Looking for some travel and/or itinerary advice.
My adult son & I will be taking a once in a lifetime trip for us to Italy for 22 days (plus 2 half days on arrival and departure). We arrive and depart to/from Rome FCO this May 2025 (6th to 29th)
I am trying to figure out the best route for us without having to do long travel days but still get to some key festivals falling on specific dates that are not close to each other.. We are open to plane, train and car rental. Would love to rent a moped or eBike too. I just want to hit some of these things without spending all of our time travelling. Staying 1 or 2 nights in an areas is just fine, but of course, would rather hang our hats for a couple nights in 1 spot and day trip. We are travelling carry on only and will be doing hotels.
Looking for itinerary suggestions with a focus on food.
1. Would love to do food cooking classes with local venues rather than larger commercial ones. We are really open and would love to travel as many regions as we can, but there are a couple of things we really want to do.
Really want to attend the Fish Festival (Sagra del Pesce?) in Camogli that occurs (from what I can tell) on 10th and 11th (apparently 2nd sunday of may). Has anyone experienced that? Is it worth it?
Would love to attend the Lemon Festival in Cinque Terre (or any one of them if there are others). But I don't see how that would be do-able without wasting a lot of travel time. Again this is a more foodie trip so want to experience as many different foods as we can. More on the locals side than big city. Looks like that is happening May 17 which coincides with the Flower Festival in Noto, Sicily (says mid May but not sure exactly when). If we had to miss this that is sad but ok. We still want to do Sicily though.
My son also wants to check out the Ferrari/Lamborghini museum in Bologna - doesn't matter when.
- Other than food, we do want to hit some of the big things: Leaning tower of Pisa and the main Rome items/ We don't plan on seeing a bunch of basilicas or museums, etc.but do want to hit some of the big ones.
We don't envision going further north to Venice or anything. Not as interested in that - no time.
Really want to do Sicily too and of course, a couple days on the Amalfi coast and blue grotto. Those are things that interest us more
Plus the food, always the food.
Originally we thought we would spend the arrival day (6th) and next day in Rome then head to Cinque Terre and/or Camogli (Liguria) area on the Thus 8 or 9th) in order to hit that fish festival. Then the rest was whatever works best. But then I thought it might be better to immediately take the train from FCO directly to Florence, and a little visit there + Pisa, then head up north to Cinque Terre. Then travel around and end up back in Rome for the last 2-3 days where we would hit up the major venues, like colluseum, St Peters, fountain, etc. (so rather than split the Rome stuff, keep it together at the end since we depart from FCT)
Does anyone have any good ideas that would get us around and down to the south plus Sicily without doing all the criss-cross travel, unless that was part of the stopping adventures of course.
I have Rick's Italy for Food Lovers plus his other Italy book and have scoured YouTube and websites and read countless topics on this forum. I think I am just starting to get overwhelmed. I don't want to wind up in some remote dumpy area where it's not the best use of our time.
Thank you for any advice <3