You may not believe this, but I really am okay winging it on a trip. I have done it quite a few times in the past, and probably will many more times in the future. But sometimes it’s kind of nice when I am able to do a little digging about where we are going. Don’t get me wrong, it’s not always my favorite thing to do because it seems like it takes forever to research where to stay, what to see, and the order of the trip in general when I want to be a little more organized.
I have to say, most of the time when I’ve planned things out, we’ve had great trips. It’s nice because I’m not quite so stressed, and I don’t have to spend hours trying to decide what to do after we get there. I can have the hotels booked, and some tours even taken care of. If I’m lucky, I may even find a restaurant or two that we might want to try – and I book reservations!
For instance, my husband and I booked a week long cooking class in Italy, for May of 2017. I knew there were about ten days that still needed to be filled with hotels, restaurants, and possibly tours. So I set out to try and determine what I wanted to accomplish by the end of the trip. Here are a few tips that have helped me along the way:
Creating a List
First, I created a want list. What cities did we want to go to, and what were the most important things we wanted to see? From there I could try to see what all would fit in the time frame we had.
My list contained the following places:
- Parma – for the Parma ham and balsamic vinager
- Carrara – because of the marble mines
- Florence – just because it’s an awesome city to hang out in
- Levanto – one of my favorite towns in Italy because it’s by the water and has mountains in the back ground
Now that I had my list, I just needed to figure out what was going to be the best way to try and fit it all in. Like I mentioned in an earlier post, I use Tripadvisor.com and RoutePerfect.com quite a bit when researching where to go and what to do. Since I already had the towns, I just needed to figure out what there was to do after getting there.
Finishing up the Details
Parma – I found out you can take a tour to see where Parma ham is made, and balsamic vinegar all in one day. Perfect! I also found a place to stay that looked really quaint, and was right in the middle of town.
This really was an awesome tour, and I’ll be writing a piece about this tour.
Carrara – On Trip Advisor I found a guided tour to see the marble mines that lasted most of the day and was pretty reasonably priced. I also chose the hotel, which is older but it’s right next to the train station and was where I stayed the first time I went there in 2001. Check that one off my list.
I am writing a piece specifically about this tour, so be on the lookout for it to come out a little later. It was definitely an experience!
Florence – I didn’t book anything specific for this stop, because I thought we might just walk around town. Since we really liked the hotel we stayed at the year before, no need to look anywhere else. Check this town off my list too.
Although we didn’t book anything before we got to Florence, we did check with the hotel about doing a one day wine tour. They were able to contact Marco Carraresi. He took us on an amazing day touring the Italy countryside, visiting a couple wineries and having a romantic lunch.
Levanto – Since this was the last stop on our tour of Italy, and I figured that by this time we would just want to rest up a little before heading home. The hotel took me a little longer to book because I waited too long.
Levanto is a pretty small town so if you are looking for a fun night life, this town may not be what you are looking for.
Something to note, is that the summer time gets crazy busy and can be very frustrating because there are so many people visiting this area since La Cinque Terra is a train ride away.
I was really excited when I finally had most all of the details taken care of for our trip to Italy. Believe it or not, I usually type up some kind of agenda so we can let our families know an idea of our airline flights, hotels (if we know them), or any other type of details that may be important in case they need to get in touch with us.
