Itinerary/travel help

First of all, I don't think Venice would be awful on Easter weekend - - Rome, yes; but Venice, no.

Secondly, the problem with the CT in early April is the iffiness of the weather. There's nothing to do there if the weather is bad. If you pay deposits, you'll have to stay or lose your money.

Thirdly, you haven't allotted enough time to the area around Siena. There are tons of charming, small towns near there. In the event of bad weather, Siena, itself, and those towns have enough indoor attractions that you could still happily fill your days. My advice is to scrap the CT altogether, or at least cut one day, and add the time to Siena. Cutting one of the Venice days and adding to Siena, as well, wouldn't be a bad idea.

We were in Italy the last week of March (Rome Marathon) thru the first two weeks of April last year. Temperatures were up and down. Had some rain and chilly days. We decided not to go to CT. We visited Pisa and Lucca on the same day. There will be lots to see driving around. We rented a car for the middle portion of our trip and drove around the hill towns. Loved it.

The weather that time of year might be bad in CT, but the Amalfi coast should be nice, you get a similar quaint seaside village experience, plus tons of interesting local sights to see even if the weather does turn nasty. Plus that time of year there won't be hoards of tourists yet.

I have to agree that it's a bad time of year to plan to visit the CT. Since you'll have a car in Tuscany, if there's a really fine day, you can drive to the CT and spend a day. Since you've only got 2 nights in your itinerary for the CT, that's not enough to substitute the Amalfi Coast. But there is so much to enjoy in Tuscany and Umbria (Orvieto, Assisi, Bologna, Ferrara . . . the list is almost endless). Just spend the extra nights in the Tuscan villa.

The train from Venice to CT is between 5-7 hours depending on the time of day and the route. When I did that I had 3 connections and we left Venice early in the AM and arrived in CT at lunchtime. Our trip was via Florence but others go via Milan. We did high speed train from Venice to Florence, a change to a train from Florence to La Spezia, then a change in la spezia to Vernazza. Depending which City you visit like Monterosso may have a less train change from Venice-Milan-Monterosso.

Since part of that CT route will be on a regional train and those tickets are only avaialble 7 days in advance you maynot see the full route online. Use a date 7 days out, so if you will travel on a monday in April, use Monday 1/26 as an example to see the schedules and options.