technoguy

Hi folks,

Me and my wife will be traveling for a month long first holiday to Europe. We are going to Italy, Netherlands, Belgium, France and Dubai.

Our Italy leg starts on 4th April in Rome and ends 18th April in Venice. We have booked AirBnb's in all cities. Both me and my wife love architectural history, art and war history.

Any specific places or restaurants or cities as day trips preferably via train or bus we should do?

Rome - 4th April land 1.30PM until 9th April

Florence - Arrive Florence 9th April via train from Rome around 1.30PM and stay until 15th April

Venice - Arrive Venice 15th April around 2PM via train from Florence and stay until 18th April mid afternoon then take train for Amsterdam.

Rome

4th April - Free to do whatever after 4PM is currently blank

5th April - We have booked a 11AM guided tour for Galleria Borghese from the museum itself as I read that this must be booked in advance. After this it's blank

6th April - We have booked a 7.30AM Walks of Italy Sistine Pristine tour and then a 1.45PM Scavi Tour within the Vatican. After 3.30PM then it's blank

7th April - currently blank

8th April - currently blank

9th April - Train leaves at 10.30AM so cannot do much in Rome on this day?

We are hoping to do the underground Colosseum tour and book tickets when they open for April allotment in late March. Rome National Museum, Spanish footsteps, Trevi fountain. I was looking at buying 2 x 72hour Roma passes to use with National Rome Museum and Colosseum along with unlimited metro, bus and train rides within Rome.


Florence

9th April - Arrive 2PM and then it's blank
10th April - currently blank
11th April - currently blank
12th April - currently blank
13th April - currently blank
14th April - currently blank

We are hoping to do Uffizi gallery, Academia, Duomo, Science museum, Sienna as day trip and Modenna to visit Ferrari museum and drive one for an hour as rental

Is Firenze pass worth it? Any other museums or day trips we should look at?

Venice

15th April - Arrive 2PM and then it's blank
16th April - currently blank
17th April - currently blank
18th April - Leave for Amsterdam at 2PM via train.

My wife wants to sit in a Gondola.

Any help with filling the days or hours with itinerary would be very helpful. We both love to eat and drink. My wife is a vegetarian though which is a shame. Restaurants for breakfast, lunch and dinner suggestions would be very helpful as well. I am happy to make reservations in advance. We have a daily spending budget of 220 euros for shopping, museum tickets and shopping. This excludes already paid tickets for Galleria Borghese, Scavi tour and Walks of Italy Vatican tour.

technoguy

Reserved

PWMTrav

There's a ton of very recent, very relevant info in the forum right now on these locations. I would say good start only choosing 3 locations for that amount of time. If you haven't been to any of them before, I would probably suggest taking one of those days in Florence and allocating it to Rome or Venice instead. Not because there isn't enough to do in Florence, but there's more in Rome, and Venice could use an additional night - nights IMHO being the best time of day in Venice.

s4popo

From experience, I would reduce Florence by 1 or 2 days and have more time in Rome. The 3 days you have in Venice is more than enough.

Perche

Most of your trip itinerary is blank. You need to fill it in. This forum is for comments, not to do your research, or to function as a travel agency. For example, you have six nights in Florence with nothing to do. I'm sure you can figure out something to do in Florence, and not post a blank itinerary here.

As PWMTrav said, there is already a lot of information in this forum. Take some time to read it, and then if you have any questions, I'm sure people will be happy to help.

PWMTrav

Incidentally, I will plan trips for a fee

Check out the merged threads for the various Rome, Florence and Venice topics. There is so much good info in there. Especially after you sift through all of us arguing with each other Consider your travel style, too. I think it's fair to say this is a food-oriented forum just because of the interests of the regulars, so food and wine are very well covered. Common activities too. If you're interested in more unique things, frame your questions more specifically and people will certainly do their best to help.

amyers

We're there on the same week. We also book the pristine Sistine tour Saturday the 8th..

What we planned on doing is taking a day trip to Orvieto. Train leaves from Termini. I think we are doing that on Sunday the 9th and the Colosseum tour on the 7th.

Where you flying in from?

JBord

I disagree with needing more time in Venice. Two full days and some extra hours is enough. I think the itinerary is fine overall.

It seems like the OP has some ideas of what he'd like to see, but pretty difficult for us to fill in the blanks. I'd suggest he start grouping the things he wants to see by proximity and fill in some of the blanks. See what's left and then come back if he needs suggestions to fill that time.

Perche

You can't see a mysterious city like Venice in two days. There are different ways of doing things but skimming the surface in two days means that when you get back you should realize that you never really went there, and should not claim to have visited Venice.

