ITALY IN 10 DAYS | my recommended itinerary and suggestions

Hi everyone, today I'm going to walk you through our 10 day itinerary in Italy where we visited Pisa, Florence, Siena, Monteriggioni, San Gimignano, Cinque Terre, Milan and Lake Como. It sounds like a lot of places but if you follow our itinerary I guarantee that you'll have enough time in each of these places. I also talk about Rome and Venice as alternative options for your itinerary as well as share my other travel tips and learnings along the way. So let's get started. On day 1 we flew from Amsterdam to Pisa by plane. The main attraction of this city is of course the Leaning Tower of Pisa which is so awe inspiring and absolutely worth seeing in person. The history behind the Leaning Tower is fascinating and I just loved seeing such a famous landmark in person. It's also incredibly fun to take cheesy photos with the Leaning Tower of Pisa and watch others do the same thing. We spent the rest of the afternoon wandering around the streets and people watching. Pisa is a very small city so I think one day or even half a day is more than enough for your visit. After Pisa we moved on to Florence by train. It was just a 1 hour direct train ride from Pisa to Santa Maria Novella which is the main station in Florence. I have now been to Florence several times and my preference is to stay outside of Florence Old Town. Not only is it much more affordable, it's also going to be much quieter at night. Public transport is quite cheap in Florence and very easy as well. Both places that we stayed in recently in Florence were outside of the Old Town and I'll link it down below in the description box. That evening we went to see the Duomo Cathedral and also walked around the Piazza della Signora. Day 3 was all about exploring Florence. With some planning ahead you can cover quite a lot of places in Florence within one day. The first place we visited was the Duomo Cathedral. The Duomo Cathedral is actually free to visit but the lines are often incredibly long and it can take hours before you get inside. That's why we decided to buy skip your line tickets via Get Your Guide which allowed us instant access to the cathedral and also it meant we had an experienced guide tell us the history of the cathedral while we were inside. Other places we visited that day were the Ponte Vecchio Street where there's quite a lot of different shops, the Boboli Gardens which is a real sanctuary in the middle of what is otherwise a very busy city and finally we really recommend seeing the sunset from the Giardino Della Rose Gardens. Okay so that is day 3 and on day 4 we did a Florence to Tuscany tour. We didn't want to hire and drive a car in Italy so we decided to use Get Your Guide again. We picked a tour that allowed us to visit Siena, Monteriggioni and San Gimignano. Don't come at me for my horrific pronunciation of these cities. And this tour allowed us to visit all these cities in one day. The day trip was about 12 hours long and it allowed us to visit parts of Tuscany that we simply wouldn't have been able to cover ourselves. I really enjoyed this tour, I thought it was so well organised, we had plenty of time in each town, our guide was really informative and funny, we had lots of free time to explore each place ourselves away from the tour group which is really important to me. There are also plenty of other well rated Tuscany tours on Get Your Guide like the Chianti Wineries tour with food and wine tasting so I'm going to link them down below if you're interested in those. By day 5 it was time to say goodbye to Florence and hello to Cinque Terre. I have been wanting to visit Cinque Terre for so long and it did not disappoint. We had booked accommodation in a place called La Spezia which is a town just outside the Cinque Terre towns and therefore was a little bit more affordable as well. I was initially worried that 3 days wouldn't be enough for Cinque Terre but actually I think it's the perfect amount of time. On the first day that we arrived we explored Ria Maggiore and Manarola. We grabbed dinner and watched sunset with an incredible view as you can see. The next day we went to Venazza which was the starting point for our hike to Monterosso. The hike took about 2 hours long and it was absolutely stunning. Keep in mind you do need to pay an entrance fee to do this hike and there are some stairs and inclines as well. It costs about €7.50 to do the hike per person and you can buy the entrance ticket at the start or the end of the trail. Nearly there! It took us 2 hours on this hike. Definitely easier. Well I don't know because I didn't do it the other way around but all the guides say it's easier to do it from Venazza to Monterosso so we are nearly there. I think another 20 more minutes. On our third day in Cinque Terre we decided to spend the whole day in Monterosso by the beach side before ending our time in Cinque Terre with a wonderful dinner in La Spezia. So now we are on day 8 of our itinerary. The next day we got up early and headed over to Milan. We walked around the city but unfortunately for us it was raining a lot that day. We didn't get to explore as much as I would have liked to but we did get to see the beautiful cathedral. We also enjoyed walking through the Via Monte Napoleone shopping area. It was a lot of fun to just stroll around this incredibly cosmopolitan and bustling city and of course enjoy some delicious food as well. If the weather had been better we definitely would