Italy in December

He train from Rome to Venice is better than flying. From Touchdown at Marco Polo to being in down town Venice will take about two hours.

Train avoids hanging around in Rome for your second flight, security, etc etc. Train trip is about four hours, trains leave about every half hour, and you arrive in Venice right on the Grand Canal.

Absolutely the train from Rome to Venice!

In Venice, look at Ca’ Angeli as a hotel. Lovely location and breakfast, 24 hour front desk, but very small and intimate.

my younger daughter who is study [sic] in Florence...Also, any off the beaten things to do during our week in Florence

I suggest you give your daughter the task of investigating the "off the beaten path".

for our planned week's stay

Am I reading this correctly? Your entire stay will only be one week? If that is true, skip Venice. You just don't have enough time to see all three, especially if you are there to visit your daughter. When's the last time you saw her? How long will she be studying in Florence? Personally, I'd skip both Rome and Venice and spend what little time you have in Florence, especially if your daughter will be there for a while. Before she comes home, plan another trip of at least two weeks and see Venice and Rome then.

Doug, I think there are six days available in addition to the time in Florence.

My stay will be 2 weeks but we chose to spend an entire week in Florence.

The other week will be split between Rome and Venice. Trying to determine the value of a "personal" tour guide if anyone has done this opposed to tour with a larger group. I hear the lines are not to long in December. The value in the individual guide is to avoid the line??

Also people are recommending the various 3 day passes for museums.

Still searching for the "special" place to stay in Rome.

Thank you!

I'd estimate about 500 euros per day for a personal tour guide, based on no personal experience whatsoever, just what I've read. That's way outside the price range most of us would be comfortable with, at least for more than perhaps one special day of a trip.

I'm not aware that a personal tour guide can do anything for you, line-wise, that you cannot do either for yourself by buying an entry ticket in advance or (in the case of the Vatican) by going on a non-private early-access tour. What a guide primarily does is impart information, which is obviously quite a valuable commodity when your time is short and/or you have a special interest that may not be well-served by a mass-market tour.

The value in the individual guide is to avoid the line??

No. As acraven said, what a personal guide does is impart information. You can skip the long ticket lines with pre-purchased tickets or tours offered by the attractions themselves. No one skips SECURITY queues, which are common at most of the most-visited sites, but which tend to move pretty quickly and shouldn't be as long during the off season.

We've managed pretty well without guides by doing a lot of reading before (and after) a trip but a guide can be valuable, as acraven mentioned, if "time is short and/or you have a special interest that may not be well-served by a mass-market tour" or deep reading. Personal guides are very expensive but there are small-group tours which are very good and don't involve herding 40 people around. When you decide on some of the things you wish to see, the gang here can make some recommendations if you want to go that route?

Also people are recommending the various 3 day passes for museums.

It comes down to the math: having the time and interest to visit enough of what they cover to make good on them. We've never used the Roma Pass but some folks like that one. For Florence, we used a pass which is, sadly, no longer available and which covered us for longer than the current 72-hour version. Still, the Firenze Pass might be a good buy for you IF you make a plan to use it to advantage in its 72-hour life.

Regarding transit which may be covered with passes, both cities are very walkable so we didn't feel the need to use public transit at all in Florence, and have just purchased a couple of single-ride tickets for venturing longer distances in Rome. Do note that NO pass covers transport from/to airports, and please don't consider buying the Omnia Pass for Rome: that's an oft-mentioned ripoff.

Off-the-beaten in Florence? Put your student in charge of those but if you like art, architecture and history, there's enough in Firenze, both in and out the main tourist areas, to fill your week. Many sweet spots are not really "off the beaten" at all but are not visited by the majority of the visitors on the 24 or 48-hour dead run to the majors (Uffizi, Accademia, Santa Maria del Fiore, Ponte Vecchio...) So, what sorts of things are you interested in seeing?

I've used and gotten value out of some city sightseeing passes, but most of the time I investigate them, research the cost of individual attractions I expect to visit during the validity period and decide they will not pay off for me. Each traveler or group is different. Here are some considerations:

• What do you want to see in the city? Are some of those places free or not covered by the pass?
• How many covered attractions do you realistically expect to see during the validity period? Are you going to get started early each day? Are you going to eat lunch on the run, vs. spending 1-1/2 hours having a nice, leisurely Italian lunch? Are you they type of traveler who walks at least as fast as average through museums and historical sites, or do you spend the time to read every bit of posted explanatory material? Do you plan to use audio guides where they are offered? (Audio guides typical slow me down a lot.)
• If your hit list includes a number of place not covered by the pass (whether free or pay-to-enter), is grouping your covered sights together on pass days going to result in skipping over nearby free or non-covered sights as you attempt to maximize the pass? How much time will you waste later, on a non-pass day, returning to the same neighborhood(s) to hit the skipped-over sights?

It's very difficult for me to answer the question you have asked for myself, and impossible to do so for another person.

One other point: I suspect that travelers planning their first trip to a city tend to overestimate the value of the "free city transportation" part of a sightseeing pass. Often the sights are close enough together that there's not a lot of benefit from hopping on a bus or the subway unless one is mobility impaired or is staying in a non-centrally-located hotel. Full disclosure: I walk everywhere, so my view on this subject is a bit warped.

Full disclosure: I walk everywhere, so my view on this subject is a
bit warped.

LOL. Me too. A city is almost always more interesting from the sidewalks than from behind glass, and hoofing it helps me work off the quarts of gelato. Ooof.

I will mention that with enough time and interest to work with, a pass can encourage a visitor to stop into some attractions they otherwise might have skipped.

In Venice, check out this free tour. Very informative and fun guides. Please tip.

http://www.venicefreetours.com

They also have one in Florence, but I have no personal experience with it.