See Northern Italy Travel Guide Part 1: Rome and Cinque Terre if you haven’t read that yet!

My two week Northern Italy itinerary:

• 1 Travel Day
• 3 Days in Rome
• 2.5 Days in Cinque Terre (would recommend staying longer if you have the time, maybe at least 4 days)
• 2.5 Days in Florence (I would personally only stay here again maybe 1 day and instead stay longer in Tuscany countryside aka be closer to the wineries).
• 3 Days in Venice
• 1 Travel Day home =13 days

Days 6-9 Florence:

We spent the morning in Cinque Terre then took the afternoon train to Florence, Italy. This train was also booked through ItaliaRail. It departed from La Spezia Centrale and arrived in Firenze Santa Maria Novella (Florence) about 2.5 hours later. The trains in Italy are super easy to use! You just need to make sure you have your ticket and arrive about 30 minutes before departure time. Once you get to the train station just look at the departures board for your train’s departing platform. This usually doesn’t show until about 10 minutes or so before departure. Some train tickets have a seat assignment, if so you then need to find your designated carriage and seats. We were able to bring on all of our luggage and either store it right next to us or in a spot near the doors for heavier bags. Just be super careful with your possessions, your purses, and anything that you don’t want to get stolen as trains are notorious for thieves taking purses or camera/laptop bags and running off the train before it even takes off. I just keep all of my important stuff right at my seat and in view. It’s always better to be careful with your stuff!

Where to stay:

From the train station in Florence it was about a 15 minute walk with our luggage to our hotel. We stayed at the Marriott AC Hotel. It was a nice hotel and even better that we got to stay for free with our points and free night certificates through Marriott! It was a little bit of a walk to most attractions but not too bad. I’d say it took us about a 20-30 minute walk to most sights. The only negative thing is to get to the hotel you have to walk through a little bus stop and park area and especially at night it was a little sketchy but I was with my husband so felt safer. We still always felt a little uneasy walking through there at night. Nothing happened though, but its always good to be careful and aware of your surroundings no matter where you are!

Things to do:

• Tour of the Cathedral of Santa Maria del Fiore and Duomo
• Tuscany Day Trip-Winery Tour and Visit to San Gimignano: Take a tour to the wineries in Tuscany and visit San Giminagno for THE Best gelato in the world! Seriously! Go with the tour The Grape Escape by Italy on a Budget tours. Highly recommend for people in their twenties and thirties to meet other young travelers and get to see Tuscany in one day! I definitely want to go back to Tuscany and stay longer and maybe skip Florence next time or just stay a day in Florence and Tuscany longer. I love the countryside (=)and the wine of course)!
• Gallery dell’Accademia to see the statue of David. It’s worth seeing at least once but we did get guide tickets to not have to wait in line and get a guided tour. There ended up being no line (not sure if that was unusual for July) and also she just provided history and context for one room and then focused most of the time on the statue of David which is great to see and I can appreciate but wasn’t exactly my favorite art work. I would say skip if you only have limited time in Florence and don’t really care about art.
• Visit the Ponte Vecchio, a really famous old bridge in Florence.
• Visit the Piazzale Michelangelo for beautiful views of the city! This was definitely worth going to as the views were amazing and we were able to watch the sunset over Florence. The place was PACKED with people though fighting for a view and taking pictures so just be aware its not a quiet place during the busy season.

Where to eat:

• Gustapizza came highly recommended and it was a cool spot for some good fire grilled pizza made right in front of you. This place was also really packed but the wait wasn’t very long as they seat groups together at tables.
• Santo Spirito for really good risotto and their cheesy gnocchi! We ordered way too much food here because the pasta was so filling but I was able to take my chicken and vegetable dish to go and just ate it cold in the hotel room the next and it was still delicious!

Days 9-11 Venice:

We again took an ItaliaRail train from the Firenze Santa Maria Novella train station to Venezia San Lucia train station. This train ride only took about two hours and we had first class because I booked early and also took advantage of their Two for One deal on Saturdays!

Where to stay:

We stayed at the Hilton Molino Stucky hotel on Giudecca. We chose this hotel because we had quite a few Hilton points saved up so we decided to use our points for a nice executive suite room with a view in Venice. However, we had one major issue happen with our suite in which the air conditioning wasn’t working at all and there were no other rooms to move to so we had to sleep in that room when it was super hot. However, they did make it up to us the next day by moving us to a suite with a better view of Venice. Their customer service was definitely helpful and addressed our issues while being respectful to us. After lots of back and forth negotiations they also were able to give us back the points we used for our first night there. So I do recommend this hotel as its super nice and the rooftop pool is amazing with beautiful views of Venice! We also had access to their executive lounge which provided all day water, pop, coffee, lattes, snacks, and a happy hour between 5-7pm with free wine, beer, aperol spritz (spritzes?), and appetizers. This in itself was incredibly worth it and saved us a lot in drinks and snacks!

The only other downside is that its on a different main island so you have to take a ferry shuttle over and sometimes that can take a while even though it runs mostly every twenty minutes. Just something to keep in mind! If you want to stay on the main island of Venice, I highly recommend the Jewish Ghetto neighborhood to stay in. This is probably where I want to stay the next time as this is where I stayed the first time visiting with my sisters. It’s such a cute, much quieter aka less touristy, area of Venice, Italy that not many people get to.

Things to do:

Wander around Venice! Venice is the type of city that I don’t really want an agenda for. I just like to start walking and see where I end up. It is a magical city full of narrow winding streets, dead ends overlooking the canals, and gorgeous historic buildings and houses. For more inspiration on how to fully experience Venice read my post from my last visit: 5 Ways to Fully Experience Venice, Italy.

Where to eat:

To be honest nothing really wowed us on this trip to Venice. I had been to the restaurant Al Timon previously which I mention in my other blog post and that’s really good but we wanted to try other places while we were there this time. I would just recommend going off the main touristy areas for any good food. We ate at one of the restaurants close to San Marco square and it was just awful! But the one restaurant we went to in the Jewish Ghetto neighborhood, Agli Archi was pretty good and had seating right next to the water. So if you want to find the good restaurants definitely walk far away from San Marco square! A lot of the smaller restaurants in other neighborhoods will also provide good deals like choose a pasta dish and get a glass of wine or Aperol Spritz for 12 euro and it was actually a pretty decent lunch.

For vacation packing tips see My Top Tips for Packing Light.