Italy and France Itinerary -- is this reasonable

Although I'm sure major delays on the Freccia from Milan to Rome are very unlikely, prepurchasing 6 tickets for a Walks of Italy tour for that afternoon would make me nervous. You have a lot of time in Rome to play with, so I'd try not to have a costly prepaid activity scheduled for the arrival day.

Posts on the forum show some unfortunate and significant recent changes in the way the Paris Museum Pass works. Be sure you're aware of those. With one day for Disney (will you want flexibility to react to weather forecasts?) and nearly a full day for Versailles--plus a group of 6 people to wrangle--I have doubts that the pass will make economic sense. With not much more than 1-1/2 days for the city itself, will you get any value from the ability to just pop into minor sights?

Making allowances for personal preferences, I think the itinerary looks solid.

Since you are still in the planning stage, I assume you haven’t purchased your Walks of Italy tours yet. I took 3 on my last trip and they were very good. Keep an eye out for any sale they might have. They usually have one on Black Friday that would save you a bundle.

I would do many of those tours you have planned with Walks of Italy on my own using a guidebook or with a private guide, the latter being a good value considering you have 6 people. For example, your day planned for the Colosseum, Palatine, and Forum could be done for about €250-300 with a private guide. How much will Walks of Italy cost for that tour? Same with the Vatican. If interested in a private guide, contact Sonia Tavoletta, [email protected] for her rates and ideas.

I would definitely do Pisa and Lucca on my own by train and with Rick’s guidebook. Rick has so many great walking tours in his Italy guidebooks.

For the Archaeological Museum in Naples and Pompeii, I would suggest you contact the Rick recommended Mondo Guide. Use their quote request and they’ll be happy to tailor a tour to your group’s needs.

Way too little time in Rome, Florence and Venice.
You can do Pisa (but the site of the Leaning Tower, etc. is not near downtown) on your own, but to do Pisa and Lucca on the same day will stretch your time there, because of the time spent on travel. To me it is worth finding a tour that handles the transportation.

I would skip Milan and fly into Rome if possible, then spend all the pre-cruise days in Rome (4 nights if I'm correct).
Then, after the cruise, no time in Rome - spend 1 extra day each in Naples, Florence and Rome.
Otherwise, it's too fast-paced for me, and there's some sub-optimal backtracking: for instance, your original itinerary passes through Florence twice.

The Rick Steves Italy books says you can get a 10%discount when you book online with Walks of Italy and use the code 10ricksteves

Day 11 - Naples - We want to see Pompeii and then Naples Archeological
Museum. Haven't found a tour that is reasonable in price and includes
both --- suggestions appreciated.

That's because trying to do both in one day is overload, IMHO. I've done Pompeii twice and it's a much larger excavation than first-timers realize. We spent at least 5 hours there on my 2nd time and still didn't cover it all. We couldn't have done the museum justice on the same day. Then again, you might be fine with just a couple hours of highlights at the scavi.

Also, you've done your itinerary by number of days but not by actual DATES. There are days that the museums are closed - such as Italian National Museums on Mondays and the Vatican Museums on most Sundays - so you might need to take those into consideration.

I'll agree with Laurel that you don't need guided tours for ALL of what you've listed, such as Day 14 in Florence.

Day 18-21 Paris Fly To Paris from Venice, Explore Paris sights with
Museums Pass (Louvre, St Chapelle, Orsay, Versailles)

If you used the Paris Museum Pass before, make sure you understand what has changed since the last time you used it? You will need to make advance, timed-entry reservations for the Louvre even with the pass. It also doesn't allow you priority entrance at the security queues of Sainte Chapelle or Versailles (and there is an extra price for visiting on Musical Fountain Shows or Musical Gardens days) and you are now only allowed a single entry to each attraction the pass covers.

If you only intend to use it for the 4 attractions listed, I'm not sure it's worth the price but you'd have to do the math. I'd probably pre-purchase tickets for Versailles and the Louvre through their individual websites instead.

https://booking.parisinfo.com/il4-offer_i148-paris-museum-pass.aspx

"PLEASE NOTE: To visit the Louvre Museum, you must book a time slot (full instructions here), due to high affluence and ongoing renovations"

And again, some attractions are closed on Mondays (Musée d'Orsay, Château de Versailles) or Tuesdays (Musée du Louvre) so you'll want to be cautious of your actual dates. :O)

I think most of this is doable, you will just be really busy and not have a lot of down time, which was our lesson learned during our Italy trip. Probably the one thing I would say is that the extra day in Florence is more interesting than the day trip to Pisa (we didn't visit Lucca), as there's more to Florence than just the Duomo, Accademia and Uffizi. The Medici Chapel was one of our favorites, going to the market, Pitti Palace (we like castles), Ponte Vecchio, Piazzale de Michelangelo, getting gelato, shopping in the leather district, etc. We stopped in Pisa on our way from the Cinque Terre to Florence, but I would've been disappointed had we sacrifice a day in Florence for it.

Rome -- don't forget St. Peter's (and take the elevator to get closer to the dome and see Michelangelo's work -- amazing), Spanish Steps, Trevi Fountain.

Paris -- you might like the Catacombs, though book a tour to get a better experience. I think it will be hard to get all of that in and then spend a day in EuroDisney, though. We had five nights in Paris and still missed a lot, but the Hop On/Hop Off bus brought us through the neighborhoods that we couldn't get to on foot.

Posts on the forum show some unfortunate and significant recent changes in the way the Paris Museum Pass works. Be sure you're aware of those. With one day for Disney (will you want flexibility to react to weather forecasts?) and nearly a full day for Versailles--plus a group of 6 people to wrangle--I have doubts that the pass will make economic sense. With not much more than 1-1/2 days for the city itself, will you get any value from the ability to just pop into minor sights?

Thank you so much for this tip. I have used the pass before, but before all of these changes. I will have to see what is best for us. We might scrap EuroDisney. Also, because the adults have been to Paris, our visits to Versailles, the Louvre and Orsay will not be too long. We mainly want to introduce our teens to those sights.

I would skip Milan and fly into Rome if possible, then spend all the pre-cruise days in Rome (4 nights if I'm correct).
Then, after the cruise, no time in Rome - spend 1 extra day each in Naples, Florence and Rome.
Otherwise, it's too fast-paced for me, and there's some sub-optimal backtracking: for instance, your original itinerary passes through Florence twice.

Thank you for the tip. Unfortunately, this is a Birthday Milestone trip for our daughter, and she really wants to visit Milan. We have a specific time frame in which to take the trip, which is why we had to put Milan before our cruise. We hope this to be an introduction to Italy. We know we will want to go back.

I would do many of those tours you have planned with Walks of Italy on my own using a guidebook or with a private guide, the latter being a good value considering you have 6 people. For example, your day planned for the Colosseum, Palatine, and Forum could be done for about €250-300 with a private guide. How much will Walks of Italy cost for that tour? Same with the Vatican. If interested in a private guide, contact Sonia Tavoletta, [email protected] for her rates and ideas.

Thank you for the tip. I will contact her and see what her rates would be.

Also, you've done your itinerary by number of days but not by actual DATES. There are days that the museums are closed - such as Italian National Museums on Mondays and the Vatican Museums on most Sundays - so you might need to take those into consideration.

Thank you Kathy for all of your tips. I am aware of museum closures so I am working around them.

Regarding the Paris Museum Pass, I have used it before, but it was before the changes. I am so happy that I posted this here, and got peoples replies that alerted me to this. I will have do research some more to decide what we will do.