Italian Intermezzo

After greeting your Travel Director at Milan’s Malpensa Airport, you join your fellow travelers at a traditional restaurant, where local dishes arrive and you may catch the warm scent of butter and Parmigiano rising from the plates. You take your first sip of Italian wine as glasses clink around you and you begin learning the names of your new traveling companions. Around the table, the journey begins in a simple Italian way: plates passed, wine poured and the soft hum of conversation.

You leave Milan for the Veneto plain, traveling past peach trees, vineyards and farmland with the Dolomites pale on the northern horizon. Near Venice, you check into your hotel before choosing whether to spend the evening in St Mark’s Square. There, you can sit at an alfresco cafe, listen as orchestras play beneath the porticoes and watch lamplight catch on the tables around you, or simply gaze out at the basilica’s grand arches and gold mosaics across the piazza.

Across the lagoon, you'll ride by private boat towards St. Mark’s Square, passing palazzos, churches and façades marked by salt and spray. Near the basilica, you'll stand by the Doge’s Palace and Bridge of Sighs with sea air on your skin. A skilled Venetian gondolier guides you into narrow canals, where you hear oars dip into the water and catch soft hum of music between balconies. At a glassblowing workshop, you'll feel furnace heat as artisans shape molten glass using centuries-old Venetian techniques. You may choose an Optional Experience to Burano for candy-colored houses, lace makers, a leaning bell tower and dinner.

In Pisa, you'll stand before the Leaning Tower, following its pale marble arcades as each tier angles over the square. Where Galileo is said to have tested ideas of velocity and gravity, you can trace the famous lean from base to belfry, watching columns and arches climb at a beautiful slant. Your day ends with the chance to join an Optional Experience for a traditional Tuscan dinner, where Chianti fills your glass and you might catch notes of olive oil, garlic and rosemary wafting among the tables.

In Florence, your choice experience leads you either into the Accademia Museum, where you walk around Michelangelo’s David and study the carved veins and curled hair, or alongside your Travel Director to a local cafe for an Italian treat. Later, you'll cross Piazza del Duomo with your Local Specialist and look up at the cathedral’s marble facade, taking in slender spires, carved saints and lace-like stonework before turning towards Giotto’s bell tower and Ghiberti’s gilded bronze baptistery doors. In Piazza della Signoria, you'll pass Palazzo Vecchio and the statues fronting it, with the palace towering above the square and voices ringing across the open piazza. At the craft demonstration, you catch the scent of leather and watch flashes of gold pass under the hands of Florentine master craftsmen. The afternoon is yours to explore at your pace or join an Optional Experience to San Gimignano, where medieval towers stand above cobbled streets and artisan shops.

From the hilltop town of Orvieto, you gaze down across vineyards patterning the plains before entering Piazza del Duomo with your Travel Director. At the cathedral, you'll look up at spires, bas-reliefs and gold detail worked across the facade before continuing towards Rome. In the city, you may choose an Optional Experience with your Local Specialist, following a passeggiata through pedestrian streets to piazzas, fountains and the Pantheon. At the Trevi Fountain, you can hear water rushing over stone, feel a coin in your palm and perhaps toss it into the fountain, watching it glimmer briefly before it slips below the surface.

Rome opens its doors with fast-tracked entry to the Vatican Museums, where you follow your Local Specialist through the voluminous Papal art collection and into the hush of the Sistine Chapel. Inside, you gaze up at prophets, sibyls, angels, God and men swept across the ceiling by Michelangelo’s brush, from the nine scenes of Genesis to Adam’s finger reaching towards the touch of God. Outside St. Peter’s Basilica, you look over its grand exterior before free time in the city. At dinner, you sit down to Lazio’s culinary specialties, perhaps twirling pasta dusted with Pecorino Romano and freshly cracked black pepper as low conversation fills the restaurant. Occasionally, access to the Vatican Museums is limited. If tickets are unavailable, you’ll instead explore the Capitoline Museums, home to iconic Roman art and archaeology.

As you say farewell to Italy, its beautiful cities, Piazzas and chapels. You leave with Rome’s fountains still in your ears and memories that will linger long after you leave Italy’s shores.