Venice Planning

Our time in Venice is largely unplanned.  We have about a day and a half there (2 evenings) and while there are some cool sites (Piazza San Marco, Rialto Bridge, Doge Palace) I expect we'll enjoy our time there strolling the along the canals and alley ways, taking a boat ride along the Grand Canal, discovering some of the sites while getting lost, and likely visiting the islands of Murano and Burano.  

Yikes - Italian train strikes?!

In my research for our trip I ran across articles about the somewhat frequent (but pre-planned/ announced) train strikes that occur in Italy.  I don't remember running in to any issues last visit - but the Internet sure is a wealth of information, and it is something I wanted to make sure we were aware of before leaving.

We've booked Trenitalia to get us from Rome to Florence, then Florence to Venice, then Venice back to Rome (with a short regional train ride to Santa Marinella for a night before back to Rome).

The following blog posts, found on Pinterest, explain where to look for info on if a strike may be coming.

https://www.italybeyondtheobvious.com/travelers-guide-strikes-italy
https://www.italiarail.com/strike-information
http://italyexplained.com/how-to-deal-with-italian-train-strikes/

As I reviewed the site today to see of upcoming scheduled strikes I was concerned to see one of our travel dates, October 15, as a scheduled national strike day.  We have an 11 am train booked to take us from Rome to Florence.

I looked at the detail, and not understanding Italian - but could tell the strike was for October 15-16 and impacted Trenitalia nationally.  My first reaction was "UGH!" and to look at rental car options or other bus options - neither of which are even remotely preferable.

Eventually I got wise enough to try to translate with google what this alert and strike detail was really saying and YAY, I think we'll be ok.  The planned strike is scheduled to take place from 21:00 (9 pm) on Saturday, Oct 15 through 21:00 (9 pm) on Sunday, Oct 16.  By that time we'll have taken our train ride to Florence and should be settled in until we head to Venice on the 18th.  Of course, we'll still have to watch close and be tuned in to what is going on as we get closer and after we arrive in Rome, but fortunately the strikes being planned and announced in advance seem to rarely change.  Whew!!

Florence planning

Our second city/stop on the trip is Firenze for 3 nights.  We'll arrive via train mid-day on Saturday, October 15 and depart the morning of Tuesday, October 18.  I recall from my 2001 visit the beauty, art and relaxation of Firenze.  It is a very walkable town with lots of amazing architecture and history.  In brainstorming how to spend our time in Firenze we'll leisurely spend the first afternoon/evening exploring the many sites of the city; the different piazzas, the Arno and Ponte Vecchio, and the Duomo.  Maybe even attend Mass in English Saturday evening at the Duomo.

The remaining two full days in Firenze we'll take advantage of some tours.  On Sunday the 16th we have an electric bike tour booked through Viator in the late afternoon.   The earlier part of our day will be left to explore the Mercato Centrale, stroll along the Arno, and enjoy the city.

Monday the 17th we'll be taking a day trip/tour with Avventure Bellissime from Firenze to Cinque Terre.  This will be an all day adventure, and we're looking forward to learning from our guide about this precious area of Italy and seeing the beautiful small towns along the sea.  

T-minus 13 days until Italy!

It has been a busy summer, and we are now about 2 weeks away from departing on our Italian adventure.  Summer brought some extra excitement as we sold our house and moved.  It's been a great change, but certainly occupied our time from late May until mid-August.  Now we are just settling in to our new home.

In the midst of our move and now getting settled this fall; all of our final planning is taking place and we are preparing for our trip.  In my research and preparation I found some fun live webcams from famous sites around the world.  Here are some from places we'll be!

Piazza Navona Rome: http://www.skylinewebcams.com/en/webcam/italia/lazio/roma/piazza-navona.html

We'll be there Thursday, Oct 14 to meet our first Walks of Italy tour around 4:45 pm Italy time; which is around 9:30 am at home.

Piazza Signoria Florence: http://www.skylinewebcams.com/en/webcam/italia/toscana/firenze/piazza-signoria.html

We'll  be there from Saturday, Oct 15 - Tuesday, Oct 18.  The hotel we're staying at in Florence is in the back left corner of this camera shot.

Piazza San Marco Venice:  http://www.skylinewebcams.com/en/webcam/italia/veneto/venezia/piazza-san-marco.html

We'll be visiting this famous Venetian site sometime Tuesday, Oct 18 in the afternoon or Wednesday, Oct 19 (or maybe both).

Gelato preview

This past Saturday evening, Ryan and I went out to dinner to celebrate our 11th wedding anniversary.  We had a nice dinner at Cantina Laredo in Mall of America and calling our name nearby was a gelato shop.  So, of course, after we had a little post dinner walk we had to stop and get a little preview of the treat we'll encounter frequently in October!

