We were planning on spending 4 days in Florence and 4 days on the Almafi coast (basing our stay in Salerno) in October. I am rethinking that we should skip Florence and spend the week in almafi, so we can really see many of the coastal cities and get a nice feel for Salerno. We can only take so much of museums and wanted one day for a winery in Florence.
Our first stop is Venice for 4 full days. Advise?
What are your flight details?
But, this sounds like a good plan to me.
PS You might ask the moderator to place this in the general Italy section rather than the tour section.
The Amalfi Coast is a difficult place to get from place to place and so I shudder when people announce plans for a quick trip there. We spent 2 weeks in Sorrento in April 2023 and loved it. We never made it to Salerno and our priority was Pompeii and the other Vesuvius sites over the actual Amalfi Coast but we did make 2 day trips along the coast. At some point we'll visit again and likely base ourselves in Salerno and Naples.
Note that October is late or shoulder season, and a few seasonal businesses may have started to close. Be careful about having the right bus and ferry schedules for your exact visit dates.
If you're not that interested in Renaissance art, it might be a good choice. Do you understand that Salerno, Sorrento, Positano, and Amalfi (the town ... you need to distinguish between Amalfi and Amalfi Coast!) all have different "personalities"? For example, Sorrento is a purpose-built postwar resort, although it is not a "beach town." Salerno has great access to Paestum and Pompeii, but is the anchor at the far end of the Amalfi Coast. It's a larger, workaday town that is not as "touristy" as the other mentioned towns. This whole area is a victim of its own success, and can be very crowded and congested from May to September, at least.
We did not get to Salerno, because it was so far from our Sorrento hotel. We had hoped to see the UNESCO WHS of Paestum, but had to give up the idea because of the travel time from Sorrento. (Be aware that you can almost certainly NOT fly home from Rome the same day you wake up anywhere on the AC, or even Sorrento.)
You may wish to use the Search box to learn more general facts about this section of Italy. Southern Italy has been short-changed by the central government for decades, so it is short on "infrastucture" like roads and transportation. There is basically only one two-lane road from Salerno to Sorrento, curvy and mountainous. The half-hourly busses (change in Amalfi) sometimes have to back up and take another shot at some of the sharper curves, delaying everyone.
While I cannot speak to Salerno, we did spent 4 days in Sorrento during July and loved it! We hired a private driver (found through RS) to take us up and down the Amalfi Coast, which was worth every penny. We saw everything we wanted to see, visited the beach, ate yummy food, toured some churches, gardens, museums. Then another day we took a small boat tour to Capri, which included 5 hrs to tour around the island, lunch, the blue grotto (which we chose not to do as it was SO crowded) and we even swam in the sea from the boat. The remaing 2 days we explored Sorrento (we visited Pompeii on the way in to Sorrento.) We loved it and felt like 4 days was not too short (though we definitely want to go again!) Florence, if you haven't been, is incredible. Even without visiting a museum you could easily fill 4 days (honestly I eat my way through Florence every time I'm there.) And October in Florence is still lively where as the Amalfi Coast (with the exception of Salerno) will be less lively with more things closed. I'd keep 4 and 4 or 3 (florence) and 5 (Salerno)
I'd keep 4 and 4 and if were my trip, 5 and 3. Don't discount Florence which we preferred to the Amalfi Coast. It is more than museums.
