First I want to thank this forum for all the help I got planning our first trip to Italy. The travel agent I’d used before is now only working with their German clients so I was scared to plan on my own but between RS’s Italy book, this forum, and other research, we had a fantastic time.
For anyone new to planning, just a few thoughts on what was very helpful during my research. When I had a question, I first used the search bar, and often found the answers I was looking for. If not, I tried to be fairly specific in my question. I would write ‘what are the pros and cons of staying near the Duomo or in the Oltrarno district in Florence?’ I narrowed things down, and felt like putting it that way was helpful for me, since one person’s pro could be another person’s con.
Also, even when I’d decided on where we were stopping, I continued to read posts about those places when I saw them come up on the forum. Sometimes you don’t know what you don’t know, and I gathered very useful information I had missed in my research just by continuing to read posts.
This is a personal preference for people, but the more I read experienced posters usually saying they preferred fewer stops and longer stays, I decided to go that route. This is definitely the way I will continue to look at travel in the future. A specific for me is that there are interesting potential day trips from a location, in case we end up not being that excited about where we’re staying.
So a few specifics on our trip. We started off in Vernazza, staying at an Airbnb I found because of following a forum post and it had the best little balcony/view. If you watch Rick’s Cinque Terre video, there’s a boy who jumps off a balcony around 8-9 minutes, that’s the room/balcony we had! And I know the majority tend to favor Monterosso (we didn’t stay there, only visited), but we’re definitely glad we picked Vernazza and would return there and to this Airbnb. We hiked the Monterosso-Vernazza trail. I was expecting it to be very physically challenging, and it was. But what I must have missed for anyone else who has a fear of heights is that the trail is very narrow, has very steep drop offs, and often there is no railing! That was harder for me than the physical aspect.
I originally planned to drive everywhere, but the forum posts also convinced me that trains/buses were the way to go for this trip. I was nervous as we’ve never really used mass transit, but it went very well and with all the warnings about validating tickets, we did it and saw several people get ‘caught’.
Our longer stop was in Florence. Here we stayed at La Scaletta in the Oltrarno district after a friend recommended it and it was also highly regarded on the forum. Another great choice and the roof top terrace was wonderful and it is a very good location. We really enjoyed Palazzo Vecchio and took Dante’s Inferno tour that got us to some ‘behind the scenes’ rooms that was fun. Also loved San Miniato and the San Marco Museum away from the crowds. Didn’t plan on the Uffizi as we are not into art museums and not sorry we missed it as we didn’t get everywhere else we’d hoped and that was fine as we wanted to enjoy what we did see and not rush from place to place. Took a Walks of Italy tour that allowed us to skip the lines and see some behind the scenes areas/be efficient in what we saw.
Took a day trip to Siena. Loved it. Would’ve been great to stay overnight, but still glad we went. Took the ‘Heaven’s Gate’ tour that again took you to places not open to the general public and that was fun. And because we had the Opa Si Plus pass, we stopped in to see the Baptistery and Crypt and those were nice to see.