Undiscovered Abruzzo: The Italy You’ve Never Seen 11 Days / 10 Nights
Discover the Italy few ever see. Cloud high castles, wild Apennine peaks and timeless villages across Abruzzo, with a private driver, your own rental car and a romantic finale
Romantic Vacations in Italy, Planned Around the Two of You
No country does romance like Italy, but the trip that suits a couple depends entirely on which trip they are actually taking. A honeymoon, a second honeymoon, an anniversary trip and a romantic getaway are four different journeys with four different rhythms, and planning them the same way is how couples end up with a beautiful itinerary that does not fit the moment they are in.
We are a travel agency, not a guidebook. We build all four. An Italy honeymoon is a first trip taken by two people who have just been through the most demanding week of their lives. A second honeymoon is a return, usually years later, with different priorities. An anniversary trip is dated, tied to a specific week that cannot move. A romantic getaway needs no occasion at all, runs shorter, and does one region properly instead of crossing the country.
Below is what changes between the four, then the places we build them around and which trip each place actually suits. Every itinerary is planned privately from what you tell us and hand assembled by our Italian planners. Nothing here is a fixed departure you join.
Italy Honeymoon Packages: Your First Trip as a Married Couple
A honeymoon is the only trip where the couple arrives exhausted. The wedding has just happened, you have hosted everyone you know, and you get on a plane. That single fact should shape the whole itinerary, and on most honeymoon packages it does not.
We plan the first two days soft on purpose. Somewhere you can sleep, eat well and go nowhere, usually on a lake or a coast rather than in a city, before the trip asks anything of you. Then the pace picks up. Newlyweds also travel with a specific kind of privacy in mind, so we favor private boats over group excursions, quiet terraces over famous rooms, and dinners where nobody is seating you next to a tour. Timing matters too: a lot of couples marry in the busiest months, which is exactly when the good tables and the private guides are already committed.
Our Italy honeymoon packages are built from that starting point rather than from a template, and every one is hand assembled around the two of you.
Second Honeymoon Trips to Italy
Best for the trip that got postponed, or the one you could not do the first time around.
Second honeymoons come at the round numbers. Ten years, twenty, twenty five, forty. Sometimes it is the anniversary and sometimes it is simply that the children have left and the calendar has opened up for the first time in two decades.
What surprises people is that it is rarely a return. Most couples we plan these for did not honeymoon in Italy at all. Italy was the trip they wanted and could not take then, for whatever reason it was, and this is the one where they finally take it. Others postponed a trip that never got rebooked and this is that trip, years later. Either way it is usually the first time rather than the second, which changes how we build it: nothing is being recreated, so we are free to plan it as the trip it should have been.
They are also the longest of the four trips we plan, which surprises people. By this stage a couple usually has more time at their disposal than they did the first time around, and they spend it. Ten to fourteen nights across two or three bases, because by this trip the appetite is for time in a place rather than a count of places. Couples on a second honeymoon also tend to know what they like, which makes them the easiest of the four to plan for and the most rewarding to get right.
Anniversary Trips to Italy
An anniversary trip is the one with a date attached, and that single constraint changes everything about how it gets planned. A second honeymoon can move a month either way if the flights or the weather argue for it. An anniversary cannot. The week is the week, and everything else has to be arranged around it.
That matters more in Italy than most places. If your anniversary falls in June or September, you are competing with the entire summer season for the same rooms, the same private guides and the same tables, and the good ones are committed months ahead. If it falls in February you have the country almost to yourself but half the lake hotels are shut. We plan around whichever hand you have been dealt rather than suggesting you move the date.
Milestone years bring their own requests. Couples marking twenty five or forty often want to return to where they honeymooned, and we will happily rebuild that itinerary with better access than you had the first time. Some want to renew vows, which needs a location, an officiant and paperwork arranged well in advance. Some are bringing adult children or the whole family for part of the trip and want the anniversary days kept private. All three are normal and all three need saying out loud early.
One seasonal detail worth knowing if your date falls in winter. Lake properties largely close through January and February. The exception is the larger towns, so Como on Lake Como and Stresa on Lake Maggiore keep going when the smaller villages around them do not. If your anniversary is in that window and you want a lake, we base you in a town that is awake rather than promising you a village that is shuttered.
Romantic Getaways in Italy
Not every trip needs an occasion. A romantic getaway is the one couples take because they need to be somewhere else together, and it is usually shorter, often a week or less, sometimes tacked on to a work trip already crossing the Atlantic.
