Tossed this note out to some knowledgable friends and family:
Here’s how we’re divising our trip. Maybe it’s backwards but it seems to work. First we picked out locations, next we’re making lists of sites to see, now we are polling those who know the country of special places within or close to the places we will be, then prioritize what we want out of each of these lists, finally we will apply a duration to each place and then we book.
Our current thoughts are a to stay with trains since Robin nor I have driven in Italy yet and as our first real excursion to the country we’d rather not pile too many worries on our plate. We’ve decided on Milan, Florence, Verona, and Venice. Early probabilities are a short stay in milan, longer in florance, short in verona, longer in venice, but thats still to be decided. We’ve got most of the regional galleries and sites to see, what we’re looking for are neat eateries, caffe’s, an easy excursion from the norm. We’d like to see local sights, eat great food, see some caffe’s that might lend us ideas for our own shop, anything else that might round our trip out nicely. We’re looking at leaving at the end of May so our timers are running pretty hot right now.
-a