Italy, Train or Plane?

[bigfrank Administrator Find all posts View Profile Close bigfrank]

I think you guys just changed my plans. I think we can get to Florence on the Friday we fly into Venice. We can spend a night there and on the next day spend a night in Venice and fly home the next day.

Does this sound do able? Flying into Venice from Rome on a Friday arriving at 9:30 am. Catching a train or renting a car to take me to Florence to spend the night. BTW once in Florence I would like to see Pisa. Go back to Venice from Florence On Saturday by car or train. Coming back to Rome on Sunday early AM to get the plane to get me back to NY. Now is this too much, Can I get it done?


What are the good sites for hotels in Italy?

[wombat Member Find all posts View Profile Close wombat]

Hi SandCrab, I guess we like Italy as every town is unique with different character, churches and architecture. We haven't encountered too many rude people, although security is an issue (money belts are a nuisance but necessity). We'll be exploring the Assisi / Umbria region next.

Frank, a good website for Italian hotels is Venere.com. Most hotels have their own websites, but you often have to email them for availability. We like the Porta Faenza in Florence for its price and location (near train station, markets and restaurants). Boscolo Bellini in Venice is next to train station (good for avoiding the vaporetto with bags), but prices fluctuate according to season.

Trains are very efficient and there is no need for a car. Takes about 3 hours between Venice / Florence and about an hour or so to Pisa (requires some walk or a taxi to the Leaning Tower, if memory serves me right). Pisa also has an international airport, have you considered flying out of there?

[wombat Member Find all posts View Profile Close wombat]

Hi Sandcrab, which parts of Southern Italy did you go to? What was your experience there? We haven't been south of Rome, so I guess we were in "safer" territory. We were warned (even by Italians) not to tread to the south (esp. Naples), but were thinking of doing the Amalfi Coast, which unfortunately involves stopping in Naples. Is that a worthwhile trip?

[Sydney Contributor - Bronze Find all posts View Profile Close Sydney]

We were in Venice, Florence and Pisa in '96 and loved all three places. Venice is a must see simply because it is so different and interesting. We thoroughly enjoyed strolling around enjoying each other's company. Yes food there is expensive but it's expensive everywhere in Italy.

Florence was also beautiful and I still have the leather handbag I bought there.

And Pisa, yes, you just have to do the cheesy tourist shot of one of you holding up the tower.

They're all tourist traps really so just try to enjoy yourself.

[Laurie Senior Member Find all posts View Profile Close Laurie]

If you've already booked air to Venice, my vote would definitely be 2 nights in Venice. If you hadn't already booked air, my vote would still be 2 nights in Venice - and go back to Florence on your next trip as already suggested.

I've been to both Venice and Florence for short stays, 2 nights each - neither stay was long enough, so we're going back to both. It's true Venice has lots of tourists - I didn't hear so much American spoken anywhere else in Italy. And I agree the food was better in Florence.

But Venice is more unique of a city, a huge open air museum with no cars - it's all real, and ancient. (This is what sets it apart from Disney.) On your full day there, you can ride the boat to the outlying islands. There are parts of Venice with fewer tourists too.

To add not only Florence, but also Pisa to your plans, IMO is trying to fit way too much into a short schedule - you'll spend too much of your time in transit, and if you're like us, too much time figuring out directions. Also remember most places you want to see, such as leaning tower and museums/galleries in Florence, may have long lines.

The thing about Italy is, you'll just have to return! We're getting ready for our third trip there. So if you end up going to both cities, you'll probably want to go back to both anyway!

