Logistics of planning a trip to Rome, south Tuscany, Florence and Bologna

Hello!
I am trying to plan my summer itinerary for our visit to Italy. I am having a hard time with the "logistics" of planning a 2 week trip!
My husband and I plan to arrive in Rome first. We plan on staying there for 4 days. After which we have a booking in a wonderful villa in Cortona for a week. During our stay in Cortona, we plan to take short day trips etc as well as enjoy the grounds of the villa, take cooking classes etc. After this week, I want to fit in Greve, Chianti, Florence (maybe? I have visited Florence numerous times and we even visited Florence on our honeymoon 7 years ago. That being said, one can ALWAYS revisit places...Florence being one of them!! ) So...my thought was to go to this great winery I read about (Verrazzano) and stay at their agrotourismo for 2 nights (much cheaper than Florence!!!) so that we could do the wine tasting one day and perhaps take a day trip to Florence? After this, we were planning to go to Bologna (my husband is a ducati owner and must take a tour of the Ducati factory in Bologna (maybe spend 2 days in Bologna). Finally, we plan to fly out of BOlogna back to the states. We will be renting a car after our visit in Rome and driving to the villa in Cortona. Oh , and one other thing.....a friend highly recommend a one night visit to NOrcia...after Rome. I am not sure if this is a wise thing to do because it is quite east....and I do not want to feel like I am on a harried tour of Italy!
Any advice would be greatly appreciated!!!
grazie mille
 
Ciao Danielle!

If you're in Cortona for the entire week, you can definitely start with day trips to the area closest at first and then spread out....
that way you can visit:
Arezzo
Montepulciano
Pienza
Montalcino + Sant'Antimo Abbey
San Quirico d'Orcia

As for cooking classes, I'd suggest you take a look at the second listing here: http://www.discovertuscany.com/tuscany-cooking-classes/
Fiamma and Ginny will go to YOUR rental to do the cooking class in your kitchen, so you can enjoy the class as well as the meal in the comfort of your own villa. I think it sounds pretty awesome, am putting together an interview I did of them last week.

As for the move up closer to Florence, it sounds good to enjoy Chianti directly there... but you can also do wine tastings (actually highly recommended) around Montepulciano and Montalcino since they also produce great reds! So take advantage when in that area as well.

The only part of your itinerary I'd change is Norcia - yes, they do produce great salamis but you can find their products beyond their town. And there's great ones in Tuscany too - just think anything with "cinta senese" and it's really very good. You could do the visit on the way up from Rome, but I think it would be sort of trying to fit too much on this trip. Norcia is great to discover on a trip to Umbria, another beautiful region.

So overall, I think your itinerary looks good so far and confirm the ideas you had already gotten! ;)
 
grazie!

ciao Lourdes
I so appreciate your commentary and advice. I have already decided to take out Norcia ( and I can see from your message, you agree! ). On another note, since we are so close to Montepulciano we have decided to taste wine in this region instead of chianti ( I actually prefer these to chianti). I have decided to take the whole Florence /northern Tuscany part out of the trip....and move on to Bologna /Emiglia Romanga after our villa in Cortona. We have seen Florence numerous times, and we want to see some new regions etc.
Thanks again!!!
 
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