Honeymoon advice - Italy (1 Viewer)

[PS Nystrom]

The fiance and I are wanting to go to Italy for our honeymoon in July, but where to go?! Neither of us have been and we are at a loss as to where to stay. Any help or suggestions would be much appreciated. Here is what we do know:

7 or 8 days, preferably in one location
$600 budget for hotel
flying into Verona - don't need help with flights
looking for small/romantic city vs large/cultural metropolis
hotel with a view
on the water would be great

Even a point to a website with hotel/hostel/rental information would be a great start for me. Thanks all,

Pieter

 

[Allen_Appel]

Florence is wonderful.

 

[ThomasC]

Ditto the Florence nod, but I don't know if it qualifies as a small, romantic city. I don't think it qualifies as a large, cultural metropolis either, I think it leans more toward a small, romantic city. But I was only there once and just for a couple days (weeklong tour of northern Italy, with the exception of Rome), so I may be off. But one thing's for sure. If you do end up going to Florence, don't make the same mistake I did and DON'T MISS THE BOBOLI GARDENS!!! I went back in the spring of 2000 and I continue to have regrets.

 

[Zane Charron]

PS,

I live in southern Bavaria, about 3 or 4 hours north of northern Italy and have been there many times. The good news is that you get to go to Italy! The bad. You are going during high tourist season. Cities like Verona, Venice, Pisa and Florence will be swamped with a ridiculous amount of tourists.

My advice would be to get away from the maddening crowds and visit the small, quiet towns in the Veneto (Venice region) and Tuscany. Many of these are wonderful and almost undiscovered by the hordes. Great atmosphere, architecture and better food for less money! Just pick up a good travel guide and see what they recommend for smaller towns and off the beaten track sights, maybe spending a day or two in Venice, Verona or Florence (you can't miss them , after all).

 

[ChrisMatson]

My honeymoon will also be in Italy in July! My fiancee and I are flying into Rome and driving up to Florence, spending a few nights in different towns along the way. I was not aware of Boboli Gardens--we'll have to add that to the list.

 

[ThomasC]

One more thing about the Boboli Gardens...as is with (most) everything else in Italy/Europe, the hours are limited and can be strange. Find out what the hours are beforehand and if you are staying in Florence for a few days, I don't think it would hurt much to delegate an entire day to explore the Gardens. My friends got through maybe a quarter of the gardens and it took up 2-3 hours of their time. They would've spent more time there but they were apparently dying of hunger.

 

[Ron Etaylor]

My wife and I have been to Rome, Pisa, Venice, and Florence.
They are all worthwhile, but we preferred Florence over the others(Venice was our least favorite--wife saw some giant rats in the water and it was all over with). Our experience has been that in most cases throughout Europe that the big famous cities are important, but there is greater pleasure to be found wandering around the smaller places. Have a nice trip.

 

[John Miles]

Maranello.

 

[Kris McLaughlin]

Ancona! Roughly 300km south of Venice, right on the coast.

My girlfriend & I spent several days there while backpacking last summer. Bellissimo! Very laid back, not a tourist in sight, beautiful sights, beautiful & friendly people. Porto Novo beach is a 15-minute city bus ride away, stunning!

Have a look:

http://www.maporama.com/share/Map.as...=7&submit.y=13

Can I add that I never wanted to leave, ever?!

 

[Zane Charron]

The trick to Venice is to stay off the beaten path. There are a handful of congested areas in the city (St. Marks Square area & Rialto Bridge to name two), but if you just step onto a side street and wander for a bit, there are hardly any tourists around (but take a map!). It's quite eerie sometimes, especially at night when the streets are quite and all you can hear is the water lapping against the canals. I love it. Been there 4 times. My favorite city.

Rome is at once a sesspool and a grand city. So much to see, everywhere. You're just walking along some dirty, traffic choked side street and happen to look over at some old crumbling wall and see that the sign says it was originally built in 343 or something. One of my favorite things to do is have a picnic dinner on the Circus Maximus (grounds of the former chariot race track) at dusk. The locals are out playing soccer, eating and walking around, the sun is setting and the ruins are bathed in orange light. Wonderful.

And as far as the stinky canals in Venice, I've never smelled them. Must be a hot summer thing.

 

[Zane Charron]

One of the neat things about Venice is that it's really hard to get lost, since it's a series of small islands

Well, it's hard to get too far away, I suppose, but getting lost in Venice is incredibly easy, even with a map. If you've ever seen a detailed map of Venice, it's literally a maze of streets and canals, with a few somewhat marked thoroughfares. If you run across a shop or restaraunt not in a major tourist zone and want to go in, DO IT THEN, 'cause you'll never be able to find it again.

