I've been encouraged to write this by a poster that I have had some private conversations with. It's not something I do regularly.
My wife and I like to get away from the UK in the dark wet months between January and March. We managed to have an opportunistic two weeks in the Galapagos in January - cheap Avios flights and piggybacking on our younger son's 3+ week trip to Ecuador.
For the next trip we already had a week's booking in a Marriott timeshare in Mallorca booked for the UK February half term school holiday, to share with our eldest son, wife and 3 year old granddaughter. We then decided to add something else on to that and we haven't been properly to Italy for a while, so we planned a 3 week add on.
I hatched a plan to fly to Italy from Mallorca and take a route south and then eventually back home to the UK. Whilst I could probably manage to book all this myself I was attracted to try the services of a relatively new UK agent specialising in no fly holidays. It was incredibly easy to get a plan from them in a day or two which we pretty much stuck with after a few tweaks. The simplest plan was for them to use a 7 days in a month Interrail* pass for us both and we were able to take advantage of their limited offer of free first class upgrades.
We flew from Palma to Bologna on 22/2 for the simple reason that that was the only direct flight from Palma to Italy on the day. But it's a great place to start as it's a big rail junction, we had never been and it was a perfect start for two nights.
We took a fast train from Bologna to Napoli for three nights in a city I have been around but never properly visited. We took a food tour on the first day and went to Pompei on the second to show my wife who had never been. I had first visited in Easter 1967 as a 14 year old schoolboy on a school trip, which had also been by train. Our next destination for two nights was Minori, on the Amalfi coast and where we had stayed 59 years ago. A simple train ride to Salerno followed by an hour long bus drive along the coast road. A ferry would be an alternative way to get there but not in late February to Minori - there were limited services to Maiori and Amalfi itself.
On the full day we had we walked the Sentiero del Limoni over the hill from Minori to Maiori. On the way down into Maiori my wife stumbled over a sole step and fell over. She bounced straight up and everything seemed to be fine - we carried on walking around Maiori and then took the bus and walked round Amalfi (far too busy to be enjoyable even on an afternoon in February). However when she woke up on the following morning she could hardly walk and her right knee had swollen up like a balloon. She is a retired doctor and has already had a couple of falls meaning she has a titanium nail in her lower right leg, so she was naturally concerned that she had broken something. So, instead of taking an early bus back to Salerno and a train to Palermo, we were in a taxi to the nearest hospital just outside Salerno. Thankfully x-rays showed that nothing was broken and we were able to get back on the rails, although we had missed our booked train. Given the flexibility of our passes it was very easy to re book seats on an afternoon train and we eventually arrived in Palermo at 23.15 rather than the 19.00 it should have been.
The following morning there was some improvement for Anne and after a visit to a pharmacy for a knee support the doctor in Salerno had recommended and some painkilling gel we took a HoHo bus tour of Palermo with an add on to Monreale. It helped to cut down on the walking and provided a very convenient if a bit more expensive way to get up to Monreale for the stunning cathedral.
The day after there was enough improvement for Anne to commit to a walking tour of the city and to do a tour of the Teatro Massimo.