Tools for planning your Italy trip properly.

High-speed trains (Frecciarossa) need a seat reservation, not just a ticket. Board without one and you buy the whole fare again at walk-up price.

Regional trains run a reduced timetable on Sundays. A Florence–Cinque Terre day trip is around three hours each way even on a good run, with a change at La Spezia — six hours in transit for three on the ground.

Strikes happen, and they are announced rather than sudden. Check before you commit to a tight connection, and keep a buffer on the day you fly home.

There are no trains past Sorrento toward Positano and Amalfi — it's bus or boat from there, and the buses are not reliably on time.

Ferries get cancelled in good weather. If the swell is too high to moor at Positano, the boat doesn't run, whatever the forecast says.

The Circumvesuviana line to Pompeii is crowded, loosely timed, and a known spot for pickpockets, especially with luggage.

Most historic centres — Rome, Florence, Bologna and many others — are restricted driving zones. Cameras issue fines automatically: roughly €80 to €335 per entry depending on the city.

Drivers rarely trigger just one. Cross two sectors on a single trip and that's two fines, plus an administrative fee from the rental company. They arrive by post about six weeks later, long after you're home.

If your hotel is inside a zone, call them before you arrive. Most can register your plate for a 24-hour window. If yours can't, park outside and take a taxi in.

Some places genuinely need a car — the Cilento coast, and most of the Tuscan countryside, where public transport is thin. If you'd rather not drive, base yourself in a town on a rail line instead: San Miniato and Lucca both work.

The Colosseum, the Uffizi, the Accademia (for the David), the Vatican and the Last Supper all use timed entry, and all sell out well in advance.

Walk-up tickets exist, but barely. Only a sliver of daily capacity is held back, and in summer it's gone by mid-morning.

Book on the official site. Resellers charge more for the same slot.

Closing days are not uniform, and some are genuinely irregular — the Cappelle Medicee in Florence is the usual example. Check the specific dates you'll be there rather than assuming a pattern.

Coperto is a legitimate, standard cover charge per person. It is not a scam, and it is not a tip. A separate service fee may also appear. Both should be printed on the menu.

What isn't standard: being pushed to pay cash so a tip can be added on top. Paying by card avoids the question entirely.

American Express is not widely accepted outside larger hotels. Carry a second card.

Smaller markets and family-run places are often cash only. Standalone Euronet ATMs — the blue and yellow ones — charge noticeably more than a bank's own machine.

The first is backtracking. Plans get built from a list of places worth seeing, without checking the map — so the route runs south, then north again. Rome, then Sorrento, then Florence is the most common version, and it costs a travel day for nothing. Reordering usually fixes it.

The second is simply too much. Three cities in three days looks fine on paper; in practice it's transit, packing, and no rest.

But this one is a matter of taste, not a rule. Plenty of people cover five cities in fourteen days, get told it's too ambitious, and come home saying they'd change nothing. Know what the pace will actually feel like, then choose the one you want.

The sea on the Amalfi Coast is cold in April. It's beautiful, it's just not swimming weather yet.

October is the wettest month in Rome. Planning around rain there isn't really possible.

Autumn colour in the Dolomites and Tuscany peaks later than most people assume — late October into November, not early October.

Easter week is the busiest of the year, everywhere at once.

Lock the fixed points first — flights, and the nights you've already paid for. Everything else moves around them.

Put the route on a map before you put it in a spreadsheet. Direction is easier to see than to read.

Anything with a date or a time attached — an opening hour, a departure, a closing day — check it against the official source before you rely on it. Confidence of tone means nothing.

Leave one unplanned afternoon per city. It's where the trip usually happens.

And distances in old centres are not what a map suggests. Walking times through narrow streets run longer than they look.