The planning rule for a short romantic trip is the opposite of the planning rule for a long one: pick one region and do it completely. Three nights split across Rome, Florence and Venice is three days of packing and train stations. The same three nights on one stretch of coast, or in one corner of the hill country, is an actual holiday. We build getaways around a single base with days radiating out from it, so the trip feels twice as long as it is.
These also work well as a surprise. If you are planning one without the other person knowing, tell us, because it changes how we handle confirmations and what lands in whose inbox.
Romantic Italy by the Numbers: How Long Each Trip Needs
Couples ask us how long a romantic trip to Italy should be more than they ask us anything else, and the honest answer is that it depends which of the four trips you are taking. These are the shapes we actually build, drawn from the itineraries we plan rather than from a brochure.
7 to 10 Nights for a First Honeymoon
A first honeymoon usually has to fit around what a couple can take at that stage of life, and seven to ten nights is the shape most of them land on. It is enough for two or three bases without rushing any of them, and it leaves the trip feeling generous rather than compressed.
10 to 14 Nights for a Second Honeymoon
Second honeymoons are the longest of the four, and it is worth saying why. By this trip a couple usually has more time at their disposal than they did the first time around, and they spend it. Ten to fourteen nights across two or three bases, with the appetite for time in a place rather than a count of places.
7 to 10 Nights for an Anniversary Trip
An anniversary is dated, so it is planned around a week that cannot move, but the couples taking one are usually at a point where they can give it real time. Seven to ten nights, most often one or two bases with day trips out, because a fixed date rewards settling in rather than moving hotels every second morning.
4 to 6 Nights for a Romantic Getaway
The shortest of the four and the one most often gets planned wrong. Four to six nights in one region, with a single base, feels twice as long as the same nights split across three cities. We build getaways to radiate out from one place rather than to cross the map.
2 Nights Is Our Minimum in Any One Place
We will not build an itinerary with a single night in a base, on any of the four trips. One night means you arrive, sleep and repack, and you have paid for a hotel to store luggage. Two nights is the floor. Three is where a place starts to become somewhere you have been rather than somewhere you passed.
6 to 12 Months of Planning Time
Six months is comfortable for most romantic trips. Nine to twelve is what we ask for travel in May, June, September or October, for the Arena opera season in Verona, and for any honeymoon following a wedding in the peak months, because the honeymoon and the wedding compete for the same planning window. Trips 2 Italy has been arranging these since 2003, across all 20 Italian regions.
Where We Send Couples in Italy
Eight places, and each section says which of the four trips it suits: a first honeymoon, a second honeymoon, an anniversary trip or a romantic getaway. That is what the line at the top of each one is for. We plan all four privately, and which one you are taking decides the town, the length and the time of year before anything else is settled.
Worth saying plainly, because it shapes how we build them: the romance is not a property of the place. It is built into the trip and into the way the days are arranged. Italy gives us more to work with than anywhere else because the country was laid out to put beauty and feeling ahead of practicality, but the trip is what we make of it for you. If somewhere you had in mind is not on this list, tell us. It is where we send couples most often, not the limit of where we go.
Venice for Honeymoons and Second Honeymoons, Two or Three Nights
Best as two or three nights woven into a longer Italian itinerary, rather than as a destination on its own.
Venice is the most romantic city in the world and it rewards couples who know when to wander, but it is not a week. Two or three nights is the shape that works, and in practice we almost never build it as a standalone trip. It goes inside a longer itinerary, because couples who have come this far want to see more of the country than one lagoon, however extraordinary that lagoon is.
The gondola belongs here and is worth doing properly rather than at the busiest hour on the busiest canal. So does getting deliberately lost: the back canals of Cannaregio and Dorsoduro belong to Venetians in the early morning and hand themselves back again once the day visitors have gone. We build those two windows into the days and put the middle of the day on the water or at a long lunch.
One thing we hear often enough to plan around: couples rarely want to come back to Venice on a later trip. They want somewhere new. So we treat Venice as the piece of the itinerary to get right the first time rather than something to save for next time, and we pair it with the rest of the Veneto or a run west toward the lakes.
The Amalfi Coast for a First Honeymoon
Best for a first honeymoon where the sea and the cliffs are meant to do the work.
Positano, Amalfi, Ravello, Vietri and Sorrento are villages built onto steep cliffs above the Tyrrhenian Sea, stacked in color and topped by citrus groves. Nowhere in Italy hands you scenery this cinematic with this little effort. You sit still and the coast performs.
