Two week Italy tour options

Have you already booked your flights? If not, fly into one city, and out of another. That prevents time and expense of backtracking.

Siena is serviced by regional trains and I believe the train station is not at the City Center. With all the moving around, you want to minimize travel time, especially with kids.

I’m going to suggest Orvieto instead of Siena to experience a hill town. It is serviced by high speed trains and easy to get from the train station to the top of the town.

When you are calculating travel time, included time to pack, time to and from hotel, and time at train station to get your bearings, find right track, finding and using bathrooms, and keeping track of 4 kids......And look at travel time per day. Traveling from one place to the next can be both physically and mentally exhausting.

I’d suggest dropping one of your stops. You have three big, crowed cities, so maybe drop Rome or Venice and have a bit more time in two smaller villages.

I recommend sticking with Venice, Florence and Rome. Add another day to Rome. Visit Siena on a day trip from Florence. Skip Manarola, you can come back to Italy and visit Lucca and Pisa along with Manarola.

If you want to stay in all 5 locations during your 2 weeks in Italy and must arrive/depart from Florence, I suggest the following order: Venice, Rome, Manarola (take the direct coastal train from Rome to La Spezia), Siena and Florence. To reduce travel time even more, fly into Venice and out of Rome, visiting Florence, Siena and Manarola in that order in between. For early flights, I think it's easier to get to Rome airport than to Venice airport.

Unfortunately we already have our plane tickets. We chose the to-and-from-Florence tickets because the flight times were much less (for some reason) and the cost was about $200-$400 less per ticket than almost any other flight scenario, which makes a huge difference when you're talking about six people. It does seem that chopping Manarola might be the best option. It would, though, be nice to have at least one stop be a smaller town. We wanted Camogli but it is too far away.

Venice is the most removed of the locations but also one of the more exciting destinations for us. We could consider the option of Rome--Venice--Florence (with an overnight in Siena during the Florence stage of the trip). I know Siena isn't a small town but it is closer than any of the others.  

Two nights in Manarola is at odds with your stated ideals.

We want to be in places long enough to experience them yet also see a few different places while we are there. We're trying to limit day trips and staying somewhere just one night. We want to see some of the sights but we also want to just simply spend time experiencing different places. We don't want to spend too much time on trains and getting ready for train trips etc.

I would not go to the Cinque Terre for less than 3 nights. Best plan this trip: drop Manarola. Add those nights in Option 1a to Florence and Venice. Don't work too hard on day trips. There is plenty to do where you are staying.

I few things I realize I should note:

---Other than the 4 yr old, the kids are teenagers so are pretty easy to move around with.

---I have personally been to Italy but the family hasn't so I'm considering a "first trip" for us. I visited Rome, Florence, Naples, and Cinque Terra in 1999. I did about 2 nights at each place and loved it. I am glad I didn't just do one or two of the locations.

---The order of importance for us is: 1.Rome 2.Venice 3.Siena or Ligurian Coast 4.Florence. Florence is required, though, since we are flying into and out of there (not a bad requirement!). The train from Florence to Rome (just upon arriving) is only 1.5 hrs so we are not too worried about that. We will be in transition mode anyway. Flying into Rome requires a transfer to city center anyway (and as I noted, flying to and from anywhere other than Florence would require us to spend one to two thousand more on plane tickets).

Just a quick question, since this is your first trip do you actually have 14 nights on the ground?
Or does it also include your 2 flight days.

We have a full 14 nights (with flight times, it is more like 16).

One way to limit travel might be
Arrive Florence, train to Rome (4), train to Venice (4) train to Florence, bus to Siena (4), back to Florence for 2 nights.

You could swap Siena for the coast, then stay in Siena before departure if Florence is last in importance.

The train from Florence to Venice is only 2 hours, so it's as easy to go to Venice first as it is to Rome. Yes, it's then 3.5 hours from Venice to Rome, but personally I think the rest of your trip flows better if you do Venice first.

Valadelphia, you are right, that route would cut travel time significantly. Intriguing. That could be a good itinerary.

The suggestion of starting in Venice is interesting too, but there is something epic about starting in Rome (although Venice is a close second in that regard!). There seems to be a strong consensus to cut Manarola. It would make my wife and me a bit sad to miss it, but doing so may make everything go a little smoother. Siena as a day trip is not an option since I'd rather skip it than only experience the place during mid-day.

