Itinerary

Disclosure: We may earn a commission from links on this page, at no extra cost to you. How we earn This article contains affiliate links. If you make a booking through these links, we may earn a commission at no extra cost to you. About & Affiliate Disclosure ✅ Quick Answer Three days in Florence is enough when you sequence by neighbourhood: Day 1 the Duomo complex and the historic centre on foot, Day 2 the Uffizi Gallery, the Accademia’s David, the Ponte Vecchio and the Oltrarno, and Day 3 either a Tuscany day trip to Siena, San Gimignano and Pisa (around €85) or the Pitti Palace and Boboli Gardens. Book the Duomo dome climb (around €34-58), the Uffizi (around €43) and the Accademia (around €25-33) the day your dates are fixed, because all three are timed-entry only and sell out in peak season. Together the ticketed sights come to around €190-220 per person before meals and hotels. No car is needed, since most sights sit within about a 20-minute walk and ZTL cameras fine drivers in the centre. From Florence Airport, the T2 tram reaches Santa Maria Novella in around 20 minutes for about €1.70, and from Pisa the PisaMover plus a regional train costs around €15-16. The Florence Itinerary Built Around the Two Tickets You Must Book First Showing up in Florence with zero reservations and a printed map is a common mistake, especially for travelers who’ve already “done” a few other Italian cities that trip. The Uffizi queue punishes it: forty minutes standing in line only to learn the timed-entry slots were long gone for the day, booked out online weeks earlier by people who’d read exactly the kind of guide you’re reading now. The fallback, the Duomo’s free ground floor and a long gelato break, salvages the afternoon but costs half a day there wasn’t room to lose. ...

Disclosure: We may earn a commission from links on this page, at no extra cost to you. How we earn This article contains affiliate links. If you make a booking through these links, we may earn a commission at no extra cost to you. About & Affiliate Disclosure ✅ Quick Answer The best South Africa itinerary runs 10-14 days: 5-6 nights in Cape Town and the Cape Peninsula, then the Garden Route at 10 days and a Kruger safari at 14. Seven days covers Cape Town alone, with Table Mountain, Cape Point, the Boulders Beach penguins, Robben Island and a day trip to Stellenbosch and Franschhoek via the R45 (around 75-90 minutes each way). The 10-day version adds a self-drive along the N2 toward Knysna and Storms River, with no internal flight. The 14-day version adds a domestic flight on FlySafair, Airlink or Lift via Johannesburg for four nights of dawn and dusk game drives in Kruger. A rental car, driven on the left, or a guided tour is needed for the Peninsula, since public transit does not reach Cape Point. Daily costs run around $60-100 on a budget and $117-167 mid-range, before any safari lodge. August brings low-season Cape Town rates and whale-watching near Hermanus, while June-September suits Kruger. Planning a South Africa Itinerary? Decide the Second Leg First Land in Cape Town without a real plan and the trip half-writes itself: Table Mountain one day, Cape Point the next, a market on Saturday, and suddenly you’re on a flight home having never left the Cape. That’s not a bad week. But South Africa’s real trick - the one that makes a 10 or 14-day trip so much better than a 7-day one - is pairing Cape Town with something completely different: a slow coastal drive along the Garden Route, or a safari in Kruger where the whole rhythm of the day changes to match the animals. ...