Trip to Italy

I think you are trying to do too much in 8 days. If you are flying from India, it will be the same, or worse, as coming from the US flight-wise. Travel time will consume 2 of your 8 days. Assuming that you have 8 days on the ground, you should leave out some of your destinations. For 8 full days on the ground, I would suggest:

Day 0 fly from India to Venice
Day 1-2 Venice
Day 3 Early Morning train to Florence, rest of day in Florence
Day 4 Florence
Day 5 Early Morning train to Rome, rest of day in Rome
Days 6-8 Rome
Day 9 fly home.

As you can see, this involves 10 full days and you have barely had enough time to see the sights in each location. If you only have 6 days on the ground, you should consider dropping one city from the list so you can more fully enjoy the ones you do visit.

For trains, try to buy cheap tickets ASAP. Look for super economy tickets on:

https://www.lefrecce.it/B2CWeb/search.do?parameter=searchOutputViewer&cFID=GIEmfqZWcv7y

When you buy these tickets, they are non-refundable, so you either have to take that particular train, or buy new tickets.

For hotels, I suggest looking at booking.com and finding something within your budget, as close to the center of town as possible. If you are able to walk to the main sights, you will save on transportation costs.

Hello Aishwarya!

5 cities in 8 days would probably be too many in my opinion.
I'd allow a minimum of 2-3 days in each city and allow a half day for travel between cities.

If I had 8 days in Italy I'd arrange it this way:

Rome (3 days)
Florence (3 days)
(one day in Florence day trip to Pisa)
Venice (2 days)
1 day travel back to rome

I'd save Naples for your next trip, since there are so many amazing things to see south of Rome it really does deserve its own itinerary!

If you have the chance to fly into Venice and out of Rome it would save you some precious sightseeing time and allow another day in Venice. You'd just reverse the itenerary like this:

Venice (2 days)
Florence (3 days)
(one day in Florence day trip to Pisa)
Rome (3 days)

I know sometimes Airlines make this difficult and pricey though (my flight options from the US really are only good in/out of Milan so I feel your pain here!). Just weigh your options though and know that flying into Venice and out of Rome essentially gives you a whole extra day (maybe day and a half) to sightsee.

I don't think a rail pass would be necessary or beneficial for this itinerary. I believe it would be less expensive (and more flexible) to purchase individual tickets along the way (passes don't fully cover the express trains anyway so you'll end up buying tickets regardless). Booking them ahead will save money.

I stayed in a very nice budget hotel (recommended in Rick's guidebook) in Rome. http://www.hotelitaliaroma.it/en/ I believe its about 125 Euro per night (a little higher on weekends). I'd recommend calling ahead though as they tend to book up a few months in advance. I believe they offered us a discounted rate if we booked directly with them (instead of through a booking site) and like most budget hotels they asked we pay in cash.

The rooms were quiet, spacious and clean and the staff was very helpful. Its within walking distance of Termini station and just a few blocks from the metro and just around the corner from a bus stop where you can catch a bus (#64 I think) that will take you to all the major sights.

I highly recommend purchasing Rick's individual guidebooks for Venice, Florence and Rome if you haven't already. He has lots of good budget hotel recommendations and all the tips he offers in each city will be extremely helpful in planning your days so you can see as much as possible and move around the cities efficiently. :)

With 8 days you should plan no more than two cities. You'll lose half a day when you change locations so you'll have 4 days in once city and 3.5 in another if that 8 days doesn't include arrival and departure days. If it does include those then you really have 7 days which would mean 3.5 days in one city and 3 days in another. Since you are flying into and out of Rome I suggest ending the trip in Rome and picking one other city and going directly there the day you arrive. Which city that is depends on what you want to see and do the most.

Trying to visit 5 cities in just 7 days leaves you no time to actually visit those cities.

2) Just buy point to point tickets, a pass is never a good idea in Italy.

3) Without knowing the sites you want to see it's impossible to suggest an itinerary. You need to decide which cities you plan to visit and then which sites in those cities you want to see. You really need to get a guide book to help you decide this.

4) for hotels you can use www.venere.com or www.booking.com. You don't mention what your budget is but you can find hotels in all price ranges on these sites. The reviews are written by people who have completed a stay so they are very accurate and can be trusted.

Donna

I'm with Stephen on this one. Venice to Florence to Rome (or reverse) in 8 days is a great first sampler of Italy. Only two major train journeys and both surprisingly short, time wise, means buy point-to-point tickets. If your itinerary is fixed, you can buy nonrefundable tickets for quite cheap online now, but even full fare, they are not that expensive. Trick is to Fly open jaw.

I think Venice, Florence, Rome is about as much as you can do in 8 days (you should count nights instead of days).

Fly into Venice, train to Florence (about 2 hours), you can daytrip to Pisa if you want but aside from the Leaning Tower, why go there? Florence can easily fill three days. Then train to Rome (about two hours), fly out from Rome after 3 nights there.

Venice: 2 or 3 nights
Florence: 2 or 3 nights
Rome: 3 nights

Budget hotels that I have liked are: Venice: Locanda San Marcuola; Florence: Hotel Bigallo; Rome: Hotel Teatro Pace. All offer breakfast included in the room price.

Aishwarya,

I'm definitely in agreement with the others! Especially as you're flying both inbound and outbound from Rome, eight days is simply not enough for a stay in all the places you've listed. If you were using open-jaw flights (ie: inbound Venice, outbound Rome), that would provide a bit more touring time.

Depending on what time your flight arrives, something along these lines might work for you.....

