Italy in November - Florence & Venice or Florence & Rome

7 days is not much. I would limit myself to Florence and Rome. Forget about adding any place else. You barely have enough time for Florence and not enough for Rome.

Given the time of year and your limited days, CT is a 'no', in my book.

2 days Rome or 2 days Venice. Take your pick. No 'wrong' choice.

If you really need one other place to go while based in Florence, perhaps a day trip to Pisa or Lucca? Or Pisa and Lucca if that ambitious.

If you fly into Venice and spend 2 nights, you will have 1.5 days of which your half day is jet lagged. If you fly into Florence, and then go to Rome, flying out of Rome, you have 1.5 days as you need to allow a half day for checking out of your hotel, taking the train and checking back into your new hotel. What can you see in one day in Venice? What can you see in 1.5 days in Rome? That is your decision. I would allow one more night to either Venice or Rome and I would go to Venice. Why? To me it's magical. I love it there. Save Rome when you have more time to see it. But, that is just my opinion.

We did a similar trip to Italy in November 2016, but stayed the entire time in Florence with day trips to Lucca, Siena and Fiesole. There is so much to see in Florence and it makes a great home base for day trips. Also, remember that it gets dark early in Nov. and you may have a little drizzle (we did) that cuts into your sightseeing time.

That said, we ended up returning to Italy the next summer and wished that we had visited Venice in November instead of late June!

As mentioned, you lose time on travel days. I would add a day to Venice. Because there is just so much to see and do in Rome, I feel that any visit shorter than 5 days really doesn’t capture the magic of the Eternal City. I’d save Rome for another trip.

Thank you so much for your replies. I think we will save Rome for another time and fly into Florence and out of Venice. We can get over our jet lag in Florence where we will have the longer stay. Plus it seems we would hardly touch the surface of Rome in that short time. I can see doing southern Italy on another trip and can do Rome at that time.

Think it is coming together!

Oh good idea. Flights coming in from Boston were good, so I assumed the same for departures. I will have a look.

It has been a while since I looked, but it seemed the early flights were the lowest cost and the ones later in the day had a higher price tag. Just have to balance cheap flight and expensive water taxi vs higher priced flight and lower cost transport options, and not having to get up at o'grim 30.