We just got back from a 12 day vacation that was months in the making. Over the last decade, my sister Jenna and her family have lived in Puerto Rico, Japan, Germany, and Belgium. We never got a chance to visit them in any of those locations, so when they moved to Italy last Fall, we started making plans for a sibling summer reunion there with her family and my brother’s.
Our travel window was from June 21st through July 2nd. My brother Jered and his family booked their flights to visit Jenna from July 1st through the 9th, giving us just one day to hang out together as a 12 person crew. I originally tried to include a train tour of a few cities for some of our time in Italy. That plan escalated when my sister offered to rent a van through the base in Aviano, that could fit both of our families. Suddenly we were plotting out a road trip adventure for eight.
Having spent a few weeks in Italy when I was in college, I really wanted to take Amy and our girls to Florence and Cinque Terre. Jenna suggested including Bologna and Verona, which created a nice loop from Aviano. I used Claude to work through some of the logistics, to help us avoid driving into ZTL areas, and to research things to do in each city. It helped me flag things I didn’t know I needed to book in advance. The Uffizi, the Duomo dome climb, and the Via dell’Amore cliff walk all require timed entry that fills up weeks in advance.
As Jenna and I got to a solid plan, I used Claude again to create a little, responsive overview website with details about each stop of our tour to get everyone excited before we left. Check it out (in a new window), or give it a scroll below:
We mostly followed that plan (including the infinite gelato stops) and our route ended up covering about 500 miles. We drove south from Aviano through Bologna for a lunch stop, then into Florence for two days and three nights. We made another lunch stop in Pisa on the way to the Ligurian coast. Next, we spent two nights in La Spezia as a train station base for our Cinque Terre day, made a stop in Verona on the drive back north, then a few final day trips from Aviano — including one to Venice before my brother Jered and his family arrived.
The map above captures most of our adventure. The red line is the road trip. We stopped in 4 of the 5 Cinque Terre villages (in green) and the blue pins cover the day trips. It ended up being an epic, once-in-a-lifetime tour that we’ll never forget and a good reminder that we need to travel more in the few breaks we have left before our girls finish school. There’s no way I could capture everything that happened over our trip, but here are a few lessons we learned:
- Even as Floridians, we weren’t prepared for the June heat wave. It got close to or over 100°F in every city and on almost every day of our trip.
- The cathedrals are beautiful, and not just the famous ones. We popped into open churches in most of our stops to admire art and enjoy a cool, shaded, reprieve from the heat.
- There really is no bad gelato in Italy, but there were certainly some top tier shops.
- I wasn’t a spritz person before, but Aperol Spritz are delicious and everywhere in Italy. A Hugo Spritz is even better, but a White Spritz is just prosecco and tonic.
- Italians eat dinner late in the evening, so you can usually find some great discounts on The Fork for reservations before 7pm.
- The Verona Arena is truly remarkable to see up close, but our favorite part was looking for ancient ammonite fossils embedded in the spectator stands.
- The Uffizi was unbelievably hot, humid, and crowded inside for our 9:15am entry window. You really can’t skip it if you’re in Florence, but I have no idea how they manage to maintain the trove of Renaissance art there in those conditions. I’m glad we didn’t go later in the day.
- The Florence Duomo Climb is tough, but so worth it for the close-up view of The Last Judgment fresco and the panoramic view of Florence from the top.
We took so many pictures! Below are some highlights, but there are over 500 in our shared gallery. I’m grateful to my sis for hosting us, for joining us on this adventure, and for doing all the driving! The van was manual and I got my IDP to help but she was a pro, even in all the crowded roundabouts.