have been able to fit in more sites but because of the weather we chose to spend most of our time indoors that day. And then that very same evening we took a train to Leko which is where we chose to base ourselves in the Lake Como district. So on day 9 the very next day we woke up in beautiful beautiful Lake Como. Our first stop in Lake Como was Verena. We took a bus from Leko station to Verena. It's a very small town and you can easily cover it in a day. We had a wonderful time doing the lovers walk which is a lakeside promenade that is very easy to walk and also we explored the Villa Monastero gardens as well as the old town. On the second day we met up with our friends who happened to be in Lake Como at the same time. We decided to spend the day in Bellagio. Our friends had a car so we all drove to Bellagio but you can also take a bus to Verena and then a ferry to Bellagio from Leko. Because the weather was so nice and there was a group of us we decided to spontaneously hire a boat and drive around Lake Como ourselves. We hired a boat from a company called Boat Hire Bellagio. It cost €180 for 2 hours which between the 4 of us equated to €45 per person. You don't need a boat license, you can bring your own food and drinks on the boat and it was just so much fun zipping around Lake Como, admiring all the mega mansions from the water and let's face it, pretending to be a millionaire for a day. I highly recommend doing this and it was just so nice to get away from the crowds on land as well. So believe it or not we have now reached the end of our 10 day trip in Italy but I also want to share some alternative suggestions in case you want to do things a little bit differently to us. One alternative suggestion to visiting Cinque Terre is to visit Rome instead. Rome is only about a 1.5 hour train ride away from Florence and 3 days is also a perfect amount of time to spend in this historic city. We were able to fit in a visit to the Vatican City, the Colosseum, the Spanish Steps, the Trevi Fountain and all the major tourist landmarks that you probably know about already. One tip is that the lines for the Vatican City and the Colosseum are really really long and it's really difficult to get official tickets for both landmarks. A lot of people turn up without a ticket and try to line up on the day. That's a huge mistake because you will end up wasting hours of your day. You can buy skip your line tickets for both the Vatican and the Colosseum via Get Your Guide which is what we did, especially because I was travelling with my parents-in-law who really would not have been able to stand that long in the heat. The second destination you could swap in my itinerary is instead of doing a day trip in Tuscany, you could also go to Venice instead. Venice is only a 2 hour train ride away from Florence. Because the city is so compact, you can easily cover the major sites in one day. One of the best things to do in Venice is just to explore the little alleyways and also to take a gondola ride. I know it's touristy but trust me, it's a once in a lifetime experience and you'll have a really good time on the gondola. You'll easily be able to find lots of gondolas as soon as you step out of the train station but it's better to walk further inside the city and find someone in a quieter location. Before I end this video, I am very excited to share that this video is sponsored by Get Your Guide. Firstly, I want to make it really clear that all the trips and Get Your Guide tours that I mentioned in this video were paid out of my own pocket so please be assured that my recommendation is 100% genuine and honest. If you don't know what Get Your Guide is, it is a one stop shop for sightseeing tours, fun attractions and excursions and interesting local things to do around the world. What I find especially useful about Get Your Guide are the user reviews and the fact that they include a very detailed itinerary of every single tour so you know exactly what you're paying for and you know exactly what to expect from it as well. All the tours are always provided by reputable and knowledgeable local experts. As someone who doesn't always want to drive or rent a car or go really far away on my own when I'm travelling, we chose the Tuscany day trip for this very reason. In doing so, we were able to avoid the hassle of renting a car. We could just sit back, put our feet up and relax and enjoy the tour. Finally, what I really love about Get Your Guide is that they do have a 24 hour cancellation policy which means that if your plans change, you're not going to be out of pocket. I have personally had to cancel a few Get Your Guide tours in the past and every single time I've done so, it's never been an issue. They also offer 24x7 customer support service. If you have any questions or issues, there's always someone that you can reach out to. There are actually over 60,000 curated experiences so you're bound to find something that suits your needs. I'll leave a link to Get Your Guide in the description box down below so you can check it out in your own time. So, I hope you really enjoyed this video today. If you haven't already done so, give this video a thumbs up if you liked it and also hit the subscribe button and the notification bell down below because I make a lot of different travel videos on this channel and that way you're going to be notified of any new video that I make. Otherwise, thank you so much for watching and I hope to see you in the next one. See ya!