Vacation in Italy

Planning vacation In Italy can be a daunting task - with so many things to do and see in this relatively small country, where do you start? Unless you spend a lifetime there, you will certainly miss some things, so what do you leave out? What do you put on your must-see list? What do you save for next time?

When you reach this point, you have two choices - you can plan your own tour in Italy, setting up your own itinerary and connecting the dots between sights, or you can book yourself a spot on a vacation where someone else has done the hard work for you. Both have their pros and cons, you just need to know which one suits your needs best.

Below, you will find a few of the things to take into consideration when deciding whether to go it alone or rely on someone else’s judgment - but keep in mind that you could end up doing a combination of these two options. If you will be in Italy for an extended period of time, you could take charge of most of your tourist outings but jump on a guided trip into the mountains or a three-day trip to the lakes while you are there.

Italy Vacation Packages

Italy Vacation packages come in all shapes and sizes and suit every travel taste and budget. There will be tours that cover the highlights of one city or the entire country, tours that focus on one region, tours that center around a particular interest or hobby, tours on water and tours on land. You name it, there is an Italy vacation package that covers it.

Italy Vacation packages can also be great if you have a specific interest that you want to focus on when you travel, whether it is food or history or cars or wine or skiing. The time it would take the average traveler to seek out each stop on an interest-based tour like that would make planning the trip a nearly full-time job. With someone else to sort out those details - someone on the ground in Italy who knows where to look - you are assured of a great experience without having to make a chore out of the planning process. You are also bound to meet like-minded travelers, people who share your passions, which always makes a trip more interesting.

Planning Your Own Italy Vacation

There is nothing quite like taking control of your own Italy vacation, doing the research, booking the hotels or hostels, choosing the sights you want to see, and mapping your route. It can be an incredibly satisfying experience, knowing you are getting exactly what you want out of your holiday. It is also time-consuming and can be frustrating - so you do not want to leave this to the last minute.

Your first task should be to prioritize the things you want to see and do in Italy. Making this list, and truly prioritizing it from top to bottom, will force you to see your trip in terms of what you really have time to do and what you simply do not. It will also allow you to more easily cut things from the itinerary if you already have things prioritized early on - if not, you will feel like you are being asked to sacrifice one of your own children.

To budget your time realistically, plan to spend at least three days in every destination you visit, give or take a day. In Venice, for instance, two days is probably plenty, while you might want to add a fourth day to Florence or Rome, especially if you use one of them for a daytrip outside the city. But in general, three days is a good baseline to work from. This will keep you from zipping too quickly through any given place, and will allow you the pleasure of getting to know your way around a complicated foreign city.

The biggest downside of planning your own Italy vacation is the time it takes to do it right. The results are rewarding, but just as Rome was not built in a day, neither was a vacation to Rome. There is a reason, after all, why people employ travel agents and tour companies to do this stuff for them. Another downside is that if something goes wrong you have no one to take care of the problems for you. With a tour company, you can pass the complaint on to someone else whose job it is to fix it. So, if you have the time and the fortitude to plan your own holiday, go for it. If you do not have any spare time for lunch let alone vacation planning, and if you prefer to have someone around to take care of problems so you do not have to, you are probably better off going with a tour.