1-2 weeks in Italy advice

Hello, I posted my question on the main Italy TA forum, but as I've been narrowing down our options, I wanted to ask people specifically knowledgeable of the Italian Riviera/Liguria.

My husband and I will be vacationing in Switzerland Sept. 20 - October 21, ending our trip in Lugano, and would like to extend our trip to include the Italian Riviera area. We have up to 2 weeks to spend, and will need to get back to Zurich for our flight back to the US. We would prefer using public transportation, rather than renting a car. We have been to Cinque Terre, and hiked between some of the villages, but only as a day trip from our stay in Florence. That is really the only part of the Ligurian coast that we have seen.

My specific questions a is 2 weeks to long to spend in this region? We want to hike, sightsee, visit Portofino for the day, and just wander around in the villages of note. We are not looking for a lot of nightlife; just mostly scenic beauty, or interesting towns/villages. If two weeks is not too long to spend in this area, then would the recommendation be that we divide our stay between one place along the Riviera di Levante (Santa Margherita Ligure was recommended), and one base in Riviera di Ponente? We could also spend one week in this area, then move elsewhere (still saying north for train from Milan back to Zurich), but knowing we will be ending our trip the end of October/early November, weather will need to be considered. Appreciate advice on my 2 week plan in this area. Thanks so much.

Hello,

My husband and I want to celebrate our 15th yr anniv and planning on going to Italy. We are both vaccinated. Is it safe to travel there now? If so would you say a lot of the wineries up north are open. We can't decide if we want to go up north to tuscany, florence, lake como, cinque terre, etc or should we do naples and amalfi coast. Our dates are Oct 1-9. Is the weather warm enough for Amalfi coast? I just don't know if everything is open and worth the trip? Any guidance is appreciated. Thank you!

Hi,

My husband and I are hoping to do a road trip around Italy mid sept for 2 weeks. We are flexible with respect to which city we fly in/out from.

We love quiet, scenic beaches (especially quiet coves away from too many tourists), but also like mini city/local town/village trips. We would like our trip to be more beach heavy with a few day/overnight trips to cities/local towns/villages thrown in!

We are happy to do a mix of trains/rental cars but are thinking it probably makes more sense to just hire a car for the whole trip.

Could anyone suggest a 2-week itinerary that could incorporate these things? We are thinking south of Italy, as assuming the weather will be better there in Sept.

Thanks in advance!

Help! My granddaughter is studying in Florence from August -December 15th. My husband and I are taking this opportunity to visit her and travel some throughout Italy. I have studied and have an itinerary of places to visit from Rome to the Dolomites. We love views and sightseeing. I can not decide if it’s best to go the first two weeks in October or the first two weeks in December when all the Christmas markets are open. My main concern is weather….mainly rain. Decided on December but read several places it can rain a lot in December. First time visiting Italy. Thanks for any input!

Hi all, we have the pure joy of a month to explore Italy by car this autumn (covid etc dependant). We have a few of the obvious places to visit; Venice, Florence, Amalfi Coast (likely the furthest south we will go) but to join these up we are looking at “non obvious” aka not big city places to stop. Somewhere with beautiful views or old villages to explore, places with beautiful hotels or hideaway gites to stay.

We will travel from the north, likely Pisa / Florence first, then work down South until Naples so particularly looking for suggestions in this area. It’s a round trip so we go Naples back up with some stops (east coast perhaps?) to Venice, Como and home

Many thanks!

My husband and I are planning to vacation in italy for our 25th wedding anniversary next year.

i am so overwhelmed with decision making and he is no help as he is very go with the flow and says yes to everything. which doesn't help me decide. lol.

we want to go to rome, pisa, florence, tuscany, amalfi coast

is it better to rent a car and travel this way or is it better to travel via train with all our luggage as we move from city to city?

or

could we be based out of one city for the entire vacation and travel to each place for the day trips?

if so, which city do you recommend to be based out of?

is renting a car a good idea?

i am planning a 14 day vacation to Italy, what is the best time of year to go?

thank you so much in advance for all of your help in planning this trip.

Hi everyone!

My wife and I are traveling to Italy for two weeks. Do you have any suggestions on what to do or see? Here is our route with car and ferry:

1 night in Milano

1 night in Santa Margherita - visiting Portofino

2 nights in La Spezia - visiting Cinque Terre, Vernazza and Riomaggiore

1 night in Florence

5 nights in Amalfi - buss or scooter around the coast

3 nights in Capri - buss or scooter

1 night in Rome

So we were thinking about leaving the car somewhere in Amalfi because it seems that using car in the Amalfi Coast is unnecessary. Then we take a ferry from Amalfi to Capri.

