Please Critique my (basic!) Itinerary - Italy in 12 days

It cut me off!! Continued:

It seems decent but I feel like it could use a little more, you know? I love the idea of starting in Rome and ending in Cinque Torre, but the middle of the trip maybe could use work. What's a great historical site in Northern Italy, maybe?

Aaron - I'd strongly suggest rethinking your plans. the way you are currently stuctured you have nine nights on the ground. You're traveling to four destinations and they are not very close together.

Under ideal circumstances you usually lose a least half a day to the hassle of traveling when you change locations. However your trip from Venice to the CT will kill almost the entire day. the train ride is close to seven hours.

Another factor is getting from Vernazza to Malpensa to catch a plane. the train ride to Milano Centrale is about 3 1/2 hours and then you're still about an hour from the airport. In order to arrive in time to clear security and get on the plane you'll need to leave at an ungodly hour or take a really late flight if available. Train trouble or a strike and you've missed your flight.

You might want to consider just three destinations instead of four. Either leave Venice or the CT out and add the extra nights to Tuscany and Rome or Tuscany and the CT.

Wow, that is a longer train ride than I expected. Definitely thanks on the heads up. It's no more than Steves recommends, tho. Page 3 of Italy 2009:

4 days: Florence, Venice
6 days, add: Rome
8 days, add: Cinque Terre.

All I've done is replace Florence with Siena. Perhaps an overnight train between Venice and Vernazza could help? What do you think? Maybe if I cut out Siena or nixed one of my recovery days at the tail end...

edit:

Maybe the best thing to do is go from Siena to CT and do Venice last? That might help on the airport front, as well.

Florence is in there for a reason, it breaks the trip into smaller parts. Plus there are options where it would only take about 6 hours for the trip but most of those trains leave a bit later in the day and you'd get to the CT later.

If you put Venice at the end, you might be able to get a flight back from there; and you'll save yourself that train ride at the end. We live on the west coast; and last year, we flew home to San Francisco from Venice with one stop at JFK.

I think for your interests and age this is a fine itinerary in content. The only suggestions I would make would be to echo the one above. Stop in Florence to break up the trip and at least see David or run over to the Santa Maria del Fiore to see the duomo that inspired Michaelangelo's Basilica in Rome. They really are worth the stop and in March you will likely have no lines. Then you can ponder on the remainder of your train trip "what genius enables man to create such things out of blocks of stone. . ?".
Also, flipping Venice to the end to fly home from there does cut out a train ride. That would make your route Rome-Sienna-CT-Venice via Florence. If you want to stick with your original route look at flying home from Pisa.

Aaron,

Due to your time limits, I would cut out Venice and go to Florence. Visit Siena as a day trip from Florence. Don't miss the CT area.

Hi--

I need to second the advice about CT to Venice--went eastward from CT, but caught a train about 0700 and arrived somewhere around 1400-1430.

I like the advice about flying out of Venice. We landed Rome and flew out of Milan, and I would much rather have spent more time in Venice.

We looked at the scheduling to get from our hotel in Milan to the train station to get the public transportation to Malpensa and just decided to blow some extra money we had on a taxi. It's a grind.

A word of caution--Siena is not a small town compared to other hill towns. We found much more charm in the smaller places.

Randy

Aaron

Sienna to Florence is about a two hour bus ride. Why not leave Rome and go to Florence and bus it to Sienna? I agree that it is a long train ride to the CT from Venice and you will miss a lot in the CT. Another option would be Rome - CT - Florence - Venice. You also have left two days to "recover" when you get home. You are young; recovery should not take too long so take these two days, spend it in Italy by spreading out your itinerary. You may also find somewhere that interests you and requires an extra day or two. Enjoy!

I would fly into a northern city,Florence,Milan or Venice and go south.Rome is better not being jetlagged.Then fly home from Rome.