Getting Close to Our Departure Date

Just about 3 weeks until we leave on our 5th adventure in Italy. We're excited and a little nervous, as usual. Have we prepared thoroughly for everything? Have we checked all the boxes, especially our what-to-take list? This is a very important detail since we will be gone for about a month and are only packing one carry-on bag each (22 lbs). Also, is everything ready with our flights; rental cars to/from our airport; are all of our lodging reservations finalized; and, have we purchased our train tickets between the cities on our 8 stop itinerary?

Let's take a look at each of those details:

1. Flights: We booked our flights on Aer Lingus on May 23, 2022. We were fully committed to making this trip on that day.

2. Transportation to/from the airport: We reserved our rental cars at Enterprise for going to and from our airport (Logan in Boston). We found that this was less expensive than long-term parking.

3. Transportation while in Italy: To save a little money, we bought train tickets in advance of our trip through Trenitalia and Italotreno online. We will purchase train tickets for day trips at train stations. We're all set getting to the 8 destinations on our itinerary and will narrow down day trip choices when we're in Italy. Yesterday, we purchased our round-trip ATVO express bus tickets from Marco Polo Airport to Piazzale Roma in Venice. When we arrive at the airport, we can just walk out present our tickets, and get on the bus for the 20-25 minute ride into Venice proper. From Piazzale Roma, we have about a 15-minute walk to our rental apartment.

4. Where we'll stay: All of our lodgings have been booked on Booking.com. We will spend our first night in Venice before boarding the train to our hotel in Desenzano del Garda. The rest of our itinerary will take us to Venice, Verona, Feltre, Bologna, Cortona, and Florence. Several of the apartments are located in the ancient city centers, while one in particular (Donnaberarda in Cortona) offers spectacular views (Please, see photo).

Donnaberarda apartment setting. (Cortona)

Cortona view from Donnaberarda apartment.

Train tickets purchased.

Well, with our itinerary finalized and our lodging choices reserved, today we bought the remaining train tickets on Trenitalia (oh, and one on Italotreno) online. It's great seeing the exchange rate almost at par - the best it's ever been on our trips to Italy. We will still buy train tickets for most of our day trips while there, since we only use public transportation while in Italy (trains, buses and an occasional taxi).

Our first stop is on Aer Lingus (Boston to Dublin to Venice) at Marco Polo Airport in Venice. From there we take the short Express Bus ride into Venice proper to Piazzale Roma. Then we make a short walk to our first apartment rental. Next stop, the next day - Desenzano del Garda for 3 days. Photos, top to bottom - One is the Grand Canal passing in front of Santa Lucia Train Station, Venice. Two is the express bus from the Marco polo Airport to Venice Piazzale Roma. Three is Piazzale Rome. Four is the exterior of our first rental apartment in Venice. Five is a view of the waterfront in Desenzano del Garda.

Milan, Florence, Sorrento and Bologna - Our (Finalized) 2016 Itinerary

   Still planning your itinerary? I've been working on ours since my last post on June 5th. It is no longer just a hypothetical possibility - flights are booked and paid for - Boston to Milan's Linate Airport on Aer Lingus changing planes in Dublin. Got another super airfare ($1336 total for 2 round trips - there are a few even cheaper air fares available now on Swiss and Lufthansa) for an early November departure before election day. We'll definitely be voting, though, via absentee ballots.

Milan, on our way to see da Vinci's The Last Supper.

   Having already visited several cities like San Gimignano and Siena two times each, we have decided to explore a bit more of this beautiful country this time. This left us with many great choices, as usual. Since we'll be spending our first and last nights in Milan, we thought that would be enough having been there for four nights last year. Florence is always one of our destination cities because we love it and now, we have friends there. Bologna also deserved another look, especially with an eye toward new days trips from there. Staying in Riomaggiore, Cinque Terre seemed like an attractive option, too. Getting to experience Arezzo's huge antique fair was also on my list of things to do. From Arezzo we could easily visit Cortona. Both towns would be new to us.

Leonardo da Vinci statue in Milan.

