Hi all,
I posted a week or so ago about our 17-night honeymoon this coming late september/early october. Thank you all for your feedback and help. I have many more questions and would appreciate any feedback. I appologize in advance for this long post.
Rough Outline: We will be flying in and out of Milan. We land around noon in Milan on our first day and plan to immediately train to Venice. From Venice we will train to Florence. From Florence we will rent a car for a week, return the car (likely in Pisa or Lucca) and train to Cinque Terre. From Cinque Terre we will train to Varenna on Lake Como. Finally we will train back to Milan for our flight home. Here is a quick summary of where we will be each night:
1) Venice (after arriving by train the day of our flight)
2) Venice
3) Florence (after train from Venice)
4) Florence
5) Florence
6) Montepulciano (driving from florence)
7) Montepulciano
8) Montepulciano
9) Montepulciano
10) Siena? (driving from montepulciano)
11) Siena?
12) Siena?
13) Cinque Terre (return car in Pisa and train to CT) - Exact town to sleep in TBD
14) Cinque Terre - Exact town to sleep in TBD
15) Varenna (after train from CT)
16) Varenna
17) Milan (after train from Varenna)
18) Fly Home at 4 PM
That is our rough outline. No hotels/villas/etc have been booked. So this can be adapted. We are fairly sure we want to go to all of these places, but number of nights in each place it up in the air. Also, we dont want to change hotels every night. My biggest concern is in which town to stay and for how many days. We are active, in our early 30s, like to visit sites (museums, etc), but we also really like to relax, drink wine, and eat.
Questions:
1) Is one full day (2 nights) enough time in Venice. Note, our first night will be after flying to Milan and then taking the train to Venice. We can stick aroud and explore a little on the 3 day before taking the train to Florence. We could also move one of our Florence nights back into Venice or even move one of our Siena nights back into Venice (so we would have 3 nights in both Venice and Florence)
2) We really want to see Pisa and Lucca, but I am not sure that we want to stay in either place. Does it make sense to take a day trip from Florence (thus losing one day in Florence), or should we swing by Pisa and Lucca on our way to dropping off the car and then taking a train to CT. Assuming the latter, between Pisa or Lucca, which makes the most sense to drop off a rental car and train to CT
3) After Florence and before CT, we have 7 nights to spend in non-florence tuscany. From what i have read, we are positive that we want to stay in Montepulciano. I think it will be a great hub to explore hill towns and go wine tasting. Upon inspection of a map, i think it makes the most sense to drive to our furthest south destination before driving north, spending 3 nights in another town, and then catching our train to CT. Is 4 nights enough in Montepulciano? What other towns, wineries, sites, etc do you recommend near Montepulciano? We don't plan on going further south than Montepulciano, so we wont make it to Assisi
4) We have 3 more nights in non-florence tuscany. From what I have read, everyone love Siena. Is 3 nights a good amount of time to spend there? If not Siena, where else would you recommned us stay? Should we move one of these 3 nights to Venice (or somewhere else, perhaps CT)? I dont think we want to spend 3 full days in siteseeing in Sienna, are there other towns nearby Sienna that would be good day trips?
5) Are two nights enough in CT? We dont know what town we will be staying in yet, but will figure that out soon. If more time is warranted, where should we take it from?
As always, any help/comments on the itinerary as whole would be great. We are getting ready to start booking accommadtions, but want to make sure that we have a good itin outlined before we do.
Thanks!