Ultimate Italian Road Trip: Amalfi to the Dolomites

When we travelled to Italy for our honeymoon, I had a very ambitious itinerary. I love the mountains and I love the ocean. It is truly so hard for me to choose a favorite. Each one calls to me in a different way.  You also can’t take your first trip to Italy and skip over Rome and Venice.  I searched relentlessly, and I couldn’t find an itinerary that covered Amalfi, Dolomites, Rome and Venice. I was determined to make it happen, but we only had one week to explore. This is where my type A personality kicked in…along with my itinerary notebook, and my 3-prong folder with sheet protectors. (To put all of our scheduled tickets and reservations in of course.) Yes, I’m a dork. Yes, I’m ok with that.

I’m going to go over our basic itinerary that allowed us to see all of this within a week, but I will also post links to my side blog posts about each specific location. These smaller posts will contain must-sees and specific lodging or restaurant recommendations.  In case anyone would like to spend more time in each area. We tried to hit the highlights during this trip in order to explore as much of the country as possible.

We took a direct flight from Dulles to Rome. We left on a Saturday at 4:15 pm and landed at 7:00 AM Sunday. From the Rome airport, we took the FCO Leonardo Express train to the Rome terminal.  You can get your tickets for the Leonardo Express online here or at a kiosk in the airport. Once we arrived at the Termini station, we then transferred trains in order to travel on to Naples. I have to brag on the rail service in Italy. It is extremely convenient, comfortable, and very cost efficient.

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Once we arrived in Naples, we were picked up by our private driver. For those unfamiliar with Amalfi, the roads are extremely narrow and huge tour buses as well as scooters are around every curve. If I’m being honest, Italian drivers also scare me. Speed is kind of just a suggestion to them. These factors combined can seem a little scary while you’re driving on the edge of a daunting cliff above the ocean. For these reasons, we hired a driver from the company Day Trip. We had an amazing experience with this company. You can also schedule stops and tours while making your online booking. We scheduled a trip to Pompeii while booking ours.

I would also advise anyone traveling abroad to download the WhatsApp application to their phone prior to travel. Many foreign countries use this service. It is also a nice option when the cell service is limited, but you have Wi-Fi available.

Our driver picked us up from the Naples train station and we proceeded to our pre-scheduled stop at Pompeii.

Pompeii

We roamed around Pompeii for a couple hours and did the self-guided audio tour. Once we were finished, we had some pizza from a stand outside the Pompeii entrance.  My husband still swears this was the best pizza he has ever had. (If you have read my Silverton-Telluride posts, you know that I disagree. Click here for the blog post and here for the can’t miss.)

Amalfi Coast

We stayed in a quaint bed and breakfast called La Divinia Amalfi in Praiano. It was a gorgeous boutique bed and breakfast.

Unfortunately, the weather was quite terrible on our way to Amalfi. It was very cloudy and rainy. Due to the weather, we weren’t able to do a lot of the things I had planned on our first day in Italy. We did walk to a gorgeous restaurant, with a fantastic view. I had the most amazing truffle gnocchi there.

The weather that night was a “wee-bit” scary.  I have never seen or heard a thunderstorm quite like the one we heard our first night in Italy.  It was gorgeous with the lightning striking against the ocean and cliffs, but it also rendered us without power. It was pretty humid and stuffy in our room.  We also didn’t have cell service. Thankfully, the power was restored the next morning about 1 hour prior to our driver picking us up.

Rome

We headed back to Naples with another driver from the Day Trip company. We proceeded to the train station and took the short one hour train ride back to Rome. Again, I have to brag about the rail service. It is so efficient and quite affordable. Once we arrived in Rome, we took a taxi to our AirBnB hotel. I picked an accommodation close to the Trevi fountain. We then spent the evening exploring the Pantheon, Spanish Steps, Trevi fountain, and taste testing all of the Gelato.

The following day, we did a Vatican/Colosseum tour. This was an all day endeavor. I highly advise that you wear extremely comfortable shoes if you are going to attempt a  similar tour. I thought I had comfortable shoes, but alas, I ended up with bleeding ankles before day’s end. If you want to know more details about our Rome specifics, click the link here to read my Rome post. You can also see how we managed to snap this picture of the empty Trevi fountain!

