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Itinerary: Venice/Florence/CT in May

Posted by (Chicago, IL, U.S.A) on

My wife and I would like to celebrate out first anniversary in Italy, in particular Venice, Florence, and the Cinque Terre. I've got Rick's 2010 guide, but I'd appreciate any advice about how to arrange our itinerary to best use our time. We're hoping to spend 9 days/8 nights and we'll be coming from Chicago.

My first stab at it has us flying to Florence and going straight to the CT, spending two nights there, returning to Florence for 3 nights, and ending up in Venice for 3 nights before we fly home.

From what I can tell, we won't pay much more for open jaw flights, which surprised me. We're planning on taking the train between cities. Our anniversary is May 9, but we're flexible on the exact dates, if it will improve the weather, crowds, etc.

So, I guess if I had specific questions, they would be:

Would we be better off going earlier or later in the month?
Does my plan seem reasonable?
Anything you'd add or remove?

Thank you!

Posted by
1201 posts

Seems like a good plan. You might want to check on the timeing of the return flight from Venice. If you have to connect within Europe for the overseas flight, the departure times can be very early. Means you might have to get there at 5:30 am or so.

We have been able to get a direct flight from venice lately with a more reasonable departure around 10 or 11 am.

Posted by
306 posts

Good plan, if it were me I would spend 4 nights in CT and 2 in Florence and 2 in Venice, but I looove CT!

Posted by
1003 posts

Seems to make good sense. They all deserve more time, particularly Florence (in my opinion of course :)), but at least that is long enough in each place to get a good feel. Personally, I was incredibly disappointed by CT just because of the immense touristyness, but it's beautiful so I can't really in good conscience actually say people should skip it. I'm glad I saw it, I'd just never go back, but 2 days is enough to see all 5 towns for sure. Anyway, the train rides are fairly short and you might consider taking early morning or late evening trains to maximize sightseeing time in each place. Otherwise, have a most wonderful time! :)

Posted by
94 posts

I have also been going through all this planning. We're flying Delta using frequent flier miles, and Florence wasn't a good option. Although we were originally going to fly into Milan, we switched to fly into Venice (2 nights), train to Florence and stay there (only 1 night for us), and train to CT (3 nights). We have 2 more weeks and we're renting a car to head south to a timeshare a hour north of Rome. You might want to spent more nights in Venice and Florence or take some side trips like to Pisa or Lucca. You could fly out of Florence or check out whether flying out of Milan might work. FYI, depending on your budget, I would look for rooms in Venice ASAP. They are not cheap! Good luck!

Posted by
7209 posts

Can you fly into Genoa (Cinque Terre) and home from Venice?

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