[Rene McDaniel Junior Member Find all posts View Profile Close Rene McDaniel]

Hmmm... That's a **LOT** to see & do in 48 hours

"Does this sound do able? Flying into Venice from Rome on a Friday arriving at 9:30 am. Catching a train or renting a car to take me to Florence to spend the night. BTW once in Florence I would like to see Pisa. Go back to Venice from Florence On Saturday by car or train. Coming back to Rome on Sunday early AM to get the plane to get me back to NY. Now is this too much, Can I get it done?"
------------------------------------------------------------------------

"I talked it over with the boss. We felt that since we had a Time share room for the week rather than check out 2 or 3 day's before and lose all that time on the train. We could book the air at a cheaper price and use up a quarter of the time. Instead of Thursday to Sunday, We booked Friday 7 am arrive in Venice at 9:30 am out of Rome. This way we have all of Friday and Saturday there. I needed to pay for one night in a hotel since my TS is a Friday check out. Now I only need to book 2 nights rather than 3. I leave Sunday Morning at 7 am arrive at 9:30 am in Rome and check in to come back to JFK at the same time. Now my Question, Do I book 2 nights in Venice or 1 night in Venice and 1 night in Florence? It might be easy just to rent a car and drive it back and forth or just use the train and stay in Venice. Or should I just stay in Florence?"

Ambitious itinerary! BigFrank, I can't see anyway to squeeze in 3 cities (Venice, Florence & Pisa) in only 2 days including travel time if you are starting out in Rome on Friday morning and have to fly back to the US from Rome bright and early on Sunday morning. Those cities are just too far apart. Having been to all 3 cities on our last trip, I would suggest skipping Pisa. You would need an entire extra day just to get back-and-forth from Pisa to Florence, and it's not worth it. We tied it into a trip to the Cinque Terre, which was **fantastic**, but Pisa was just a tourist trap.

Also, the poster who mentioned the airports being on the outskirts of town is absolutely correct. The airport in Florence is tiny and out in the middle of nowhere. Several years ago I flew into Florence, and picked up my rental car and ended up driving past a moving airplane before I realized I was on the RUNWAY. That was an interesting experience! Reminded me of one of those teeny tiny airports on the out-islands in the Bahamas... (unless they've enlarged the Florence airport recently). In my experience the train stations were much larger, offered better services, and are ALWAYS centrally located.

The distance from Rome to Venice makes flying your best option. But going from Venice to Florence, and then Florence back to Rome you are probably better off taking an express train. Did you know, you can do Florence as a daytrip from Rome and come back that evening? We've done it by car and it's not a bad drive (2 and 1/2 hours each way?), although train would probably be faster, cheaper and easier -- it's just that we had already rented a car for the week. You can squeeze in a lot in a day in Florence because everything is very close & easily walkable distances. You can see the big sites in a day as long as you have museum reservations before you get there. (Accademia -Michealangelo's David, Uffizzi-great renaissance art, the famous Duomo & Baptistry doors, enjoy a great lunch & dinner, sunset on the Arno) Then, at about 8pm or so, head back to your timeshare in Rome.

If you fly back to New York from Rome Sunday morning, wouldn't you want to be back in Rome by late, late Saturday night? It's always much less stressful if you are at least **IN** or **pretty close** to the city your US return flight will be leaving from. Also, would Ryan Air from Venice return to the same Rome airport your flight to JFK is leaving from? (I think there are 2 airports in Rome.) If you wake up Sunday morning in Venice, with a 12:00 noon flight from Rome to JFK -- that leaves a lot of possibilities for things that could go wrong. Your airline may not have any sympathy that the Venice gondoliers, or train workers, or airport security, decided to go on strike and you were late for your Venice flight, or there were mechanical problems/delays getting from Venice back to Rome on Sunday morning. (This could be a less-risky plan if you were in Germany or someplace where things operated like clockwork -- but Italy... P-L-E-A-S-E, it would be **the exception** for everything to run like clockwork. (On any given day, it will seem as though somebody is on strike, and you would be at risk that if you miss your New York flight, the Rome airline staff may have no sympathy & tell you you'll need to buy new one-way tickets to New York for $1,000 apiece!

I asked my husband what he thought about your plan, and he agreed to definately skip Pisa. He also suggests that you do a mid-week daytrip to Florence, instead of trying to combine it with a trip to Venice. He felt more comfortable than I did, with your idea of a Sunday a.m flight from Venice back to Rome, and making your New York flight -- as long as you fly out of the same airport. He thought it might be less stressful if you came back on Saturday night, because Sundays in Italy alot of services are totally shut down. He was also of the opinion that you don't really need 2 full days for Venice, and could probably do just fine with just one day there, if your schedule is tight.