We enjoyed and shared a cup with 4 different flavors: hazelnut, tiramsu, amaretto, and peach melba.  It was fabulous - great flavor and so creamy!  

Santa Marinella - YouTube Video

I love the technology that the internet and Google Earth provide,  that lets us preview the areas we will visit.  This is a cool video I found about Santa Marinella (on our scheduled beach stop toward the end of our trip).

Planning: Roma

Rome is the first and last city we'll see on our Italian adventure.  It is a "big" tourist city, but there is so much to see here.  It should be a comfortable first stop for a number of reasons.  First, having been there before I have some familiarity with the town, and second there are a number of great tourist resources (Walks of Italy tours, hop on hop off bus, etc.) that we can take advantage of.

This trip I want to make sure we leave time to relax, wander and discover things without being on a strict agenda.  On the other hand, wanting to make sure to hit some highlights and make the most of our days in this fabulous city.  Since we are not taking a planned tour, we can really dictate what we choose to do and when.

Here is my brainstorming for our first two days in Rome.

Day 1 day/afternoon: arrive train to Termini station, find hotel, explore, maybe a hop-on-hop-off bus tour

Day 1 evening: Walks of Italy Twilight Stroll tour w/ gelato, dinner

Day 2: daytime visit Colosseum, Roman Forum, Villa Borghese, evening Vatican City w/ tix for courtyard happy hour and museum entrance.  

Dreaming in Italian

Ciao!  Il mio nome è Kristin.  

Having studied Spanish in high school, I noticed on my first trip to Italy, that the languages are very similar.  When thinking about our trip this fall I've starting pinning language tips on Pinterest, listening to a language CD on occasion during my commute, practicing with the free Rosetta Stone Travel Italian app on my phone - and borrowing the Rick Steves' Italian Phrase book that my parents had from their trip to Rome last fall.

Tips I've picked up on from blogs and other articles (and past history) are:

1. Try.  Try to speak the language.  When traveling to another country be prepared to "give it a shot" and know a few key/polite phrases.
2. I've read Italians dislike when folks start speaking Spanish to them - yes the languages are similar, but they are not the same.  So, I'm hoping to avoid this mistake!
3. "il conto" = the bill (when you are ready to pay and leave a restaurant); "il canto" = the singing (resulting in your waiter looking at you sideways and singing for you :)

These are some useful infographics that I know I'll be referring to in October!

 

Planning: Where to stay?

Planning and research are fun and exhausting at the same time.  There is a plethora of resources, advice, Pinterest suggestions etc. that were used to narrow down the hotels we'll be staying at on our trip.  It is an extra challenge to coordinate all the details of a trip yourself vs. going on a planned tour but fingers crossed the locations/hotels we've picked will serve us well.

Resources used:

• Prior Experience (I liked the location near Roma Termini train station of our hotel, Royal Court, during my 2001 trip so we focused in that general area for Rome.  I don't have the best memories of our Florence hotel, so looked for other options this time around).
• Blogs, Pinterest
• Expedia, Trip Advisor, Oyster (great site with reviews and room pictures of most hotels), Booking.com

Rome:
The reviews/ratings and roof top garden drew us to the Hotel Diana Roof Garden in Rome.  This is where we'll spend our first two nights.

Florence:

After much research and reading reviews, finally settled on Casa del Garbo in Florence.  This small inn is located right in the Piazza della Signoria, right in front of the Palazzo Vecchio.  We'll be in the heart of Florence with the below view out the front of the hotel for the next 3 nights of our trip.

Venice:

Next stop is Venice for 2 nights.  Again, after much research and comparison "shopping" decided upon the Best Western Hotel Olimipa in Venice.  After reading what felt like millions of reviews and studying a map of Venice this seemed like a great option.  It is close to the Santa Lucia train station, so we won't have to wander too far and over too many bridges with our luggage when we arrive.  

Santa Marinella:

Heading back down south, I mentioned in a prior post, the plan is to head to the beach for a night. The hotel options in Santa Marinella are limited, but the Hotel Villa delle Palme looks beautiful and is right on the water!

Rome:

Final hotel, final evening in Italy.  We will be back in Rome, and decided to save a few dollars (we'll have some extra gelato!) and stay somewhere different from where we'll be the front end of our trip.  Also for nostalgia sake, we'll spend our last night in the Hotel Royal Court where I stayed in 2001.   The location is perfect near Roma Termini train station and I have fond memories of their cute courtyard and cappuccino with breakfast.

Planning: Which cities to visit?

Deciding where to visit on this trip was a dreaming/planning process over many, many, months as well.  Being familiar with a few key towns from my 2001 trip I had some ideas of where we should go, but also wanted to visit some locations I had not visited previously.

