A big THANK YOU to all of the members who answered our questions and offered their experienced opinions. We recently spent nearly two wonderful weeks in Northern Italy and had a fantastic time.
We flew into Milan and immediately took the Milano Express to Milano Porta Garibaldi so we could catch the high speed train to Florence. Thanks to suggestions from forum members we were able to get a highly discounted advance rate of €10 for the Italotreno “Extra Large” seats.
Four wonderful days were spent in Florence. We purchased the Firenze card and thought it very worthwhile both in the number of museums we visited and the time spent not waiting in ANY lines.
One morning we got up early and did a half day in Pisa. Just so we could say we were there!
Then we took the Frecciargento train from Florence to Venice and were able to take advantage of a buy one get one free ticket on a Saturday.
Venice was fantastic. What a unique city! We walked everywhere and totally enjoyed our “non-agenda” visit which was so different than our running around in Florence.
Finally we returned to Milan again by high speed train. (Our plane ticket was round trip from JFK to Milan – a special price from Emirates airline for $799 round-trip for two people!)
We used Milan as a base to spend one full day at Lake Como where we purchased an all day ferry pass and toured many of the scenic villages.
The next day we took the train to Lake Lugano, Switzerland for the day and enjoyed the shopping and walking along the lake.
In each of the cities we rented an apartment from VRBO.com and were very pleased with how that worked out. It was nice to wake up and make some coffee and have breakfast at “home” before heading out for the day.
We lucked out with the weather as most days were in the mid 70's (cooler in Venice) and fortunately the only day it rained was a day we were in transit.
The trains were easy to figure out, clean, and on time.
Your comments and suggestions proved very useful and helped to make our trip successful. Thanks again!
Of course we would be happy to contribute to the forum by answering any questions.