“We’re coming to Italy for week – we’ll be renting an apartment in Rome but taking day trips to Florence, Venice, Pompeii and Pisa. I always laugh, when I hear his, because I know that this person is in for a very stressful time. They never listen. 

Vacation is for relaxation – have you forgotten? Sure you Yanks only get two weeks off a year, but that doesn’t mean you have to see every place in ‘Lets Go Italy’ in half that time. It’s as if there’s some big checklist in the sky that forbids anyone from leaving Italy if they haven’t hit everything on it. Never mind knowing what you are looking at or understanding its history or – God forbid – having a good time. There are sights to see! And Italy’s a small country anyway, right? Everything’s only a few hours away. 

Of course next to the US, Canada and Australia, Italy is small space-wise, but once you consider that it’s a long, mountainous peninsula and that its infrastructure (we’re talking trains and roads here) is only slightly better than that of a developing country, it no longer seems so small. Typically trains to Venice take up to five hours. Pompeii is an arduous day trip – when there’s an even better-preserved site at Ostia Antica about 20 minutes from Rome. Besides, with so much to see in the ‘Eternal City’, you’ll need at least two weeks to check off everything (at least on our list of Must-Sees).

So come to Rome and relax. The rest of Italy is not going anywhere. Its been here for thousands of years and change comes very slowly here. If you have a week or less, you can hit the Grand Canal and the Leaning Tower (or Sicily, or Puglia!) on another trip. Not only will a focus on Rome be a lot more manageable and more relaxing, but you might actually learn something – this is the cradle of Western civilization after all.  

If you are simply driven to see more of Italy, or if the traffic in Rome has completely destroyed any possibility of relaxing, you can stay close by and see a lot. Florence and Naples are both within two hours on the fast ‘EuroStar’ train. There are also many smaller cities like Orvieto and Viterbo within an hour of Rome with a lot to see and even more to eat – ah yes, and all along you’ve been pretending you came for the culture. Now throw away your guidebook already and dig in.