Rick Steves Best of Italy

THE BEST OF ITALY

Map: Top Destinations in Italy

THE BEST OF VENICE

THE BEST OF THE CINQUE TERRE

THE BEST OF FLORENCE

THE BEST OF THE HILL TOWNS

THE BEST OF ROME

THE BEST OF NAPLES AND THE AMALFI COAST

THE BEST OF THE REST

TRAVEL SMART

Designing Your Itinerary

Trip Costs per Person

Before You Go

Map: The Best of Italy in 2 Weeks

Travel Strategies on the Road

Bella Italia! Italy has Europe’s richest, craziest culture. It bubbles with emotion, traffic jams, strikes, crowds, and irate ranters shaking their fists at each other one minute and walking arm-in-arm the next. Accept Italy as a package deal—from the exquisite to the exasperating. It’s the sum of its amazing parts that makes it my favorite country.

Italy is the cradle of European civilization—established by the Roman Empire and carried on by the Roman Catholic Church. Here you’ll stand face-to-face with some of the world’s most iconic images from this 2,000-year-plus history: Rome’s ancient Colosseum and gleaming Trevi Fountain, Florence’s Renaissance masterpieces (Michelangelo’s towering David, Botticelli’s perfect Birth of Venus), and the elegantly decaying island-city of Venice.

Beyond such famous sights, simple traditions endure within a country that is modern, vital, and passionate. Join the locals for their ritual evening stroll—the passeggiata. Seek out homemade gelato, dodge motor scooters and pickpockets, and make time for il dolce far niente (the sweetness of doing nothing). Ramble through ancient rubble and mentally resurrect the timeless stones. Write a poem over a glass of wine in a sun-splashed village. Italy is for romantics.

THE BEST OF ITALY

This book focuses on Italy’s top destinations, from its thriving cities to its authentic towns. The biggies on everyone’s list are Venice, Florence, and Rome. But no visit to Italy is complete without seeing the countryside, from the coastal villages of the Cinque Terre to the hill towns of the central heartland. For a dose of southern Italy, dip down past Rome to gritty Naples, seaside Sorrento, historic Pompeii, and the scenic Amalfi Coast.

Beyond the major destinations, I also cover the Best of the Rest—great destinations that don’t quite make my top cut, but are worth seeing if you have more time: Milan, Varenna on Lake Como, and Pisa. When interesting sights or towns are near my recommended destinations, I cover them briefly.

To help you link the top sights, I’ve designed a two-week itinerary (see here), with tips for tailoring it to your interests.

TRAVEL SMART

Approach Italy like a veteran traveler, even if it’s your first trip. Design your itinerary, get a handle on your budget, make advance arrangements, and follow my travel strategies on the road. For my best advice on sightseeing, accommodations, restaurants, and transportation, see the Practicalities chapter.

Designing Your Itinerary

Decide when to go. Italy’s best travel months are May, June, September, and October. Crowds aside, these months combine the convenience of peak season with pleasant weather. The heat in July and August can be grueling, especially in the south. Between November and April, expect cool weather, shorter hours at sights, and fewer crowds and activities.

Choose your top destinations. My itinerary (on here) gives you an idea of how much you can reasonably see in 14 days, but it’s easy to adapt it to fit your interests and timeframe. Romantics linger in Venice. The Cinque Terre is tops for hikers and beach fun. Art lovers are drawn to Florence and Rome. If rolling hills, charming towns, and wine tastings sound like paradise, you’ll find it heavenly to spend a week exploring Italy’s hill towns. Pilgrims make tracks to Assisi, while honeymooners hide out at Lake Como. Historians could marvel at Rome’s sights for days. Stretching out a southern loop from Rome—from a few days to a week or more—offers a lot of variety: Naples (Italy in the extreme), ancient Pompeii, jet-setting Capri, friendly Sorrento, and the wildly scenic Amalfi Coast, with the beach village of Positano.

Draft a rough itinerary. Figure out how many destinations you can comfortably fit in the time you have. Don’t overdo it—few travelers wish they’d hurried more. Allow enough days per stop: Figure on at least two or three days for major destinations.

