Touring holidays of Italy

Fly-drive touring holidays of Italy

Travelling to Italy by air is an obvious and popular way to travel. With daily, frequent, scheduled flights from London and other regional airports to major Italian cities and a flying time of about two hours, this is a quick and easy way to start your holiday. Our fly-drive touring holidays include scheduled flights with British Airways. This allows our clients to choose the departure date and holiday duration, with the possibility of the Club Europe premium cabin. Wherever these scheduled airlines fly from and to, we can offer you their services. If there is no direct flight from your local airport, we offer a connecting flight with British Airways at a small supplement. A popular option for touring holidays is to fly into one airport and back from another and this is offered by Expressions Holidays as a matter of course for holidays that start and end in different places. A hire-car is essential for many, but not all, of our hotel stays in Italy. We include a hire-car for most holidays as it is a cost-effective means of getting from the airport to your hotel and back and provides the means to explore the area during your holiday. If you are combining a stay in a city with another region (for example, Venice and the Veneto), we would arrange for you to collect your hire-car at the end of the stay in Venice, have the use of it for your stay in the Veneto and then return it to the airport at the end of your holiday. We include a basic group A car with Avis with all our fly-drive holidays to Italy. This is usually a Peugeot 107 or similar with air-conditioning which is adequate for just two people, a short break or if you don’t intend to do much driving. However, you might want to upgrade to something larger or more powerful. If you want to combine two different regions in Italy, it can be most appropriate to fly in between, for example from Rome to Sicily, or take the train between cities, for example from Milan to Naples.

Rail-drive touring holidays of Italy

A rail-drive touring holiday to Italy is a rewarding way to combine the experience of a rail journey from London to Italy, perhaps with stops along the way, with a chance to explore countryside regions in Italy that lend themselves more to car travel than train travel. Typical examples of this are a rail-drive holiday to Tuscany, where you take the train from London to Paris, Paris to Milan, Milan to Florence, then collect your hire-car, perhaps after a short stay in Florence itself, to tour Tuscany, staying in three of four different places which might be the Chianti region, San Gimignano, Montalcino and the Maremma. You return by train, the same way or a different way.

Rail touring holidays in Italy

Rail travel to Italy and within Italy is an increasingly popular option for a touring holiday to Italy. You can travel to Paris by Eurostar and then take the overnight sleeper to Venice and stops in between or you can overnight in Switzerland and enjoy a scenic journey over the Alps to Italy, one way or both ways. Many clients now combine stays in various Italian cities, travelling by train in between, for example Venice, Florence and Rome. For a special occasion or for a leisurely, nostalgic rail journey, we offer the Venice Simplon-Orient Express.