Itinerary help - Amalfi coast, Rome & Venice

Splitting 7 nights 3 ways is possible.

How good an idea it is depends on what you want to see/do at each location.

If you are content to treat it like 'grazing at Costco', do it. Otherwise, picking just 2 may be a better choice

LOL at “Grazing at Costco”. That’s exactly my daughters plan. She wants to see as much as possible & then come back for a future visit.

Hello Vanessa,
While this is technically possible I would have to warn you against this. Unless absolutely bombing someplace is your normal style of travel I think this will be too much. The Amalfi coast is time consuming to travel to and from so even assuming you fly into Rome and out of Venice I would guess you'll spend too much of your time traveling between places.

It would probably look like:
Rome 3 nights (1 full day and 2 partial days)
Amalfi coast (~3 hours Rome to Sorrento and then ferry or bus to Amalfi coast) 2 nights (one full day)
Venice (Ferry to Salerno/Sorrento, 1.25hr train to Naples, 5 hours Naples to Venice on the train or fly) 2 nights in Venice

If you limit your Amalfi coast experience to staying in Sorrento and day tripping to the Amalfi coast on the ferry your travel times decrease a little but the overall problem remains.

I'd pick two spots and split the days 3/4 nights in two places. Either Rome or Venice deserves 4 days but it depends on your interests. Doing only Rome and Amalfi keeps you on one end of the country and if Venice is more important than Rome I would suggest visiting the Ligurian coast and then crossing to Venice as a trip - especially coming from Barcelona.

Remember two nights is only full day and any day you change cities you need to deal with packing, checking out, travelling with your luggage, finding your new place etc. This plus travel can easily eat up almost an entire one of your precious days.

My advice is plot out travel times, where you're sleeping on each day and try to maximize your enjoyment.
Have a great trip,
=Tod

Thank you so much for taking the time to respond! And for the awesome advice. I was afraid it might be too much time spent traveling & not having a base. You provided some great options for us to consider.

Traveling up to Venice will eat up a lot of your precious and limited time. And Venice is not at her best in June/July—it is very crowded and quite hot. So I advise sticking to Rome and the Amalfi coast, with more time to enjoy each one.

Another drawback for Venice is that it has become a difficult airport to fly out of, perhaps because of the cruise ship crowds. But we found the airport so crowded last September that we gave up on checking our bags—-the line was so long we would never get to the front in time for our flight. So we ditched some things and re-packed into just a carry-on each. And security was short-staffed, so there was no one to help when we had trouble opening the gates with our boarding passes. It was 25 minutes of frustration before someone came to our assistance.

Also, if you are connecting from Venice to a large airport like Amsterdam, London, etc. for your US-bound flight, the flight from Venice will likely leave very early in the morning. That means an expensive water taxi ride to the airport, or extra time to take the slow boat (Alilaguna) or the vaporetto plus bus combo.

These destinations are just a little far flung for 7 nights. Imo you need at least 5 nights to make the Amalfi coast and the area worth the effort. Getting around there just sucks up time in all sorts of ways. You don’t want to try this on a tight schedule.

Keeping Rome as your axis is fine, but I would drop either Venice or the AC from the itinerary. 4 nights Venice, 3 nights Rome (or vice versa) is more comfortable. If the AC, then I’d split 5 there and 2 in Rome. Finding reasonable accommodations this time of year and just a couple months out may be challenging (especially for the Amalfi coast.) This may affect your decision making.

Leaning more into Venice, you could also daytrip to (or stay in) the nearby Veneto towns. They may provide a less crazy mobbed tourist experience than Venice proper.

"traveling to Barcelona"
Have you bought the air tickets yet? Can you fly home from Italy instead of from Barcelona? Total length of trip? Home airport?

Agree with the previous replies. The Amalfi Coast takes extra time to get to and out of, and it isn't the "nicest place in Italy." She is young and can go another time. I guarantee that she will be glad of more time in Rome and Venice. It is only going to get harder to visit Venice, as time passes.

We have been in Italy at least six times, and we did not go to the AC until our fifth trip.