Many people on this forum are familiar with USA expat bloggers like Katy Parla, Elizabeth Minchilli, Maureen Fant, and others (sorry if I skipped some). On the Italy side there are a whole bunch of Italian bloggers as well. Since it is public information I'll mention one here and provide the translation, with appropriate credits.

It is from Luciano Pignataro, written by Mariana Alaimo, a well known sommelier from Naples, writing about how she planned just one day in Venice. In Italy she is is nationally recognized as an expert on food and wine, and has received medals in recognition for it. Parenthetical comments are mine. These are her words, not mine, except for what is in parentheses. I suggest that people click on the link below, just to see the pictures.
http://www.lucianopignataro.it/a/i-v...giornata/6354/

"Visiting Venice is like making a complete immersion into beauty. Your nose and mouth will be gaping wide at all times due to the beauty of it. Even the most insignificant streets and places will seem unreal, fantastic, as if you are in a fairy tale. Even though Venice is a cosmopolitan city with a centuries long tradition of cultural exchanges with people and races from around the world, it is unlike any other city that is famous for its art. Venice has maintained its own unique identity."

"Venetians don't speak Italian, they speak their own unique language, have their own social structure, hold more firmly to traditions, and don't change with the style of the day. The way they hold onto tradition is why street signs and directions are still in the Venetian language, rather than in Italian. It's why streets are still called calle instead of strada, and why a piazza is still called a campo, and why a canal is called a rio, instead of a canal (Those are not canals in Venice. A waterway has to be a certain size to warrant the designation of being a canal. Venice only has three canals, the Grand Canal, the Cannaregio Canal, and the Giudecca Canal. All of the rest are called rio. That's what you'll see on the maps and street signs.)."

"It is necessary to walk beyond the banalities where tourists go and then just complain, 'I was always lost, and nothing was authentic.' That's not true, there are thousands of things to discover. Here are a few. I tried to live a typical Venetian day to get a taste of the city and to discover the great enthusiasm, courtesy and hospitality that Venetians are famous for."

"At 8:30 AM I went to have my coffee and pastry at Pasticceria Rizardini, founded in 1742, where time has stayed still since then, with the same furnishings and decorations, where you can have typical Venetian pastry like zaletti (biscuits of chocolate, nuts and raisins), a pastry called, "I die in Venice," made with chocolate, almonds and dried fruits, marzipan, Venetian struddle, and bread of the Doges."

"At 9:00 AM I went to Campo della Pescheria ed all'Erbaria (Plaza of the fisherman and herb/vegetable sellers). This is like a theatre stage where life is pulsating, screamingly colorful, almost never seen by tourists, full of Venetians, where you buy fresh things right off of the boat whether it's fruit, fish, whatever, you are buying it off of a boat from islands where there are no cars, where people still just get around by bicycle or by foot. Venetians are here buying typical Adriatic seafood at normal prices like sole, scallops, clams, monkfish, St. Peter's fish, flounder, sardines, where instead of cats wandering around trying to get some of the left overs, sea gulls are surrounding you, screaming at the fishmongers to throw some waste out to them as they clean the fish."

"At 11 AM I stopped for a Spritz with a baccala meatball (codfish) at Enoteca Do Colonne in Rio Tera del Cristo, one of the many bars in the city, a cross between a bar and an osteria. Such places are numerous, so delicious, obviously you would have a Spritz, the official aperitivo of Venice, made with sparkling water, white wine, a little bit of lemon, olive, and Aperol, invented when the Austrian-Hungarian empire took over Venice after its fall and they found the local wine to be too strong, so they found a way to water it down a bit, accompanied by snacks called cicchetti, such as fried codfish fritters, meatballs of either fish or meat, artichokes made in various ways, sardines in onion, raison, and vinegar sauce, smoked octopus, and mozzarella stuffed with various things."

"At 12:30 I went to the mythical Osteria Do Spade, on Calle Do Spade, perhaps the oldest in the city because even Casanova mentioned eating there in his autobiography where he recounts drinking wine by the glass that was a red 'foreign' wine that came from the south (Italy hadn't yet been founded, it was just the name of the peninsula, and Venice was still its own country, so Casanova was referring to what is now Southern Italy, perhaps Naples.), and he then went on, 'then one of our own wines, perhaps a Malvese from Istria."

