Hi there,
My husband and I would like to rent a home or an apartment in Italy that we can use as our base for two weeks. Ideally, it would be in a village so that we can really experience the ambiance of Italy but we would also like to be able to do some sight-seeing in and around either Rome, Milan or possibly Venice, by either by car or train. (We will choose one of these, not all of these, venues)
Any suggestions of locales for this?
Kyle
You can utilize AirBnB to rent local homes for around $20 per night. AirBnB is pretty great for vacations because you generally don't spend much time at the hotel anyway. Let me know if this works out for you or if you stumble upon something better!
We got a place off of VRBO and we loved it. We stayed in Florence for 8 nights. Like you we were looking for a small town first and then opted for staying close to the rail station in Florence. We loved it. More later. Have to go to airplane mode
Renting a house or apartment is easy. Renting one as a base to see from Rome to Milano and Venice is not so easy.
Rome is 3 1/2 hours by fast train from both Milano and Venice. If you make Rome your base, that is 7 hours roundtrip leaving little time to enjoy the "day trip." Driving times are longer so you will not save time by driving everywhere. AND parking and driving in the big cities is ridiculous.
If you rent a place in a village, say in Tuscany, it is still not feasible to day trip everywhere. You will encounter slower trains and perhaps the need to drive to a train station just to get started.
Better to pick two or three bases: one in Rome, one in Venice, and one in Tuscany or Umbria (for that rural experience) would make a nice balance.
We once did most of a month using a "Home Base" and after retirement we will likely utilize this strategy more, for a month or more.
I agree with the comment about some "Daytrips" (Rome to Florence for example) being too much travel, but that assumes you are spending every night at the "Homebase". For longer excursions, consider staying at that location a night or two.
Part of the idea of a home base is that it gives you a place to keep the majority of stuff, travelling ultralight to other locales. Also you likely are getting a bargain rate on a per night basis, so even with a few nights of lodging expense, your total lodging cost is still less than moving around to different cities.
Driving in Italy has a some caveats - the big one is the dreaded ZTL, the historic center of nearly every town and city in Italy where driving is restricted to authorized vehicles and fines are stiff - hundreds of euros for each violation. It seems it's all too easy to accidentally drive into one.
For a 2-week stay using public transportation, I'd choose either Florence or Bologna. Florence has top sights and a goodly number of them, plus access by bus or train to several towns. Bologna is a major rail hub so you can visit a different town nearly every day over two weeks. It has a few second-tier sights and is renowned for for its cuisine. Bologna will be cheaper and less crowded than Florence.
Before you make any decisions, find out all the difficulties of driving in Italy. be sure you have a good GPS and figure out the approximate costs - gas is roughly twice what it is in the US, parking is often expensive. Use the trenitalia website to see what train fares and travel times are.
Our normal method of vacationing is to rent a house in an area we want to explore and then do day trips. We've stayed in Tuscany twice, two weeks each time, once near Montepulcino and again in San Quirico. From there we did driving day trips to Florence, Siena, Piza and other closer in areas. Both trips we made a day trip to Rome on the train. We aren't big city vacationers so one day was fine for us. We would catch the train about 7AM and the return train about 9PM. Worked fine for us. We've done this in Italy, France and Ireland multiple times. Going to France for four weeks in September.
Good advice about driving and the benefits of a base on a train line: trains can usually get you from A to B faster.
Florence - while not a "village" - came to mind too as it's such a great base for umpty day trips but you could look at Fiesole? It sits right above Florence so you'd be only minutes by bus from a major transport hub. Not counting bus time to S.M. Novella (Florence's main station), you are still 90 minutes by fast train from Rome, though, and more than that from Venice.
You might also look at Orvieto? Depending on what train you take, you could be in Rome in an hour or so.
Fiesole means waiting for buses and possible traffic delays, plus extra lead time in the station because the buses aren't always on time. Orvieto means either staying up on the hills in the historic center and having to bus or walk to the cable car and then to the train station. Either adds 1-1.5 hours of travel to day trips. It's easy to get a nice room in Florence or Bologna that is a 5-15 minute walk to the train station and very central.
Yes, lead times times for transport connections is likely a factor in many "village" stays but how big a factor that is may depend on the goal: lazing around most of the time or doing a fair amount day trips to the listed cities. If it's the latter, I'd definitely choose to stay IN those cities.
Florence is one of those terrific hubs for day tripping...except 90 minutes to Rome is too far for me, personally, for taking multiple trips there. It's a better hub for Lucca, Pisa, Siena, Fiesole, etc. The other problem here is that Florence isn't on the sightseeing wish list to begin with (and I'm sort of curious why not)?
Anyway, as suggested by , it's most efficient to split your time if quality city sightseeing is in the plan. If I was to spend multiple days out of a two-week stretch sightseeing Rome, I'd stay in Rome; there's just so much ground to cover in that one. Venice? I'd stay those days in Venice. Milan? Maybe two weeks in Varenna: an hour by train to the city, and ferry service to towns around the lake. Milan tends to be the least interesting to tourists among the three listed so having that option is a bonus, IMHO.
"Ambiance" isn't restricted to small towns; it's alive and well in some of the cities too. :O)
Kyle, you haven't said what time of year you're planning to go?
We just got back yesterday and made Florence our 'home base' for 8 nights. We were close to the main train station (SMN) but far enough away that our location was very quiet at night. We made day trips to Fiesole, San Gimignano, Sienna, Greve, Prato, Pistoia, Lucca and Pisa. Having a home base meant, we didn't have to have much of a plan. There can be a lot of rainy days or potentially rainy days in December/January and we pretty much decided a day or two out where we would go based on what we were going to do and what the weather was. We liked being in Florence because on the days that weren't great for walking around (aka... heavy rain) we hit the museums in Florence and it worked out great. One day it was supposed to rain but then looked like it wouldn't and we took an electric bike tour to Piazza Michelangelo and Fiesole. We loved the flexibility plus not having to unpack/pack. We actually did two day trips to Milan... in a way... We flew into Milan, spent part of the day there and then took off for Aviano. On our way out we spent 1 1/2 days there prior to our departure. It's certainly not for everyone I know but we loved it. Some days we slept in to relax without the pressure of much of a deadline of packing up for our next destination.
Hope this helps and best of luck on your trip!
