Flying into Venice was the cheapest of all the airports in Italy. Not Rome, Milan, or Florence. Go figure. And did you know, from the airport to Venice you can take a taxi, bus, train, or boat?
After our Italy trip had been delayed by a wedding in Mendoza, Argentina (2013), a football game in Dublin, Ireland (2014) and avoiding Italy’s whole country celebration in 2015 (we went to Spain instead), we finally got there!!
Almost everyone knows there’s so much to do in Italy. With its several thousand years of history, culture, wine, etc., you could spend months there and still not see and experience everything. We were there for 10 days and we felt like we barely scratched the surface.
The Itinerary
Our journey to Italy started and ended in Venice. Venice, Rome, Florence, then back to Venice.
We flew in to the Venice Marco Polo Airport and caught a boat shuttle to the hotel where we were staying.
After that, we took the train from Venice to Rome. We felt fortunate, because they had had a worker’s strike two days before but the trains were back up and operational on the day we went.
As we all know, Rome has the colosseum, the Vatican, and a lot of other famous sites. We toured Rome strictly by walking. They do have a subway system that’s relatively convenient, but we didn’t use it on this trip.
Then we got back on the train, and headed to Florence.
Florence has a different type of appeal. Most of their history is in the building architecture of houses and churches. Plus they have a bridge that has shops and apartments built on it.
In all three cities, we stayed in the city center, to promote walking tours of each city while we were moving about. We used public transportation exclusively for the entire trip, had no issues and loved it.
What did we do?
This was the first time we invested in some formal tours. After some intense research, it seemed to be appropriate. From talking to people, there were a couple of tours we purchased on site, and others we purchased in advance. Some well in advance.
Venice
We spent 3 days walking around Venice. There’s a lot to do there. Walking over the canals, and into shops (both up and down) you’ll discover there’s also a lot of steps.
Bring your rain jacket, but buy boots when you get there. They slip over your shoes and they only cost $7 US. We left ours there for someone else to enjoy.
It is mostly a “touristy” type of destination, but it’s enjoyable. It’s also quite fascinating to see a city built as it is.
We didn’t do any formal tours there, but we did check out the historic churches, rode in a gondola, and took a water taxi to Murano where they have some extroardinary glass works. Their water taxis run similar to buses. You buy a ticket, there’s a list of stops. Just make sure you get on the correct water taxi for your destination as they have a few that go various places.
Let’s not forget there’s some pretty good restaurants. The best pizza we’d ever tasted was there. Until this past year we ate at Ravenisi Pizzaria, whose pizza is made from all Italian ingredients.
Rome
Because there’s so much to do in Rome itself, for our 3 days in Rome we didn’t venture out of the city. Of course saw the Roman Colosseum, Vatican, Sistine Chapel, but we took time to see some other sites as well. Even though it’s big, Rome is pretty walkable.
We stayed near the Vatican. We were originally near the colosseum, but that didn’t work and we had to change accommodations on the fly, similar to the year before in Barcelona. Finding Accommodations at the last minute may unnerve some. We’ve done it often enough it no longer even phases us.
From our new place, we walked to the Colosseum. It’s a couple of miles with a lot to see on the way. We did the Skip the Line Tour through Viator for the Roman Colosseum. This was the first real time we tried something like that. We had done something similar the year before in Barcelona when we got our guided tour of Sagrada La Familia, but didn’t realize it was skip the line till we got there.
Skip the Line tours are fun. There are some places that are soooo busy. To wait in line can take hours, only to find out they can’t let in any more people so you have to come back. This happened to us with Sagrada La Familia, we had to go back the next day. Thankfully, with a smart phone we bought our tickets for the time we wanted the next day. We did this while we were being told we couldn’t get in that day.
Florence
In Florence, we stayed in an awesome flat. Our post Florence – The Stairs tells what we did when we got to Florence and realized this awesome loft apartment was up seven flights of stairs and had no lift. As you can see, we not only survived, we got a great story out of it. You might also want to read Lifts versus Elevators if you plan to travel to Europe.
Before we left, we booked two Tuscan farmhouse wine tasting and dinner tours through Viator, which you can read about one of the events in our article Tuscan Farmhouse I – Meeting Up and Getting There, and Tuscan Farmhouse II – Wine Tasting and Dinner.
We also searched for knives and scored big time. It took us a while to find the shop, which is funny as we walked past it twice before someone pointed it out to us. The story – Finding the Knife Shop is a classic.