"There are five calles (streets) in Venice with the name Malvesia, which testifies to the fact that this wine varietal is deeply rooted in Venice. Here Sebastian Masio, also owner of del Portego, an impeccable, quick witted and well mannered host, can serve an ombra (an ombra is a small glass of local wine. Ombra means shadow. There is a lot of folklore about why a small glass of wine at 12:30 is called an ombra. Most think it is because the men would ask for an ombra, a small glass of wine given to them hidden in the shade so that their wives couldn't see that they were drinking that early.). You can have the ombra with typical cicchetti of very high quality, or have a typical venetian dish at a table such as liver venetian style, squid in its black ink sauce, sardines in onion and vinegar sauce, spaghetti with local clams, smoked or whipped codfish, octopus with sauce and white polenta, fat spaghetti in anchovy and onion sauce, etc. I chose the octopus and codfish, and paired it it with a local Soave Classico La Roccoa, with gigantic purity, a little bit of citrus and a sweet smell, mineralish, with great structure, and a very long after taste."

"At 6PM I went to Nico (Dorsoduro, Zattere) for a hazelnut gelato, with whipped cream on top."

"At 7PM I went to have another Spritz, this time in a popular area, the market, at the bar Muro di Venezia in Campo Cesare, chatting with old men who were locals from that area, learning about many of the hidden stories and customs of this unique, singular, ancient city."

"At 8PM I ate at the famous Osteria all Vedova (I'd highly recommend that too) and had the fried fish, accompanied by a prosecco di valdobbiadene di Cartizze (prosecco now outsells champagne worldwide, and Valdobbiadene is where the best of it comes from), very dry, citrusy, minerally.

"At 9:30 I had a coffee at the Florian, the historic bar in Piazza San Marco, so exquisitely beautiful, so extremely refined, listening to a concert of Vivaldi's work, "La Stravaganza," very well played by a chamber orchestra."

"At 10:30 I went back to my room in San Polo, exhausted, but divinely fulfilled by a city with so much beauty and vivacity."

That sounds to me like someone who knows how to travel! That's just one day, and she has barely even begun to know Venice!

She hasn't been to the whole other side of the city! She hasn't even gone to a museum or heard a concert yet, except at Piazza San Marco. She hasn't visited any of the other islands in the lagoon. Anybody who says that you can visit Venice in two days, I would just say to them that they haven't been to Venice yet. They might have just as well taken a helicopter ride over it.

Ninety five percent of the people who come to Venice go there to do the zombie walk from Piazza San Marco to the Rialto Bridge.

You cannot see Venice, Florence, Rome, Naples, or anywhere else in Italy in two days and a few hours. If anybody has done that I hope that they go back to see the 99% of those cities that they missed before claiming, "I've done Venice," or "I've done Rome."

rickg523

Almost everyone I know who has spent a couple of days in Venice has been less than impressed. Some downright disappointed. Others intrigued enough to make sure they return for a longer visit. This was my case.
Everyone I know who has stayed at least a week has been enchanted. Anyone who has stayed a couple of weeks never wants to leave.
It's really that kind of place.

Perche

Yes, I was recently speaking to someone who told me that he hates Rome, Prague, and Paris. He added Rome, Prague, and Paris as one day side trips after a 5 day business trip to Amsterdam. He loves Amsterdam, but hated all of the other cities.

I recently read that a good rule of travel etiquette is to not claim that you have been to a city if you were only there for 2 days or less. Whether its New York City, San Francisco, or anywhere else, you really haven't been to any of those places if it was just two days. A person would be able to say, "I saw the Golden Gate Bridge, I saw the Empire State Building," and so on, and that's about it.

If someone visited NYC, SF, Venice, or Rome for two days and was asked their opinion about any of those cities, the only response that would make any sense is, "I don't know, I was only there for two days."

chongl

I was in Venice for 2 days and I felt one full day was enough for me. Going in I thought I needed 3-4 days, but I ended up being glad we were leaving

Perche

It would be interesting to know what you did while you were there, and where you were in Venice. It's useless information otherwise.

rickg523

Well, a city like Venice, with it's upfront, in-your-face tourist veneer and it's significant charms "hidden" away (not really hidden, but requiring some effort to discover), is maybe a self-limiting experience. People who aren't going to get it, just don't stay long enough to change their view.
If you can't get past the jimcrack on the Riva degli Schiavoni, if you don't give yourself enough time to go beyond the San Marco/Rialto area, if you find getting lost in mysterious alleyways and hearing footsteps in the dark frightening rather than intriguing, maybe this place just isn't for you.
I'll admit that (at least to me), Venice is an interactive experience that is highly dependent on what you bring to augment what the city offers. This is more or less true of every place, but Venice is possibly the most extreme example.

Antonio8069

I am told the best way to experience gondolas in VCE is to buy a public transit pass (similar to what you are planning in FCO).