BimmerFest BMW Forum banner

ED visiting Italy cities

8K views 3 replies 4 participants last post by  Gary J 
#1 ·
Hi All,

I plan my first ED this Sep or Oct and like to visit Milan, Florence and Rome with wife and two kids. It will be our first Europe trip. I learned from the forum that it's not easy to drive in Italy cities. I am thinking to drive outside Milan, leave the car in the garage and take public transportation to Florence and Rome. Any similar trip or suggestion on this plan?

Any suggestion will be highly appreciated!
 
#2 ·
I would drive to Milan and Florence. There are many small towns in Tuscany (near Florence) that are worth visiting and a car is great to visit them. You are 4 persons travelling so I think it would be more economical and convenient to take the car rather than the train. Depending on how long you plan to be in Rome, I would drive there as well, unless you only plan to stay 1 or 2 days. Assuming that you're dropping off the car in Nice or Munich, you would have to come back up north from Rome. On the way down you could stay in/near Florence, and on the way up you could stay in Siena or any of the hilltowns in Umbria you didn't see on the way down.
 
#3 ·
Hi All,

I plan my first ED this Sep or Oct and like to visit Milan, Florence and Rome with wife and two kids. It will be our first Europe trip. I learned from the forum that it's not easy to drive in Italy cities. I am thinking to drive outside Milan, leave the car in the garage and take public transportation to Florence and Rome. Any similar trip or suggestion on this plan?

Any suggestion will be highly appreciated!
European cities are really not that difficult to drive in but it is usually very hard to find parking places. If you are lucky enough to find a place to park it is seldom near what you want to see and is very expensive. Not unlike parking in NYC or Chicago. So I do not recommend using your car for sightseeing in any of the big cities. But that does not mean that you should not use your car for travelling to these cities. Just make sure that you can get secure parking near your hotel at a price that you are willing to pay. Then either walk or take public transportation to the sights you want to see.

A few years back we drove from Frankfurt to Lake Como, then to Florence and on to a hotel near Sienna and then to Rome and Naples and back to Frankfurt. In Florence, Rome and Naples we stayed in hotels, or friends, with secure parking and had a fabulous time.

In Florence we stayed in Hotel Silla. It is located across the Arno from Santa Croce and not far from the Ponte Vecchio, the Pitti Palace, the Uffizi Gallery and the Duomo. The nice thing about Florence is that it is very walkable. So I would strongly recommend driving to Florence and leaving your car parked near your hotel while you saw the main sites on foot.

Between Florence and Sienna we stayed in a small hotel which was a great location for touring Tuscany. As Asteroid said "There are many small towns in Tuscany ... that are worth visiting and a car is great to visit them". At a minimum I would visit San Gimignano. It probably could be seen on your way from Florence to Rome but there are many other sights that would justify a few days in Tuscany. These are all scattered around and would be essentially unreachable without a car.

We did more or less the same thing in Rome as we did in Florence except that the hotel was far enough from the major sites that we took public transportation. In fact Rome is so big that that we took public transportation to most of the main sights. But there are still areas which are close enough to one another that you will get some walking opportunities - the Capitaline Museum (gorgeous view of the Forum from the museum), Forum, the Palatine Hill, Colosseum and the Victor Emanuel Monument are relatively close. So are the Spanish Steps, Piazza del Popolo and the Borghese Gallery. And, of course, St. Peter's and the Vatican Museum (Sistine Chapel) are a walk in themselves.

So I agree with Asteroid - use your car to get to the big cities and also to enjoy some of the medieval towns of Tuscany. Also consider visiting Lake Como, it is beautiful. I would also consider re-posting this thread in the European Delivery Forum of Bimmerfest. You are likely to get many more responses than you have received on the "Travel" Forum.
 
This is an older thread, you may not receive a response, and could be reviving an old thread. Please consider creating a new thread.
Top