If arriving day early for RS Village Italy tour in early October

Hi Susan, when my husband & I took the RS 17-day Best of Italy tour back in 2006, we landed at Malpensa (Milan), coming from Seattle and immediately took the trains to Verona for three days before meeting up with the tour at Lake Como. So, logically, absolutely, you could go to Verona! It’s just an hour further than Padova on the train. It is a beautiful city and a very easy one to begin a trip. You won’t be there during their opera season, so prices should be good. I love the pink granite streets.

My daughter & I will be staying in Verona again, and I booked the Hotel Bologna since I like that hotel. Their excellent location is steps from Piazza Bra - almost in site of the Roman Arena, and their breakfast is excellent, too.

Be sure to select the faster train from Venice to Verona. : ). There’s a Verona City Card if you want to go into sites, but being a jet lag day, probably just walking around the historic center will be your priority. Another option, depending on your interests, that I enjoyed during a subsequent stay in Verona was participating in a Verona city bike tour. It’s a 3-hr morning flat ride that shows you a lot of the historical center & interesting city history.

Maybe I should also add that we stayed 5 nights in Padova during a subsequent trip. So I am familiar with a lot in Padova, too. I would take the day & enjoy Verona.

Perhaps it depends to a considerable degree what condition you are in after the overnight flight. I'm always miserable and wouldn't be interested in a rushed visit to a somewhat distant city.

I like both Padua and Verona. You won't see all that Padua has to offer on the tour, and the time you have available wouldn't give you good coverage of Verona (I saw only one small church in a city full of historic churches, and I was in Verona for 3 nights), so I'd suggest staying in Padua.

Padua is obviously more convenient, logistically. There are about six trains per hour between Venice and Padua, most of them regionals that are cheap for ticket purchase right before departure. Nearly all the trains take just under 30 minutes. Verona has fewer departures, much longer travel times (one regional per hour takes about 1 hr. 30 min.; the other is about 2 hr. 20 min.), and ticket prices that can ascend to 35 euros each way for the express trains, which you would probably prefer in this situation. The express trains to Verona take 1 hr. 12 min.

In both cities the part of the historic center where you'd probably want to head is some distance from the train station. The situation in Padua is simpler, because you just hop on the tram. In Verona you'd need to figure out the appropriate bus.

We went on the RS Village Italy this past fall and didn't visit Verona, but what you're thinking of sounds reasonable. With a free afternoon once the tour starts I thought we saw all we wanted of Padua. You'd have an afternoon in Verona and then if there's more you want to see you could leave your bags at the hotel and explore in the morning, then take an early afternoon train to Padua. Take a look online at some of the walking tour videos of Verona people have posted on YouTube; you and your husband can decide if it's worth seeing. Part of the decision comes down to knowing yourself; if I arrive in the morning I'd be pretty beat by afternoon but others do just fine.

If you'll have cell data service in Italy then the Trenitalia app is great for looking up schedules and buying tickets; remember that you have to use the Italian names of cities (and of the US when registering)

When I did the VI tour I had us (myself, brother, SIL) staying in Venice and going to Padua the day the tour started. After we got to Padua I realized that was a mistake and wished we'd gone down the day before to have at least a full day plus the afternoon in Padua. I thought there was a lot that we missed. The botanical gardens (which are near the hotel the RS tour uses) are wonderful if gardens are an interest. I did not get to spend enough time in the Basilica of Saint Anthony, also near the tour hotel. I just zoomed in there when we had a few minutes between our tour day and dinner and it was not enough for me. I also would have liked another visit to the Scrovegni Chapel. You are very time-limited in there, so 15 minutes in the dehydration room, lol, and 15 minutes in the chapel itself. There is so much to see you can barely just turn around in a circle and your time is up.

I would like to have gone to the archeological museum and the art museums in Padua.

This tour was early in my tour "career" and I didn't really "get" how to do research and thus missed a lot!

Whatever you decide, you will fill your time!

Thank you all very much for your perspectives. I haven't decided yet, still need to discuss amongst ourselves, so anyone else's thoughts are most welcome as well. I appreciate the RS community!

As Pam mentioned, the Scrovegni Chapel is worth the time. When we stayed in Padova for five nights, we purchased the first time period of the day and almost had the chapel to ourselves. If you decide on Padova, I would recommend purchasing tickets before your trip to secure that time period. When you go with your tour, it will probably be more crowded.

What I would suggest is either flying into Venice (if it's a direct flight from wherever you're flying from, I know Philadelphia has direct flights to Venice) or into Milan. If you fly into Venice, I would suggest taking the short train ride to Padua and checking into your hotel and walking around and seeing Padua that first afternoon (I know you're going to be seeing it on your tour but I'm sure that there are many other things which the RS Tour won't cover). Second morning I would get up early-ish and take the train, it's only about an hour, to Verona and you should have about 6 hours or so before you would need to catch a train back to Padua to meet your tour group. That way you're planting yourself in one hotel for three nights. If you fly directly into Milan, then it's easy to take a train to Verona and spend the rest of the day there and an overnight before heading to Padua the next day. So it seems as though a lot of it depends on your flight plan. Have a wonderful time. We will be doing the RS BOI 17 days in September, which starts in Venice. But we will be flying into Milan directly from Boston, and then taking a train to Venice to begin our tour the following day.

And thank you, Jean and Mala, for your thoughts. Interesting idea to do Verona as a day trip from Padua... I would so not want to miss Verona, so we'll ponder the various ideas. (I had wanted to arrive to the RS Heart of Scotland a couple of days early so we could see either Glasgow or Isle of Skye but got overruled because my husband didn't want to bounce around to another hotel - whenever I see anything about either place I regret not insisting more...) Thank you.