Map of Venice

http://www.lonelyplanet.com/mapshell...ice/venice.htm

And that one isn't even very detailed.

I agree about Naples. It's a heap. Traffic choked, thousands of noisy scooters zooming in and out of traffic and on sidewalks, garbage piled everywhere. It was quite an eyeopener. Having said that, there are a few good things about Naples as well. The one that sticks out of course is Pompeii and Herculaneum. If you get a chance to go there, GO. It's amazing. Herculaneum is better preserved, but Pompeii is quite large and feels like a town still instead of just ruins. Even many of the murals and tile work are preserved. Truly great. Been there twice.

 

[CharlesD]

Maranello, Monza, Imola...

Italy is a wonderful place, my favorite country when it comes to vacations. Venice is wonderful, it is not dirty or smelly as some allege, and as others in this thread have mentioned it is surprisingly easy to get of the beaten tourist track. The same is true of Italy in general, the famous places are well worth visiting, but some of the real gems are off the standard tourist track.

Napoli is not the greatest place on earth, but its not that bad, at least in my experience. Its worth visiting if only for the genuine Neapolitan pizza "Margherita" or "Marinara".
In the Napoli region of course there is also Vesuvius, Pompeii and Capri which are all well worth visiting, especially Capri.

 

[PS Nystrom]

Wow. Thanks for all the ideas everyone. We still have not decided on specific hotels but did recently run across a flight into Venice for a bit less than the one into Verona. So it looks like we'll start from there now.

Please keep all this great info coming,

Pieter

 

[Drew Bethel]

We are also going to Europe the end of June for our honeymoon. This is our 15 day plan Frankfurt > Barcelona > Paris >UK. We will be using RyanAir and EasyJet to save time.

 

[Craig Dulany]

My wife and I had a wonderful time in some Riviera/Coastal cities. Verrazze and Loano. They are both small but right on the water. I don't know if they would be appropriate for 7/6 days though. We left the Riviera and headed North to Lake Como and Bellagio. I would highly recommend Bellagio for a few nights, beautiful!!

 

[Ashley Seymour]

I should pass this onto my daughter. She spent a semester Turin on a foreign study program. The little snot got all over Italy and much of Europe in just five months.

I was stationed in Italy 30 years ago at San Vito Air Station outside of Brindisi, down on the heal of the "boot." The base was closed at the end of the cold war. Not as much to see as the places up north, but it is surprisingly open there, as is the space between Brindisi and Naples.

Got to second Pompeii as a place to see. If you have an interest in architecture and you take a trip that far south, there is a city, Alberobello that features a unique building styles for the houses. It is called the Trulli region. The homes are white washed limestone block with roofs made of limestone slabs piled up like a bee hive.

During my second summer, another buy and I rented a small villa on the Adriatic. The landlord was getting greedy with each new group of Americans, so he had raised our rent to $36 per month, or $18 each. We were on the second floor, each had a bedroom, livingroom, kitchen and up on our roof was enough space for a table, chairs, cooler and bar-b-que pit. On top of the stairwell was yet another level that was big enough for a couple of lawn chairs and table for our beers and tourist girls we picked up getting off the ferry boats. From there we could throw a stone into the waters of the Adriatic. I have never seen the Milky Way in more depth that sitting up there having a beer during a summer evening, or watching ferry boats that were sailing just over the horizon so that only two smoke stacks were visible.

But, you are not going to spend the summer there, so go catch the tourist sites up north.

http://www.trulli.com/trullo_story.html

A bit more info on the Turlli regin above.

 

[ThomasC]

Does anyone know where this part of Malena was filmed? I'd love to visit that part of Italy someday.

 

[PS Nystrom]

Well, thanks to everyone again who posted suggestions. The wedding and honeymoon are over and all went very well. Plans changed in a major way from our initial ideas. We ended up renting a car in Malaga, Spain ($209 for 19 days!) and driving all over. We spent one night in Somo, Spain which is about an hour west of Bilbao. Two nights is Paris, France which ended up being my favorite city. One night in Luzern, Switzerland. Two nights on Lake Como in a city called Verrenna, Italy which ended up being my bride's favorite destination. One night it Arles, France; our one mistake - we passed up a beautiful room with a view of the Med but no AC to stay in a two star no where near the beach. A night in a huge and very inexpensive suite in Valencia, Spain. And topped it off with a night in Fuente de Piedra, Spain before heading home.

We've got a few pictures online, but the vast majority of them haven't come back yet. Still, take a look here: http://homepage.mac.com/nystrom/PhotoAlbum41.html if you want to see what we were up to.

Pieter