That is the reason it suits a first honeymoon so well. Couples arrive tired, and this is a coast where the days can be genuinely undemanding without ever feeling empty. A boat morning, a long lunch above the water, a slow afternoon, and the view has carried the day for you. We start every romantic itinerary gently, but on the Amalfi Coast the setting does most of that work without being asked.
The practical piece is the road. It is spectacular and it is slow, and the difference between a good week and a frustrating one is a driver who knows it and a schedule that respects it. We plan the transfers around the hours the coast road is worth being on, and use the water where the water is faster. For couples who want more of this, our coastal Italy vacations run the same coastline at greater length.
Lake Como for Honeymoons and Slow Romantic Getaways
Best for the opening days of a honeymoon, and for getaways where doing very little is the point.
Lake Como is at its best after dark. The lights of the towns and houses across the water reflect on the black surface until the lake becomes a game of color and reflection, and the steep shore opposite reads like a sky full of stars sitting on the black wall of the mountains. When the moon comes up the stars fade a little, but the shapes and shadows of the Alpine peaks appear instead. Either way your evening has a backdrop, whether you are at dinner or just walking out for a gelato.
The days are the opposite kind of pleasure, slow and on the water. You move on and off the boat or the ferry through narrow stretches of lake, past colored villas and gardens planted by people who came here to be seen, with the shore steepening above you. A romantic getaway on Lake Como is built for doing very little in beautiful surroundings, which is exactly what most couples want and rarely get. We plan the boat days around the light rather than the timetable, and we hold the evening table with a view of the water well before you travel.
This is a relaxation trip more than a sightseeing one. The landscapes do the work: steep shores, gardens running down to the water, and mountains behind. Days here are for the boat, the terrace and a long lunch, and the sunset over the western shore is worth planning an evening around.
Explore Lake Como vacation packages »
One more thing Como does better than almost anywhere. A great deal of what makes it wonderful asks nothing of you but time: the light on the water at the end of the day, the ferry between villages, a bench in a garden, the walk along the front after dinner. Italy is unusually dense with that kind of pleasure, and Como is the clearest example of it. Couples who arrive with a list often end up abandoning it by the third day, which is exactly the right outcome and one we plan for.
Verona for Anniversary Trips and Second Honeymoons
Best for an anniversary or a second honeymoon, with the opera folded in only if it is something you actually want.
Verona is a classy city at every level, rich, clean, well kept, and home to the most famous love story in the world. You feel it walking in. The Roman arena still stands in the middle of the city, the piazzas are handsome and unhurried, and the whole place is small enough to cross on foot and grand enough to feel like an occasion.
The opera season in the arena is remarkable and we can build a night of it into the trip. What we do not do is organize the whole itinerary around it. The season runs to its own calendar and your trip runs to yours, and forcing the two to meet usually costs you more than the evening is worth. If opera is your thing, say so and we will hold seats. If it is not, Verona has plenty of other reasons to be there and we plan around those instead.
It works particularly well for a trip with a fixed date, because the city is rewarding in every season and does not depend on one thing being open. Valpolicella and Soave are close enough for an afternoon, the wider Veneto opens up from here, and Lake Garda is a short drive when you want water.
Capri for Honeymoons Where the Sightseeing Is the Point
Best for a honeymoon that wants to see the island properly, with the romance built into how the days are arranged rather than into hiding from them.
Capri was the island of the Roman emperors, chosen for exactly the beauty and the views that draw people now. It is small, dramatic and genuinely spectacular, and the mistake visitors make is treating it as somewhere to disappear. The point of Capri is what is on it and around it.
So we plan it as a sightseeing island done at the right hours. The Blue Grotto when the light is working and the queue is not, the boat circuit of the Faraglioni, the chairlift up Monte Solaro, the gardens above the sea, Anacapri when the port has filled up. The romance is not in avoiding any of that. It is in going at your own pace, with a boat that waits for you and nobody else to keep up with, and coming back down in the evening when the day trippers have gone and the island belongs to whoever stayed the night.
That last point is the argument for sleeping on Capri rather than day tripping to it. A different island appears after the last ferry leaves. It pairs naturally with the Amalfi Coast across the water.
Cinque Terre for Active Romantic Getaways
Best for a getaway for couples who would rather walk than sit.
