My family of 3 just returned from a 10 day trip to Rome, Venice and Munich that I planned almost entirely from Rick's guidebooks and thought I would share a few experiences.
We absolutely loved Rome. I was a bit anxious about the language gap so had learned a number of key phrases and words, but was very relieved to find that we could communicate very easily with just about everyone in English. We enjoyed using our limited Italian and it definitely came in handy on several occasions, but mostly I think the locals just appreciated the effort. We saw all the major sites so I won't bother going into much detail on them as many have already done so. I will say that Rick's book paid for itself on our visit to the Colosseum. We arrived without reservations (not smart) to find the line for tickets would take 1.5 hours to navigate. I took Rick's advice and walked about 100 yards down the street to the Palatine Hill ticket office, was able to walk right up to the ticket window and buy our combo passes for the Colosseum and Forum. We walked by everyone standing in line and directly into the Colosseum.
I'm a bit of a foodie so Rome was heaven. Breakfast was usually a panini and cappuccino, the paninis there are fabulous, especially with parma ham or prosciutto. Lunch was pizza, it is excellent and found everywhere. For dinner we looked for restaurants a bit of the tourist path that seemed to serve locals. We would start with an antipasta platter of meats and cheeses (seriously, try the parma ham and prosciutto), then a pasta dish. We had nothing but excellent meals the entire trip.
We decided at the last minute one day to take a side trip to Pompeii and are glad we did. The ruins there are even more impressive than we expected. Rick's guidebook provided all the essential details for the trip, including an observation that the further south you go in Italy, the more Italian it gets. That perfectly described our short time in Naples that day. Naples was loud, chaotic and just had a much different vibe than Rome that is hard to describe. This was a memorable day trip for us, but involved a lot of travel for one day. It was 2 hours each way to Naples, then a switch of train companies and 45 minutes each way to Pompeii. there were a lot of stops on each leg of the trip so be prepared for a tiring day of travel if you go on this excursion.
The trip to Pompeii was tiring enough that we overslept and missed our train to Florence the next morning. We checked out and hustled up to Termini Station where we were able to get tickets on a train leaving within the hour. We had planned on spending an afternoon in Florence, then continuing on to Venice that night. We didn't arrive in time for our reservations to see the David at the Accademia Museum, but thought we would head straight over there and hope to get in and back to the train station in a 2 hour window. We were thrilled to find that because it was Christmas Eve there was only a 10 minute wait to get into the museum, we saw the David and were able to walk the city center, see the Duomo and eat gelato before heading back to the train station.
Arriving in Venice is pretty spectacular. Exiting the train station you step right out into a beautiful view of the Grand Canal. We bought 48 hour unlimited Vaporetto passes that paid off immediately as we went through the gates to the wrong dock and would have wasted 21 Euro in single tickets. With our passes we just laughed it off and found the correct dock. The Grand Canal at night is spectacular and not to be missed. We were concerned that nothing would be open Christmas Eve and Christmas Day, but found that there were plenty of restaurants and shops open both days. We also had a great time just wandering the back streets of Venice and were able to see the Doge's palace and St. Marks the day after Christmas.
Overall, we had an absolutely wonderful trip, thanks to Rick and the rest of you posters for helping us plan it so well!