Travel order help for our itinerary

Hello Jennifer and welcome!

The order that you gave listed your locations would be the order I would suggest you travel

Where in Tuscany? It’s a rather large area
Will you have cars for that portion?

I'm sure you're aware of this but those destinations don't link well. I'm not gonna drill down on the specific connections since you can do that. Also, I assume by "Tuscany" you specifically mean to exclude Florence since you all will have been there before.

For me the biggest downside of Italy is the crowds.Everyplace will get progressively more crowded during the month of May. The worst place for crowds will be Venice and CT so I might go Como=Cinque Terre=Venice=Tuscany=Puglia=Rome
3+3+3+9+6+1. Steal days from Tuscany and Puglia as you see fit.

You're lucky to be able to do such an extended trip. Enjoy

The three big open questions are "Where in Tuscany and Puglia?" since they are regions and the mode of transportation.

The biggest issues to consider is that these places are pretty spread out across the country. Lake Como to CT is 6+ hours in transit and CT to Venice is realistically 8+ hours door to door. My usual advice for people is to do Venice, Florence, CT (or the reverse) to avoid sending an entire day on travel but if by Tuscany you mean southern rural Tuscany like Pienza and Montalcino then this plan won't work. If by Tuscany you mean train based northern Tuscany like Arezzo and Siena then this may still be an option. But Bari (for Puglia) is still 8+ hours south of even Venice training along the coast but Pescara is only 5-6.

Here's a train map of Tuscan towns:
https://www.wanderingitaly.com/maps/images/tuscany-rail-map.png

If I was putting this together - with the current open questions - I would go Como > CT > Tuscany > Venice > Puglia (Pescara/Bari) > Rome. There will be some longer travel days and with a 25 days schedule you may be okay with losing a couple of days purely to travel but I would still try to minimize it up as much as possible avoid crossing the same area twice.

Have a great trip,
=Tod

Thank you for all the feedback, to make life simpler we have removed staying in Venice and will add a day to Tuscany portion of the trip and do a day trip into Venice. So our itinerary is Switzerland, lake como, CT, Tuscany, Puglia (stays in Lecce and Monopoli trying for 4 days each we may add a day to our travel time to accommodate this) finishing in Rome to fly home. Tuscany we haven’t determined where yet as we are researching if we need a car and then will decide.

I’d remove CT before I’d remove Venice… but I’m not you!

From where do you plan to day trip to Venice??

Tuscany to Florence to Venice

CT is more important to the group but also want to see Venice this is my third trip to Italy and won’t be my last so if I love Venice I’ll come back hopefully one day we can’t do it all and logistically this is better for our overall vacation

It is possible to fly from Venice to Bari on Ryanair.
This makes a Lake Como - Cinque Terre - Florence - Venice - Puglia - Rome route quite viable.
I come up with the following night allocation totalling 20 nights, the remainder is for Luzern.

• Lake Como: 3 nights
• Cinque Terre: 2 nights (can do just 1)
• Florence: 4 nights (can add 1)
• Venice: 3 nights
• Puglia: 6 nights (more than 1 location needed, ideally)
• Rome: 2 nights

Thank you, yes we will definitely fly to Bari I’ve used ryanair before we will definitely use them again.