Italy 2018: Initial Itinerary Plans

It’s still very early in the planning process, but my parents and I have a rough idea of where we’ll be going in Italy later this year. This two-week trip will be focused around three main cities, and then there are some other places that could work as day trips from those cities.

Rome
We’ll be flying into and out of Rome and my guess is that a little under half of the total trip will be spent there. The list of things to do in Rome is quite extensive—the Colosseum, Forum, Vatican, Pantheon, Trevi Fountain, Spanish Steps, and Castel Saint’ Angelo are just a few of the city’s attractions and you could probably spend a whole week sightseeing and not get to everything the city has to offer. I haven’t visited Rome since 2012 but I can still remember pretty well which sights are worth visiting and which can be skipped, so I should be able to keep us from wasting too much time. If I do my job well we might even have time to fit in a day trip outside the city.

Venice
This will probably be the shortest stay of the trip. I’m guessing we’ll only be there for two nights, but that’s enough time to check all the big-name items off the sightseeing list. Since we’ll be there in November there’s a decent chance we’ll have to deal with the flooding that’s become an increasing problem due to the fact that Venice is slowly sinking, tides are slowly rising, and the Italian government doesn’t have the political will (or money) to enact a permanent solution to the problem. Still, even with the risk of flooding I think Venice is worth a visit for anyone coming to Italy. There’s really no other city quite like it.

Florence
The home of the Renaissance is easier to manage than Rome because of the smaller and more compact size of its historic core and also could be a base for visiting other towns in Tuscany like Siena. I’ll make sure we have reservations at the Accademia and the Uffizi so we can skip the lines and from my initial research it looks like the duomo now requires reservations too if you want to climb the dome. We’ll be walking a lot since most of Florence’s attractions are close enough together to not really merit using public transportation, and that’s probably a good thing because I personally intend to consume at least 10,000 calories of gelato while we’re there.