Hello. We are planning our trip next summer, which will be based in Italy since our daughter already has a school trip scheduled there.

We're planning to spend about 12 days in Italy, ending in Venice. We have 5-6 more days to play with, and were debating between going to Switzerland for the first time, or going to Milan/Lake Cuomo (also for the first time).

I'm hesitating to add the Switzerland portion onto our trip, out of concerns that it might complicate our travel next summer for Covid-related reasons. I'm worried about things like a difference in entry requirements, extra testing requirements, etc. We are all four fully vaccinated, but who knows what the rules will be concerning that by June 2022?

Since nobody has a crystal ball, I was hoping someone could at least talk about how easy it was to travel between Italy and Switzerland this summer (for vaccinated Americans, if that is relevant).

Thanks in advance for any advice you can give. :)

Hi there,

My family of 4 (kids aged 9 and nearly 5) are planning a trip to Sicily for 4-6 weeks in 2023 (and other parts of Italy too after the 4-6 weeks are up). We will rent a car for most of our stay.

We are planning to come in mid-June, which is the earliest we can arrive that spring.

My main question is: We aren't certain though if we should stay through to the end of July (6 weeks)?

We don't really know what its like in July, as we've been to Sicily in different periods befo

* early-mid June a few years ago (a bit north of Catania, Ortigia, Agriturismo Silitti near Caltanisetta, Marsala, Scopello); and

* a few days in early October for our honeymoon about 10 years ago (Ortigia and an agriturismo called Zottopera near Chiaramonte Gulfi).

We would ideally like to have a relaxing time with the kids in Sicily - and are hoping to avoid extreme heat (e.g. over 33 Celsius) during the middle of the day, crazy busy-ness and the worst of the Italian school holidays.

We are planning to stay in 2 or 3 spots as bases (about 10 days each): something like beachside near Noto/Ragusa, another near Palermo; and possibly an agriturismo in a central region or near a nice village (in a different region) as a third base. With possible weekend stays in Ortigia, Palermo, Cefalu and San Vito lo Capo.

Most places in Italy we'd like to visit mention September/October as ideal timing to visit, which I believe is also true for Sicily. But if we can visit Sicily at the start of our trip, we can leave September for areas like further north like Tuscany, Urbino, Ascoli Piceno.

Hi people,

Planning on visiting both Lake Como and then going into northern Lombardy (Chiavenna as a base, maybe), but not sure how to arrange it or how to manage the car rental in the most efficient way. Our rough itinerary so far looks like this:

- Day 1: Coming from Tuscany, arriving at Lake Como around noon or 2/3 PM (overnight in Varenna)

- Day 2: Around Lake Como, maybe visiting Bellagio / Varenna / hiking around the area.

- Day 3: Around Lake Como, maybe visiting Bellagio / Varenna / hiking around the area.

- Day 4: Going from Varenna to Chiavenna, sightseeing around the area

- Day 5: Visiting Soglio (Switzerland) and maybe other small towns close to Chiavenna.

- Day 6: From Chiavenna to Tirano or Pontresina to take the Bernina Express up to Chur, so we might be able to visit some towns enroute to Pontresina/Tirano during the morning as the Bernina Express leaves Tirano at around 2 PM. We will probably go from Chur to Luzern which is our next step for a couple of nights instead of staying in Chur.

I am not worried about the Lake Como leg of the trip, but how would you arrange the trip from Day 4? We weren´t planning to have a car initially because we would do Lake Como and then move into the Ticino (based in Locarno) in Switzerland. However, we discovered how beautiful the area around Chiavenna is and we are now gravitating towards doing that instead of Ticino, before moving into Lucerne (Bernina Express seems to be an interesting option to connect northern tip of Italy (Tirano) with Chur and then going into Luzern for a long but relaxing day).

Big problem is that there doesn´t seem to be a rental car return place that would suit our itinerary without getting into astronomical fees or a lot of unnecessary driving (or returning in Switzerland which also increases fees), any advice on that and how our rough itinerary looks? We would like to keep unnecessary travel as much as possible and minimize super expensive costs for the car rental.

Thank you!