How To Plan Your Italy Flights:
Less Stress, More Enjoyment
From Mama Margaret’s Italy Travel & Food E-newsletter, January 11, 2012
Now that you’ve decided what region(s) in Italy to visit, it’s time to plan your flights. Here are some tips to make your airplane travel smoother and more relaxing.
- Avoid early morning flights when you leave Italy. Let’s say you’re catching a 7:00 a.m. flight in Rome. If you stay in the centre of Rome, you’ll need 30 minutes to get to Fiumicino airport by taxi (an hour if you take the train) and about two hours before take-off at the airport. You’ll get up at 4:00 a.m. Not a good way to end a relaxing vacation in Italy.
You could spend your last night at a Rome airport hotel in Fiumicino, a small town, and sleep about an hour later, but why do that o n your last night in glorious Rome? Better to enjoy this world class city as much as you can!
- Fly in and out of the same airport or out of two airports? Many Italy itineraries go from north to south or west to east in a line. Let’s say you fly into Milan airport and travel down to Rome. It makes sense to fly out of Rome. You say, “The flight is cheaper if I fly in and out of the same airport. I’ll fly out of Milan.” Is it really cheaper?
From Rome you take a long train ride to Milan, probably changing trains along the way, hauling your luggage from one train to another. In Milan, you may arrive tired from your long journey. There you pay a taxi to take you to your hotel for a one night stay. To not risk missing your flight, you need to stay in Milan the night before you leave. These extra costs of backtracking add up and you get tired before a long flight home.
- Jet lag. When you arrive in Italy, you’ll feel jet lagged, so won’t have much energy to sightsee on your first full day. If you land in Venice and plan on spending three days there, with the first day a write -off, you actually have two days. Plan accordingly.
Avoid long connection times between your European or other connecting flights and flights to Italy. If you’re flying from North America or Australia and the airline tries selling you an itinerary with a five hour wait in Frankfurt for your Italy flight, say no. Your jet lag will start hitting you in Frankfurt and you may feel really tired by the time your head hits your pillow in your hotel in Italy.
Same thing on your flight home. Unless I have no other choice, I refuse to fly into Toronto from Italy and wait four hours there for a flight to Vancouver. The jet lag hits me in Toronto and I’m exhausted by the time I get home. I believe in being good to me whenever I can! Especially on holiday!
