Our Italian Adventure

After purchasing our airline tickets, I quickly found lodging for each location. During our last European trip to Scandinavia, we ended up washing our socks & underwear in the hotel sink. Avoiding that scenario became a priority during our hunt for lodging. To accomplish this goal, I decided to mix VRBO rentals with hotels. If fact, other than the Rome airport on our last day in Italy, none of our lodging was at a traditional hotel. We had VRBO rentals for Sorrento, Siena, Florence, & Lake Garda. The other stays were at small independent businesses consisting of only several rooms or units. These were at Rome, Venice, Verona & Ortisei. The Ortisei place was quite large and felt similar to a VRBO. In Rome, Venice & Verona, breakfast was included in some manner. Overall, our early planning for lodging paid dividends. We had fantastic stays at every location and all of our hosts were friendly and helpful. Yes, the Verona room was smaller than expected, but it was in a great location and they had a common kitchen for their guests. Even a near disaster, turned into one of the best lodging location.

By confirming our lodging, this locked us into each location for a set period of days. I then worked on transportation and major activities. Without going into detail about our activities, these included various activies such as obtaining tickets for the Italian Tennis Open in Rome; day trips from Sorrento to the Amalfi Coast & Capri; Tucscany tours out of Siena; famous Florence museum tickets; an evening dinner cruise in Venice; and the famous Verona Arena admission tickets.

For transportation, we decided to take the Trenitalia trains as much as possible. In order to avoid having to rent a car at all, transportation was supplemented by a high-speed ferry, a shuttle bus, taxis, and private drivers. Although the train tickets normally are not available for purchase until three months from travel, I got lucky around Christmas of 2024 and was able to purchase all of our train tickets except for the regional train to/from Siena/Florence. What we paid for our private drivers would be about $300 dollars more than if we would have rented a car. However, not having the stress of driving a car in Italy along with finding parking in each location was money well-spent.

By January of 2025, a lot of the intial planning was completed and it mainly came down to purchasing tickets for activities as they became available online. We also made some final decisions about our itinerary. One decision was during our stay in Verona. Based on the length of our stay, a day trip to a nearby destination would be the best use of our time. The choice came down to either Milan or Bologna. After some wrangling back and forth, we finally chose Milan.

We were set! The plans looked great and I left enough flexibility at each location where we could make small changes whenever we wanted. Of course, you know a 36 day trip can’t go as planned, right? The first hiccup presented itself in March. We were still wintering in Tucson when I received a message from ITA that our outbound flight to Rome had changed. I opened up the email and noticed a small time change. Well, that’s not a problem. Then I looked closer, holy cow, they now had our outbound flight leaving on Wednesday afternoon, May 7th, instead of Tuesday afternoon, May 6th. This was bad!! I immediately called ITA and was told the airline had cancelled their Tuesday flights from Chicago to Rome. Not just June 6th, but all Tuesdays. By this time, Lufthansa had completed their majority purchase of ITA. I asked if we could fly on Lufthansa out of Chicago. However, I was told the actual operations of ITA wouldn’t be merged with Lufthansa for another year. I then asked if there was another flight in the United States that was a nonstop flight to Rome for May 6th. The service employee said no, but when I said, “You’re telling me that ITA doesn’t have a single nonstop flight to Rome from the United States on May 6th?”, he paused and told me to hang on. A few minutes later, he came back onto the phone and said they did have a non-stop flight from New York City JFK to Rome on that date. I told him to book it with the same business class tickets and he did so. When we first made our plane reservations, we had also purchased American Airlines tickets to/from Madison/Chicago. I had to call American and change our outbound tickets to NYC JFK. It cost about $150 more, but now we were set without having to rearrange our entire vacation. Whoa, I sure hope that was the last hiccup.

Yea, way to dream. But no, there would be another curve ball thrown our way before we even set foot in Italy.