How to Plan the Perfect Silver Wedding Anniversary Trip. #Italy #Travel

This year will be my wife and I’s Silver Wedding Anniversary. 25 years of official cohabitation. One of the things we love doing together is travelling. Ironically, we don’t have a lot of things in common. I’m more in the artistic side of personalities, she’s very practical. I’m not very tidy and orderly, while she is, sometimes with military precision (her Dad was in the Royal Navy). We have a grown up daughter who has been the apple of our eyes and is now pursuing her own path. So travel is one of those activities we can agree on. Not always. Last year I went to Stockholm, a destination that she was not interested in at all until she saw in my face how much I loved that city. Now she wants to go with me next time I visit.
Back to the Silver Anniversary. After many conversations over the last 2 years, we settled on the country we’ll go to: Italy. Originally we were going to drive around Sicily. But later on, realizing that I did not really want to drive around much – as we did in Tuscany a few years ago – we focused on the Amalfi Coast. I was there many, many years ago and only once. After high-school. Don’t remember much though and I think at that time my group didn’t spend many days in the area.
AMALFI
So now that we had a new potential destination, what? How do we plan it if we’ve never been there really? We have a few requirements. My wife wants warm weather and sun, so that determines the dates. We want to go when the temperatures can reach 27 or 28 degrees (82F). I want places to walk to, have an espresso, see a historical church or building, a piazza. Culture in this context is the main reason we didn’t choose a place like Bora Bora or the Seychelles. I can’t just lie around a beach for a week.
The INTERNET
With all the information available on the net, you’d think it’s very easy to research destinations, but you’d be wrong. There are many great destination websites, sure, like VisitStockholm, VisitSweden, NewZealand.com, KeepExploring and many others. But when it comes to Italy, destination websites are lacking. That speaks to how strong Italy’s brand is when it comes to travel, and maybe they are the holy grail of destinations wherein the people, travelers themselves do the marketing via word of mouth, blogs and online reviews.
The TRAVEL BLOGGERS
Being a travel blogger, I am connected to a couple of travel bloggers global communities. So naturally, instead of doing a google search, I asked our FB group about the Amalfi coast. I had heard of Positano (home to the very exclusive and very expensive La Sirenuse Hotel) and Capri, of course, but did not really know how to allocate our time. Their responses really narrowed it down and we completed our itinerary. Thank you to Suzanne at PhilaTravelGirl, Jennifer at LuxeAdventureTraveler, and Faith Dugan.
The TRIP
Having a good idea of what the itinerary will be does not resolve the issue of accommodations. For this trip we concluded that we would spend 5 nights in Sorrento (on the other side of Amalfi) because after doing my own research, I felt it would be good to spend the first leg of the trip there, in a larger city than the small towns on the Amalfi coast.
Sorrento – 5 days
Sorrento has a great Corso Italia, and I found what looks like a very good hotel with a swimming pool for relaxing after long walks. From Sorrento we can take a tour or make our way to Capri for one day, as one of my blogger friends suggested.
Ravello – 4 days
Ravello is a small town inland from the Amalfi coast but high on a mountain. Once you brave the long and winding roads in the region (which we won’t attempt to drive ourselves), according to many reviews and travel bloggers’ comments Ravello seems ideal for our Silver Wedding anniversary. We also found a beautiful hotel with great views (or so we believe). The town is quieter than the towns on the coast as less tourists flock to Ravello than they do to Amalfi or Positano. We’ll see.
Rome – 4 days
The Eternal City. We may have made a mistake putting Rome at the end of the trip because we may end our four days there exhausted from all the sightseeing. But there’s also the issue of potential Christmas shopping when we go, and we wouldn’t want to carry all the gifts around the Amalfi Coast. Besides, as we both have been there before when we were younger (on separate trips, before we met), we’re planning 2 days of intense sightseeing: The Sistine Chapel, Michelangelo’s Moses at the San Pietro in Vincoli Church, the Galleria Borghese, the Spanish Steps, Trevi, Santa Maria della Vittoria Church and a few other spots. And 2 days of relaxed sightseeing and shopping. Walking around neighbourhoods, stopping for yet another espresso, exploring interesting stores and eating at a fantastic restaurant like Il Pagliaccio.
Hotels or AirBnBs?
For this trip we decided early on that it would be best to stay at hotels because the number of stays in one place are short and we don’t want to spend time buying and cooking food. To find the hotels at a destination I have never been to, I use a combination of searches on Expedia and TripAdvisor. I read reviews, but also go to the potential hotel’s website. Then I zero in on the hotel’s location and use Google maps to street view it and check how far a hotel is from a particular spot, like say the Spanish Steps in Rome or Corso Italia in Sorrento. We want to be within walking distance of certain areas at the destination. Then of course we need to consider the rates because prior to all this work we agree on a maximum budget for the whole trip. Once, I have narrowed down the hotel choices I show them to my wife and we both decide which hotel to book.
FLIGHTS
The flights are easier to book because there’s not much research involved. I sometimes use Kayak to get an idea of what the price will be and then I use Expedia to book the flights. I like using Expedia because of the discounts you can get by booking the flights and hotels with them (in addition to some member discounts and loyalty points if you’re a registered member). We found good flights departing from Toronto to Naples via Frankfurt and Naples to Rome and finally Rome back to Toronto.

With my wife in Montepulciano, Tuscany a few years ago.

Source: canadianandworldtourism.com

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