So, there's 2 more opionions to throw into the mix. But Frank, please feel free to email if you have questions I can answer, since we did a Rome-Venice-Florence-Pisa trip in 2002. You probably THINK you need to see everything, because you'll probably never get back -- but with timesharing you WILL, if you want to. We can't afford another round of 4 summer tickets, but we're going back for Spring Break next year. A second stay at Carpedium Roma, followed by a week just outside Florence. Italy is such a beautiful, amazing country. You wait and see. Once is not going to be enough!

--- Rene McDaniel

[bigfrank Administrator Find all posts View Profile Close bigfrank]

rene thank you for all that info. I will look into doing a day tip from Rome to
Florance. It might be worth it to do that. The only thing I want to see in Pisa is the leaning tower so it may not be worth it.

[Sydney Contributor - Bronze Find all posts View Profile Close Sydney]

Yeah. I agree with Rene also.

If it were us, we'd skip Pisa and do both Florence and Venice just because even though the lack of time would not do the cities justice, we wouldn't want to miss either places.

[wombat Member Find all posts View Profile Close wombat]

Hi Frank,

Rene's suggestion on the day trip to Florence is a very good one -- since a full week in Rome is probably 1 or 2 days too much. The train journey from Rome to Florence is also shorter, at just over 1.5 hours, compared to nearly 3 from Venice to Florence.

If you look up the Trenitalia website (www.trenitalia.com), the english version uses Italian names for the cities -- so it will be Roma Termini to Firenze SMN (Santa Maria Novella).

Also, try to book the Eurostar trains (denominated by "ES") -- they're direct, faster and very comfortable, compared with the Intercity trains ("IC") which has many stops. Trains in Italy are cheap, and second class on the ES is comfortable enough, no need for first class.

If you're still utlizing the Carpediem Assisi timeshare, you may also want to explore Siena and San Gimignano as they appear to be quite near the Umbria border. The Carpediem Assisi website says they offer that as a day trip on Tuesdays, from 7.30am to 7.30pm. That way, you'll see most of the major highlights of Tuscany from your Rome & Assisi timeshares.

[bigfrank Administrator Find all posts View Profile Close bigfrank]

Hi Frank,

Rene's suggestion on the day trip to Florence is a very good one -- since a full week in Rome is probably 1 or 2 days too much. The train journey from Rome to Florence is also shorter, at just over 1.5 hours, compared to nearly 3 from Venice to Florence. Since I have 2 weeks in Rome I will take the day trip by train.

If you look up the Trenitalia website (www.trenitalia.com), the english version uses Italian names for the cities -- so it will be Roma Termini to Firenze SMN (Santa Maria Novella).

Also, try to book the Eurostar trains (denominated by "ES") -- they're direct, faster and very comfortable, compared with the Intercity trains ("IC") which has many stops. Trains in Italy are cheap, and second class on the ES is comfortable enough, no need for first class.

If you're still utlizing the Carpediem Assisi timeshare, you may also want to explore Siena and San Gimignano as they appear to be quite near the Umbria border. The Carpediem Assisi website says they offer that as a day trip on Tuesdays, from 7.30am to 7.30pm. That way, you'll see most of the major highlights of Tuscany from your Rome & Assisi timeshares.

I did not know Florence was closer to Rome than from Venice. Looking at the map it looked closer to Venice.
I will be at Carpediem Assisi for a week and will be at I Cieli Di Roma for a week. Any ideas on what is close to do from each resort.
Also should I rent a car for a week or two? One resort is north Rome the other is south Rome. I may need to rent a car just to get to the resorts.

[Carolinian Super Moderator Find all posts View Profile Close Carolinian]

I like to use the train to get around in Italy, but your resorts may not be convenient to a train station. Parking and driving in a major Italian city like Rome is very difficult.

