tour of italy 2015

Hi Suzanne.
3 weeks is a nice first trip to Italy! Have you started with a good guide book so you can identify the sites and places that really call to you? There are too many details to relate here, not to mention the details on how trains work in Italy. Rick Steves' Guide to Italy covers it all. It is also very much time to settle on your plans and make reservations. Do you have your flights yet? Working south to north is fine, but many of us recommend north to south as it is easier to assimiliate culturally, and the flight times out of the south (i.e., Rome) are more favorable than when one has to leave from Venice at 6:00AM!

Sleeping on trains is difficult. Not that many trips in Italy take long enough to justify overnight. Again, the guidebook would come in handy to understand the wheres and whys of traveling by train in italy.

Rome could use 4-5 nights giving you 3-4 full days to sightsee. A sample itinerary might be

Day 1 - Ancient Rome including the Colosseo, Palatine Hill, and Forum plus a walk through som eof the famous piazzas, past fountains, etc.

Day 2 - St. Peter's and the Vatican, which is a museum I would highly recommend!

Day 3 - Ostia Antica (€1.50 Metro ride)

Day 4 - Galleria Borghese in the morning, leaving the afternoon free to see sights you may discover in the guidebook. maybe a walk on the Appian Way!

Be sure to explore the Roma Pass and see if it might be a benefit to you!

One other question/comment: Sicily is a big place that takes at least 10 days to see, and mostly it requires a car. Where will you spend your 2-3 days? Maybe some place like Taomorina to relax a bit by the sea?

Suzanne, sorry you got negative feedback before. As Laurel noted, there are very few overnight trains in Italy since the longer distances can be covered by high-speed trains, for example, Venice to Rome used to be an overnight trip but now it's under four hours. There are also low-cost flights from/to the most popular cities..

The Rome2Rio website can help figuring out travel times and types of transportation; then check Trenitalia for prices and purchasing tickets. You can buy high-speed tickets up to 120 days in advance for 9-39 euro per ticket, but you can't miss that specific train. Milan to Venice can be as low as 9€.

Enjoy planning!

How are you planning to get to/from Sicily? Flights are fast, ferries are slow. What especially did you want to see there? Frankly, I think it's a schlep to get there and it's a big place. I was there this spring - spent 2 weeks there and didn't see it all.

Hi Suzanne,

I've never been so Sicily so I can't offer any helpful advice there. But my husband and I spent a month in Italy a few years ago, and he also gets bored with museums/churches, but even he loved St. Peter's, the Colosseum (more of a site, than a museum, I know), the Accademia (in Florence, houses the famous David), and the cathedral of Milan. So I'd say those are all "must-dos".

Also, if you're looking for a few small towns/cities where the city itself IS the attraction, I recommend Assisi, Lucca, Siena, Cinque Terre, and Venice. Assisi has a lot of daytime tourists due to the St. Francis factor, but at night it generally quiets down and is lovely. Italy is my favorite place in the world - I hope you have lots of fun on your trip!

Rick Steves' Italy guidebook is also my recommendation for sightseeing advice and many of the details necessary to help you make it happen. Sicily can be a great focus to a trip, especially if it's not your first time to Italy, but it does not make the cut of Rick's favorite three-week visit to Italy. Spending 2-3 days in Sicily is not a very good trade-off compared to the amount of travel time to your next destination. If you do start in Sicily, then flying to Rome would be a logical next step, or there is an overnight train on that route (not a particularly fancy train).

Another good way to start is with a one-page calendar reflecting your 3-week travel period. Pencil in how many nights you want to spend in each destination, allowing a minimum of 3 for the larger cities, which gives you 2 full days for sightseeing. Also pencil in travel time, which may be a half-day or pretty full day between various stops. Before you get to real train schedules online, you can see a brief overview of travel time in hours on Rick’s Train Travel Time & cost Map..