Everything you need to plan a trip to Italy — from Rome’s icons and hidden gems to the cliffside towns of the Amalfi Coast and the peaks of the Dolomites. Itineraries, where to stay, the best things to do, and real costs.
Three days in Rome is not enough to see everything — and that’s exactly the right way to think about it. The city has 3,000 years of history stacked on top of itself, and the travelers who try to tick off every ruin, basilica, and museum in 72 hours leave exhausted and remember none of…
There’s a moment about an hour north of Milan, somewhere around Lecco, where the motorway narrows and the mountains close in from both sides and the flat Po plain you’ve been crossing just — disappears. That’s when this road trip announces itself. We’d been debating whether to stop at Lake Como (we stopped; we stayed…
Before we booked flights, the question came up twice: do we actually need a car? A friend who’d done the Dolomites by train said it was perfectly fine. A forum post from 2019 described the bus network as “surprisingly good.” We spent about an hour reading both before concluding that neither of those people had…
Hiking in the Dolomites sounds like something you need to train for. Serious boots, technical gear, a fitness baseline that doesn’t include chasing a two-and-a-half-year-old around a hotel room. I had all of those doubts when we were planning our trip. Then we spent a morning walking around Lago di Braies with our son in…
If you’re trying to figure out the best time to visit the Dolomites, I’ll give you my honest answer upfront: it’s September. Not July, not August — even though that’s when most people go. We visited the Lago di Braies area ourselves, and I’ve done enough research (and made enough booking mistakes) to tell you…
One day in the Dolomites — Lago di Braies, Cortina, Passo Giau. Here’s what it actually cost. We spent €140 in one day in the Dolomites. That’s the number I added up on the drive back, going over it in my head while my husband drove and our two-and-a-half-year-old finally fell asleep in his car…
Yes, a day trip to the Dolomites from Venice is worth it — but only under two conditions: you have a car, and you set realistic expectations. If you’re counting on public transport or hoping to tick off three different valleys in one day, you’ll end up frustrated. If you drive, leave early, and pick…
The Dolomites are not one place. Where you base yourself changes how much of the region you can actually reach. We chose the wrong base on our first day in the Dolomites. Not catastrophically wrong — the mountains were still extraordinary, the food was still excellent, the trip was still worth it. But we spent…
Milan rewards the traveler who slows down enough to actually look at it. Most people treat Milan as a passport stamp — land at Malpensa, collect your rental car, and head straight for the mountains. We almost did the same thing. We’re glad we didn’t. We gave ourselves 24 hours in Milan before driving up…
The Amalfi Coast is expensive: genuinely, noticeably, sometimes shockingly expensive. A hotel in Positano in July can run $500-1,500 per night. A seafood dinner with views can cost $100 per person without blinking. A private boat tour can run $400. But the part that keeps this trip from being impossible is simple: many of the…