The Cinque Terre are five postcards. Seen from the water or walked on the ground, each village composes itself into a picture, which is why they are photographed more than almost anywhere else in Italy. The trail that has always connected them, long before any visitor arrived, is open to anyone on foot today and is called the Path of Love. The name was not invented for tourism, and it is the reason Cinque Terre romantic trips sell out first among couples who like to walk.
These are small villages with small alleys where people still live and work with or without the travelers passing through, and they have kept their traditions and their colors because of it. That is the difference between a place that performs for visitors and a place that simply carries on while you are there. We plan the Path of Love and the village walks around trail closures that change from year to year, and we move you by boat when the trains are full.
This is the closest a romantic trip in Italy comes to an adventure. The trails link the villages along the cliffs with the sea below, the landscapes shift at every headland, and the charming part is that people still live and work in these towns whether or not you are there.
Tuscany for Second Honeymoons and Anniversary Trips
Best for a second honeymoon or a milestone anniversary, and for any trip where one base and no repacking is the point.
Tuscany works on you slowly, and the roads are the reason. They wind rather than run, lined by cypress that either mark the way or draw your eye up to a villa on the hilltop, and the effect is the same in every season. There is a feeling of luxury to a romantic vacation in Tuscany that is somehow also simple, ordered and calm, and it makes people slow down and spend unhurried time with the person they came with.
The medieval villages do the same thing by other means. They are old enough that time visibly passes differently inside them, and that is both inspiring and quietly persuasive. The romance here is not staged, it is a normal reaction to constant beauty in every direction you turn, the same way the road keeps turning. We plan the drive itself as part of the day, because in Tuscany the road between two places is often better than either of them.
The countryside is the attraction and the vineyards are how you see it. Days here run between hill towns and wine estates, the landscapes changing with the light, and the cuisine is the unhurried kind that assumes you have the afternoon.
Florence as a Honeymoon and Anniversary Base
Best as a base you stay put in for several nights, with the rest of Tuscany reached from it and nothing repacked.
Florence is the cradle of the Renaissance, and the Renaissance was about beauty, form, proportion and the love of a beautiful thing. That is not a bad description of what a couple is looking for. The city is dense with it, walkable end to end, and the Arno at dusk from the right bridge is one of those views that does the work for you.
What Florence is not is a short break in the sense of somewhere you dip into for two nights. Several nights here is a base rather than a stay. The suitcase stays where you put it on the first evening, and Siena, San Gimignano, the Chianti hills and the Val d Orcia are all day trips that end back in the same room. That is a far better trip than moving a suitcase every second morning, and it is how we build almost every Tuscan itinerary now.
Book the major galleries ahead or do not bother going. We hold timed entry, and we put the big rooms early in the morning or late in the day. For the countryside half, our Tuscany travel guide covers what sits within reach.
How We Plan Your Romantic Trip to Italy
The three trips on this page are planned differently, and the first conversation is mostly about working out which one you are actually taking. A couple flying out four days after their wedding needs something different from a couple marking twenty five years, and both need something different from two people taking a week off in October because they can.
What we ask first. Which trip this is. How much time you have, and whether any of it is already committed. Whether either of you has been to Italy before, and if so where, because returning to a place you loved and seeing somewhere new are different itineraries. How you like to spend a day, honestly, including whether you want a plan or want to be left alone. And whether the trip is a surprise, because that changes how we handle confirmations.
What we do with it. We draft a first itinerary for you to react to rather than approve, and most couples change something on the first pass, which is the point. We work in the pace deliberately: the soft opening days on a honeymoon, the single base on a getaway, the deeper access and the food and wine on a second honeymoon. Then we book. Private transfers, private boats, guides who are good with two people rather than twenty, timed entry so you are never in a line, and the tables and terraces that have to be held months out.
When to start. Six to nine months is comfortable for most romantic trips, and nine to twelve if you are traveling in May, June, September or October, or if the Arena opera season is part of the plan. Couples marrying in peak wedding months should start earlier still, because the honeymoon competes with the wedding for the same planning window and usually loses.
From the moment it is confirmed the logistics are ours. You get a day by day plan, one point of contact, and someone reachable in Italy while you are there. Every traveler books and pays Trips 2 Italy directly, so nothing about the arrangements sits with a friend or a relative.
For context on scale: we have 253 published itineraries to draw on and 23 years of doing this, so when we say a pairing works or a drive is longer than it looks, it is from having built it before rather than from a map.
