Hello Everyone,

I think there is some confusion and I haven't been clear based on the conversation bouncing around at the time. We currently don't have Children. The reason the conversation was focused around kids at the start is we plan to have them very soon and were considering not traveling after we had them internationally. This is why the trip is labeled as a Potentially Last Trip for a while. It should be Potentially last international trip for a while. So kids won't be an issue, it will be my wife and I. On a side note, we are reconsidering international travel if we have kids, because of this post. We were pretty much 90/10 on not doing any before I posted here, its probably somewhere between 60/40 to 75/25 now not doing it. So we have moved our opinions quite a bit thanks to your insights.

I apologize I wasn't clear on our preferences. I thought I had been the trip is for historical views, not food, not immersion in the current culture. I feel we will experience all of that and are open to it as we go along, but I'm not going specifically to taste the food and we aren't really drinkers. A little backstory is that during college I spent 6 weeks in Athens and I was able to pop over to Rome with friends for a long weekend. We spent 1 day in Venice and 2 days in Rome, it was all the time we had. We missed the Sistine Chapel, because it was closed on Sunday and we came the weekend after the free one. Anywho, I was not that impressed with Venice while we were there. It felt like we walked the entire city in 12-18 hours and then took an overnight train to Rome, at least I recall it being overnight, I could be miss remembering that. Just for clarification sake, I have been there, but my wife has not been anywhere in Italy. The we I refer to here, is my college friends.

Pompeii is a must and I'm okay with losing a day to travel there, see it and return from a "home base". The Vatican is a must, my wives family was Catholic at one point before she was born or her extended family was, not exactly sure. The reason Milan is on the list is we have enough points to fly into it and fly out of FCO that allows us to use points for hotel stays. I can get the entire stay on points all 14 days along with trip travel. My Capital One should have enough points to pay for a majority of train costs and other miscellaneous travel. So that is why the preference is arrival MXP and departure FCO. Plus my wife wanted to be a model when she was younger, but decided against it. I thought seeing Milan the fashion capital of the world or close to it, would be cool for her.

I'm really torn on Venice. You all speak highly of it, but it smelled during July when we were in college. We walked a lot of it, I have pictures with tons of birds flying around me, road a gondola, though my wife hasn't. So I am just not sure about it, but I haven't research it or Florence yet. I am starting too, I know mostly about Rome/Pompeii/Herculaneum.

We are not huge international travelers. We do roughly 1 trip a year, that credit card points pay for and those trips are mixed with beach vacations. Our chances of coming back to Italy are very tiny compared to the rest of you who range from Travel photographers to Independently wealthy people with houses in Italy. It would be a great Luxury, but both of us have so many other places we want to see and say we have been the list is so long. I want to see Japan, China, Hong Kong, Egypt(1st on List tied with Italy), London, Paris, and Germany. My wife wants to see Athens, to see where I did study abroad, Bora Bora, Fiji and any other major beach place.

If you take the scenario above with 1 international trip a year and that doesn't include us wanting to find time for Mexico/Canada exploration it would be ten years if we traveled with kids before we think we could return or perhaps 20 if we waited till the kids are 10 like we had planned. It is why we were trying to see the major cities to kind of checklist them, so to speak.

Rome/Pompeii are the heart of our trip. However, the important things in Rome is the Vatican, Sistine Chapel, Colosseum and perhaps the fountain. We aren't huge museum people, but we will check a few out here and there. I don't have to spend hours at each site as a person. I just like the fact I've been there, that I can speak a little about it with others and I do value when we have time to deep dive, but it isn't a must for either of us. We aren't people that rush around either, we take a leisurely pace and tend to pick 3-5 must sees while in every place. If we make it to three of them, great if not, its a bummer but no huge loss.

Life could change for us and we could start traveling more, we have discussed that as well. It is so funny how people view heavy travelers. We are known as massive travelers with my wives family and our friends, because we do one huge trip a year and then about 5-7 small ones within the US. If we traveled like those of you who have done so many places and the same places so many times, I don't know what our friends and family would call us haha. They think we travel the world as is.

I hope this better explains why I was trying to see so much, where our mind is, etc. There is a lot we don't know. Such as will we travel with kids in the future, will we try to find more time/resources for more international trips or will we finally fall in love with a place that lets beckons us to return over and over there?? I don't know any of those answers. I have been to NYC multiple times and to Chicago multiple times. I don't love returned trips there to be quite frank, I enjoy going and normally we go with people who haven't went before as a weekend trip or our traveling friends who love Chicago. That is another thing, our traveling friend couple is having a kid in December. They aren't traveling for multiple years, which is one reason we started thinking about what we would do.

I know this is a long post and a lot to explore. I wanted to be clarify and explain our focus. I know it probably seems like we are crazy, I can just see the branching paths before us, knowing that our days of doing International Travel maybe put on pause for reasons that you might not understand, but make sense for us.

Does this change anyone's view of how we should hit Italy? Of where we should go? Anything I can clarify? I truly apologize that I haven't explained this very well. I thought I was pretty clear on the reasons "history" and Pompeii..

Thanks