs, snail mail, email and the telephone.

Kathy's advice for booking flights directly with the airline is dead on. It makes it much easier when there's a snafu. So does sticking with carry-on. If you need to make a quick flight change you have everything with you.

I also book directly with hotels and apartments. For the most part we've found pictures and reviews to be accurate. We have hit a goofy rental or two over the years, but that's part of the fun and makes great stories when you get back. Have a good time planning your wedding and honeymoon. It's all a great adventure!

I have a few suggestions based on our visit to Europe in June this year:

1. You may find that it’s cheaper to buy round trip tickets to a city like London. We paid about $550 round trip SFO to London when we bought tickets in January (for June). From London there will be lots of choices to fly to/from Italian cities. Buy tickets directly from the airline. After British Airways cancelled our flight from London to Venice with just 10 days notice, I was able to buy tickets on EasyJet for about the same price. In addition, because of European rules regarding flight cancellations, BA paid us compensation for the cancelled flight.

2. Read Rick’s guidebooks to see what you really want to do in Italy, because it’s easy to get an overload of museums, churches, and art in each city. Decide how many days you want to spend in each city based on what you are interested in doing.

3. This suggestion isn’t going to be popular on the Italy board, but I would highly recommend leaving 3 days or so in your 2 week honeymoon to visit Murren, Lauterbrunnen and the surrounding area in Switzerland (AKA Berner Oberland). A fantastic place to go on a honeymoon and relax doing absolutely nothing but just enjoying the spectacular scenery, clean air and optional incredible hikes. You can fly into Zurich from Italy, and then fly to London from Zurich. Mid June and later is the ideal time to go, but you can still do a lot in early June. You may want to consult the experts on the Switzerland board about this.

hey travelbug
sent you a message, log in upper right hand corner says unread message
aloha

Kathy has given you a great itinerary, it will give you a great overview and time to relax in these wonderful cities.

For beaches, you have the Lido beaches in Venice and for Rome, I'd go the additional fifteen minutes by train to Santa Marinella.

Florence has many day trips to offer, Kathy has given you some by train, these are by bus.

https://www.getyourguide.com/florence-l32/day-trips-tc172/

Welcome to the group. Congrats on the wedding. Please heed the advice above and research. Your fiance can swim in Venice. We took our daughter out to the beach on Lido, an island you can access with the Vaporettos(water busses). It is a typical Italian beach, pebbles. Be sure to have water shoes. Go on a Chicchetti tour. You can do it on your own. Flights out of Venice are early which means little if any sleep, we got none. Remember, it may take an hour to get to the airport. The airport bus did not run the hour we needed it so we teamed up with another passenger and split a taxi.

Thank you everyone! Good tip about booking directly through the airline. We were considering potentially doing some sort of package and have no decided against it. The flights we were looking at went from 1k to 1.3k within a few hours.

We are going to wait. a bit longer and see if they come down any.
Kathy - I made an itinerary similar to yours except I cut the time in Venice and Florence and added more days to Rome. I had no basis on why I did that and was going to adjust the days once we start looking at activities and seeing what all we want to do in each stop.

Here’s what I had.

5/26 - Fly
27 - Arrive in Venice
28 - Venice
29 - Venice
30 - Train to Florence
31 - Florence
6/1 - Florence
2 - Train to Rome
3 - Rome
4 - Rome
5 - Rome
6 - Rome
7 - Rome
8 - fly home

We are planning on doing some heavy activity research this weekend and adjust the days as needed. Fiancé said he liked idea of spending most time in Rome but what does he know haha.

Don't miss Lake Çomo, Ravenna, and Lake Bellagio because they are wonderful honeymoon spots, but quieter. Rome is a busy metropolis. Sorrento is a fun place to visit. Capri is close by, but not a "beach" place for swimming from my recollection. I would also recommend the Tuscany area, specifically Siena. Congratulations! Money on an unforgettable trip is so much better spent than a wedding in my opinion.

TravelBug29, your itinerary is fine as long as it accommodates the things you two lovebirds most want to do. We LOVE Rome so 6 nights hasn't been too long for us but Florence is pretty darn wonderful as well so....

Decisions, decisions, eh?

Travelbug,

You will have a wonderful time with any itinerary for an Italian honeymoon. I do want to pose complicate things and suggest Sorrento or the Amalfi Coast. This area has beaches, Pompeii is nearby, and there are hiking trails. You would need to omit one of your cities if you opted for this area. It all depends on your priorities.

If you do go with Venice, Florence, and Rome, I would try to stay a couple of nights in a small town. It just gives a different perspective of Italy. Orvieto is easy stop between Rome and Florence for train riders. There are plenty others.

Have a great time and congratulations.