We're planning a trip in late April/early May to Italy. We want to visit Rome for a few days (2 full days max) and include Florence/Tuscany and Amalfi Coast. For the Florence 'leg', we will base in Florence and day trip to Tuscany. If anyone has done a 10 day trip in these 3 areas, we would love advice for order of execution, great places to stay, etc. We've taken 2 incredible Rick Steves trips and they are always SO well planned. We're bringing friends that have never been to Italy and we want to create a similar experience for them. Suggestions are VERY welcome.
Other than two days in Rome, you haven’t given us much to go on. Do you have a rough idea of sightseeing priorities? What are the reasons you have chosen the specific destinations?
Fly into Rome
Stay 2 nights
Train to Salerno
Stay around the Amalfi Coast 3 nights
Train to Florence
Stay 4 nights
Train back to Rome.
Stay 1 night
Fly out of Rome
Get the plane tickets settled first then fill in the blanks.
* I agree the Amalfi Coast is an outlier; it takes a lot of time to get to and back from you might cut Florence out.
I think the most important strategy you can employ is not to try and do all these places you mention with just 10 days. That's not enough.
And how exactly are you counting those "10 days"? Does that include your arrival or departure days? If so, then you really have no more than 8 days, which is enough for two locations. Even with 10 full days, you would burn a day each way getting out to the Amalfi Coast. I think you need to be more explicit with how many days and nights you really have, then pick a smaller number of places. If you drop the Amalfi Coast (which is a geographic outlier) then the rest become somewhat more realistic.
You look to be spread thin enough to be translucent, if not transparent. You need more days, or "pick 2"
We appreciate all the info!! My husband and I have been on RS amazing 11 day Florence to Rome (incl Cinque, Lucca, Siena, Assisi, Orvieto). On this trip, two of our friends would be joining us to tour Italy and we're trying to figure out how much ground we could cover in 10 days. They want to see Colosseum, Forum and Vatican. Other than that, the trip is TBD. We would like to go south, but since they would love to see Florence too. Dilemma, Dilemma. trying to pick a great 10 day trip, leaving Dallas on a thurs, returning to dallas the following saturday
If you do not want to go where they want to go maybe they should take their own RS guided tour.
and you can do your own trip at the same time and meet them where you agree.
"...leaving Dallas on a thurs, returning to dallas the following Saturday."
That's what I was afraid of. That's not a 10-day trip for the purposes of planning an itinerary. Thursday you are in the air. Most of Friday you'll probably be in Italy, but at least some of your group, possibly all, will be so sleep-deprived and jetlagged that you'll be sleepwalking. You'll want to crawl into bed, but that's not a good way to get over jetlag. That arrival day is when you should plan to walk around outdoors, getting your bodies on Italian time. The second Saturday you'll just be eating breakfast, checking out of the hotel, and getting to the airport 3 hours before your flight home departs, so that's not a day for sightseeing, either.
What you have is really a seven-day trip (Saturday through Friday), plus some walking-around time on the arrival Friday. That's enough for a couple of bases, or you could stay in Rome and make some day-trips. Orvieto is very nice.
I agree with acraven.
You have a total of 8 nights in Italy (Friday, Saturday, Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday). That equals 7 real days on the ground, seeing and doing stuff. I'm not counting your arrival day as a productive one for doing much except to, as she says, "walk around outdoors, getting your bodies on Italian time."
Keep in mind that any group travels at the pace of its slowest member. Also keep in mind that you all don't have to be joined at the hip. You could split up in any number of ways and meet up with each other later.
I do think you should seriously consider renting a 2 bedroom (hopefully 2 bath) apartment in Rome. That would be a totally new experience for everyone. If that's too much togetherness, you might be able to rent two 1 bedroom apartments close to each other.
Whether it's 1 or 2 apartments, the cost should be less than staying 8 nights in hotels. To get an idea of costs, do some research using Booking.com and limit to apartments. Use any other filters you want to get the numbers down to a manageable size. Play around with it. I always start with Booking.com because I find it easy to use, the reviews are from people who have actually stayed in the places they review and the pictures are good.
Note that you are likely to find the same apartments on a variety of online sources, or maybe even listed on a personal website. Prices may vary among the listings. I understand that the well-known Airbnb tends to be more expensive than others such as Homeaway, VRBO and sources local to the city.
Before the RS Village Italy tour I took in 2017, I rented an apartment in Rome for 6 nights and 1 in Venice for 5 nights. I travel solo which makes any lodging expensive, but I prefer staying in an apartment whenever I can.
That's primarily because I'm lazy. I usually take things slowly in the morning. I swore when I retired that I'd never set an alarm again unless it was absolutely necessary. The bad thing for me is that breakfast has limited hours. I'll sacrifice my lazy instincts for an RS tour or the very early Sistine Chapel visit, but not just because breakfast ends too early.
Having a home base in Rome, seeing and doing some things there that you missed before or haven't even considered, taking a couple of day trips to places close by, will be much more memorable than spending so much of your very limited time on trains and buses.
We took our 3rd trip to Italy last fall with our daughter and son-in-law(their first trip). Flew into Rome and were immediately picked up by our driver to go to Positano. Spent 4 nights.(Plenty of time to relax, hike, take a day tour with a driver to Ravella and Amalfi. Next day we took a train to Florence for another 4 nights. Included a day trip with driver to Tuscany for 2 wineries and some small towns) The last leg we took a train to Rome where we spent our last 3 nights. Given the fact that we had an early train from Florence to Rome we had reservations to do the Vatican tour that afternoon so we were able to use the travel day as a touring day.
