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.  

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.  

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.