Rough outline: Siena & San Gimignano (v2)

Of all the days of the trip, the ones we've adjusted the most are the days we're in Siena and Tuscany. I'm really happy with how we've adjusted things, because 1) we now have more time with SAY and Dr G, 2) we're doing a few things that are new, and 3) we have lots of free time to just enjoy Italy and where we are!

Saturday:
- Arrive in Siena in the evening (bus or train from Rome is around 3 hours)
- Meet up with friends, check out Siena, wander around

Rough outline: Florence (v2)

I could spend an entire trip to Italy based out of Florence. It's been my home city away from home since I did a semester there during college, and I'm super excited to be heading back soon! We'll only have two nights there, so we'll be packing in quite a bit, but I think we'll still have time for everything.

Wednesday:
- Arrive in Florence by bus late morning, check into hotel
- Uffizi gallery for Shorty - it's on her bucket list of things to do on this trip! I'm not sure I'll go in this time around, since I spend many extensive tours there when I lived in Florence.

Rough outline: Rome (v2)

It seems like this trip is constantly changing!

But now that we have our itinerary set, at least in terms of airline flights, I'm going to revise the rough outline of a Rome itinerary from a few months ago.

It's actually fairly close to the same itinerary, with the adjustment that we don't get to Rome until late Thursday night, and have an extra night there at the end of the trip. Also, my friends who are getting married let me know that there's a rough plan to celebrate the Bride's birthday and everyone meeting up in town on the Friday night we're there!

A love letter to bella Firenze

View of the city from Piazza Michelangelo.

I've discovered in our recent trip planning that many people who have been to Italy either didn't enjoy Florence immensely, or could take it or leave it. It's rarely people's favorite city. And I can kind of understand - it lacks the romanticism of Venice and the vast history of Rome. It doesn't have a leaning tower or The Last Supper. It can be crowded, gets very hot during the summer, and is fairly industrial and dirty. The public transportation isn't as good in Florence as in other cities, and it's pretty pricey.

But despite all of those things, Florence remains my favorite city in Italy.

Bus travel around Tuscany

As much as I love the train system in Italy, one of the places I didn't explore as much as I wanted to in 2002 when I lived in Florence was Tuscany. I know, crazy, right? Since it's RIGHT THERE? I didn't see as much of it as I wanted because I was young and new to travel and didn't like to go places I couldn't get to on a train. A train was safer, you see, because it had one place to go, and was pretty difficult to mess up with. Buses, on the other hand, were tougher - there were different timetables and schedules, where to get the tickets was always somewhat of a mystery, and there were rarely the convenient audio reminders of which station you were about to get to.

Bus travel in Italy requires a little more effort than train travel, but the benefits of getting to go to the smaller towns and locations were great.

Day Dreaming of San Gimignano, Italy

I've been having a serious case of the day dreams when it comes to trip planning lately. Now that we're officially going, I've been playing around with itineraries and things to do, and talking to the people we're going to be traveling with, and I'm getting really excited.

My newest day dream? Adding a night in San Gimignano into the mix.

Know your airline's luggage restrictions!

Now that we finally have our plane tickets for our Europe trip this summer, I've been changing my focus to other aspects of our trip. Our luggage has been a big one for me - I had been trying to figure out if there was a way I could possibly pack for a two week vacation (including a wedding) in two different countries and just have a carry on. I'm pretty much to the point of admitting that's not going to happen, so now I'm focusing on the logistics of having to check a bag.

Europe 2011? BOOKED!

We booked our flights!

It's officially official - we've got our tickets for the trip! And while expensive, we found a deal that included the flight to Ireland, the flight from Dublin to Rome, and the flight home from Italy.

Our trip includes four nights in Ireland!

Ch-ch-ch-changes...

We've gone and done it again.

We've changed our itinerary.

I realized as we were planning that something was holding us back from our plan - something kept us from getting tickets last year. The themes that kept coming up when we would talk about it were 1) the amount of time we would be gone, and 2) the budget.

So I sat down with BF, and with M and Shorty, who are planning on doing the same itinerary as us, and we came up with a plan that we were all a little more comfortable with.

The old plan was: Italy first for 9 nights, then Ireland for 6 nights, with a proposed budget of close to $4,000.

The new plan is: Ireland first for 5 nights, then Italy for 7 nights, with a proposed budget of around $3,200.

3 Day Wander in Florence, Italy

I've had a soft spot for Florence since I did my semester abroad there in 2002. At first glance, it's not many people's favorite city in Italy - it's crowded, rather industrial, and, well, kind of dirty. But once you get past all that, it's a place unlike others in Italy - a city, but with a small town feel. We'll only be in Florence for two nights, but there's a lot we're going to pack in!

4 Day Wander in Siena, Italy

We'll be in Siena for three nights, including for our friends' wedding! I cannot WAIT for this portion of the trip - just to be in Italy with so many friends!

DAY 1
- arrive in Siena late afternoon (bus from Rome is approximately 2.5 hours)
- meet up with friends, check out Siena, wander around

3 Day Wander in Rome, Italy

To keep myself excited about the trip and avoid thinking about the budget, I've been putting together some rough outlines of potential itineraries for each of the cities we're going to visit on our Italy trip! Here is the one for Rome - we'll arrive on a Thursday, and then leave for Siena on Saturday late morning-ish.

DAY 1
- arrive in Rome in the morning to early afternoon, depending on which flight we actually end up getting
- get settled into our hotel, then walk the main touristy area, checking out both the Spanish Steps and Trevi Fountain, which both warrant more than one glimpse (Trevi Fountain is particularly cool to see in the evening/at night)

Travel accessories, LL Bean style.

BF and I both received gift certificates for LL Bean this past Christmas. It was an incredibly nice gesture, but our first thoughts were 1) we've never, ever shopped at an LL Bean before, and 2) where the heck can you find a LL Bean store? Turns out, we'd never shopped there before because there are no stores in California!

Fortunately for us, LL Bean has an extensive, easy to use website, and while checking it out, we discovered several things that could come in quite handy on our impending trip!

Here is my current wish list of travel accessories from LL Bean.

Balanzza Luggage Scale - $25


With all of the charges associated with luggage these days, it seems like this would be super useful! (Especially as a woman who has had to pay "heavy luggage fees!")

Hmm...

A good friend of mine passed along an article as a comment on my last post that got me stressing a little about when to buy our plane tickets for this summer.

This Jaunted article warns about ticket prices going up exponentially because of rising fuel costs.

Now the economy is slowly recovering, and so oil prices are threatening to shoot back up. Oil import costs have skyrocketed roughly 300% over the last few months, and of course those costs get passed on to the companies that use fuel, at which point they get passed on to the rest of us. In the airline industry that means not just higher ticket prices, but also higher luggage fees and—just to make up for lost revenue—higher penalties.

Hmm. I think that we may have to get our plane tickets sooner rather than later at this point!

Ticket price puzzle: Part 4

Wow, just like that a whole month has gone by!

After the crazy holidays, I'm back in full planning mode for our trip! I can't believe it's already just 6 months away - time flies when you're trying to save money, no?

I'm changing it up a bit for this round - I'm going to use our actual dates, and I'm going to add in a few options I was thinking about today - going to Ireland before the wedding in Italy, etc.

Prices, as of 8/4/10:
- LAX-Rome, Dublin-LAX: $1332.52

Prices, as of 9/21/10:
- LAX-Rome, Dublin-LAX: $1331.62
- LAX-Rome, Venice-LAX: $1418.51