Once we booked our flight in February and knew we would be flying in and out of Rome, the real planning began.

A number of places were on the "list" of where to go; but it was a challenge thinking about how we could visit many of these locations in a 10-ish day trip.

Obviously Rome was a "must see" and we are going to be there on the front and back end of our trip.  Ryan having not been to Europe before has to experience the Eternal City :)  I'll cover more in a future post about our planning for our time in Rome, but as I read on a website "Its beauty, its history, its food, its character – Rome is worth seeing for all these reasons and more..".

Another "must see" city for me, which I fell in love with on my 2001 trip, was Florence.   While in Florence in 2001 we had taken a day trip to Pisa, and we thought about that for this trip but decided we are going to (hopefully) do a day trip to the Cinque Terre instead.  This beautiful group of 5 fishing villages on the cliffs with their beautifully colorful buildings is calling to us.  

One of the big Italian cities I had not previously visited, that made it on the itinerary is Venice.  I look forward to wandering the streets, floating down the Grand Canal, and maybe visiting the Islands of Murano or Burano.

Finally, we have to make our way back toward Rome from the northern region of Italy (Venice).  We thought about seeing Pompeii (something I did not do on my 2001 trip), then talked about heading much further south to the Island of Capri.  I also looked at options for a relaxing/quiet day trip from Rome (Marmore Falls, Tivoli) and eventually discovered the small beach town (about 30 minutes from Rome) of Santa Marinella.  We decided to book one night there toward the end of our busy trip to just relax on the Tyrrhenian Sea.  While later October may not be "lay out on the beach and swim in the sea" weather we'll certainly be able to enjoy the relaxed outdoors of a beach community.  Hopefully, stroll the beach and unwind from our busy travels across Italy before heading home.

Finally, it will be back to Rome for one more evening, before returning to the States.

Planning: When to go?

My first trip to Italy was in late February/ early March.   The weather was cooler, some rain, and it was definitely the "lower" season tourist-wise.  As we thought about this next trip, and when would be the best time to go, we looked toward fall.  Fall, primarily, since that is when my birthday is (and that is the initial reason for the trip).  September still seems to be part of the higher season for tourism (but honestly when is it not a good time to visit Italy?), as well as a busy time of year at work; so we turned to mid or late October.

The October temperatures seem to be pretty decent.  Lows in the 50 degree F range and highs in the mid 60 degree range up to 70 degrees F.  In doing some research October kind of starts the "lower" tourism season as well.  However, 2016 is a Holy Year declared by Pope Francis - so visitors could be high all year.

While watching flight options for a few months, it didn't seem to matter much if we went early or late October as cost was very similar.  In February we finally pulled the trigger and snapped up a good flight deal, price-wise and travel-time wise departing October 12.

Our itinerary

Wednesday, October 12: depart home on overnight flight to Rome

Thursday, October 13: arrive Rome around 9 am, settle in, explore city

Friday, October 14: Rome - Walks of Italy tour

Saturday, October 15: depart Rome, train to Florence (settle in & explore)

Sunday, October 16: Florence

Monday, October 17: day trip from Florence, hopefully to Cinque Terre

Tuesday, October 18: depart Florence, train to Venice (settle in & explore)

Wednesday, October 19: Venice, check out Islands of Murano/Burano

Thursday, October 20: depart Venice, train to Rome - then to Santa Marinella (beach)

Friday, October 21: relax in Santa Marinella, afternoon train back to Rome for last evening

Saturday, October 22: depart Rome for home

Why Italy? Why now?

Well - why not?!?!

Actually my love of Italy goes back many years.  As a college senior, I took an Italian art history class, and was in love with the art and culture that I learned about.  As I graduated from college I made a list of future "goals" for myself - one of them being to visit Italy one day.

I was fortunate enough to make my first trip to Italy with two of my best girlfriends in early 2001.  It was late February and early March and we explored this wonderful country; traveling to Rome, Florence (visiting Pisa), then to Sorrento before heading back to Rome for our return flight to the States.

I have many wonderful memories of that trip, and despite having checked off that item from my bucket list I still have a desire to return!

Now, 15 years later life is different.  Now, as a wife and mother travel and vacations are often more local and involve our young children (which I wouldn't trade!).  However, my husband and I made a decision to do a special trip for each of our 40th birthdays.  We had a fabulous trip to Jamaica to celebrate Ryan's 40th in 2014; and now this fall as I reach this milestone birthday we are headed abroad to my Italy!

Planning and dreaming began a good year in advance of this trip, and now we are about 6 months out from our departure.  I look forward to sharing and documenting our memories of this trip.