(12D, 11N itinerary)
In June of 2025, the entire family packed up and headed to Milan, Florence and Venice for a nearly two-week vacation. Needless to say, we had the time of our life.
Back in the States
We friggin took a boat to the airport. How cool is that?! I feel like that’s a pretty fitting way to wrap up an amazing trip to Italy. We all made it back to our respective homes despite some delays due to weather in and around Atlanta.
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Day 11 – Murano & Burano
After a quiet first half of the day spent window shopping and grabbing pizza for lunch, we hopped on a boat and headed for the islands of Murano and Burano. The former renowned for its glassmaking prowess, the latter for its intricate lacemaking and colorful homes.
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Day 10 – Doge’s Palace & St. Mark’s
If Florence is magical, Venice is straight out of a fairy tale. No cars, no bikes, no grass – just beautiful and narrow winding streets that abruptly deposit you into a plaza or across one of the hundreds of small canal bridges.
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Day 9 – Venezia!
After a quiet last morning in Florence that involved the stress of eating breakfast and window shopping, we grabbed lunch and headed to the train station to catch a high-speed train to Venice.
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Day 8 – Baptistery, Duomo, Palazzo Vecchio & Pasta
This morning we reunited with our fearless tour guide, Siro, to tackle Florence’s most notable buildings after touring the museums three days ago. Needless to say, the Baptistry, Duomo (and accompanying museum) and Palazzo Vecchio did not disappoint.
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Day 7 – Our “Free” Day
As I started to put together today’s recap, I thought it might be a short because we didn’t have anything officially slated for the itinerary. But it turns out in Florence, when you don’t have anything to do, you end up walking more than 20,000 steps (putting each of us at well over 100,000 for our first seven days in…
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Day 6 – Cinque Terre
Like nothing I’ve ever seen before. That’s the best way to sum up our day visiting the five towns that make up Cinque Terre – a UNESCO World Heritage Site along the west coast of Italy.
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Day 5 – Uffizi & Accademia
My goodness Florence, stop it. In the span of about four hours, we saw some of the most amazing art ever created. We started at the Uffizi Gallery, the former administrative offices of the Medici.
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Day 4 – Parma & Florence
Hopped on a high-speed train for Parma this morning cruising along at 250 kph. Here’s how that converts to miles: the United States needs to rethink the way it looks at transit. Instead of spending almost two hours battling Italians who drive like they’re angry at the road, we transversed the 80 miles in 50 minutes of peaceful bliss.
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Day 3 – Lake Como
Today we headed about an hour north of Milan to check out Lake Como. While it was as beautiful as advertised, it was also crowded and many of the roads on the west side of the lake are barely one lane (at best) which was quite the interesting experience on a tour bus.
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Day 2 – Duomo di Milan & Last Supper
Turns out jet lag is real. We slept from about 9 pm to 11 am and were forced to have pizza for brunch.
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Day 1 – Milan
Well that was certainly not on our bingo card. Pretty much at the exact halfway point of our roughly nine hour flight – so completely in the middle of nowhere over the Atlantic – a passenger suffered a diabetic episode in which his blood pressure plummeted.
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Andiamo in Italia!
Kara and I first brought up the idea of a family trip with Kaitlin, Madeline and David when we were in North Carolina for Christmas.
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On the Road with the Ashbys 