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Itinerary recommendations for Italy over Easter

Posted by on

My husband and I are taking our adult daughters who are in their 20's to Italy for 2 weeks over Easter and would welcome any tips or suggestions to help us finalize our itinerary. I've outlined it below, but it's needs some help on timing, especially trying to take into account the transportation between cities. Any suggestions would be so appreciated!

Day 1: Arrive in Rome at 11:00 a.m. and take train to Florence to meet up with our daughters. We have an apartment for 1 week in Florence.

Day 2-3: Florence

Days 4 - Would it be possible to day trip to Venice? We would like to get up early and take a train back late at night. If that is too much to do in one day, we can spend the night in Venice.

Day 5: Return to Florence or take wine tour to San Gimignano

Day 6: Day trip to Siena or San Gimignano. We would really like to go on a wine tour and we've also heard that Siena is a must see. Do you have any tour suggestions on fitting both cities in?

Days 7: Easter in Florence. We are planning to go to the "explosion of the cart". Any suggestions to a dinner reservation?

Day 8-10: Either spend 3 nights in the Puglia area doing some ancestry research on my grandfathers family (while my family sight sees and relaxes) in Bari? Ceglie Messapica? Taranto? Lecce? Or go to the Amalfi coast? Is it too far to travel to Puglia on this trip?

Day 11-14: Rome - Colosseum, Vatican, Scavi tour, Trevi fountain

Day 15: Leave Rome very early in the morning

Any advice/suggestions on places to stay, restaurants, and must see sights are much welcomed!!
Thank you!

Posted by
21274 posts

I am not a fan of day trips to Venice, especially from as far away as Florence. You will arrive with all the other day tripper hoards, be jostled about with them, all of you trying to see the same sights at the same time, then turn around and head home, (or back to the 5000 passenger cruise ship for dinner) at the same time. It might lead to that frequent displeasure people express regarding Venice, a city I love. But it takes time.
To paraphrase Alexander Pope.

A little learning is a dangerous thing;
Drink deep, or taste not the Pierian spring:
There shallow draughts intoxicate the brain,
And drinking largely sobers us again.

Posted by
28450 posts

I don't think it's a good idea to try to go to Puglia when you have only three days and are starting out from Florence and then heading back to Rome. Bari is at least 6-1/2 hours away from Florence by train. You can get to Rome from Bari in just a bit over 4 hours, but that's only on the 7:14 AM, 1:14 PM and 6:14 PM trains. The other options take about 8 hours. Realistically, you'd be spending about half of the waking hours on your three Puglia days checking in and out of the hotel, going to and from the train station, and in transit. It wouldn't be worth it to me.

I'm not sure about Amalfi at that time of year, what with the Easter holiday, but I see that tickets for the Frecciarossas and Frecciargentos (fast trains) to Naples have not yet gone all the way to their maximum price (which looks like 75 euros one way), so that's good news.

Posted by
11839 posts

I will join the chorus of no day-trip to Venice. Why not go there instead of Puglia? Puglia is, IMO, too far to go for only 3 days especially since it only seems you have two nights (right?). Venice for those two nights with a convenient high-speed train to Rome is easy enough.

We had a nice Easter lunch in 2016 at Lob's Fish in Florence. We did reserve and dined early-ish, like at 12:30, as we had a train to catch. Nice place, good food.

Posted by
5276 posts

Where in Puglia?
It would have to be a very limited visit. Three nights would also be tight for the Amalfi coast, but again you could do something limited (and perhaps return for a longer visit to include Puglia in the future).

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