Italy - is it too much to add Switzerland?

Marie,

An activity your kids might enjoy is a cooking class in Rome. If you want the website of the place with great reviews in Rome, send me a private message.

If you planning to go to Venice, I would recommend just going into the Dolomites and hike there instead of adding more travel time to go into Switzerland (although S is wonderful, too). Check out Cortina d'Ampezzo, Italy to see if that appeals to your teenagers.
Teenage girls would probably also like Verona (Romeo & Juliet) along with sites you would enjoy.

Idea for Itinerary:
Fly into Rome - 4 days
Siena - 2 days
Verona - 2 days
Dolomite area - 3-4 days
Venice - 3 days

One thing I have done twice is fly into Zurich (ATL to Zurich non-stop flight) and take a train down in to Italy. Great scenery--waterfalls, tunnels, chalets, lakes....you could spend as many days as you wanted in Switzerland before leaving from the Zurich airport if you flew out of Zurich on the return home.

My first choice would be to add the Cinque Terra for 2 nights. Beautiful area and the kids can hike from town to town. Monterosso has the biggest beach of the 5 towns.

You can fly into Venice and out of Rome. Venice - CT - Siena - Rome. The Venice to CT trip when I did it last year was a 5 hour trip. If you don't mind the long travel you can leave Venice early in the AM (we did I believe it was 7) and arrive in the CT in time for lunch. Also from the CT to Siena you'll pass by Pisa where you can drop you bags at the station and see the tower for a couple hours and jump back on the train.

You want to avoid museums, churches, etc. and yet you are including 3 days in Venice, 4 in Rome and 3 in Siena, all of which will bore an adolescent to death after one full day or two.
You can add Russia to your trip, if you like, but even within Italy there are lots of places that would entertain an adolescent without museum overload. First of all Venice (or Milan) is not a good airport to depart from (far from the city and return trips are generally early mornings). It's however a good place to arrive at. So generally is best to land in the north (Venice or Milan) and return from Rome. I'm including Milan in the equation because with frequent flier awards it's easier to find seats to larger airports (like Rome and Milan) rather than smaller ones, like Venice.
VENICE: 3 nights is more than enough. 2 also ok. If you arrive early, on the first day visit Murano and Burano, the second day devote fully to Venice.
LAKE GARDA: Plenty of activity for kids (beaches, boat excursions, Gardaland Water Themepark, Auto Safari, pretty towns like Limone, Malcesine, Sirmione, Riva. Nearby Verona has the Roman Arena and Juliette's house (a total fake worse than Las Vegas).
DOLOMITES: Hiking, spectacular alpine landscape.
CINQUE TERRE: Beaches (cliffs), hiking, beautiful coastline.
TUSCANY: One full day to Florence (boring museums and churches), then head for the small towns and countryside. Let your kids drink some Chianti, that will make them happy after a couple of tastes (drinking age is 18, however nobody gives a damn about the law).
ROME: Two days are more enough for the boring stuff. Take them to the beach or to villa Borghese park.
SORRENTO/AMALFI COAST: beaches near Positano, boat excursion to Capri, Pompeii, Ischia (water park/spa with plenty of pools)

All great suggestions. I have seen places with cooking classes, and that sounds like a lot of fun. think I may try to stay in Italy at this point. What about:
Fly into Venice - 3 days with a possible day trip to Verona
Tuscany - looking into potentially renting a villa with a pool. We can take side trips to the beach, Chianti, Cinque Terra, Sienna, etc. That way it breaks it up a bit. 7 days? Some of those villas are 7 day rentals.
Rome - 3 days. I spent a week in Rome in my early 20's, and loved every second of it.

My biggest concern with the villa is that I really didn't want to rent a car - there are 5 of us with luggage and I think that might mean a huge car with a huge expense and potential difficult driving conditions.

Does this sound more kid friendly and do-able?

To add to my above reply - is 7 days too long with three teenagers in the Tuscany region? I could look into going south of Rome as Roberto suggested, but would only want to do that via public transportation. Boat ride to Capri could be very different and interesting vs. more churches....

I think you're right to focus on Italy and save Switzerland for another trip. If you go into the Dolomites, you can stop in Bolzano for the Ice Man Museum which makes a change from what's offered in the cities. Many travelers do enjoy a week in Tuscany with a car, but I'd rather spend a couple of nights each in Siena and Cinque Terre, which are accessible by train. If you day trip from Tuscany to Cinque Terre, you might have a couple of hours driving time each way to La Spezia (then park and take a train to other towns). See www.viamichelin.com to help plan driving times/routes and if you have Rick's Italy book, see also the driving-time overview on p. 675.

I would go to Cinque Terre and Lake Como. I was there last year and I really enjoyed it. I think it is a must see, the hike from one town to another at Cinque Terre is really unique. Plus you are already there in Italy so why not just cover all of it. Switzerland is pretty nice too, but I think it deserves its own trip.

Marie, a few years ago when we were using our United points to fly into and out of northern Italy, the United lady said that they had no flights home from anywhere in the area. However, she could get us out of Zurich. I recall saying "now there's a big problem - book it" We changed the entire back end of our trip to include 3- days in the Berner Oberland. It was a great decision. It does take about 7-8 hours to get from Venice to the B.O. No shortcuts or ways around the travel time. Venice --> Milan --> Spiez --> Interlaken Ost --> Lauterbrunnen or elsewhere in the valley. Very easy train ride to Zurich. We spent our last night in the Zurich airport Hilton (on points of course).

Thanks, Larry. I will need to use that as an option - free doesn't necessarily mean convenient! And if I were FORCED to go to BO - then there would be worse things in the world :).