• Mar.28 - D1/N1 - Arrive Rome; Buy tickets at airport rail station for trip to Rome and then to Florence; take Leonardo Express from FCO to Roma Termini (DON'T forget to validate your ticket prior to boarding the train, or hefty fines may be charged); take Freccia high speed to Florence (90 minutes). Note that your destination station will be Firenze SM Novella.
• Mar.29 - D2/N2 - Florence - touring (if you're planning to visit the Uffizi or Accademia, reservations are advisable).
• Mar.30 - D3/N3 - Florence - possible day trip to Pisa or Siena (use train to Pisa, Bus to Siena - if you decide to do that, I can provide more detailed information).
• Mar. 31 - D4/N4 - Florence - you could take a day trip to Venice (~2 hours each way). More below on why I'm suggesting this method.
• Apr.1 - D5/N1 - Train to Rome in late morning/early afternoon (90 minutes); light touring in Rome.
• Apr.2 - D6/N2 - Rome - touring (plan carefully so you don't waste any time).
• Apr.3 - D7/N3 - Rome - you could take a day trip to Naples if desired (~1H:10M each way via high speed train).
• Apr.4 - D8/N4 - Rome - touring
• Apr. 5 - D9 - Return flight to India.

This suggestion "ticks" most of the boxes on your list, although it won't provide much time to look around each place you'll be visiting. Given the fact that end of March is not too far in the future, I thought it might be prudent to limit the number of "moves" and number of hotels you'd be using, to maximize your touring time. Each change of location usually requires at least half a day, and there's some cost as well.

Regarding "suggested hotels", I would highly recommend (given your location) that you download a copy of the Italy 2015 guidebook as an E-book. You can choose either the Kindle version (which can also be used in free Kindle Readers for PC, Mac, iPhone or iPad) OR the iBooks version. The guidebook has many listings for reliable hotels in various parts of each city and various price ranges, along with website information. There's also a LOT of information on restaurants, sightseeing, transportation and just about anything else you'll need to know about travelling in Italy. When choosing hotels, I'd suggest not choosing on price alone - be sure to consider which part of each city the hotels are located in. In Florence, the area around Firenze SMN station is fairly central, and in Rome the area around Roma Termini station is central.

You'll also need to be aware that there are some potentially expensive caveats when using trains and other public transit in Italy. If you need more information, post another reply here and I'll send you a PM.

There are many possible ways of arranging your Itinerary, and this is only one suggestion.

Good luck with your planning!

Since you are getting fairly close to your trip, I would book rooms on Bookings.com, this seems to be very popular in Italy. I just booked two of our four hotel that were hard to get reservations for on bookings.com and so far very happy with the web site. If you book directly with the hotel it is a longer process of putting in a request, waiting, excepting and sending payment info. On bookings.com it is one step and done. And most hotels will give you a cheaper price if prepaid.

Note that the cheaper rate is marked "non-refundable" on booking.com, the slightly higher price permits cancellation before a specific date at no charge (usually several days before your arrival date). The cheaper rate is not always tied to prepayment, but is always tied to the hotel's cancellation policy.

1. No. To cover that much of Italy you would need about 14 days or more. Although Pisa can be easily seen as a half day trip from Florence.

2. Point to point tickets are the way to go. You can buy train tickets in advance at a huge discount, but they are non refundable. Give yourself plenty of time to get to the train station and find the correct platform or you will end up having to buy a new ticket at full fare.

3. For first timers to Italy with limited time frame you can't beat Venice, Florence, and Rome. To fly "open jaw" into one city and out of another look for multi-city option. It may cost a little more than a round trip fare, however you save time and money by not needing to return to the original destination.

4. In Rome I always stay at Hotel Julia, near piazza Barberini metro stop and Trevi fountain. In Florence I stayed at Hotel Margret, it was OK and fairly close to the train station, but did not provide breakfast. In Venice I have yet to find a budget place that I liked, it's very expensive to stay in Venice but is such a unique and lovely place that I have to visit.

Thank you all for your input. We are changing our itinerary . We will be spending Rome 3 days,Venice 3 days and Florence & Pisa 2 days. Your suggestions were really helpful. We will book our hotels accordingly. I will share my travel plan once I book hotels.

Thank you all for your suggestions.

Aishwarya,
Given your revised itinerary:

We are changing our itinerary . We will be spending Rome 3 days,Venice 3 days and Florence & Pisa 2 days.

I'd take one day from Venice & add it to Florence, so your itinerary would look something like this:

Rome 3 days, Venice 2 days, Florence 3 days with possible day trip to Pisa.

In reality, you will only have 2.5 days in Rome, 1.5 days in Venice, and 2.5 days in Florence because you will lose about half a day
each time you travel from one location to the next.

Hi Everyone,

Finally we have made our final itinerary for Italy , got our visa, made train reservations-
27.03.2015: Reach Rome at 6.15 pm
28.3.2015: Day trip to Vatican
29.3.2015: Local sightseeing in Rome
30.3.2015: Local sightseeing in Rome
31.3.2015: Reach venice around 5:20 am and sightseeing in Venice.
1.4.2015: Local sightseeing in venice
2.4.2015: Reach Florence by 11 am and sightseeing in Florence.
3.4.2015: Day trip to Pisa and Locca (or maybe somewhere else in Tuscany)
4.4.2015: Local sightseeing in Florence
5.4.2015: Leave Florence around noon and reach Rome. Go to airport at 6 pm for 8.40 pm flight.
6.4.2015: Reach Delhi

We are also planning to do free walking for which there are great reviews. Is it worth to do these tours?
Rome
http://www.romefreewalkingtour.com/
Florence
http://www.florencefreetour.com/
http://florenceforfree.co/2014/09/11/florence-for-starters/
Venice
http://www.venicefreewalkingtour.com/
http://freetourvenice.com/

Do have any suggestions. Dos and Donts