There are many factors in choosing the best privately guided 12 day vacation tour of Italy to the 3 most popular cities, Venice, Florence and Rome when you're deciding with your travel partner, your spouse or your travel family and or friends.
The first thing to decide is how many days you can allow for your Italy vacation.
If you're still working and can only get 2 weeks off (14 days) you must factor in that there are two days of travel that ARE NOT part of your vacation in Italy, this leaves you with 12 days of actual time there. Once you've determined your vacation length, then you have to decide on how may locations you want to visit and how much you want to see while you're there. When you pick a pre-packaged tour with "another company" you don't get to pick the amount of days in each location, you get what they've picked out for you, and often times it's just NOT enough time in these locations to fully enjoy yourself in Italy.
With Custom Tours of Italy, you get to customize your Italian vacation locations, the time spent in each place and all of your tourist attractions while there. In all my trips the general consensus is that a minimum of 3 or 4 nights in each place is the lowest number of nights to stay.
So here's what a possible 12 day vacation in Italy might look like if your desire is to visit the 3 most commonly visited cities in Italy..... Venice, Florence and Rome, with day trips from each one of these locations.
Nights 1 - 4, Fly into VENICE arriving at Marco Polo Airport and spend 4 nights in Venice city center. Your first night there is relaxation with no tourist activities planned on your arrival day. I never schedule tourist activities on these travel days in case of travel changes or delays....Venice is a perfectly preserved city and a must do if you want experience the iconic tourist activities you can only do there such as a Gondola ride..(I still search out and find my very first Gondolier Marco Mingardi when I'm there-we're friends since 1997)......a visit to Saint Mark's Cathedral, a day trip visit to a glass blowing factory on the island of Murano and a memorable Canal-side dinner. Piazza San Marco is one of the best squares in all of Italy with cafes, live Orchestras and shops.
Nights 5 - 8, Train it to FLORENCE (as you don't need a car into any of the big cities) and stay for 4 nights in the city that was the heart of Renaissance. Florence has so much to offer with the Accademia where you'll see Michael-Angelo's original David Statue, the Galleria di Uffizi where you'll see the greatest collection of Italian paintings anywhere, the Bargelo where you'll see the most amazing statues, the Galileo Museum where you'll see all of his scientific achievements. The red-roofed Duomo is a must with a climb inside the dome with the best 360 degree view of Florence at the top. The Duomo museum is an easy visit with the original Baptistry doors designed by Ghiberti which kicked off the Renaissance across from the Duomo. Florence is an easy city to walk and the sights are all fairly closeby in the city center. While you're staying in Florence there are many day trip train possibilities such as to Pisa to see the Leaning Tower and also a visit to the town of Lucca, a true gem. Th Cinque Terre is a little too far for a day trip from Florence although many will try this - too much travel time there and back!
Nights 9 - 12, train it to ROME, the eternal city. Rome is gigantic but surprisingly walkable with many of the historic sights near the city center. Top visits are of course the Colosseum and the Roman Forum, the Trevi Fountain, Piazza Navonna, the Spanish Steps, the Pantheon and the Vatican Church and Museum. The Vatican is the farthest away attraction and can be accessed by Metro subway or Taxi cab unless you're staying close to it, it is not an easy walk to it from the other main sites in Rome. The Vatican Church and the Vatican Museum are separate visits next to each other, the church is free to enter with only a security line while the Museum requires a ticket in advance. An easy day trip from Rome is the beautiful hilltop city of Orvieto just an hour and a half north,....Since Rome is your last city on your private Italy vacation you don't have to rush around at all to take it all in. Rome can be exhausting and you'll be walking a lot on your whole trip so many times we'll stop and have a drink or meal in a peaceful, non touristy location in order to experience Italy like the locals do, as we say,..il dolce far niente,..the sweetness of doing nothing. When I schedule your tour activities for you, we can usually only do one activity after breakfast and one activity after lunch..night time is when the charm comes out in Italy, the day tourists have all gone away, walking before dinner, called the "passagiatta" is a must to see Italians strutting their stuff, dinner starts at 8pm and ends when you're done, there's no rush, and an after dinner walk to a lively bar for a night cap of Limoncello, Grappa or Amaro is typical.
Day 13 you'll fly out from Rome back to the USA,....Rome's airport is about 45 minutes to the West Coast of Rome and many times we stay in the small city of Fiumicino next to the airport the night before you leave in order to make an early morning departure,..there are some great restaurants along the river in the town there,.....these are the things I do at Custom Tours of Italy that you cannot do with any pre-packaged Italian tour companies out there.
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