Trip to Italy

I have found it best to avoid Italy the week before and after Easter, which is April 20, 2025. Have a great trip!

I am not an expert on Tuscany, so I hope someone else will comment on the idea of using Lucca as a base for seeing Tuscany, apparently without a car.

Emily, do you have specific places in Tuscany you want to see?

Well, we were just looking at the map and thought Lucca seemed in a better location to then get to Florence than San Gimignano. Your thoughts please?

Hello emilyw_99, and welcome to the forum!

A couple of thoughts on your itinerary. The day from Varenna to CT is pretty long day on the train realistically 5-6 hours if not a maybe a little more depending on the schedule. This is a long way to go for one night - you'll have the evening of the day you check in and and then how ever long you stay the next day before leaving to explore Vernazza.

Generally I would never stay one place for only a night unless it is for travel logistics - like getting into a city the night before a flight - because you don't even get a full day. I would look for a way to get more time in CT to explore it more thoroughly or save it for another time. Two nights in Florence is only one full day so I think the obvious - if hard - choice is to shift the CT day to Florence to at least get two full days there.

Lucca is a little Tuscan town that really like, but what are your goals for exploring "Tuscany". Lucca is reasonably well connected by train because it lies in the flat river delta valley. If you're looking for the rolling hills of farmland and vineyards of the Tuscany of films and photographs that lies south of Florence on the other side of the hills more in the Siena area and that's a different conversation.

Pisa is a quick trip from Lucca is the famous tower and fields interest you and there are a variety of small interesting towns in the area but beyond Pisa few blockbuster names. If you want to see Siena, San Gimignano, Cortona, etc these lie well south of Florence. If this is what you mean by "Tuscany" specifically I would look to shift those three days in Lucca to maybe Siena and explore from there. Rural Tuscany is as beautiful as advertised but can be logistically difficult on a tight schedule since things there move much more slowly.

Keep in mind that 3 nights means only two full uninterrupted days of exploring and two partial days of packing, bags and travel. Siena certainly deserves at least a day on it's own and then maybe a day of touring the surrounding area to get your Tuscany fix.

With nine nights I think you need to be realistic about the number of places you can see versus the amount of time you spent traveling around.

Hope that helps, have a great trip,
=Tod

Lucca is a lovely town but a bit too far north and west for touring the Tuscan hill towns

If you are flying out of Milan you will need to be IN or near Milan the night before your flight so need to allow at least 1 night there

1 night for CT is not worth the trouble as explained above

If you have 9 NIGHTS in Italy stick with just 3 main locations
Something like

Varenna 3
Siena 2 - take a tour of hilltowns from here
Florence 3 could do 1 more day trip from here
Lucca and Pisa for example
Milan 1
Fly home

Another thought might be to replace Varenna with CT heading south to Liguria and Tuscany without heading north first. This would replace the lakefront with a seaside if that's somewhat the same to you. The complication of this is that the train to La Spezia is much longer than the train to Varenna.

You don't mention how long your flight into Milan is but you don't mention staying over in Milan for a night after landing. Flying from the west coast, and often changing in London, I'm not usually looking for anything beyond a quick meal and crashing out on arrival. Also keep in mind that MXP (the most common international airport in Milan) is a good hour outside the city by train so any train travel times are on top of getting into the city itself.

If you decided to go only south you could head to Florence first which is faster because of the fast train - about 2 hours - but is still longer than the hour or so to Varenna.

That might make it (Milan) >Florence > Siena/rural towns > CT > Milan.

Here is a good map of the towns that are served by rail and then the ones that are only bus connections in Tuscany:
https://www.wanderingitaly.com/maps/images/tuscany-rail-map.png

Anyway these are just suggestions and ideas. Since you are in the planning stages these are kinds of things you might want to consider to cut down on travel time and maximize time 'on the ground'.

Hope that helps and doesn't add more confusion to the planning, but it's all about prioritizing and arranging things in the way that makes the most sense to you and your travel style and interests.

=Tod

My experience is that Lake Como is much less crowded than the CT, as there are no cruise ships dumping of thousands of day trippers in Lake Como. And , Lake Como is just so beautiful! Safe travels!