Itinerary for May 2008

DOable? Maybe. Enjoyable? I doubt it. For the length of your trip, try to limit yourself to two cities. Venice and Florence or Rome and Florence or rome and Naples/Positano. Or spend the entire time in one place.

When you decide, fly into the starting city and fly out of the end city to minimize backtracking and wasting vacation time.

Oops that's what I meant, doable. Anyway, we were thinking of just Venice & Rome in the beginning. I guess we'll just do that...

Hi Kristine, by any chance, have you purchased Rick Steve's Italy book? It has great recommendations and will answer many of your questions and give you excellent guidance. Once you've glanced at it, you can use the search area here to see what others have answered on similar questions. You could probably pick up a copy at your local library too.

Also, I planned my 14 day trip for May back in July the previous year. I found many budget hotels already full, so now is an excellent time to start your plans.

kristine,

For a trip of only 6 or 7 day, IMO it's only realistically possible to visit 2 or 3 cities. Given that you'll have to allow some travel time between cities, it's somewhat unrealistic to plan for any more. Is there any way you could extend your trip?

Travelling that distance, with the inherent problems of losing a day in flight and dealing with jet lag, makes for bit of a difficult travel experience. You won't be able to decide on which rail pass will be most appropriate until you finalize your cities. For 2-3 cities, you might be better just to go with P-P tickets?

For a more relaxed trip, I'd suggest focussing on perhaps just Rome (4 days?) and Florence (3 days?), with a possible day trip to Siena?. You might talk to a travel agent about "open jaw" flights into Florence (you might have to change planes in Frankfurt or Amsterdam) and depart from Rome.

As for the other cities, as Rick frequently says "assume you will return" and plan those for a future trip.

My recommendation is Venice (for sure) and then either Florence or Rome.

In terms of the train ticket, buying them from Trenitalia on their English website is much cheaper (almost 50%) than buying a pass.

ditch venice; south was great, and restrained time makes for compressed schedual...frieze[florence], rome, naples is too much on the plate as is.
have fun, but concentrate on the closest to each other.."6 or 7" days shouldn't be spent on traveling, after u traveled to GET there..2/3 weeks? kick in venice..one week? nawwww.
was there may this year, TWO weeks: was rome/florence/naples[pompeii, nettuno]..WAYYYY enough.

The cities to choose would depend upon which city or cities you fly into and out of. But for a 6-7 day trip, I would suggest seeing only 2 cities. Any more and your fondest memories will be of hotel check-in desks and train stations. For the number of train rides you'll be taking, just purchase point-to-point tickets once you're there. The Italian rail system's website www.trenitalia.com/en/index.html is a great resource for timetables and prices, but more than a few people have experienced a lot of frustration in trying to actually purchase a ticket online.

Kristine, lots of great opinions here. Here are some things to keep in mind:

1) when my wife and I travel, if we can't be on European soil for at least 10 days then we don't go. That gives us for sure 8 full days (as travel to and from your destination can take a good chunk of a day). If you can squeeze a few more days into your trip then Venice, Tuscany and Rome are easily doable.

2) You can do two cities that are further apart if you take a night train. That way you can be in transit while you sleep, and you can save the cost of a hotel for one night. In order to take a night train, Rome to Venice is about as close together as is realistic.

3) Try to do places that are very different from each other. Venice and Rome are different but they're still big crowded cities. Try mixing it up with big city (Rome/Venice), medium city with a strong identity (Siena), and relaxing slow-paced life (Amalfi Coast).

Thanks guys!!!! I appreciate the responses! I'll keep those in mind!