We had a great, if brief, 8N stay in Italy. We are three long-time girlfriends (their first time to Europe, my second) and we had a blast. Here is a brief report, in case it helps anyone with planning. Thank you to Christine H, Chani, and others who gave feedback on my itinerary. We ended up with: 3N Venice, 2N Orvieto, 3N Rome, May 8-16. We did not drive, instead took trains. None of us speak Italian, apart from a few basic words, and we got by fine. We used Euros for small purchases like gelato and some stores preferred Euros, but we used credit cards for restaurants.
For arrival in Venice, I wanted to splurge on a water taxi, but I procrastinated too long I guess because when I went to reserve tickets, they were sold out for anything close to our arrival time. I also learned (from the Tripadvisor forum) that you are no longer able to just show up and get a water taxi. Interested if anyone here can confirm. So I instead purchased tickets for the Alilaguna boat bus thing. My sense of direction is not that great to begin with, and it was a big of a challenge for our jetlagged selves to find where in the airport to catch the boat! But we made it and arrived in the Cannaregio district where our apartment was located. We had a great view of the canal. That first night, we ate dinner at literally the nearest restaurant we could find. We tried to walk around a bit to stay awake, got some gelato. But we were pretty tired, went back to the apartment, and were in bed by 8:00 pm!
On Day 1, we were lucky to have a nice sunny day, no rain. Thankfully there was a restaurant right out our front door that opened early, so coffee was available right away. People in Venice don’t seem like early morning people to me! Tiniest coffee cups I’ve ever seen but the coffee was potent. We wandered for hours. Crossed the Rialto bridge, which was extremely crowded. I had pre-purchased tickets for St. Mark’s Basilica and glad I did, as the line to buy on site was pretty long. Our tickets included the Pala d’Oro and the museum. We enjoyed it very much. Walked around the square, did some shopping. Saw the Bridge of Sighs but elected not to purchase the tour to actually cross it.
Day 2 in Venice, it rained cats and dogs. But we still took the vaporetto to Burano and then Murano. I wished I had bought a day pass in advance. I made the wrong assumption that every vaporetto stop had a kiosk to buy tickets. So we had to walk to a different station where we could buy tickets and then walk back to our actual departure station. The crowds were not too bad on Burano and Murano, at least according to the shop keeps who lamented how the rain was very bad for their business. Bought a lace table runner in Burano and some glass jewelry in Murano.
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