Itinerary Help: Venice, Cinque Terre, Florence, Siena

Keri:
Nice to see someone put good thought into planning and ask clear questions. I do think this is ambitious for 11 nights and you will spend a lot of time in transit between locations. When you only stay somewhere two nights, you only get one full day in a location. It's just not enough time to justify the enormous time spent chekcing out, moving to a new place, checking in, and getting oriented. Of your 11 night trip, you would spend 4 half-days (TWO FULL DAYS) changing locations. Here's what I would suggest: * Venice - 3 nights. That gives you time to recover from jet lag and two full days to get a little Venetian experience. See Rick Steves' guide to time in Venice here. Skip the CT this trip. It is 6 hours to the CT by train from Venice. Not worth it for two nights/one day there. Really. Truly. I wouldn't lie. If you can add 3 nights to your current 11, then work it in. If you cannot extend your trip, skip it. Really. And skip Pisa, too. IMHO not worth it to see one thing, the tower. So much more in the other three places you will stay! * Florence orSiena 3 nights. Personally I would pick Siena. Do one day trip to Florence via bus, and one day to Volterra via bus. You'll get the Siena experience and stay in one place. Trying to do both cities in 4 nights means that dreadful change of locations again. Wasted time when you coudl be relaxing, touring, holding hands in a piazza. <SIGH>

Continued:
* Rome 4 nights. It is a marvelous and complex city. Give Rome her time. Take time to sit in a Piazza and enjoy just being there. Trains and busses by all means. Check out http://www.roninrome.com/%20transportation/booking-on-the-trenitalia-website for train advice. You can certainly buy your train tickets once you get to Venice, though. You have tons of planning time left. so you can continue to research and get into the details. Refer to the archives of this board for more help, too. Ciao! Buona fortuna!

Keri What Laurel said! Good that you are flying open jaw! Saves time and money! Another way to visualize your trip with sightseeing and travel time is to do this: Download the Word version of an on line calendar such as WinCalendar (free for basic version)for your travel month. Put in your international fllights. Write down Recovery Day the first day you arrive. Your last day will be all about getting to the airport and waiting in line. Plot out your itinerary as above. Now research the travel times by train between your destinations. RS Italy 2011 includes a couple of paragraphs at the end of each city or area chapter with the times to get to other destinations. Key is to include the hotel to hotel times. Time to get to the station. How much time to arrive to find your track and the stamp machine? Train. Then time to get to your new hotel. It adds up. But that is the true time. And each long train trip such as CT just drastically cuts into your total trip time available. As Laurel mentioned. Stay in Siena or Florence but not both. Us day trips to see the other. Skip Pisa. If you do not go to CT, not worth the travel time from Florence for the 2 hours there. Italy should be lovely in May. Fewer tourists and nice weather! And an early start on your planninng! Bobbie

Keri, I agree with the others. This trip is too ambitious for such a short time frame. Is your total time 12-days, or is that your "touring time"? You'll need to allow for the two travel days to Europe and back. I also agree that it would be a really good idea to skip Pisa. It's not worth the travel times just to see the Tower. If you had lots of time, the situation would be different. Regarding the other places, unfortunately you won't be able to see all of them in such a short time, so you'll need to prioritize according to which ones are most important to you. The suggestions provided by Laurel are a great solution. Happy travels!

I miscounted on the itinerary I gave you, only accounting for 10 of your 11 nights. Add one to any of the three locations: it will be well spent. Reinforcing the pack light advice: It will change your life to pack light. I have totally changed how I pack even for business trips. So much nicer without all the stuff!

Keri, " Given our somewhat heavy packing habits " If you work on this issue, your entire trip will have much less stress. Make it a learning moment by packing less than half of what you "think" that you need & take a few laps around downtown Akron. Try to find an exceptionally rough section of a sidewalk under construction ( Italian streets and sidewalks are under some sort of eternal repair program ). Go to a building that has at least 30 steps & go up & down several times. Rick has a nice section under traveling light. Have a great trip!

