We are finally planning another land based trip to Europe after having succumbed to the easy travel of too many cruises. We have not done a completely land based trip to Europe since our France, Germany and Switzerland Trip in 2012. We enjoyed the relaxation of the Transatlantic Cruises and enjoyed a few nights staying in many places before and after those cruises. We have visited many different places on the Transatlantic trips, and especially enjoyed the comfort of being able to totally unpack our suitcases in our cruise cabin. However, we have missed seeing places at night, and were spending too many relaxing days at sea, where we ate and drank more than we should have!!
We have been contemplating this trip back to Italy for a few years, but always found a cruise we wanted to take that put this trip on the back burner, that last cruise being the 2018 Germany to New York Transatlantic Cruise where we visited the Baltic and the British Isles. We had even picked dates previously for this Italy trip, and even went as far as making and paying a small non-refundable fee for reservations for the Scavi Tour under St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome. However, we opted for the last cruise realizing we could not do both trips, it was just too much time away.
This trip will be in the Fall, with a duration of twenty five days. We leave mid-September, flying into Milan. The trip ends in mid-October when we fly home from Rome. We are excited to be going back to Italy, visiting some places we have been to before in 2008 and 2010, but also visiting many we have not yet seen.
We have already made most of our reservations for the hotels, apartments, and agriturismo accommodations. An agriturismo is a running agricultural business that also rents out rooms. They are quite popular in the more rural areas of Italy, such as Tuscany. We opted to make many non-refundable reservations to lower the cost. However, this exposes us to cost should we be unable to go on the trip for an unseen event. We use the lower costs for non-refundable accommodations to help to offset the cost of travel insurance, which we always purchase for a trip of this magnitude and cost, especially being as far away as Europe if we needed to come home unexpectedly. The travel insurance would cover these non-refundable costs.
We have already purchased our flights through Delta, and the costs to fly to Italy and back are just horrendous. We have gotten used to relying on the cruise line to provide us with significantly lower airfare to and from Europe on the last several Transatlantic cruises, so we were shocked at the increase in airfare since our last land trip in 2012. That was part of the reasoning for the Transatlantic cruises, on the last trip, we only paid $450 per person to fly to Berlin, and then back home from New York after the cruise ended, purchasing these tickets through Princess Cruises. Airfare this time is about $1,600 per person to fly into Milan and out of Rome. Some of this cost may be due to our getting a late start on the planning effort for this trip, some of the flights already had quite a few sold seats, but it has generally been that high whenever we looked at costs over the last year or so, especially for minimum connections and shorter overall flight durations.
We will be posting the Itinerary next.