Our trip is finally coming together.  After a rough and rocky start of trip planning to Nepal and Tibet, we discovered 17 days was just short of doing justice to these beautiful  countries.  With much conversation and lots of regret we shelved Nepal/Tibet for another year and spent several weeks coming up with another plan.

Maybe it was John, or maybe me, but somewhere in conversation Italy came up.  We looked at tickets for weeks but were totally indecisive about committing. Finally, after driving ourselves crazy with “do we or don’t we go”, we booked the trip. Not only have we pulled almost pulled together this last minute trip but we have convinced some friends from our 2011 Israel trip to go with us.  Yea for friends who can travel on short notice!!!

We plan to make four stops on the western side of Italy with several travel days interspersed at the beginning, middle and end.  While Venice, my bucket list city, is not on the list, I am looking forward to the cities that make up the itinerary!

CINQUE TERRE (2-1/2 days)

On vacation, we usually hit the ground running.  Not so much this trip. We will fly into Genoa and take a train to Vernazza, considered the most beautiful of the 5 villages of Cinque Terre.  Honestly, there is not much to do in this little corner of the Italian Rivera except hike between villages, eat, and watch the Mediterranean Sea.

We have a room with a balcony overlooking the sea.  We plan to utilize it a lot.  Our friends have a room with a balcony over the main street, we plan to utilize their balcony too. Other than that, we will spend a day hiking to and exploring three of the villages and the other day exploring the other two.  Only 11 miles separate the northern most village to the southern most so the days should be leisurely.

Vernazza, Italy (photo from the web)

PISA (1/2 day)

Pisa was not originally in our plans but we were going through on the way to Florence so why not!?  Who can resist the opportunity to take a quintessential  photo of holding up the Leaning Tower of Pisa.

Leaning Tower of Pisa (photo from the web)

FLORENCE (3-1/2 days)

Wow, so much to see and do!  Our list is so long.  This is the part of the trip that will require 12-14 hour days to fit in the site seeing, people watching, shopping, food and other experiences we plan to have.  

Florence, Italy at night (photo from the web)

ROME (3-1/2 days)

With weeks to go, we are still working on the Rome piece of this trip. We are sifting through hotels and the lesser sights we would like to explore.  The main sights are already on our list but we are struggling with when to utilize private guides, audio tours or just do walk throughs.   We know everything will work out.

Rome, Italy  (photo from the web)

So that’s the outline of our Italy 2014.  We have a lot of details to finish and a packing list to make.  Guess you know what I will be doing this weekend!

Ciao!