Being south of Rome, one excursion you should definitely make is to Pompeii.
You can take the train to Naples and change there for the train to Pompeii.

[bigfrank Administrator Find all posts View Profile Close bigfrank]

I like to use the train to get around in Italy, but your resorts may not be convenient to a train station. Parking and driving in a major Italian city like Rome is very difficult.

Being south of Rome, one excursion you should definitely make is to Pompeii.
You can take the train to Naples and change there for the train to Pompeii.

Steve is there a 2 week train pass that I could buy?

[Carolinian Super Moderator Find all posts View Profile Close Carolinian]

Steve is there a 2 week train pass that I could buy?

It's been a while since I looked at railpasses in Italy, but my recollection is that they were either not usable at all on the express trains or only usable with a significant surcharge. One definitely wants to use the fast trains instead of wasting time on the local trains that seem to stop at every pig path. The point to point rail fares are cheap, and with the exception of my first trip to Italy, I have always bought tickets at the station in Italy.

[Rene McDaniel Junior Member Find all posts View Profile Close Rene McDaniel]

Suggestion: Rent a car for your week in Assisi, but not Rome

I did not know Florence was closer to Rome than from Venice. Looking at the map it looked closer to Venice. I will be at Carpediem Assisi for a week and will be at I Cieli Di Roma for a week. Any ideas on what is close to do from each resort.

Also should I rent a car for a week or two? One resort is north Rome the other is south Rome. I may need to rent a car just to get to the resorts.

Okay, now that I know where you're staying, I think I'm going to change my suggestions a little bit. Reading the reviews for Carpedium Assisi, it sounds to me like you are REALLY going to need to rent a car for the week. The resort is on the outskirts of town, and has some negative press -- which means you'll definately want to be out-and-about. Just use the timeshare as a place to eat, sleep, and keep your stuff. You'll probably want to take a lot of daytrips since a fellow can only sit and chat with St. Francis for just so long -- then, it's time to move on and see all that your corner of Italy has to offer. I checked the train schedule, and since Florence is only 2 and 1/2 hours from Assisi by train, it's probably close to the same by car. So, rather than take a day away from your week in Rome, why not just make your Florence trip from Assisi?

You could see Florence either a daytrip, or even as an overnight trip (midweek?). You could do either 2 full days in Florence - or - even 1 day in Florence & throw in a sidetrip to Pisa. That's what we did from our **dog** of a timeshare in Northern Italy. We just packed a few clothes, and headed for a destination that was just to far to do as a daytrip (4-5 hour drive each way), and got a cheap hotel for the night after we arrived there. Where? You ask. Well, we drove about 4-5 hours south to spend the day in Florence, then around 5 o'clock, or so -- headed over to PISA, where we stayed the night.

Early the next morning, we drove to La Spezia (parked the car for the day), then took the little train from La Spezia that goes up and down the Cinque Terre and visted all 5 of the little towns. About 7pm or so, we made the 5 hour trek back to our timeshare in Northern Italy arriving back around midnight. Now, after having done that -- I would never recommend making 5 hour trips two days in a row. (Although people drive that and more to Disneyworld, like it's nothing!) The Italian autostradas are really great, but too much driving can really take it's toll on you, especially after an already long day of sightseeing. The next day we did more of a take-it-easy day (picnic @ local castle & shopping). But it was nice coming back to the timeshare and being able to just open up the fridge make a nice leisurely breakfast kinda like we were coming back home to all our STUFF. (We had only taken a few essentials & change of clothes in a backpack, and left everything else in the timeshare). But in your case Frank, with Assisi being only about 2 hours away from Florence, you would not have the huge drive time that we had coming all the way from Treviso, which is about an hour north of Padua/Venice.