   Those considerations made for some easy decisions for our itinerary. So, I got out a calendar and started jotting down days and cities. Here is the first draft of our itinerary with day trips from each city we would stay in and the (number) of nights in each base city:

Draft Itinerary #1

Milan (1)
Florence (5) - Fiesole, Prato, Portovenere (overnight?), Pistoia
Arezzo (4) - Cortona, Montepulciano, Montalcino
Bologna (4) - Ravenna, Modena, Verona
Milan (1) - Como

Not a bad looking trip, but after more conversation, research and nine revisions, here is our final itinerary for our 15 day trip in November. You'll notice some significant changes from Itinerary #1 with some cities missing and others added. When we learned that our regular Florence apartments would not be available this year, we decided to spend less time there and expand our visits to Sorrento and Bologna. We have never seen the Amalfi Coast so that change kind of pushed us out of our familiar nest in Florence. While it will be the longest train trip (about 3 1/2 hours total), we know it will be worth it. The choice of Sorrento over Riomaggiore was also partially made because we are hoping to increase our chances of better weather a bit by heading further south. We'll see how that pans out...

Near the Duomo in Siena.

Itinerary #9

Milan (1) take it easy day
Florence (3) - Arezzo, Cortona, Fiesole
Sorrento (5) - Capri, Amalfi, Positano, Ravello, Pompeii
Bologna (5) - Ravenna, Modena, Ferrara
Milan (1) take it easy day

   This plan represents more train travel with our luggage than we have done in the past, but our experience doing that last year has given us some confidence. Plus, we are already planning to pack less clothing than last year so that we can more easily handle our suitcases. In 2015, instead taking one large suitcase and one medium one, we packed only one medium suitcase! Since we knew that we would have access to a washing machine in the apartment in Florence, we brought the clothes we each needed for one week even though it was a two week trip. This time, each of the three apartments we are renting has a washing machine. One even has a dryer! So, hopefully, we can pack even less than before. We may try to reduce what we take to fit in two carry-on bags and not check any luggage so we don't have to spend extra time in the Milan airport.

   Because we have already booked the dates and the apartments for each stay, we know when we'll be traveling, so we can take advantage of some great prices on train tickets by buying them online before we leave home. Sometimes the savings can be as much as 70%! For the day trips, we'll buy our regional train or bus tickets the day of or the day before those excursions. We will still have the flexibility to change our itinerary for our day trips as we choose to add/subtract places to see.

   Well, with four months to go before we leave, we have booked and paid for our flights, settled on a great itinerary and reserved all of our lodging. Pretty good preparations, so far. We still need to purchase our train tickets on the Trenitalia  and/or Italotreno for Milan to Florence, Florence to Naples (Sorrento), Naples to Bologna and Bologna to Milan. I've checked all of the prices for the regional trains for our day trips, as well. Still left to do: check out some smaller luggage options, go to AAA to get some euros, reserve rental cars for transportation to/from Boston's Logan Airport and do some more research on places we want to visit. Were well on our way and are excited to be embarking on another adventure to Italy!

   Next up - Buying Your Train Tickets Online Before You get To Italy

Buying Train Tickets Before You Leave Home

   So, you're planning your great adventure to Italy! As you Google through countless beautiful photos trying to decide where to go once you get there, you should also be figuring out you're going to get to those places once you are in Italy. Will you rent a car and drive everywhere, will you sign up for a tour or will you venture out into the real country with Italians on a train? Traveling to rural areas and not going by anyone else's schedule might be attractive enough to you to rent a car. If so, here is a site with a lot of good info on driving in Italy. Remember, a car can be fairly useless in the big cities unless you're a resident and, even then, there might be very restricted driving in the city centers and less parking.

Italian train station, Florence.

   Of course, everyone may not be comfortable with driving or arranging their own train travel. Traveling with a group on an escorted tour of Rome, Venice and Florence or other areas may have advantages for people who want a planned itinerary. Here is a site that might help you in your decision about using an escorted tour.

   We have yet to rent a car on our three trips to Tuscany and we feel very positive that train travel has not hindered our ability to see everything we'd like. Still, it's good to know that there are hundreds of day tours you can arrange before you go or after you get there. One very reliable tour reservation provider that we used twice on our 2011 trip was Viator. We took a half day Chianti wine country tour and a full day walking, train, boat tour of Cinque Terre. The wine tour was especially nice because otherwise, without a car, we might not have seen the beautiful Tuscan scenery up close. We totally enjoyed both tours and taking a break from being responsible for planning each day was just great!

