any advise for trip to italy?
- Thread starter legiz
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Get a Frommer's or Lonely Planet guidebook. You can borrow from the library. It'll tell you where to go and has itieneries.
2 weeks isnt a lot of time, the books got more than what 2 weeks can accommodate at not too detailed exploration.
Be very careful with pickpockets, esp if you plan to use the trains. I know of quite a few people who fall asleep n wake up to missing belongings.
The main cities of Venice, Florence and Rome will soak up the 2 weeks. Milan, Pisa, Siena, Naples, Pompeii, Sorrento, Capri, the Amalfi Coast, Perugia will eat up a few more weeks if you just breeze through them.
Further south, even more time.
Driving between cities is one way but cars inside cities is really bad news, parking is difficult n hard to find. Public transport, mrt n buses are v good. For car rentals, the usual Avis, Hertz but look at European companies like Sixth, cheaper. Note left hand drive and manual shift, autos are in premium cars
For places to stay, use bookings.com or similar.
2 weeks isnt a lot of time, the books got more than what 2 weeks can accommodate at not too detailed exploration.
Be very careful with pickpockets, esp if you plan to use the trains. I know of quite a few people who fall asleep n wake up to missing belongings.
The main cities of Venice, Florence and Rome will soak up the 2 weeks. Milan, Pisa, Siena, Naples, Pompeii, Sorrento, Capri, the Amalfi Coast, Perugia will eat up a few more weeks if you just breeze through them.
Further south, even more time.
Driving between cities is one way but cars inside cities is really bad news, parking is difficult n hard to find. Public transport, mrt n buses are v good. For car rentals, the usual Avis, Hertz but look at European companies like Sixth, cheaper. Note left hand drive and manual shift, autos are in premium cars
For places to stay, use bookings.com or similar.
No real need to pre-book train tickets.
Milan n Rome airports are served by trains.
To add. They have sales tax refund. Do remember to ask the shop for the refund paperwork. Cash is better compared to crediting the credit card, the rates are crappy.
Note that you must not check-in the purchases when you check in. You need to present them to the tax refund officer, after which you can send it in. After which you present to vouchers to refund counters inside the departure area.
Give about at least 2 hrs after checkin to clear the tax refund. Means 2 hrs for check-in plus 2 hrs for the refund. Note to expect a long queue at rome's immigration, give 45min to 1 hr.
Milan n Rome airports are served by trains.
To add. They have sales tax refund. Do remember to ask the shop for the refund paperwork. Cash is better compared to crediting the credit card, the rates are crappy.
Note that you must not check-in the purchases when you check in. You need to present them to the tax refund officer, after which you can send it in. After which you present to vouchers to refund counters inside the departure area.
Give about at least 2 hrs after checkin to clear the tax refund. Means 2 hrs for check-in plus 2 hrs for the refund. Note to expect a long queue at rome's immigration, give 45min to 1 hr.
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Italy is really easy to get around by train. Unless you want to vist some rual attraction, pretty well every thing is easily reached by public transport networks. Italians have a 'relaxed' additude to road rules that gets more relaxed the futher south you go which could make driving less than fun. Better just to relax and ride their cheap trains.
Italian railway fares are pretty cheap, many staff speak English. They (used to) wear badges with little flags on them that indicated the languages the staff member could speak and you can buy tickets from multilingual vending machines. (Although while the machines have online access to timetables and reservations, they lack local knowlege like 'that train always runs late, use this one instead, you will get there faster)
Two weeks bearly scratches the surface - you could really only do the 'majors' in that time, Rome, Venice, Milan and Florence.
Note popular attactions like the Uffizi require you book a time slot in advance. You can book online now I think. Other places like th Vatican museums I think have similar time slot booking systems in place. If you just turn up, you could wait hours in line, especially for the Sistine Chaple. Other places like St Peters are just simply busy - it's a Catholic pilgramage site, so has plenty of pilgrims lining up to see the tombs of the popes for religious reasons.
Some of the city transport systems like Rome's Metro (MRT) are a haven for pickpockets as the trains are crouded for much of the day and touristy types are an attractive target. (More likely to be carrying cash, etc..) I've never had a problem but some one nearly 'got' my sister once but the thief was wacked by a 'little old lady' who noticed what he was up to and created a scene.
But pickpockets are problem nearly world wide.
For the city transport systems they often have really good value day or weekly passes. Even if you are not in a city for week, some times the weekly passes are so cheap that it's worth it for just 3 days!. (Rome was like that, but I haven't checked recently).
NineEleven
New Member
One pax on tour package means she'll have to share room if anybody's willing or she'll pay double...
Italy is very beautiful & 2 weeks is only enough to cover Rome, Florence+Pisa & Milan while Venice is on the east (2-3hrs? from Milan). It'll be nice if you guys can rent a car to drive around & it's quite easy while the trains are not as accurate as Swiss & a little more dirty but ticketing is fairly easy. The Italians are generally not very friendly unless you speak a bit of their language or they know you but improves in the countryside.
Italy is very beautiful & 2 weeks is only enough to cover Rome, Florence+Pisa & Milan while Venice is on the east (2-3hrs? from Milan). It'll be nice if you guys can rent a car to drive around & it's quite easy while the trains are not as accurate as Swiss & a little more dirty but ticketing is fairly easy. The Italians are generally not very friendly unless you speak a bit of their language or they know you but improves in the countryside.
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