I read the reviews for your Rome timeshare and it sounds like other people who stayed there did fine using the timeshare transportation and metro -- so there would be no reason to rent a car for Rome. I would suggest reserving a rental car ahead of time from the US, picking it up at the Rome airport. Load up your suitcases and drive to Assisi for the week. (The Rome airport is on the outskirts on the autostrada, and you can go totally **around** the city of Rome.) At the end of your timeshare week in Assisi, drive back to your timeshare in Rome, check-in, maybe get your grocery shopping done, and then return the car back to the Rome airport, or their office closest to your timeshare. (From the reviews, it sounds like the timeshare is in an outskirts residential area, so you will probably be okay driving.)

Back to daytripping from Assisi to Florence. We just followed the autostrada to Florence, got as close as we could following the line of traffic into the city, and just kinda parked where everyone else did, which was down by the Arno river, a bit on the outskirts... and everyone just seems to walk in from there. Parking was about 15 Euros for the day, not cheap by any means. If you decide you will go only to Florence and no other side trips, it would probably be easier and cheaper to just take a train from Assisi if it is just you and the wife. If you're travelling with other family members, like we were, the costs can start to add up quick.

I read something from Rick Steves one time that has stuck with me. Think about HOW MUCH MONEY you have spent just to GET there, and don't worry about the nickel and dime stuff once you're there. I learned that lesson the hard way. I really, really thought it would be fun to do a gondola ride in Venice, but the prices just knocked my socks off, my husband was rolling his eyes -- so, we passed. Now, I look back at it, and realized that was stupid of me to let that opportunity get away. So, now I try to do the math and figure the costs, then if things are even CLOSE, I ask myself --- what will work best for us? Which would we enjoy the most? For us, it is having the freedom of having a car, and being able to go when we want, stop where we want, pull over for pictures wherever we want, and come back when we want that is most important. Our rental car is always loaded with an assortment of snacks, drinks, music, books and my husband and I take turns and share the driving. For families, I think travelling by car is easier if your distances are not too great, although there are times we have taken trains.

So, reserve the car before you go. Also, make reservations for the Uffizi museum in Florence BEFORE you go. The Rick Steves books can help you on how to do this. (We called when we got to Italy and we couldn't get anything until a week later, so thank goodness we had a 2-week trip!) And you don't have to have a completely firm itinerary before you go. You can decide at the last minute whether to make a daytrip, or have a non-timeshare overnight stay somewhere, or whether to drive vs. taking a train. It was our inability to get Uffizi reservations that caused us to make the 4+ hour drive from Northern Italy back to Florence. But that misfortune turned into adding on Pisa and the Cinque Terre when we realized that we didn't want to make such a long drive up and back all in the same day. Ends up the Cinque Terre day was one of the highlights of our trip, although there were many! Who knew? And we ended up writing off making a trip to Milan, because it looked just too far, and we weren't sure we could get in to see "The Last Supper" without reservations. (That trip we would have done by train, because we were definately starting to slow down near the end.)

Pack light- because we were there last week of June, first week of July and it was so hot and humid in Rome. We could definately understand all that closing up shop and taking a mid-day siesta business. Phew! And even though it's practically 100-degrees, they still won't let men into St. Peters without pants, so you may want to pack a very, very lightweight pair of pants, or just spend the 10 Euro to buy the cheapo nylon ones they sell outside. We girlies had to buy big scarves because sleeveless arms are a no-no, too. But it was so blasted hot, even though we knew the rules before we went out that day, there was no way we could have survived the heat wearing anything more. The good news is that it cools off nicely in the evening, and there are lots of wonderful outdoor restaurants, and people walk and stroll -- evenings in Rome really have a special magic. (Also in Florence, too!)

I'm sure you're going to have a fantastic vacation. Just don't let any of the "timeshare-related" negatives get to you. Look beyond those, to the glorious countryside, incredible history, the world famous art, mouth-watering food, and warmth of the people -- it will help offset any of the negatives you might run into at a resort.

Just my 2 cents worth.
---Rene McDaniel

[bigfrank Administrator Find all posts View Profile Close bigfrank]

Rene Great information thank you again. I will be printing this thread and taking it with me.
Thank you all this thread has every thing I needed to know.
I just now need to book a car rental for a week and get a hotel in Venice for 2 nights.