hello= I thought I would put our itinerary on here just to see if anyone has advice? we will be traveling by train or bus only. Thanks in advance...Cheri ps I just posted for advice to perhaps drop Ravenna and go to Assisi for 3 nights...
fly into Milan 8am, catch train to Verona for 2 nights, Venice 3 nights, Ravenna 1 night, Assisi 2 nights, Sorrento 4 nights, Rome 3 nights, Orvieto 2 nights, Siena 2 nights, Lucca 2 nights, Manarola 2 nights , Nice 4 nights and fly home from there.
Hi I responded on your other thread and I hope you keep Ravenna in the mix.
Some people will say this itinerary is moving around too much but I am not among them. We did a trip in Italy like this a couple of years ago, a mix of 2 and 3 night stands, and it was perfect. I think if you want to see a place you should spend the night there. Doing day trips from a central location involves a lot of backtracking on the train. Checking in and out of hotels takes us no time at all,,and we pack to make it easy ( packing cubes). You have mostly nice short hops of an hour or two, only Assisi to Sorrento and Manarola to Nice are long train days. ,
So it looks good to me. Only thing I might question is Manarola in March.
hi Sasha- thanks for the note...we will be in Manarola the end of March and just hoping the weather will be okay!
I came back last month from basically 2 days in every city but Rome. I was fine with moving every 3rd day to see a lot of sights. If you are comfortable traveling a lot go for it.
My comment would be the city schedule seems funny to start north go south only to go north again. Why not fly into Naples and start in sorrento and work your way north through Rome Siena Orvieto Assisi etc then maybe Venice Verona and go to nice via Milan and fly home from nice.
Cheri:
You don't say when in March you'll be traveling. March weather can be good or bad, but we usually try to do our touring about time the snow thaws--the last few days of the month.
Your itinerary be more efficient if you flew into Naples (OPEN JAW) and worked your way north. Despite Nice Airport being the third largest in France, they offer no direct March flights to the U.S. You'd probably do best to take the train to Milan Malpensa to fly home.
I have a rather short attention span, and I would be a little bored spending two nights in some of the listed small cities. Making so many stops will be difficult traveling by train since every trip takes the most of a day.
We've started spending 4-5 days in one place doing day trips by rental car. Then we'll move down the road to another regional destination. Your travel experience might be better if you simplified your itinerary and didn't stay in so many places.
cheri,
Given the time of year you'll be travelling, my suggestion would be the same as someone else mentioned. You might consider flying inbound to Naples and then go directly from there to Sorrento. After that start working your way north and hopefully the weather will get warmer as your trip progresses.
Regarding your visit to Manarola, they may not yet be open for the season in March, so that's another good reason to visit there towards the end of your trip.
Again as previously mentioned, there may not be any direct flights to the U.S. from Nice, but it's easy enough to use a budget flight to connect in Paris OR take the TGV to Paris (probably about the same time as a budget flight).
I'll try and have a closer look at this later. Just running out for an appointment now.
Cheers!
