One week trip to Rome and Florence

Get the Steves guidebook for both Rome and Florence. Go the the library and check out his travel DVDs for Rome and Florence. And then come ask your questions when you have a much better idea of what you want to see and do. Try to catch you daughter when she has break in her schedule - much easier on her. You should fly into Florence and home from Rome.

If you fly round trip in and out of Roma, you can take a high-speed train to Firenze (less than two hours).

Your daughter will have been there long enough to have some suggestions for daytrips.

Do the round trip to Rome. I would suggest that you travel to Florence the same day you arrive at Rome that way you don't have to unpack and repack. Spend your last days in Rome and you don't have to worry about getting there before your flight. We used VRBO to get an apartment in Florence and booked a B&B in Rome. If you stay near the university you will not be far from many attractions. We took a day trip to Sienna from Florence and it was a nice change of pace. I was not as thrill with it as Rick Steve suggest. Have fun!

If you fly round trip in and out of Roma, you can take a high-speed
train to Firenze (less than two hours).

Push the time you have as far as it will will stretch, say, booking a Friday overnight flight to Rome and taking a train to Florence immediately upon arrival on Saturday. There are two trains - one at 11:08 and another at 15:08 - which are direct from Fiumicino airport to Firenze S.M. Novella in 2 hours and 14 minutes. If you could make one of these work with your flight times, that would be ideal. Otherwise, take a train which will involve a change at Roma Tiburtina (or less likely at Roma Termini): not difficult at all.

Spend Saturday - Wed in Florence, and take an early fast train to Rome on Thursday morning, flying home on Sunday. This will give you 5 nights/4 full days + a partial in Florence, and 3 nights/2 full days + a partial in Rome. As Zoe said, by the time you get to Florence, your daughter should have a handle on some good places to eat but I'll personally recommend Ciro and Sons and Francesco Vini.

Central Florence is pretty compact so if you stay anywhere between S.M. Novella train station and her university, you'll be fine. Explore your options on www.booking.com : my personal favorite for hotel searches.

Four full days will really only give you time for one or two day trips: Siena and Lucca/Pisa are two popular and easy options via public transit. Rome itself will occupy all of the 2.5 days you'll have to spend there.

Check the airfares - we saved $500pp flying round trip Atlanta to Florence. Florence and Rome are well-connected by train as others have mentioned.

I agree that one of your first steps should be to buy Rick's books on Florence and Rome (or, since you won't be in each place for that long, you could instead buy his general Italy book). They have all kinds of information on where to stay and eat, how to get around, what to see, etc.

You should definitely watch Rick's shows, and fortunately, you don't have to leave your computer to do that. Just go to this link and scroll down to Italy. https://www.ricksteves.com/watch-read-listen/video/tv-show.

With the reading and the watching, you can start to decide how you will prioritize your time in each city, which day trips do and do not interest you, etc.

Best flights will be partly determined by where you live and in what order you want to see each place. Rome gets nonstops from various US cities and has connections from everywhere in Europe. Florence is a small airport, with no nonstops from the US and connections from only a few European airports. As said above, it's not hard to fly into Rome and then get a train to Florence (there's a train station right in Rome's airport; most trains from the airport to Florence will require changing in Rome itself, although there are a few per day that go direct). You won't want to buy this train ticket in advance, since your time of arrival can't be predicted, and a ticket bought for one train on this route isn't good for earlier or later trains.

For your other trains, you can buy in advance for discounts, if you know your dates and times of travel and don't mind being locked in (discount tickets are not refundable or exchangeable, or have restrictions on these actions). On the other hand, if you want full flexibility and don't mind paying more, you can wait until you are there to buy tickets. For Italy, the full price tickets aren't that expensive (eg, €47 from Florence to Rome).

Rick's books will have hotel and restaurant suggestions. If you want more help on these, we need to know particulars. For hotels, what is your budget (in euros) and what are your needs/wants (elevator, balcony, etc).

Thanks to everyone for the information -- good tips to help me get started in my planning process!!

In Florence we have stayed three times at Hotel Casci, (http://www.hotelcasci.com) which is very well located near the Duomo. It is your basic hotel, with a nice breakfast and good wifi. My only complaint is that the towels -- while they do their job -- are more like tablecloths than towels. But, a great place and we will stay there again.

In Rome, we've only stayed in apartments.

Congratulations to your daughter, and I hope you have a wonderful trip.

DD