<p>“3days in Europe” thread got me thinking I should seek collective wisdom/experience.</p>
<p>Going to Italy first two weeks of June. H, myself and 14yo DD.</p>
<p>Flying into Milan (via Brussels), will hit Cinque Terre, Florence, Rome, Venice, fly out (again via Brussels with overnight).</p>
<p>Have done fair amount of research, I’ve been to Italy before (in 1970s though) and have Art History background (specializing in Renaissance and Ancient art, conveniently :)).</p>
<p>Wondering what people have done that they found not to live up to the hype/expectations and also recommendations not found in travel books.</p>
<p>Couple of questions up front:</p>
<ol>
<li>we should make a point of doing 1st class on trains if available?</li>
<li>best area to stay in Florence?</li>
</ol>
<p>Thanks. You guys are a (Trevi) fountain of wisdom and experience</p>
<p>I have my masters in Art History(me too ) and lived in Florence (studying restoration) Just wondered on the following:</p>
<p>Has Cinque Terre recovered from the flooding and landslides? You might want to check up on that.
<a href=“Vernazza Cinque Terre - YouTube”>www.youtube.com/watch?v=bBoCfey0ueg&feature=related</a></p>
<p>Since it is the three of you, have you considered a small apartment in any of the locales? Are you staying more than 3 days in any of them? I have rented apartments in Rome, Venice and Florence. I love the option of going to the markets and having a communal space where one can collapse and go thru the days adventures. I would not bother with making train reservations unless you are traveling on a national holiday. Also keep an eye on impending strikes (scioperi)</p>
<p>Florence, especially, can be crowded and noisy in the summer. Someplace that I have stayed, up in the cooler lovely hills of Fiesole, with a convenient 10 minute bus into town right outside the entrance:</p>
<p>It’s a renaissance villa with a pensione, run by the most wonderful people. Gives you a break from all the hub-bub and a little taste of Tuscan hill town life.</p>
<p>Here’s the sort of apartment available in Florence–somewhere that I’ve stayed —but it may already be booked:</p>
<p>Totally agree with Musicamusica about renting flats in Italy. We also have done so in Rome, Florence, and Venice, taking day trips from each. It is a much cheaper, more relaxing, and more authentic experience. Nowadays it’s very easy to arrange by internet.</p>
<p>Certainly first class train travel is more comfortable, but for short jaunts, I can’t see why it would matter. One of my family’s most memorable experiences was taking the “dollar vans” around the island of Bequia, when the drivers would see how many people they could possibly stuff in the van. No forgetting that trip!</p>
<p>Another town you might consider staying in or at least visiting is Arezzo, where you can bathe in the glory of Piero della Francesca. Only a 35 minute train ride (I think it leaves every 30-35 minutes) into the well positioned Florence central station. I have stayed there for the famous anitquities market held monthly and found it makes a great base for visiting Florence and the surrounding countryside.</p>
<p>The first thing we do when we “roll into town” (no matter where that is) is visit an official tourist Kiosk (indicated with a big red I). They will know what sort of concerts that might be taking place. Rome and Venice have wonderful concerts of classical music taking place in spectacular settings like centuries old ruins and churches. It’s always a memorable experience. We have heard everything from Verdi at the Baths of Caracalla(Roma) to Vivaldi in the Chiesa San Stefano in Venezia.</p>
<p>I would also recommend booking reservations for the Villa Borghese stateside, and probably the Vatican (we had booked a custom tour of the Vatican, and so didn’t have to wait in the enormous lines).</p>
<p>Starwood has the best hotels in Florence and Venice. Westin Excelsior hotel in Florence is very centrally located. In Venice, they have 5 star hotels around the square. One thing to be prepared is that most of those hotels will not accomendate 3 people. I like Excelsior in Venice, [Hotel</a> Excelsior, Venice. Excelsior Hotel Venice.](<a href=“http://excelsior.hotelinvenice.com/]Hotel”>http://excelsior.hotelinvenice.com/), the are part of starwood and is out at Venice LIdo. They have a great beach and pool, and you could take a water shuttle (free) to Venice. Around the hotel there is a great local restaurant which serves the best steamed mussels.</p>
<p>You could used your AmEx points to get some of those hotels at discounted rate or free.</p>
<p>When we visited the Cinque Terre the train workers called a train strike for the day (it was
on a Saturday). They do this frequently because of unhappiness with their wages, etc- it lasts for a day and they think they’ve made their point. It is a huge inconvenience since there are no other travel options out there. If you have a reservation at a hotel in your next destination and they call a train strike you are stuck. </p>
<p>I don’t have any advice for how to avoid train strikes since they are always surprises, but they do happen kind of often. I would look up Italian train strikes and see if there is any pattern, and always have a back-up travel arrangement while you’re there. Some people we talked to ended up hiring a cab to drive them from the CT to Pisa, it was astronomically expensive and they were very annoyed. We had a driver, so we were unaffected, but certainly felt for the many travelers who were.</p>
<p>Also, frankly (and others on this site are welcome to disagree with me), I think the Cinque Terre are overrated, extremely crowded, and not a destination I’d return to. The villages themselves are beautiful, but they are tiny. Most have only one main street which is lined with many vendors selling souvenirs and the boats bring so many people, the streets are absolutely packed. It almost felt like Disney Land to us. Now we did not do the hiking trail from town to town, so that might be a less congested more authentic experience. But for our money, we’re not going back to the Cinque Terre anytime soon.</p>
<p>Thumper might help you for the overnight in Brussels. </p>
<p>If you still have to book the hotel in Brussels, just remember that it is not necessary to stay close to the airport. There is a very convenient train shuttle that brings you to the very center of Brussels. There is a wide selection of hotels in all price ranges in Brussels, with real bargains during the weekends and holidays. The best hotels such as the Conrad, Stanhope, Sofitel, and others offer great rates when the EU politicos are not screwing up things for Europe.</p>
