Italy - Honeymoon

Tholan said:

I wouldn’t stay on the east coast of Italy unless you enjoy beaches full of older German tourists wearing speedos. I’d spend a night near Bologna and book a table at a nice traditional restaurant, as it’s considered the culinary capital of Italy. I can recommend Clinica Gastronomica, between Modena and Reggio Emilia — you can taste some of the best Italian cuisine there.
I’d then head to Florence for a day, then Sienna, and after that the vineyards of Montalcino for some great red wine tastings. From there, you’re quite close to Rome.
I’d skip Pisa — there’s not much worth staying for, except if you like rude chinese.

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Due to our adventures in the middle east I locked in my trip suddenly. I intentionally want to travel mostly by train as an experiment since I've never done it before. So I'll have more time to soak in cities as I go rather than wander like I usually do. I'm going to Milan, Venice, Florence, Naples, Rome. Spending 3 days in each, 5 days in rome. I'll be doing a day trip to pompei for sure. I'll be looking into day trips from other cities too, I'll look into if any of these make sense.

Trains are fast and cheap, so it wouldn't be hard at all to add a city even if I'm not staying the night there. I'm not the sort that normally spends a lot on food, but I really want the italian experience, so I'm probably going to go a little crazy on this regard. I'll have to look into bologna's food scene, should be an easy day trip from florence.

Edit: Looking it up, only 38 mins by train, nice.

Lanx said:

skip the line tickets are a must

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Where did you find your skip the line tickets. I see about a million different places offering them, so I'd like to know a source that worked.

Tholan said:

the high speed train system in Italy is fantastic, the Freccia Rossa, if you have to chose between a normal train and these, take these. Nice service, they're fast, overall a great experience. Usually they're on schedule.
Great choice of cities, and as Cad suggested, if you're into cars, you should go to Modena. Or while in Milano, ff you’ve got the money, you can head to Monza — they offer Ferrari driving experiences on the legendary circuit.
Except in the city centers, good food is cheap in Italy.

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Yea, I'm taking the Freccia Rossa. Every single ticket I upgraded to business class so I can be in the first car and can sit by myself with my bag stored next to me, and I'm still under 200$ for all of the train tickets combined, which feels like a steal. I think the one plane ticket from germany to italy cost more. The only problem I had on booking tickets was that from venice to the rest of italy, a lot of tickets were sold out, so I had to book a super early trip. Everywhere else it was pretty open.

Narrowing down my schedule, have the first two thirds of it done. Milan I'm letting a local take me around, so it'll be a surprise. Venice I'm doing a boat tour of the outer islands and glass factories that last pretty much a whole day. Glass blowing is pretty darn cool if you've never seen it done. Signed up for some food tours, and got the venice historical site pass from Viva ticket that lets you enter 12 of the museums/sites skip the line once per place. It's worth its price if you go to any 2, and I'll probably hit up 4 at least. Scouted out a few restaurants I want to try. Will hit the ones that feel convenient as I wander.

For Florence I got one day long wine/food tour, one day trip to bologna where I'll hit up some car museums and destroy my stomach for lunch somewhere in the middle, then have a dinner guided food tour. Third day I was going to do a free range tour of places I want to go in florence.

Naples I've set up a day trip to pompeii.

I have a feeling I'm gonna come back fat. As someone who normally avoids food and cities and hikes in remote ass places, this is definitely going to be a strange vacation for me.

Not gonna lie, Italy is impressing me from what I remember last time I was here. The cities are a lot cleaner than I remember, most the poors working the poor jobs are Italians and not knife wielding immigrants. I’m sure I’ll notice more blemishes as I go, and maybe it’s the decline of places like France and Germany that make it look comparatively better.

Tholan said:

North is still top notch. Southern italy is hard to see. You can't tell if something is a roman ruin or a normal house.
how was the rest of your trip ?

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I had a great time in milan, venice and florence. Florence was the first city where you could see the roughness around the edges. Naples was a big oof around the train station, could definitely see a lot of DIVERSITY, and I heard call to prayer playing over the loud speaker walking through, but police presence was high. The fringes were beautiful and nice still. Sorrento and the amalfi coast and what not. Rome was an even bigger OOF around the train station, and saw one nog go full monkey mode on an old italian couple.

Still, I'd recommend all of it. So much cool history, and the oof levels are far higher in a shithole like paris or london. Those places are worse than africa. Bonci pizzarium is fucking legit. Get the lardo potato pizza and thank me later. See the vatican before muslims loot it. So much cool history.

nyn said:

just avoid left centric city, especially in center south parth, and italy s fine (napoli and rome are left centric sadly, florence too but still north part so not that extreme, venice is right while milan indipendent).

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Milan cracked me up, because I was coming across right wing extremist graffiti, which is a big flip around from most cities. I doubt venice's politics will ever matter, the place is a gigantic tourist trap in a good way.