We, as a couple from Turkey and early 30s, spent 20 days in Italy last month (January 2009) and visited Rome, Sorrento, Florence and Venice. Here is a report about our stay:

Rome: We arrived in Rome (FCO) on the 14th around midday and were met by a driver from romeshuttlelimousine service (www.romeshuttlelimousine.com) . It was a van with plenty of space and we were the only ones. The driver didn’t speak much English, but already had the adress he was supposed to take us. He even waited for a few minutes to make sure that we were at the right place. Good service.

We arranged an apartment through italialodging.com, which seems to be a good company. However the apartment (Alle Mura2) was not as good as we expected. The location was very good; just a few minutes from the Vatican Museum main entrance, 5-10 minutes to the metro station and two supermarkets. The apartment had a humidity problem and was not clean enough, which we were not able to understand through the pictures on the net. The owner was a lady living upstairs, who we saw at our arrival and at our departure. The only beautiful thing was the small lemon garden we had, which would definitely be very nice in summer.

We spent 6 nights in Rome, visited quite many museums and did a lot of walking. We bought a pair of Romapass, which gave us advantages at museum entrances and transportation.

Sorrento: We left Rome around 9 am on the 20th by car which we rented through an Avis office nearby. It was a Nissan Note and we really liked it. We took the highway (autostrada) to Napoli. (Italian highways charge you according to distance and we found it quite expensive- 11 euros for about 250 km) Our plan before our hotel was to visit the ancient Greek site Paestum, about 40 km south of Salerno. It was a little difficult to reach, but there should be a faster way which we couldn’t figure out and had to drive through some little towns. After an hour visit we left for Sorrento this time through the Amalfi Coast. That was a real experience! It took about 1h 30min to drive a 40 km road and we arrived in Sorrento around 6 pm.

We stayed in Il Roseto, about which I heard very good comments on the tripadvisor, and they were all true. We had asked for a room with a kitchenette and there it was, clean and sufficient. The staff was very helpful. Our main goal in choosing Sorrento was visiting Pompei and Herculaneum, which we could not do the first day because of rain. The next day was so nice that we could visit both of the sites (Pompei about 40 min from Sorrento, Herculaneum about 20 min from Pompei).

Florence: We left Sorrento on the 23rd around 08.30 am as we had a long drive to Florence (about 520km). On our way we left the highway after Rome to visit Hadrian’s villa in Tivoli. Including the visit it costed us an extra 1h 30min. Despite this little visit we could reach Florence before sunset and settle into our apartment.

Our apartment was Firenze Loft (www.firenzeloft.com), 7 min. from the train station and 15 min from the Duomo and with parking places around. Tommaso met us at the apartment (he lives in the same building), as he opened the door we were met by this nice smell (obviously recently cleaned) and taken through a corridor into our apartment. It was very clean too, had a very nice and fully equipped kitchen, comfortable bed and modern furniture. It definetely had a style, we got very pleased with it.

We had 4 days totally in Florence, so the first two days we kept the car to visit Pisa, Lucca, Chianti and Siena and dropped it the third day in the morning. Florence was not as big as we expected and it was Monday, the day when the major museums are closed. So we visited the Ufizzi gallery and the Academia (for David) the next day. In nearly every museum we visited in Italy, photos were not allowed, which we thought was done to sell postcards etc. at museum giftshops. Definetely disappointing!!

Venice: We took a direct train from Florence to Venice on the 28th around midday and it only took 3 hours. Just in front of the train station in Venice we took the vaporetto no 1 to get to our apartment called San Lorenzo near San Marco. We were met by Christina at the water stop S.Zaccharia.

We found this place through www.venicebooky.com and booked as soon as we saw the pictures. If you are a couple planning to visit Venice, do not waste time to finish reading this or any other review elsewhere. Book it before it’s too late. It took us about 10 minutes with our luggage to reach the apartment. The first thing that made us smile was the door bells at the entrance of the building. (They are on the pictures of the apartment too) there was a lift up to our place on the second floor. We spent 5 nights here and loved it. It was clean and comfortable with a very sufficient kitchen. But the best part was our view from our small balcony and the windows. We had a small canal right in front of us (just like in the pictures) and we fed seagulls every morning from our balcony. A unique experience! The location was perfect, not only because of being so close to the center but also because of being 5 min away from a supermarket (something quite difficult to find in Venice) and the waterstop where the shuttleboats leave for the airport.

We had two days of very nice weather, a cloudy day and a snowy one finally. In spite of its reputation to be expensive, we found very good deals in Venice (some of them thanks to the low season of course). We skipped going to any of the islands, but took the train to Treviso, the birthplace of Benetton and tiramisu (the dessert).

We left the apartment on the 2nd of February and pulled our luggage to the waterstop, took the shuttleboat (13 euros each) to get to the airport in 1h 15 min. (If you have any intention to take Italian wine home, do not wait for the duty free at the airport: they are twice more expensive than in the market)

We loved Italy...