Greve in Chianti on 1/2 day wine tour.

A view from the Castello di Querceto Winery, Greve in Chianti.

Cinque Terre view on full day walking, train and boat tour.

   Since, we weren't going to have a car, we needed to plan a few of our train trips before leaving home. Once, we had developed a draft itinerary, we headed to the Trenitalia site for train ticket information. This past year, because we had lodging reservations for three cities and we knew for certain when we had to travel, we bought three important train tickets before we left home: 1) Milan to Bologna- 18 euros ($20) for two, 2) Bologna to Florence - 26 euros ( $29) for two,  and 3) Florence back to Milan for our flight home - 34 euros ($38) for two.  By buying these tickets on the Trenitalia site this way we saved 40-75% on each ticket. All of our tickets were 2nd Class on the fast trains, Frecciargento and Frecciarossa. We were aware that once these tickets were purchased we would have to travel on the days we had selected and there could be no changes or refunds. It is possible for these trains to be sold out if you wait too long, especially for popular routes like Florence-Venice, Florence-Milan and Florence-Rome. On our first trip in 2011, we bought our train tickets for our day trip from Florence to Venice (Venezia S. Lucia station) at Santa Maria Novella train station (Firenze SMN) in Florence a couple days ahead of time. We paid 86 euros ($125) each round trip RT, but in 2014, we purchased our tickets online at least a month before leaving home and paid just $65 each RT. Two advantages we had in 2014 - buying online in advance and a much better exchange rate (please see my earlier post, "How Much Does It Cost." Also in 2014, we took a day trip to Rome from Florence on Italotreno; the tickets cost 36 euros each ($48) RT which was a great deal! Those were advance online purchases, too.

From Rick Steves:

• "Advance-purchase discounts are available online for reserved, medium-speed and faster trains (but not regional trains), and come in three price levels: "Super Economy" (up to 75 percent off), "Economy," and "Base" (full, unrestricted) fare. Privately owned Italo trains have similar advance-purchase rates between major cities."

   Tickets on regional trains usually can not be purchased more than 7 days in advance, but the trains do not sell out. Tickets can be bought the day of travel, if you like, but still get to the train station early to buy your tickets. There could be long lines at the ticket counter and at the machines. One warning: don't accept ticket help from anyone who isn't an official train station employee, especially at the machines. Also, it's good to remember, in my opinion,  that 2nd Class tickets save you money and there is little difference in ambiance between 2nd and 1st Class travel on Italian trains.

   On our last trip we traveled between three cities on trains with our luggage never out of our sight. The toughest part was lifting our one medium suitcase onto the train, but we managed with only the loss of the newspaper I had just bought to read on the train. Oops!There is a lot to learn about train travel and the best way to do that is to just go to the train station and buy your tickets and go. What's the worst that can happen? You might end up in the wrong town...that might work out perfectly in Italy! We have never really experienced a problem traveling by train in Italy. The train service is a far cry from what is available in the US - there is no comparison. The trains go almost everywhere and they go there often. It is a wonderful and easy way to travel, even with your luggage.

Milano Centrale Train Station.

Some of our validated train tickets...
Don't forget to validate your train tickets before you board the train and avoid a very large fine!

All aboard! Well, no one says that...

Other train (or bus) trips in 2014 and 2015 with prices from Florence (Firenze):

Riomaggiore via La Spezia (Cinque Terre) RT -  $78 each

Lucca RT - $25 each

San Gimignano (bus) RT - $19 ea.

Siena (bus) RT - $18 ea.

Pisa (and Livorno) RT - $24 ea.

San Miniato-Fuceccio RT - $12 ea.

Milan to Varenna-Esino (via Lecco) RT $15 ea.

Bologna to Parma (via Modena) RT $16 ea.