Staying in a home base—like Florence or Sorrento—and making day trips can be more time-efficient than changing locations and hotels. Minimize one-night stands, especially consecutive ones; it can be worth taking a late-afternoon train ride or drive to get settled into a town for two nights.

Connect the dots. Link your destinations into a logical route. Determine which cities you’ll fly into and out of; begin your search for transatlantic flights at Kayak.com.

Decide if you’ll travel by car, take public transportation, or use a combination. A car is particularly helpful for exploring the hill-town region, where public transportation can be spotty. But a car is useless in cities, and it’s not necessary for connecting far-apart destinations (easier by train), unless you plan to make a lot of stops along the way.

If relying on public transit, you’ll probably use a mix of trains and buses. Trains are faster, but buses can reach a few places that trains can’t.

Allot sufficient time for transportation in your itinerary. Whether you travel by train, bus, or car, it’ll take a half-day to get between most destinations. To determine approximate travel times between your destinations, study the driving chart on here and check online train schedules at Trenitalia.it. Compare the cost of any long train ride with a budget flight; check Skyscanner.com for intra-European flights.

Plan your days. Fine-tune your itinerary; write out a day-by-day plan of where you’ll be and what you want to see. To help you make the most of your time, I’ve suggested day plans for each major destination. But take sight closures into account: Avoid visiting a town on the one day a week that its must-see sights are closed. Check if any holidays or festivals fall during your trip—these attract crowds and can close sights (for the latest, visit Italy’s tourist website, Italia.it).

Give yourself some slack. Every trip, and every traveler, needs downtime for doing laundry, picnic shopping, relaxing, people-watching, and so on. Pace yourself. Assume you will return.

Ready, set... You’ve designed the perfect itinerary for the trip of a lifetime.

Trip Costs

Run a reality check on your dream trip. You’ll have major transportation costs in addition to daily expenses.

Flight: A round-trip flight from the US to Milan or Rome costs about $900-1,500, depending on where you fly from and when.

Public Transportation: For a two-week trip, allow about $350 for second-class trains and buses. You’ll usually save money by buying train tickets in Italy rather than purchasing a rail pass. In some cases, a short flight can be cheaper than taking the train.

Car Rental: Allow roughly $250 per week, not including tolls, gas, parking, and insurance (theft insurance is mandatory in Italy).

Budget Tips: You can cut your daily expenses by taking advantage of the deals you’ll find throughout Italy and mentioned in this book.

City transit passes (for multiple rides or all-day usage) decrease your cost per ride. Avid sightseers buy combo-tickets or passes that cover multiple museums. If a town doesn’t offer deals, visit only the sights you most want to see, and seek out free sights and experiences (people-watching counts).

Some businesses—especially hotels and walking-tour companies—offer discounts to my readers (look for the RS% symbol in the listings in this book).

Book your rooms directly with the hotel. Some hotels offer discounts if you pay in cash and/or stay three or more nights (it pays to check online or ask).

Rooms cost less outside of peak season (roughly November through March). And even seniors can stay in hostels (some have double rooms) for about $30 per person. Or check Airbnb-type sites for deals.

It’s no hardship to eat cheap in Italy. You can get tasty, inexpensive meals at delis, bars, takeout pizza shops, ethnic eateries, and Italian restaurants, too. Cultivate the art of picnicking in atmospheric settings.

When you splurge, choose an experience you’ll always remember, such as a gondola ride or a food-tasting tour. Minimize souvenir shopping—how will you get it all home? Focus instead on collecting wonderful memories.

Before You Go

You’ll have a smoother trip if you tackle a few things ahead of time. For more info on these topics, see the Practicalities chapter and RickSteves.com, which has helpful travel tips and talks.

Make sure your travel documents are valid. If your passport is due to expire within six months of your ticketed date of return, you need to renew it. Allow up to six weeks to renew or get a passport (www.travel.state.gov). You may also need to register with the European Travel Information and Authorization System (ETIAS); for the latest, check www.etiasvisa.com.