i did a similar trip over 15 days about a year ago (but included milan and bologna). unless you are big hikers and intend to hike a lot, i'd avoid the cinque terre. it's beautiful, but it is a huge pain to travel to and from. i would have rather spent extra time in Siena. in 12 nights, i'd suggest this: Venice - 3 nights Florence - 2 nights Siena - 2 nights
Rome - 5 nights From Rome you can take a full day side trip to Pompeii, Naples, or Orvieto. Or you could do 4 nights in Rome and add a night on to Florence ot Siena to side trip to another tuscan town. and i agree on packing light...i went over with my 55 year old mom and we each had only a carry-on rolling bag and a purse. she resisted at first because she's typically a heavy packer, but as soon as we started dragging our stuff around all she kept saying was "i'm so happy you made me bring only this one small bag." you'll be lugging it up and down a lot of stairs. smart packing can get you through 12 nights with no problems.

We try to stay a minimum of 4 nights in each place so my recommendation would be: Venice - 3 nights Florence OR Siena - 4 nights (day trip to the other city)
Rome - 5 nights And pack light using all the recommendations on this website. You will be so happy that you did as it will reduce the stress and make train travel much easier.

We did 2 nights in both Siena and Florence, and personally, I don't regret the extra lugging around one bit. Florence is a great city at night, and it's one less bus connection. I would agree that the CT is probably saved for another time, or add some time to your vacation. I would give a day each to Venice and Rome. We found a well recommended tour guide to take us across Tuscany from Siena. We visited San Gimigiano, a winery, cheese factory and Volterra. It wasn't cheap, but not having to rent a car was nice. If you only want to do one town, and get real 'in depth' a bus works just fine and is cheap and simple from Siena.

I would leave it as is except stay in Siena or San G for 4 days and day trip to villages and Florence. I would not give up CT if this is your big trip to Italy. If its a long train ride that is part of European travel. Every minute does not need to be filled with a sightseeing checklist.You can relax on the train, read, meet people, nap, look out at the scenery...its not lost time (you still have it) Assume you will return is a great mantra, however thousands of people have made one trip and then life takes over. The people on this site are fortunate to be able to make more than one trip to Europe, but I think they are in the minority. I always hope I can return (and I have) but I look at every trip as thought it might be my last...no regrets...

Hi Keri- After taking into account opinions from others who have been there and our own needs (Probably won't be able to return but we are going to travel like we will), we have the following plan. BTW, the comment from Terry (Whitmore) about "No regrets". This is some valuable feedback. I have struggled with trying to fit it all in and enjoying the experience myself. How much is too much, right! Anyhow, here is our plan. Day 1-Fly into Genoa and train to CT. Day 1-3- CT with Night #3 in Lucca (On our way thru..Pisa) via train. Day 4-6- Lucca, Volterra and Orvieto. If possible, Civita, all towns via car
Day 7-11- Rome w side trip to Pompeii via train. We reluctantly gave up Venice :(. We decided to do so because Venice is located a 6 hr train from basically everything else we want to see. Simply logistically didn't make sense. We added Pompeii to make ourselves feel better :) We are skipping Florence because we felt like Rome would be enough of the museum portion of our trip. I have learned to take into account opinions of others on this site, but it seems like most know they are returning, whereas we are not so confident. I hope you have the trip of a lifetime (Our goal too!)

Wow, everyone's comments are wonderful. Thank you for the well thought out advice. Your feedback is invaluable :) Thanks so much! Keri

Keri, We recently returned from Italy and I'm with the group that enjoys at least 3 nights in one place, but I also understand the need to fit in as much as possible. Also, must agree that 2 nights means at most 1.5 days in each place. Re the train: check the trenitalia site. You can see the time schedules and cost. If it's too far in advance you might have to put in the same day of the week for this month to see the info. We also like to have everything booked in advance but learned it's really easy and better to go to the ticket window and get them there and it also gives us some flexibility. Ticket agents speak English and since you will have researched your options it will be easy to just ask for what you want. You can buy your ticket for the next let when you arrive in each town. I made a spreadsheet with the travel legs and listed the train times, costs, and length that we might use so we could refer to it while there. You can do a similar thing for the towns you want to visit. List what you want to see and do in each so you can tell if your 1.5 days there willl give you time to do what you want. Remember to set aside time to just sit and enjoy being there. Also, pack light. Carrying suitcases up and down stairs in train and metro stations and dragging them behind you as you walk to and from your hotel will start to get old, especially if you move around a lot.