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Saturday, January 22, 2022

Changes To Our September Itinerary


Verona.

Now that we have postponed our trip until September and added a new destination to our itinerary, it's time to update our plans here. Here's our new itinerary, even though we are considering a change from flying to Milan to flying to Verona or Venice:

  • Milan - 1 night 
  • Verona - 5 nights
  • Feltre/Pedavena - 2 nights (Where my grandparents emigrated from in 1906.)
  • Venice - 2 nights
  • Bologna - 5 nights
  • Cortona - 4 nights
  • Florence - 3 nights
  • Milan - 1 night
A total of 23 nights.

Pedavena.

     We still have to book our flights and our reserve train tickets for travel between cities. Since we are splurging for once on Business Class tickets (and due to COVID), we are having a more difficult time deciding on those tickets. We are considering flying on Aer Lingus which we like. They have a program that lets you bid on an upgrade on your tickets near your departure date. So, we would book Economy seats and then get an email from the airline offering a chance to make a bid on Business Class seats. Right now those Business Class tickets are about $5,900 for two. The best price we have seen so far is with TAP Portugal Airline at about $4,000 for two. These prices are long gone now that it's May 13, 2022. The price now at both airlines is closer to $6500 for 2.

Huge difference there. we are hesitant to act right now out of fear that we might decide it is still too iffy because of COVID. The tickets would be nonrefundable. We plan on booking the tickets in early June. We could pay several hundred dollars more on the tickets so we could get refunds, but, we just aren't there yet. I invite comments from anyone more experienced in booking Business Class tickets. We prefer not using Business Class ticket brokers, though, where we wouldn't know the airline until after we bought the tickets.

     As for the fast train tickets between major cities, we can't access those until Trenitalia updates their schedules/prices for September/October travel. These tickets, some at steep discounts, become available only a couple months ahead of time. For day trip trains, we just buy our tickets at the station for local/regional trains (usually, there are no reserved seats on these trains). Always remember to validate your tickets before boarding your train or your bus or you risk a hefty fine (which almost no explanation can get you out of).

Regional train ticket validation machine.
Milano Centrale train station.

Trenitalia ticket validation machine.

As for our lodging reservations, we have made a couple of changes since which postponed our trip from April '22 to September '22. If we do fly into Milan, we will try to reserve a room in the Charly Hotel as before but it's too far out to reserve there yet. This hotel is close and convenient to Milano Centrale train station. We plan on staying there for our first and last nights in Italy. We also changed our reservation in Cortona to a brighter, larger apartment than before. And, since we added Pedavena to our itinerary, we reserved a hotel room for two nights in the nearby town of Feltre which is a short bus ride to Pedavena. 

Stay tuned for the progress we are making as we get closer to our departure date of Sepember 16, 2022. Fingers crossed.







1 comment:

  1. Barry, we have been working with a travel agent that Eric uses and have found the prices he gets to be better than we can get. If you're interested in trying him. let me know and I'll get you his contact info. Wren

    ReplyDelete

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