I knew you'd been many times so I appreciate the advice. The only reason we chose Milan was due to flights and it's centrally located to the places we want to see. But after checking the Airbnb's in Florence, we are changing our plans. Only negative about Florence is that it's further south from the Lake Como area, but we'll adjust travel accordingly. And the biggest problem we'll have is cherry picking what we really want to see versus the time we have to do everything. We're really bad about trying to do too many things instead of just seeing a few places and relaxing.
Italy is one of those places that needs several months to explore. You'll no doubt fall in love and want to head back in the future.
One other thing to keep in mind... Italian taxi drivers are thieves. Try to avoid them if at all possible. I've paid 50 euro for a 10 minute ride before when I just had no alternative.
You know Moto Guzzi is located in Lake Como area right? https://www.google.com/search?clien...qARIQASoOIgptb3RvIGd1enppKAA,y,4OD2FGEW5bY;mv:[[45.946292,9.3846481],[45.559182500000006,9.0687375]] Also take the time to drive up to the cycling museum and chapel of Madonna Del Ghisallo. It is really cool to see and is at the top of one of the iconic climbs done during the Tour D' Italia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Madonna_del_Ghisallo We had a great time in Italy. Tell you daughter and wife to watch their purses. A friend of ours had her purse stolen when to creeps on a scooter pulled up next to them at a light and grabbed the purse through an open window and disappeared in traffic. Just use common sense and you'll be fine. The tour guides at Ducati were almost as attractive as the bikes themselves!
If you’re going to Florence definitely go to the Cinque Terra. We stayed in the southernmost town and took. Boats and trains from town to town. You can hike between a few of them too. In Florence we had to ditch our car outside of the old city. Many places are like that, just how it is. Otherwise it’s easy to drive around the country. I’ve never not rented a car over there. Once you have travel arrangements booked post up on here. I’m sure there will be enough suggestions to keep you busy for a month.
Avoid Milan. Stay on the south side of Bologna. Better location for access to all you want to do, plenty of B&B's, etc., in that area and much more reasonable $$'s. Florence is an easy hop south. Como and Alps are easy hop north. Ducati factory and museum are withi 1 hour. Imola and Mugello are easily accessible. I've stayed in that area multiple times and love it. Have fun. Good people, good food, good wine, plenty of motos, . . . what's not to love? Cheers, Dave
Like others mentioned I would avoid milan, and head straight to lake como (an hours drive) from there you can take the water taxi's they transport cars and its cheap and fast, it will allow you to cross the lake and view other parts of the lake. I would rent a small car, easy to drive/nimble for the tight italian roads, good on gas. Having a car vs relying on the train sucks, in italian you want a car to explore the twisted roads and scenery. Riding the trains are usually crowded, then you wait for the trains, then you worry if someones going to steal your stuff. I would avoid that! Having a car you can find cheaper/nicer hotels that are just outside of the main cities.
Don't forget that MV Augusta is in Varese, and you might be able to get in for a tour. If you like art there's the Pirelli Hanger Biococca museum in Milan. It's in a old Pirelli factory and it's free but you have to have a reservation.
Bucket list.... 3-4 weeks encapsulating a MotoGP and F1 weekend each. Whomever else goes can plan the rest of the trip.
Oh I know you're hitting Bologna to visit the Ducati factory, but bring an appetite, best food in Italy IMO...
last time we've stayed at an agritourismo B&B just south of Firenze, you will have to drive up a hilly gravel road a bit. https://www.cetinelle.com/ you can do all the cities within a good reach, Siena, San Gimignano, Radda, Lucca (is a bit of a drive) as are Bologna and Venice. from what you are doing, i'd recommend flying into milan or rome and taking a rental. look up what you need in regards of the "green pass" in terms of being allowed to move freely, go to restaurants, etc. tripadvisor, lonely planet and gault millau were good selectors for restaurants (for the nicer stuff). for the simple stuff, hole in the wall places (osteria) with scooters and old beat up cars parked in front of them will be your better bet than anything that has pictures of the food on the menu. it will require some basic italian skills. back in 2013 we actually did 1-3 days here and there, lago maggiore (swiss side) , lake como, different cities and air bnb's ... needs a bit more packing and unpacking, but you get a better spread of what you can see. ( i'd recommend that for the second time around) ...
