How We Planned Our Trip Around Italy

We picked up some of our favorite places and spent ten days in the country. This is how we organized everything.

Hello dear globetrotter. This is the second article I’m writing about my recent trip to Italy. This was the first one:

As I wrote there, I’m planning to write more about where we ate, places to go and avoid, what we visited, and other tips that may help you out if you’re visiting Italy.

It has been a long time since I last set foot in “il bel paese”, which is how Italians refer to their country. And I couldn’t agree more. Italy will always be my second home, if not the first one my heart chose for me.

Now, six years have gone by, and a lot has changed. A marriage, a world pandemic, and a war in Europe. Things nobody could predict, and for me, the marriage thing would probably be the less likely to happen if I could talk to my 26-year-old self.

So, tired of being at home, falling into a routine that the pandemic put on us. I wanted to return to Italy and show my husband a little bit of my past life and show him a beautiful place that he had never seen.

So, how did we start making plans?

Honestly, I have never been a tourist or at least felt like one. I have been to Brazil, Argentina, and Chile since I was granted a scholarship to study abroad, so I had everything arranged for me already.

The same could be said about my time living in Italy. I had lived there during two different phases of my life; in Lombardia, in 2014, and in Liguria, in 2016.

So, as strange as it may sound, I felt like I was going on holiday abroad for the first time.

My mind started swirling and thinking:

“What should we do first?”

“Buy the plane tickets?”

“Check the hotels and how much they cost?”

“See if we can afford this whole thing?”

I was almost giving up thinking about these issues. But, I cleaned my thoughts, and I took the following steps:

1- Decide how many days your trip will last.

This is honestly hard because it has to do with your budget and the price of everything, from plane tickets to hotels.

We ended up deciding on ten days. Based also on the cost of the plane tickets and on what we wanted to visit.

In the first post of this series, I have said that we made a big trip, going from Milano to Rome. So we landed in Milano Malpensa, but our return was through Roma Ciampin’s airport.

2- Buy the tickets

This was the first thing we did, interlaced with deciding how many days we would stay there.

We booked through Ryanair. The tickets cost less than 200 euros for two people.

With Ryanair, you can buy the ticket and have a small bag you can take with you on the plane and put it under your seat, which is included in your ticket price.

But if you want to have a small trolley, that will cost you more.

We decided that it was enough for us to have our backpack and then pay for one hold luggage of 20 kgs, and this cost us 40 euros, which was more than the tickets themselves.

We didn’t even use half of our clothes! I wish we had left some space to bring food in that bag instead of clothes!

We checked out for the cheaper days to go and return, and when we decided on that, we booked and paid through PayPal — an option that is great for many people who don’t have credit cards.

Upon buying the tickets, you must have your “green pass,” the EU digital covid certificate, and fulfil the information that is required going to Italy, the “EU Digital Passenger Locator Form (dPLF).

When you book the tickets, they give you all the links to do that.

I filled in all the information, printed everything, and put it in a folder that my husband carried with him for the whole time — I’m a control freak, apparently.

To be honest, nobody asked us for those papers. But when we were coming back to Portugal, some people were being stopped showing them, and others weren’t.

It seems people are randomly chosen to present those papers, so you better have them.

However, more than those papers, there was one essential item we were required to have to go to Italy, and we didn’t have!

Panic!

We were already in the boarding line with our simple surgical blue masks when someone from the Ryanair crew suddenly told us that we could not enter the plane with FFP2 masks.

These are mandatory — for the moment — in all public transportation in Italy, and obviously, planes included.

We were not alone amongst the people pissed at this lack of information.

My husband had to run all over the airport to find a machine where those masks could be bought. He made it on time, but we didn’t need any last-minute stress.

3- Book the hotels.

I wanted to show my husband the places I had been to as much as possible. So, we slept in Milano, La Spezia ( near the Cinque Terre), Firenze, and Roma.

We stayed in four different beds for ten days, which may be too much. We got a bit tired, especially on the first days, but we got to see the best of each place.

We booked through booking.com.

In Milano, we stayed in Hotel Biagio, more or less ten minutes walking from Milano central train station, which was great since we wanted to be close to the trains all the time.

The time of arrival at the hotel was not the best though, we arrived there at 11 pm, and I kept looking on the map where the hotel would be — I had printed the map where the hotel would be, and I followed it.

It was good I did that. For some reason, my phone just didn’t work in Italy. I could have used my husband’s phone data, but I like maps, and we got there.

Pros:

• The hotel was a 1-star hotel. We just wanted a private bedroom with a private bathroom.
• We paid 158 euros for two nights. Not bad, honestly.
• The hotel was quiet, clean, and close to the metro, and guess what? The receptionist was Brazilian and spoke Portuguese to us. I speak Italian, but for my husband, it was nice to be in a foreign country and have someone speak your language.
• Close to the metro and coffee areas

Cons:

• Honestly, considering the price and the place, I’ve got nothing to point out.

In La Spezia, we stayed in Parfumerie 5 Terre . It was not really a hotel, but more like a building with an apartment turned into bedrooms.

This was far the best place we stayed. For 3 nights we paid 225 euros.

You will always pay the tourist tax you expect, and you’ll pay the price you’re expecting when you book the hotel. They will only tell you that some will be for the council and others for them.