Explore Some Of Our Romantic Italy Itineraries
Apulia and Basilicata Honeymoon: Lecce Nights, Southern Coastlines, Matera Magic, and Bari by the Sea
A romantic 12-day journey through southern Italy featuring charming towns, candlelit piazzas, ancient wonders, and breezy seaside escapes from Lecce to Bari, with experiences designed for unforgettable moments together. Starting from $7,844 per person
Rome to Venice Honeymoon Grand Tour: Vatican Masterpieces, Tuscan Wine Roads, Cinque Terre Coastlines, and Venetian Nights (11 Days)
Embark on an unforgettable 11-day honeymoon through northern Italy, where each destination reveals a new chapter of romance and discovery. From Venice’s enchanting canals and timeless artistry, to the
Ready to Plan Your Romantic Trip to Italy?
Tell us which of the four trips this is, roughly when you want to travel and how much time you have, and we will come back with a first itinerary built for the two of you. There is no charge to start the conversation and nothing is booked until you have seen the plan and changed whatever you want changed.
Somewhere already in mind? Tell us and the plan gets built around it. If you have no idea beyond wanting to be in Italy together, that is a perfectly normal place to start and most couples begin exactly there.
Trips 2 Italy has been arranging Italian travel for 23 years, since 2003, and has 253 itineraries already published across all 20 Italian regions. If you would rather say it out loud than write it down, call 713-952-4055 in Houston or 1-866-464-8259 toll free, and you will speak to a planner rather than a call center.
Explore More Italy Trip Styles
Every one of these is planned privately around what you tell us. Browse the other ways our travelers see Italy.
Frequently Asked Questions About Romantic Italy Vacations
What is the best romantic destination in Italy for a honeymoon?
It depends on your style. Venice and the Amalfi Coast are the classic honeymoon choices, Lake Como offers elegant calm, and Tuscany suits couples who want a private villa and countryside. We often combine two or three for variety, and design the trip around you.
How many destinations should we include in a honeymoon?
Most honeymoons work well with two or three destinations over ten days to two weeks, balancing iconic cities with relaxed, scenic time. We pace it so it feels like a celebration, not a race.
Can you arrange special touches for a honeymoon or anniversary?
Yes. Private boat days, sunset dinners, room upgrades, and thoughtful surprises are a signature of our romantic trips, arranged quietly so they feel effortless.
When is the best time for a romantic trip to Italy?
Late spring and early autumn offer the most comfortable weather and beautiful light. Summer is vibrant but busier, and we plan around whenever you travel.
Do you handle accommodations, transfers, and reservations?
Yes. Romantic accommodations, private transfers and boats, guides, and dinners are arranged as one coordinated plan, confirmed before you travel.
What does a romantic dinner in Venice actually look like when you arrange it?
We arrange it somewhere that could not be anywhere else, and that is the whole standard. Not simply somewhere good in Venice, but somewhere with the character of the exact spot it sits in, which is a thing you cannot reproduce two streets away, let alone in another city. Beyond that it is built to what you tell us you want: a table with water rather than a wall in front of it, a seating time late enough that the day visitors have gone, a kitchen that cooks the lagoon catch properly. Where a terrace or a private room exists we hold it, and if you want to arrive by water we arrange the boat both ways. Then we get out of the way. Italy, the room, the food and the two of you will do the rest.
How should a couple spend one day in Venice?
Play hide and seek with the canals. Venice is a maze of bridges and alleys and the best of it is found by turning down something narrow without knowing where it goes, into the corners and postcard angles that never appear on a list, along the back streets where Don Giovanni is said to have gone courting. Ride a gondola. Eat cicchetti standing up the way Venetians do, one bar then the next. Shop for a piece of Murano glass, the more extravagant the better, or spend an afternoon making your own Carnival mask. Start before eight when the back canals of Cannaregio and Dorsoduro still belong to the city, take the hot middle of the day on the water or over a long lunch, and be out again in the late afternoon when the day trips leave and Venice hands itself back.
How do you choose where we stay in Tuscany?
It comes down to how long you have, whether this is your first time in Tuscany, and what you want to be doing. There are two real options and they are genuinely different trips. The countryside puts you in the landscape, which is glorious, and it is the more static of the two: everything needs planning and a car or a driver, and the logistics have to be right or the week gets frustrating. Staying inside a town is the more relaxed choice. Dinner is a short walk, the evenings look after themselves, and it does not shut you out of the countryside at all, it just asks far less of you to reach it. We work out which of those two suits you, then we recommend one place and tell you why, rather than handing you a shortlist to research. We do not put anyone somewhere our own people have not been.