Three Tips for First Timers to Italy

After an amazing two weeks of travel in Italy and resting for one month since our return (!), I finally found the time and inspiration today to pen down some tips and post some pictures of the trip …

In rough chronological order of main places we visited …

 

Map Room, Vatican Museum

St Peters Square, Vatican City

Michelangelo’s Pieta

Vatican City (day 1 – guided tour)

 

Colosseum, queue for tickets in rain

Viktor Emmanuel Monument

Inside the Colosseum

Imperial Forum

Colosseum and surrounds (Ancient Rome and piazzas – day 2 and 3)

Trevi Fountain

Ceiling artworks

Tuscany countryside – Lovely greens!

 

San Gimignano

St Gimignano

Field of Miracles, Pisa

no caption needed!!

Siena

Tuscany Day trip – to Siena, St Gimignano, Pisa (all in 1 day, with guided tour)

 

Florence city, from bell tower

see the people way up there?

Santa Croce

Interior of Baptistery

Florence, birthplace of the Renaissance! (Day 5-7)

 

Great art from Italian Masters, (paintings are in the Uffizi)

 

Michelangelo’s David

Prisoners series, leading to David

Queue outside the Accademia, home of David

Accademia, Florence (home of world’s most famous statue)

 

Cinque Terre, 5 picturesque coastal villages (Day 7-9)

 

Venice (day 9 – 12)

 

Venice highlights! (St Mark’s Square, Basillica, Doge Palace)

 

Venice Island hopping (Burano, Murano, Torcello)

 

Sunset  (near our airbnb)

And, … here are my top three tips if you ever do an Italy trip:

1. Washrooms
   Now, the thing is, you would think that public washrooms would be easy to look for in train stations and other crowded public places, with so many tourists visiting the whole year round … BUT, NO, not in Italy!! Not only that, you have to pay to use them (like from 1 – 2 Euros).So, here’s the thing we learn from our guide during one of the day tours we took … just buy a coffee (expresso, or some small snack) from a bar and then use their toilet. This way, you are getting more “bang” out of your buck! Trust me, you will never ever need to be desperately looking for those public ones once you know this;  they really are not easy to find, especially so, when you need it most!
2. Skip the Line tickets
   Do you want to see all those must visit places you have read so much about in Italy (think Vatican City, Colosseum in Rome, or the Uffizi in Florence, or St Mark’s Basillica in Venice)? and yet, you are only having just a day or two in each city.

   Then, believe me, it is worth the extra costs to book your tickets ahead online (with tour, or self-guided), so that you can skip the horrendous queues to these places … Know that even with these skip-the-line tickets, there are still queues to navigate, but it is much more sane, the kind of time you spend queueing

   (the only exceptions, imho, are that you think it is actually fun to experience a 1-2 hour queue, or you are the go-with-the-flow type who doesn’t know when/where you might end up at those places, so it may be hard to book ahead).

•  Overcome museum/church/ruins fatigue
  It is really amazing to visit all these museums and churches and ruins …  so much history, such skill and artistry in the buildings and paintings and sculptures, and to think that all of these were done so long ago!

  And too much of a good thing can spoil your enthusiasm after a while! For the first timer to Italy going to the cities of Rome, Florence and Venice, I would strongly recommend, if time permits, that a visit to the countryside or coast (Tuscany and Cinque Terre, in our case) in between, would be a good breather to recharge and recuperate, after seeing all those great works of art/architecture in those three cities!