Haha, oh man. Wife and I did a trip there in 2019 and hit some of the spots you listed. Probably the most stressful yet best trip I’ve ever done. That whole country does not make any sense. I did rent a car. It was a shitbox Fiat 500L that grinded third gear if you tried to hustle it at all. It was a total turd, and it was too big for roads around Como. The wife and I got lost around Florence because Google Maps doesn’t work well at all in an old city like that where some “roads” are literally old cobblestoned Roman relics and are narrower than most bike paths in the US, yet are somehow still two-way. You know the roads are bad when the old Italian lady in a Fiat 500 is waiving for YOU to go through first with a cigarette in one hand because she knows you're gonna scrape some shit. If you can get out of Milan quickly and only drive in the countryside, driving around Tuscany is for the most part very enjoyable. Watch out for the speed cameras on the country roads. Italy likes to have higher speed limits IN TOWN than what they have on open country roads, for some absurd reason. Make sure you can walk to attractions in Como. We had a beautiful AirBnB location with some truly astounding views, but the location sucked to walk to anywhere and we ended up staying in the AirBnB most of the time as we had to walk on a busy road with no shoulder for a while to get to a bus stop, and the parking situation and driving in Como sucks. If you do Cinque Terre, stay in Levanto. Levanto has some really good restaurants and it doesn't have the crowds of Cinque Terre itself. There is a really good, cozy restaurant with an amazing view out to the water in one of the towns. It is built into a rock face. It's worth a stop. But really, if you've seen one of the towns, you've seen them all. We stayed at Agriturismo Il Colle during our time in Tuscany, and my wife and I both loved it. Giovanni is an amazing host. When I first met him, I was exhausted having driven from Borgo Panigale (come for Ducati, stay for the obvious hookers on the street corners) to Tuscany. I told the wife I wanted to have a chill night, maybe go into town and grab some food and then drink some wine and head to bed. Well, let me tell you, Giovanni had other things in mind. The dude greets my wife with a lot of...affection. Kisses on the cheek, typical Italian stuff. I'm exhausted and am just thinking "Oh great, I've had to deal with this shitbox Fiat 500 for the past four hours, and now I gotta deal with this Italian dude trying to bang my wife." My concerns quickly disappeared when he also greeted ME in the same affectionate manner. I honestly really disliked this guy at first, but after about 10 minutes of him giving us a tour of his winery and shoving kickass charcuterie and Chianti down our throats for like an hour and a half while he explained all the attractions in Florence, he became one of my favorite humans I've interacted with, ever. I would 100% stay again. The restaurant in town, Trattoria Pizzeria "Amici Miei" al Poggio, is fantastic. The pizza and Florentine steak is amazing and it's not very expensive at all. We went just about every night as it was close and the food was fantastic. Florence was just okay. Historically, it is very cool, but it is VERY touristy. My wife is not big on the historic side of these cities, so we didn't do any tours or see many historic sites. I would have done Siena instead, in retrospect. Tuscany was definitely my favorite part of the trip, especially if you like laidback, rural living. Driving around on amazing roads going from winery to winery was awesome. Everyone was very nice to us, even with our shitty Italian. I'm sure you'll have a blast. I would 100% move to Italy if my Italian was better. http://www.ilcolledelchianti.it/en
We did 2 weeks in Italy in 2015 or so. Originally we were planning on more stops, but decided to narrow it down more so we weren't spending all of our time packing up and travelling each day. We wanted to immerse as much as possible in 3-4 days each place. My buddy did the other way where he and his wife were moving every day or 2 and he came back saying it felt rushed. Our trip: 3ish days Rome (Vatican, Coliseum, Roman Forum) train to Cinque Terre (actually stayed in Levanto, one town north of the 5 towns) hopped off the train for lunch in Pisa (cheap luggage storage at train station, loved our short trip there) 3 days Levanto train to Venice, stopping for lunch in Parma (no luggage storage, didn't care for this town) 3 days Venice (I'm glad I saw Venice, but I had no "connection" to this city. We saw amazing sights, had great food, but I have no desire to go back. Same feeling as Paris to me) Bullet train back to Rome for another 2-3 days (Pompeii/Naples day trips and wandering around) We've travelled alot of places and Italy is still the most magical trip we've ever taken. We talked for the next two years about trying to find a way to live there, but never made real inroads towards it. If you do go to Cinque Terre, you need to do the hike between the towns. We hiked from Monteroso to Vernaza. The views were seriously epic, as you're just following mountain cliffs on the edge of the sea. Here's the final view you see as you approach Vernazza:
Cinque terres, all 5 of the tiny towns are mainly tourist attraction want to visit a near by beach that amazing with hot top less italian women go to near by la spazia beach.
Verona is another very nice spot. Rimini is a beach town but it had (has?) the advantage of having Bimota. Was lucky enough when I walked by that the French magazine MotoJournal was stopping by to pick a test bike and did a visit of the site with them... Trains work well.
on the tourism aspect: Italy takes off for the month of August. the whole country. the whole month. https://www.summerinitaly.com/traveltips/ferragosto-or-why-italy-closes-in-august IMHO a good moth to do cities, less going on there and also less chinese tourists that arrive by the bus loads (nothing against the chinese, just the approach) drawback: most of the motor valley stuff is closed