Here are two photos from our excursion to the  fantastic San Miniato White Truffle Festival last November:

Self-catering Apartments - Are They Right For You? Part 3: Riomaggiore Appartamento Giovanna

   On our first two trips to Italy we stayed in Florence and took fantastic day trips to see the sights in other towns and cities. Traveling several times by high speed trains of Trenitalia and Italotreno, it was fairly easy to visit Venice and Rome just for a day. And, if you buy your tickets online before you leave for Italy, you can save as much as 50%,  but be aware if you do that, you probably won't be able to change your ticket or your travel dates. Though trying to see Venice or Rome in just a day may seem impossible (it is), but in just two hours you can be in Venice, where you can walk around for 5-8 hours, have lunch, aperitivo, wine, take the Vaporetto on the Grand Canal to St. Mark's, and cross the Rialto Bridge. In Rome, you can see the Pantheon,  Trevi Fountain, the Colosseum and have lunch before boarding your train for the two hour trip back to Florence. We just wanted to be sure to get a taste in the event that we were unable to return to Italy. Another place we saw on our first trip was Cinque Terre. We signed up for a full day hiking tour that took us by air-conditioned coach to Cinque Terre (more on the tour in another post). It's a fairly long trip whether on a tour bus or taking the train on your own. We left Florence at about 8:30 in the morning and didn't return until 8:30 in the evening. A long day, but a good value and well worth the time.

Cinque Terre scene.

View from Appartamento Giovanna in Riomaggiore..

View from Appartamento Giovanna in Riomaggiore.

   On our second trip in 2014, this one with another couple, we chose Cinque Terre as a great place to celebrate my sister-in-law's 60th birthday on September 29th. To do this, we needed a more relaxed adventure, so we rented an apartment in Riomaggiore, one of the five towns. All four of us packed small travel bags for our overnight trip. We were traveling light on regional trains! We kept our apartment in Florence, as well.

   I searched on Booking.com to find a budget friendly apartment in Riomaggiore. After checking on a few places and reading the reviews, I selected a nice one bedroom apartment with stunning views of the sea and town. Appartamento Giovanna fit the bill perfectly. The cost was $162 split two ways. There was a double sofa bed in the living area along with the very nice bedroom, so the four of us were quite comfortable for one night.The apartment has a fully equipped kitchenette for making meals along with a dining and a living area (all one room). While the place was small and cozy, it was also spotlessly clean. We knew it was a fantastic choice!

Appartamento Giovanna - Riomaggiore, Cinque Terre.

Some of the provisions at Appartamento Giavanna.

Kitchen

Living & Dining Area. Bedroom doorway.

   Here is my Booking.com review of Appartamento Giovanna:

   Location, cleanliness, amenities and extras like, wine, pasta, coffee, tea, jelly, croissants, soap, towels - everything we needed! The provisions were above and beyond! Frederika took our call and sent Paulo to lead us up to the apartment. Paulo met us at the train station and walked with us to the apartment the most scenic way. Breathtaking views. And, Giovanna was waiting for us at the apartment. She was so friendly, helpful and just plain wonderful! The apartment was bright, cheery, super clean and seemed brand new. It comes with such fantastic views. Just steps down to the center of town and the sea. Everything was perfect! We do hope to rent this apartment again for a longer stay. We would totally recommend Appartamento Giovanna!

(While we liked everything and it all worked out perfectly for the four of us, someone with mobility/physical conditioning concerns should know that it is an uphill walk from the train station (on the street, sidewalks and stairs) all the way from the town center.)

   The walk down the hill into the center of town and the sea takes about 8 minutes; going back up to the apartment takes about 12 minutes. The sights are beautiful all the way. There are plenty of restaurants,
gelato shops and pizza places to choose from as you walk. Be sure to be at the water's edge for a spectacular sunset. Plan ahead and make a reservation at one of the restaurants facing the Ligurian Sea. We had a nice lunch with wine overlooking the stunning sea view at Bar Conchiglila. We had dinner at Enoteca Dau Cilla, but were unable to get a table outside with a view. We had tried earlier in the day to make a reservation for a table outside, but we were too late. However, the unique grotto-like room where we ate our dinner was just perfect. And, we had enjoyed the spectacular sunset before dinner!

Lunch check for four.

Reserve a table for dinner in Riomaggiore.

Riomaggiore sunset!

   From our wonderful experience, I highly recommend Giovanna's apartment to anyone who desires a super clean, well-equipped, modern apartment with stunning views in a great location. I would suggest making your reservation early.

  Up in my next post - our fantastic self-catering apartment in Bologna...