On Wednesday, we checked out of our room and took an early morning train to Verona. I chose Verona because it is one of the closer train stops to the Dolomites where we could rent an affordable one way trip car.  It was shoulder season, so the buses weren’t running during our trip.

Dolomites

At the Verona train station, we rented a car from Hertz to travel to the Dolomites. It is a requirement to have an International Driving Permit when driving in Italy. You can apply for this online here. The Dolomites are quite frankly one of the most stunning places I’ve ever been. The rolling fields, with the alpine peaks in the background make my heart swell thinking about them.  It is such a place of beauty. There are many different small towns within the Dolomites in which you can stay. I chose to stay in Alpe Di Siusi. This specific portion of the Dolomites is closed to vehicle traffic during certain hours of the day. I highly advise that you research which destinations you would like to explore prior to making hotel reservations.  This is simply due to the fact that the “Dolomites” cover 548 square miles and include nine mountain ranges! The roads are small and curvy. You don’t really travel anywhere quickly. We are accustomed to that, growing up with lots of “country miles” in Southwest Virginia. I will be posting a specific Dolomites blog covering our hotel, food, and specific hikes with locations and difficulty. Stay tuned, I will update here as well as the main page.

I chose Alpe Di Siusi because it is the largest alpine meadow in Europe. SWOOOON. There were also several hikes there that I wanted to tackle. Alpe Di Suisi makes a good base camp for hiking because you can utilize the chair lift system in place. It also made a good starting location for our drive to Venice for the last leg of our road trip. There were several sites between Alpe Di Siusi and Venice that we wanted to explore along the way.

After grabbing our rental car, we set out for the Italian Alps. We stopped at Lago di Carezza along the way, as well as a few other scenic overlooks. 

We stopped more times than I can count. Every curve we travelled around seemed to open up another breath-taking view.

Alpina Dolomites is the resort we chose to stay at. The accommodations and guest services were phenomenal. The hotel also offers an all inclusive option. We opted to do this. The inclusive option included a 5 course meal for dinner, and a buffet breakfast. I must also mention that the cost is extremely affordable compared to hotels of similar luxury in the United States.

Many of the local hotels will provide hiking poles and bikes free of charge. You can also rent E bikes or opt for guided hikes or bike tours. This portion of our trip was meant to explore the mountains and relax in the spa at the resort. We didn’t accomplish much relaxing. We kept trying to squeeze in more sites. This is one place that is on our list of “return-to destinations”. Shane would like to go skiing here, but I would love to go back in August or September. I am not a super confident skier and these peaks make me a teensy bit anxious looking at them.

One of the unique things about hiking in the Dolomites were the Rifugios along the way. We stopped at a Rifugio nestled into the side of this alpine mountain to have lunch while hiking one day. Italian and German are the two primary languages spoken in the Dolomites region. I came prepared with Google translate on my phone, which we did end up needing to use at this Rifugio.

On our last leg of the trip, we traveled on to Venice. Venice is approximately 4 hours from the Alpina lodge we chose to stay in. We checked out early that morning, and made a stop at the picturesque Lago di Braies. I know I’ve said it too many times to count, but…just like the alpine peaks of the Dolomites, pictures just can NOT do Lago di Braies justice. The water is so beautiful.

We also tried to hike Tre Cime di Lavaredo on our way to Venice, but we didn’t get an early enough start.  The line to get in the park was extremely long and we didn’t want to miss out on Venice. Tre Cime is on our list for the next trip!

Venice

We stayed at a Best Western near the airport in Venice. We had an early flight Saturday morning, so we dropped our car rental off the night prior to departure and walked to our hotel. We also didn’t want to deal with having to arrange a water taxi to the airport for a 6:20 am flight departure. If you stay in Venice city, the hotels arrange water taxis to and from the airport. The hotel we stayed at offered a free airport shuttle. On the afternoon of our arrival, we took the public transportation bus system into Venice. You can actually buy a ticket from the front desk with euros and then walk to the bus stop. We spent the evening exploring Venice, drinking espresso, and I finally got to ride a gondola in Venice. (Not just the Venetian in Vegas.) We woke up early the next morning and caught our flight back home.

I hope you enjoyed this Ultimate Italian Road Trip.  Hopefully, it is helpful if you are overly ambitious like myself. I will be updating the blog with more detailed posts for Amalfi, Dolomites, and Venice. You can find my Rome post here!