Ideas for Mid May visit

[ziggy4]

Hi. My husband and I had a wonderful Tuscan vacation in 2006 that was perfectly planned with the help of Slow Travel! Thanks and I'm excited to start planning our Italy visit part 2 for mid May 2019. We are flexible on the exact dates and plan to stay around 2 weeks. Our last trip included Tuscan hill towns and lots of local flavor (loved!) with a visit to Sienna and ended with a few days in Rome. This time we would love to visit cinque terre area and Florence. We are up for a villa type "home base" with day trips or staying several days in various locations. Any ideas of things to see, places to visit, trip route, etc are appreciated!

Thanks!!

 

[Alpinista]

I always recommend Portovenere as an option to Cinque Terre -- similar enough in feel without all the people (and you can take a boat from Portovenere to the CT towns if you want to).

If your dates change to put you in Florence in the first half of May, the iris garden at the Piazzale Michelangelo is a very beautiful place to stroll.

http://exclusiveconnection.it/blog/en/florence-iris-garden/

My wife's family home is near Lucca and I am a big cheerleader for using Lucca as a base for visits to other spots in Tuscany -- easy to get to Florence, Pisa, Portovenere (or CT), Carrara, Pietrasanta (arts community near Carrara). Sounds like you may have already enjoyed Barga, Castelnuovo di Garfagnana, and/or Bagni di Lucca, but also very easy to acccess from Lucca. For a slightly longer day trip, Volterra is an interesting visit.

Whether based in Lucca or Florence, a day trip to a place like Monsummano Terme for their thermal pool and spa is a nice treat -- Montecatini Terme is in the same area.

If you are transiting to/from Rome, take a look at places such as Orvieto ("underground Orvieto") and Viterbo as spots to stop as you work your way through the country.

 

[Pauline]

We stayed in Levanto, just north of the Cinque Terre, in May and had a very nice trip. Like Portovenere you can take a boat to the CT, but you can also take the train. Either Levanto or Portovenere would be a better base than staying in the CT.

You can read my trip report for Levanto (notes posted while we were traveling) here: https://www.sloweurope.com/community/threads/liguria-and-the-piedmont-may-2018.3261/

If you want to do a lot of hiking, a week would be good in that area. But, if you are not wanting to walk but do explore by car, it might be better to stay somewhere else and do one day to the CT. Other places to stay - Lucca as Alpinista recommends, or further north in Liguria - Camogli or Santa Margherita Ligure.

 

[ziggy4]

Thank you Pauline and Alpinista for your great insight and suggestions! So this is the rough draft of our plans so far-
Fly into Milan -which airport? Probably arrive early, relax, casual sight-seeing, then spend the night nearby to recover from the flight

Rental car then drive to Stresa or Varenna for a visit to the lake area. Probably stay the night

Slowly make our way( we love a scenic drive and stopping at random fun places) to a base town- maybe Lucca, Bologna, Parma? where we will stay several days -day trips via car or train/bus to ? Ideas-Florence, Modena, Verona , Monsumano Terre, Venice etc

Drive to CT area and plan to stay 1,2 days in Levanto or Portovenere- both look fun! - while we explore the area

Head back to Milan, then home.

This is just a rough draft, quick plan. Any suggestions on the route, home base, places to stay are welcome! I want to get the plane and housing scheduled ASAP, then can fine tune the other fun details! I know this plan involves some long drives, but we don’t mind them if we have interesting scenery. Another plan would be to hit CT area on the front end before the home base, or as a day trip only.

Thanks again!

 

[Alpinista]

Sounds like a great trip ;-)

We did a loop this year around Bologna (posted in another thread recently) that involved a visit to a balsamic vinegar production site (Acetaia Villa San Donnino, Via Medicine, 41126 San Vito di Spilamberto) and a parmesan cheese site (Latteria Sociale La Grande, Via F Rosselli 41, Reggio Nell’Emilia) that might fit in your driving plans. A friend of mine and I also did the visit to the the Ferrari museum in Bologna. Both the production places require reservations with nominal fees (true cost comes in the sales shops at the end).

For Florence, we always make a trip up just to enjoy a few small things -- Vestri Chocolates, Borgo degli Albizi, 11R (really is worth it to enjoy the selections on the shelves) and Aqua Flor, Borgo Santa Croce, 6 (comfortable leather chairs in the display area for me; lots of fragrances and scented items for more enthusiastically involved husbands than I and wives to buy for selves and as gifts). Also easy to overlook the Museo del'Opera del Duomo behind the apse of the Duomo, but some beautiful work in there (BTW, if you go to the Sforza Castel in Milan and the Museo del'Opera in Florence, you will add more of Michelangelo's Pietas to your list). The small town of Empoli is just outside Florence and has some beautiful scenery plus a great Etruscan museum.

