Noticed on an old post that you went to Italy on your own (with another person). . We want to go back on our own. Would appreciate some info, please.

In which cities did you stay?
How did you know which hotel would be acceptable?
What was the nightly cost at each place?
What time of year was it?
How did you get from city to city?

Thanks, Julie

I'm not Suzanne, but I have a thought on picking hotels. After using Globus twice, I've decided that if I do go back on my own, I could pick a hotel that I saw in their brochures and be fairly confident that it would be safe and nice.

Debbie

I'm not Suzanne either, but I have traveled in Italy on my own several times. A couple of very good resources for evaluating hotels are www.venere.com (which is a booking service, but also has reviews) and www.tripadvisor.com. . I personally look for location first, then try to find the best alternative in my price range in that area.

With school age kids, we can only really go in the summer at this point. July and August can be very crowded and hot. We went to the Amalfi Coast area this year in early-mid June, and I thought the weather was great and it wasn't oppressively crowded. I've also been in late October/early November, and the weather was a little iffy then.

It is very easy to get around in Italy by train, unless you want to spend extended time in areas like Tuscany or Umbria.

Thanks, Debbie, I appreciate your suggestion. I suppose I was hoping to find the perfect hotel - you know, the lowest price, but clean & nice enough & located in a good "walking to the sites" spot - sure! Anyway, we are retired & would like to spend 2-4 weeks in Rome. The Globus hotel prices are rather prohibitive. There are cheaper ones, but no way to know their condition. There is the rating system, but I'm sure that is not always reliable, especially with the lower priced hotels.

There are "pensionares" (sp?) & monthly priced apartments, but I don't know about the conditions of those either. Oh well, considering the problems of the world, I guess I can solve this one!

Julie

Hi Julie-

Glad you are back!!!
My trip last year was the end of June and my friend and I stayed at a villa (9 bedrooms, 5 baths) which her famliy had rented for a month for a family vacation (she has 8 siblings with their families too) in Umbria in a town called Passignano which is next to Cortona. It was wonderful. We rented a car and took day trips each mid-afternoon to surrounding towns. We loved Cortona alot-just make sure you go around 3-4 pm after the crowds leave.

We stayed at the villa for a week and then ventured out on our own. The only time we used the train was when we arrived in Milan and went to the villa.


Florence: Residenza Il Villino

Lake Como: Hotel Terminus-right overlooking the lake-great location but not worth the price/staff not good

We also stayed in Lucca and Volterra at small hotels we just booked on the fly.

When I go again I will just stay in Rome and maybe to Tuscany/Umbria day trips by train rather than drive-it is too much trouble in my opinion.

You can really trust Trip Advisor site-it is right on.

I LOVED the Trastevere section of Rome when I went there this year for an evening on our last day of the Globus tour. -I would stay put right there at the Hotel Santa Maria. My friends stayed there and said it was wonderful!! It is #1 on TAdvisor-check it out.

Not sure if this helped-I will check and see what I forgot to answer for you.

Thanks everyone for your responses.

What about the trains? How does it work to travel from Rome to Pompeii & back & from Rome to Venice?

I heard the big bags cannot be with us at our seat & they sometimes get stolen???

So should one go first class? If so, what is the cost? Is it just as cheap to fly from Rome to Venice?

Does it take a whole day to get from Rome to Venice by train? If so, is the seating comfortable & can you move about enough to keep comfortable? Is there food on the train?

Once the train gets to Venice, there are a lot of Venice stops (I'm assuming). . are the stops called out loud & clear enough in English to know where to get off?

Sorry, but I am from Indiana - no mass transportation. The only "trains" I have been on are subways in NY & DC & now a short train ride in Italy from Mestre to Venice while on the Globus BOI trip!

We definitely do not want to rent a car for traveling those distances.

Suzanne49 (or anyone) - I heard the Trastevere section is great. Is that within walking distance of the sightseeing places? Also, do you know the range of cost of the Hotel Santa Maria (we are going in October)?

Glad the site is working again! Julie

Hi-
My experience with the train from Milan when we arrived for our trip may not be typical. After 8-9 hours on the plane we had to wait for a local bus to take us to the train station from the airport. This involved waiting awhile for the bus and then 45 min on the bus. The difficult part we found was trudging through the station with luggage and then going down long flight of stairs to buy tickets with the language a barrier as well.
We had one of us stay at the top of the stairs and then the other went to stand in line for tickets. Buying them ahead of time would save alot of trouble but we did not want to tie ourselves down at that point in the trip since we were going to stay with family rather than at a hotel.

You then get the ticket stamped BEFORE you get on the train. The train schedules on large boards are also difficult to figure out. We had to travel on a few different trains to reach our final destination. If they do call out
out the town names it was not very obvious! The train was not bad as for comfort but it took us until 10 pm to reach our villa which was one hour southeast of Florence. We just sat close to the luggage and kept our eyes on it but you really could not relax much.

One idea that I read alot about on Frommers.com site is flying into one city such as Rome and then flying home from Vencie or so.
Try Frommers site and go to their message board. The folks on there are quite knowledgeable too and although they do not seem to favor group tours, they can tell you alot about what you need to know to go on your own.

Trastevere is wonderful and what you don't walk to you can take a cab. We usually walked to a site and then at night we took a cab home.
You have already seen alot of the sites so this time you could go to the Jewish Ghetto which is supposed to be really neat.

The Santa Maria lists on TripAdvisor for 215 Euros right now. It is very hard to get a room since it is so popular and small so better to make one and cancel if you need to closer to the trip if you need to.

We planned our first trip to Europe last year. I had assumed that we'd do it all on our own like we've done for all of our U.S. travel. However I got so overwhelmed on trying to figure out the best choice of hotel - plus transportation that I looked into other options. That is why we decided on the Globus tour. I figured that I could manage 2 or 3 major cities on our own - but we could do a lot more with the tour.

Now that I've already been once, it doesn't seem quite so overwhelming - but still it would be a lot of work.

I took the metro in all the major cities that I've been to, but my experience with the trains outside the cities is about the same as yours - from Mestre to Venice - and also from Paris out to Versailles. The hardest part was making sure we got on the train going the right direction (G). . We asked lots of questions.

I imagine you are right about the costs of the Globus hotels. I had a chat with our tour guide one day and she commented that she thought that the tours are really pretty good deals. She tried to get a friend one of our hotels with her discount in off-season and it was quite expensive.

In addition to the frommers site that was already mentioned, I'd also recommend the Fodor's one. You'd probably get more answers there as the people here are mostly those who take the Globus tours.

Debbie

julie-

I found some interesting entries on Frommer's website that you could benefit alot from. I can e-mail the exact spot for you if I have your e-mail address. Mine is sschmitz@twcny.rr.com if you want to e-mail me and then we can go from there. It could be difficult for you to find it but once I sent it to you, you just go to the spot above all the entries and hit on "Italy" and you will go right to the message board and you can find out a wealth of information!
I too come from an area without mass transit--(I live in Upstate New York
on a small lake!) so I know how confusing it can be especially in another country!
Happy Thanksgiving everyone!
Suzanne