If I was you I would pare down to 2 locations---either Rome and Florence/Tuscany or Rome and Amalfi.
As others have pointed out you only have 7 days plus travel days---we had 11 days plus travel days and it was a packed full vacation.
Good luck!
You have 8 nights. The day you arrive is really a half day by the time you get from the airport to your destination. Pick two destinations Rome and Amalfi Coast or Rome and Florence. If your group wishes to visit the Amalfi Coast fly into Naples and home from Rome. Spend 5 nights on the Amalfi coast or Sorrento which is not on the Amalfi coast but a great place to stay. From there you can do day trips to Capri, Pompeii, Naples, Amalfi, Positano etc. Then take the train from Naples to Rome spend 3 nights in Rome. That will give you 2.5 days. You could reverse it and fly into Rome spend 3 nights train to Naples spend 5 nights in that area and fly home from Naples.
If you wish to visit Florence and Rome then you could fly roundrtrip Rome. On your arrival day train to Florence and spend 5 nights then 3 nights Rome. Ending in Rome as you fly out of Rome.
Good luck
“My husband and I have been on RS amazing 11 day Florence to Rome (incl Cinque, Lucca, Siena, Assisi, Orvieto).”
I’ll just add that it’s extremely difficult to travel at the same pace as an RS tour. You’ve got the bus dropping you at a precise location so you can access the main sights easily plus the guide leading you to a main point. They’ve got years of experience getting people in and out of places efficiently and quickly that it’s hard to match on your own.
I agree with all the recommendations to pick two areas and explore: Rome and Amalfi Coast or Rome and Florence. There are a few other tips that I can recommend to help you with the planning based on personal experience of taking friends to Italy for 16 days this last June. At that time there were six of us (2 college-aged girls, 4 people from early 50s to 65). No one but me is a regular traveler.
Planning Tips:
- Understand from all the travelers what type of trip they are up for and be as specific as possible so that you can plan accordingly. For example, one of my friends had mobility issues, another didn’t want to get up early in the morning, another
wanted to take a cooking class. How much privacy does everyone need? Understanding what an ideal vacation looks like will help you craft the best itineary.
- Understand the budget—how much does everyone want to spend? You will need to refer to this multiple times in your trip as you make decisions throughout the trip.
- You will be the RS tour guide, unless your friends are planners: I didn’t realize how much work and how much stress it was to plan and be responsible for someone else’s experience. Had I known, I would have planned fewer stops just to make the trip easier and less stressful.
Choosing your itineary:
- Start early and engage with videos and RS travel books so that you and your friends can determine what is going to interest them the most. Let this guide your trip.
- Map out the travel times (on paper), so everyone can see how much time it takes to get from point A to point B. We decided to go the CT from Venice even after doing the mapping (almost 6 hours of travel) because it was important to the girls. We decided not to go to Pompeii as we couldn’t justify the travel time, especially at the end of the trip.
- Pick you flights to line up with the itineary and your lodging. In choosing the lodging balance costs and convenience. Having traveled with our friends before in the US and rented houses, we knew that we were going to do all the work, so for us mixing hotels and flats helped us balance costs and convenience.
Whatever you choose, you will have a memorable experience.
Sandy
Ive done a whirlwind trip flying into Milan from Paris, once in Milan a bus to Lake Maggiore for 2 nites, fast train from Stresa to Rome for 1 night, then fast train to Verona 1 night, then train to Venice 1 night, back to Milan 1 night- it can be done!! We saw all the Borromeo islands, did the Mottorone furnicular, ate amazing food, shopped the villages, saw the Colleseum, Pantheon, Vatican, Verona Arena and Giullettas balcony, ate the best meal of my life at a Verona restaurant called Osteria II Bertoldo, went to St.Marks square, Cathedrals, gondola rides, Harrys Bar, walking and shopping and getting lost in Venice. Best trip ever! And saw Versailles, Sacre de Coer, and The Louve in France- so you CAN do it in my opinion!
Happy Travels✨💫
Ive done a whirlwind trip flying into Milan from Paris, once in Milan
a bus to Lake Maggiore for 2 nites, fast train from Stresa to Rome for
1 night, then fast train to Verona 1 night, then train to Venice 1
night, back to Milan 1 night- it can be done!!
While it worked for you, Demi, your itinerary is not a trip I'd advise for anyone, especially for two couples traveling together. One single snag (yes, we've had those) in a very tight itinerary and the plan can be out the window. You also flew into Milan from Paris so weren't coming off an international flight: different animal. You didn't try to do the Amalfi Coast: also a different animal where transport logistics are concerned. In fact, yours was a completely different trip than the one the OP is looking at.
I'll go along with the others that for the 8 nights/7 days they have on the ground, 2 locations (Rome + Florence/Tuscany or Rome + The Amalfi) is really the max they could do without trading valuable sightseeing time for spending a bunch of that dealing with trains/stations and checking in and out of hotels.
Totally agree with Kathy. We've done three trips and usually spend 3-6 days per location. We've also traveled with friends whose travel styles don't necessarily match ours (sleep in, fussy eaters, too much luggage, and the list goes on).
All of these trips have been around 3 weeks including travel, and we're not trying to see everything, but enjoy some time where we are, AND assume we will be back.