This modified itinerary seems a bit better: Rome--Venice--Siena--Florence (plus, it is only 8.5 hours of train time, not including prep/load/unload etc, of course)

Arrive in Florence and train to Rome

(1.5hr)

Rome 4 nights

(3.5hr)

Venice 4 nights (visit Padua)

(3.5hr)

Siena 2 nights

(1.5hr)

Florence 4 nights

A close second is: Rome--Venice--Manarola--Florence (but replacing Siena with Manarola increases the train travel time from 8.5hrs to 14hrs)

Arrive in Florence and train to Rome

(1.5hr)

Rome 4 nights

(3.5hr)

Venice 4 nights

(6hr)

Manarola 3 nights

(3hr)

Florence 4 nights

I would head straight to Venice because it's low key - quiet, no major sights except the island itself, making it a great place to get over jetlag and soak up the atmosphere, easy to find back canals without hordes of tourists where you can enjoy a gelato or a cold drink, then enjoy watching the city pass by you as you cruise the Grand Canal. Rome is the exact opposite, big and bustling with several major sights. Save it for when you're all back to top speed.

Like you, I was in the Cinque Terre before it became a huge tourist destination and I loved it. I haven't been back since, mostly because of the many reports of overcrowding, cruise day-trippers and also severe damage to some of the most popular hiking trails.

If you want to see "a lot of difference places" without moving around, consider spending a few nights in Bologna. It's a very pleasant town with an interesting historic center, but more than that, it's a rail hub, so you can easily day trip to Ferrara, Modena, Padua, even Verona or Ravenna. If you add Bologna and drop Siena, it helps with the travel times. However, I wouldn't be so concerned about cutting an hour or two from train time. Riding the train is comfortable and relaxing. Changing locations is what eats up your time - packing/unpacking, getting to/from train stations, and then there's herding your group from place to place. You are only going to move as fast as the slowest person in the group, whether it's the one who doesn't want to get out of bed, or out of the shower, or dawdles at breakfast, or stops at every souvenir stand.

Chani beat me to it. I've never been to the Cinque Terre. But, by all accounts, it's become exponentially more crazy-crowded than it was in 1999. If you go in June of 2019, your experience is likely to be very different - and not in a good way!

We've gotten some great recommendations here. Thank you. Despite some people suggesting just staying in only three cities, we've actually done the opposite, gone with more of a Rick Steve's tour approach, and added a fifth stop in our trip (staying briefly in Orvieto between Rome and Venice). It is actually simpler, logistically, and requires less moving around than trying to do it as a day trip. Overall, we travel pretty well as a group and we want to see a few different places together. We like the idea of staying in our main target places for about 3 or 4 nights and staying at a couple others for 1 or 2 nights. As far as things being too much for the family, I should note that we aren't planning on dragging everyone from church to church everyday—we will generally have only one target destination in a day so that we can have either a morning or afternoon with no plans and not feel rushed to see everything in every place we visit. We ended up dropping Manarola but are keeping Siena (doing it as a day trip is not an option; we'd rather skip it than only see it during the tourist rush). With everything we've learned/gathered, below is what we are thinking is our final itinerary (but it's only final after we book lodging next week!). We may add a night to Venice or Rome, and take one away from Florence since art galleries isn't really a focus for us (so one day at galleries in Florence will suffice). We do want our girls to experience the youthful exuberance of Florence though, so we may just keep Florence at 3 nights.

• Arrive in Florence and train to Rome
• Rome 4 nights (M,T,W,Th) (~3.5 full days in Rome)
• Orvieto 1 night (Fri) (leave Rome apartment around 11:00, arrive in Orvieto around 1:00) (~1 full day in Orvieto)
• Venice 4 nights (Sat,Sun,M,T) (visit Padua and/or Burano, both are very close by) (~3 full days in Venice, half day or so visiting
  nearby areas)
• Siena 2 nights (W,Th) (~1.5 full days in Siena) (1.5hr bus)
• Florence 3 nights (Fr,Sat,Sun) (possibly visit Lucca but likely just stay in Florence) (~2.5 full days in Florence)