Pauline mentioned above Santa Margherita Ligure. There is a fantastic stretch of shoreline with a very nicely laid out walking path that goes from Rapallo to Santa Margherita Ligure, Portofino, and on to San Fruttoso. You can take a water ferry to any of the stops and walk the short hops between each town and treat yourselves to beer/wine and snacks as a reward. Rapallo is the bigger of the towns and has a nice waterfront area with hotels and restaurants. Portofino is a good place to watch the people coming off their yachts.

For Lucca, always recommend climbing the Guinigi Tower to see the city from above and renting bikes at Poli's (in Piazza Santa Maria) for the 2 1/2 mile ride around the city walls. Would suggest Trattoria Gigi and Ubaldo's for meals (Gigi's is near Guinigi Tower and Ubaldo's is immediately outside the amphitheater). Can provide more info if you do decide to go to Lucca -- always get carried away since we love the city so much.

Only bad thing about Italy is all the choices that have to be made between so many great places to go and fun things to do. My apologies for rambling on -- Enjoy!!

 

[Andrew]

For the "which Milan airport?" question, all non-stops from the U.S. would be to Malpensa (MXP) airport; the closer-in Linate airport requires connecting in Europe. MXP is some distance out of the city, about as close to Stresa as to central Milan, so you could skip Milan on arrival and just stay there at the end of your trip.

 

[ziggy4]

Sounds like a great trip ;-)

We did a loop this year around Bologna (posted in another thread recently) that involved a visit to a balsamic vinegar production site (Acetaia Villa San Donnino, Via Medicine, 41126 San Vito di Spilamberto) and a parmesan cheese site (Latteria Sociale La Grande, Via F Rosselli 41, Reggio Nell’Emilia) that might fit in your driving plans. A friend of mine and I also did the visit to the the Ferrari museum in Bologna. Both the production places require reservations with nominal fees (true cost comes in the sales shops at the end).

For Florence, we always make a trip up just to enjoy a few small things -- Vestri Chocolates, Borgo degli Albizi, 11R (really is worth it to enjoy the selections on the shelves) and Aqua Flor, Borgo Santa Croce, 6 (comfortable leather chairs in the display area for me; lots of fragrances and scented items for more enthusiastically involved husbands than I and wives to buy for selves and as gifts). Also easy to overlook the Museo del'Opera del Duomo behind the apse of the Duomo, but some beautiful work in there (BTW, if you go to the Sforza Castel in Milan and the Museo del'Opera in Florence, you will add more of Michelangelo's Pietas to your list). The small town of Empoli is just outside Florence and has some beautiful scenery plus a great Etruscan museum.

Pauline mentioned above Santa Margherita Ligure. There is a fantastic stretch of shoreline with a very nicely laid out walking path that goes from Rapallo to Santa Margherita Ligure, Portofino, and on to San Fruttoso. You can take a water ferry to any of the stops and walk the short hops between each town and treat yourselves to beer/wine and snacks as a reward. Rapallo is the bigger of the towns and has a nice waterfront area with hotels and restaurants. Portofino is a good place to watch the people coming off their yachts.

For Lucca, always recommend climbing the Guinigi Tower to see the city from above and renting bikes at Poli's (in Piazza Santa Maria) for the 2 1/2 mile ride around the city walls. Would suggest Trattoria Gigi and Ubaldo's for meals (Gigi's is near Guinigi Tower and Ubaldo's is immediately outside the amphitheater). Can provide more info if you do decide to go to Lucca -- always get carried away since we love the city so much.

Only bad thing about Italy is all the choices that have to be made between so many great places to go and fun things to do. My apologies for rambling on -- Enjoy!!

I don’t mind the rambling- you have lots of great ideas! And I know what you mean about so many great choices! That’s why my hubs says just book the plane and home base hotel and we’ll figure out the rest as we go. We really can’t go wrong and we’ll probably be back in a few years anyway

 

[ziggy4]

For the "which Milan airport?" question, all non-stops from the U.S. would be to Malpensa (MXP) airport; the closer-in Linate airport requires connecting in Europe. MXP is some distance out of the city, about as close to Stresa as to central Milan, so you could skip Milan on arrival and just stay there at the end of your trip.

Thanks! Great idea. We’ll probably have an overnight 17 hr flight from US aaand arrive early am at mxp. May find a day rate hotel to nap and shower, then head to Stresa