Pros:

• Quiet, 5 minutes from the train station, in a peaceful area of the town. The bed was very comfortable, and the room had a balcony where we could hang out our clothes.
• The bedroom was also equipped with a tiny refrigerator, which was fantastic for buying drinks and food and putting them all there.
• A supermarket was one minute from the room, which became very handy.
• They also had a coffee machine and cakes, and when they changed the bed, they put chocolates on our pillows, a beautiful gesture.

Cons:

Nothing to point out, we were very well received, and we loved staying there.

Arriving in Florence.

I booked a hotel near the train station Santa Maria Novella in Florence. We checked in at Hotel Berna, 2 minutes walking distance from the station, for two nights.

We paid 195,50 Euros.

Pros:

• Close to the main attractions, the hotel was 10 minutes walking from Ponte Vecchio, Firenze Cathedral, and Florence’s famous Market.
• We had the keys to our room and could enter and leave.
• For me, it was a great thing that they had ironing there. I really wanted to wear a skirt I had bought there — yes, more clothes — but it needed ironing. When we got there and saw that ironing, I was quite happy.

Cons:

• The worst part was definitely the AC. They sure had the machine, but they did not have a remote for us to turn it on.
• It was hot at night, and we sometimes had to open the windows. I would return there, but the AC had to be working next time. Otherwise, it would be impossible to stay there.

Last but not least, we arrived in Rome by train. I had booked the trip through Italo, the high-speed train in Italy.

For two people we paid 47,80 euros, from Florence to Rome on a journey that would take more than 3 hours if it were made by car or bus.

We arrived in Rome more or less in an hour. It was an incredible journey, peaceful and fast.

We arrived in Roma Termini, and our hotel, Euro Quiris, was five minutes walk from the train station.

Pros:

• This hotel was similar to the one in Florence, and it was an old building with each floor being a “hotel ”. We checked in, they gave us the keys, and we stayed on the fifth floor of the building.

• Luckily, it was less hot in Rome than in Florence, so sleeping with the windows closed at night was ok. But no complaints regarding the room, except for some drunk girls who woke us up in the middle of the night — I felt old and mad at them. What can you do?
• We paid 207 euros for three nights in Rome, for two people! A great price!
• Regarding the room, everything was spotless, the balcony was beautiful, and since we were on the top of the building, we had a great view of the city there. We checked out on 13th May 2022 at 4 am.
• We only left the keys on top of the table, closed the door, and left Rome.

Cons:

• The room had a balcony, but the AC was not working, similar to Firenze;
• This part of the city is a little bit dirtier, but maybe the result of being such a movement area. Nonetheless, it was quiet at night.

4- Book the trains

The trip was Milano — La Spezia — Firenze — Rome.

The big tickets and the longer trips were between Milano and La Spezia and Firenze to Rome.

We also visited Lake Como on Milano’s outskirts, stopped in Pisa, and then moved on to Florence.

All these tickets were bought directly on the day, which gave us more freedom of movement, and because these were regional trains, you didn’t need to book them in advance.

However, to buy the ticket from Milano to La Spezia was a great deal. Go to the Trenitalia website, and find the best hour.

These particular tickets cost 14,90 Euros per person, two hours and some minutes going to another region. It was an inter-city train, very comfortable.

When you buy the tickets online, you don’t need to validate them on the machines.

But please be aware.

Any time you buy tickets directly from their machines, you need to validate them on a machine that is at the train station.

Usually, they are near the train’s platforms. You need to insert your ticket on the back so that the date can be printed. If you don’t do this and you enter the train, they will make you buy another ticket, as we saw happening to a couple next to us.

So, buying online it’s a great deal. If we had purchased the tickets there, it would have cost us probably three times more.

5- Booking your transfer from and to the airport

When arriving in Milano I checked on the website that the train ticket from the airport to go to the city center cost around 2 euros, so I decided that I didn’t need to book that one ticket in particular.

There were for sure other more expensive options. Bus transfer, and private ones, but since there were train connections from the airport to the city center we decided to go with that one.

How disappointed it was to go to the machine that first night at the airport and to buy a ticket for 13 euros per person. Perhaps if I had bought online, we wouldn’t have paid that much.

Be careful. A man was selling tickets for a lower price, and I almost fell for that. I never got the chance to see the tickets, but we were rushing, and it’s when we don’t think and we could have ended up with fake tickets right in the first hour in Italy.

So, only buy from the machine! REALLY!

In Rome, even being the capital, the connections from Rome to Rome Ciampino airport are awful. We had our flight at 6.30 am, and I spent a long time figuring out how to get a transfer at 4 am. I sent e-mails to hotels, and the prices ranged from 60 to 70 euros!!

Finally, I logged in to the Ryanair website, which has private transfers. We ended up paying 43 euros for that transfer, and since it was bought from Ryanair, we were sure things would work out.

When we left the hotel five minutes before 4 am, a young Italian man was already waiting for us to take us to Rome Ciampino.

Yes! For some reason, we were very nervous about this transfer and if someone would show up! He was there even before the time!

The trip was made in less than 20 minutes, but be aware. It was 4 am in the morning, and there was no traffic. We arrived at the airport somehow 2 hours before the plane left. So, everything turned out to be perfect, tiring, but perfect.

The plane arrived in Portugal 20 minutes before expected, and we were home again.

In the next article, you can follow what we visited and what restaurants we ate at.

Hello, I’m Araci, a female writer from Portugal navigating her thirties. If you have enjoyed this article, maybe you would like to buy me a coffee here https://ko-fi.com/joanaaraci

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