<p>Since the center of Brussels is so small, you should have no problems navigating a few great sites during an overnight stay. Although the best season for mussels and shellfish is over in June, there should be plenty of great restaurants to try out. If there is still space in the clothing after two weeks in Italy!</p>
<p>Ditto post #5. Our family loved the Cinque Terre; the primary reason we went there was to hike between the towns, and we felt it was one of the highlights of our trip. Another place I love that many people skip is Ostia Antica, just outside of Rome. We almost didn’t go, but squeezed it in on our last day in Italy. The incredible access to the ruins and the incredible lack of crowds made it a favorite memory.</p>
<p>There was something wrong - sometimes major, sometimes minor - with most of the meals we had in Italy. I thought we were choosing decent places … didn’t go to the places with pictures of food on the menu for tourists, etc, But when I think about it, we just weren’t willing to spend enough money to have decent meals. The dollar was weak and I thought we were spending plenty. But we managed to find quite a bit of bad food in Italy. (We learned our lesson and upped the budget on subsequent trips.)</p>
<p>Imagine eating at a cute little restaurant right on the Campo di Fiori in Rome…earlier in the day there was an open air market there, selling all kinds of delicious things. But in the restaurant, the olives were cheap canned black olives, and when I ordered a cheese plate, I observed the kitchen staff taking the cheese out of the supermarket packaging. Had we been willing to spend about 50% more, we could have eaten a delightful meal at the restaurant across the square.</p>
<p>We were also there the first two weeks of June. We were prepared for heat. There was a cold front and we were cold for most of the trip. It got down to the 40s-50s most nights and we only had sweaters. (One night I wore my pajama top under my clothes when we went out to dinner.) There were’t really jackets for sale that time of the year and, in keeping with the “we’re cheap” theme, I refused to buy hooded sweatshirts that said ROME or FLORENCE on the front that we would never wear again.</p>
<p>We generally tried to eat where there were a lot of locals, often they were a lot less expensive and better. We never really had any bad meals in Italy, even at some little restaurants in a small town. H just left for Milan today. He goes in and out of Italy few times a year for business.</p>
<p>We also had trouble finding good food in Italy. I never expected that. Some of the best food we had was what we made in our rented villa apartment. It was around Christmas and there was unexpected snow and things were closed and the hours of restaurants were very fixed. Buying food to cook in villages was also confusing for non-Italian speakers. Much easier in supermarkets near the city. Staying in Florence should be better. We were about 45 minutes drive outside the city. That might be better in the summer than in the winter, but it was logistically really difficult. Morocco was easier for us.</p>
<p>Book your own tickets well in advance for the Uffizi Gallery(Florence) at UFFIZI.com</p>
<p>Gelato places(IMHO)
Perche No-Firenze
Giolitti AND San Crispino-Roma
Grom-Venezia
Places to eat:
Da Marisa in Venezia
price fix about 35E/person yummy vino,appetizers, veggies, bread, fresh seafood, dessert
very friendly small trattoria on a canal
off beaten path in a neighborhood with locals and tourists mingling.
Great for late night but if you want to eat earlier then a reservation a MUST
A tasty value for Venice</p>
<p>Musica: that’s impressive footage of vernazza. I’d heard about the floods but seeing is something else again. It sounds like things are semi-normal. I’ll be curious to see how it looks mere 6 months after. We’re staying in Monterosso and will hike the trail, hopefully having a bit less touristy experience. </p>
<p>Looks like most flats have a 4+day minimum. Plan right now is 3 nights in Florence and 3 in Rome so… We did do a flat in Paris couple of years ago and that ended up being a lot of trouble. Would probably work better for longer stay.</p>
<p>All the pre-reserves are on the dock (although it looks like Florence card largely obviates that). Didn’t think to book a visit to Leonardo’s Last Supper in Milan early enough and they’re already full for my days there. We will instead do a ‘tour’ that includes a visit for a princely sum. Can’t be that close to the Fresco and not see it (right, musicamusica?). Think we’ll do a day trip to Lake Como</p>
<p>Oldfort: H prefers staying in ‘local’ lodging and so no Starwoods :(</p>
<p>Mainly thinking about 1st class train for the Flo-Rome and Rome-Venice legs.</p>
<p>Strikes are a concern. I’m booking non-prepay rooms so if things fall apart over next 30 days, we will just head North from Brussels rather than South :D</p>
<p>Batllo: I will write those down, esp gelato places</p>
<p>Local lodging could be hit or miss. When I travel, I would put up with a lot of local features, as long as I could go back to American conveniences when I back at the hotel. When we were younger, I have stayed at hotels where the room was powered by 25 watt bulbs (flickering sometimes), but as I got older I want to know that I could get room service 24/7. Starwoods has some of the best/prime location hotels. They bought out a lot of old “grand” hotels with the original details, unlike Westins or Sheratons in the US, especially their luxury collection. They are of great values if you could get 50% off by using their points. Their rooms are also bigger than “local” lodging, so you may be able to fit 3 people in a room.</p>
<p>The Corridoio Vasariano is a museum the takes up the “secret” hallway that ranges from the Uffizi to the Pitti. It’s a fantastic experience walking over Florence, right over the Ponte Vecchio, thru Santa Felicita (Pontormo’s Assumption) to the Pitti. All of the paintings are artist’s self portraits. (Delacroix, Ingres, David, Velasquez et al) It can only be visited with a prior arrangement. Well worth the trouble.</p>
) and lived in Florence (studying restoration) Just wondered on the following:</p>