The Italian accommodation decision has been a bit trickier than I'd envisioned!  Having planned trips like this multiple times I was thinking I'd be done with it fairly quickly but I've spent the past few days mulling over different options and I think it will be helpful to others to see how things have evolved.  I started out with a list of the different cities/locations that we wanted to go to and then fit them into our dates.  The only non-negotiable was Amsterdam at the end (because the ticket is already booked) and I knew that our first stop was going to be Rome simply because that's where the plane will deposit us.  Knowing that most apartment-style rentals require at least 3 nights I used that as a minimum amount of time to be in each city.  We knew that we wanted to be in the northern lakes region of Italy around the weekend of August 20th because that's when our relatives would be there.  I decided to start with that area first and see what I could find.  Well, that was tricky.  It turns out that unless you want to camp or stay in a luxury hotel the options are very limited.  The only vacation rentals are for a minimum full week Saturday to Saturday and that didn't fit into our plans at all.   Interestingly enough that area of Italy is also home to Gardaland - a giant theme park that seems Disney-like in the style of accommodation around it.

A theme park vacation was not part of our plans, nor was a gorgeous (but very expensive) choice of luxury hotels, and neither was tenting.  Some suitable hotels were either already fully booked or couldn't accommodate 4 people in a room.  The only moderate accommodations available had traveler reviews that led me to understand that they are a no-frill choice where you have to bring your own bedding and towels.  No thanks.  So, this is a very long-winded way of saying that this caused us to completely re-evaluate where we wanted to stay and for how long.  And the decision is… Verona.  Home of Romeo and Juliet and a gorgeous little city that has some very nice looking rental accommodations available.  It's about a 45 minute drive to where the family will be staying but that seems manageable as we are usually a 9 hour plane trip from them.

We will need a rental car while we stay in that area and I'm glad I looked into that before booking the accommodations.  It turns out that every car rental company I looked at (in that area) is closed on Sunday - so if you need to rent a car or return a car on that day then you are out of luck!  To accommodate this we are shifting our time by one day so that we can return the car on Monday, but that means we had to take a day from Venice (where we had planned 3 nights).  Now with only 2 nights in Venice a rental place is out of the question so we are going to stay in a hotel - and I'm considering it as research for this website!  I've heard a lot about the family friendliness of the Novotel chain so we'll put it to the test.  The price is great and the location is excellent so it should be fun.  As for the rest of the trip we are going to spend the first 3 nights in Rome and the rest of the time (about 9 days) in Tuscany.  None of these have been booked but that will be happening in the next few days as I narrow down the choices and make some final decisions.  I also did some preliminary research into the cost of the train legs we want to take and they are very reasonable and still have a lot of availability.  I'll book those after the accommodations are finalized; it's definitely time consuming but also really exciting.

Is it August yet?