5 Day Trip to Italy: Rome & Sorrento

Italy is a very large country with SO many amazing cities to visit. Charlie and I decided on a 5 day trip to Italy in June and it was a difficult decision on which cities to pick! We decided on Rome & Sorrento since we could take a train between the two cities.

As you are planning a trip to Italy, we have mapped out our travel itinerary below, complete with information on trains, hotels, weather and sightseeing! There are things you will want to consider before you book your trip and hopefully we can answer some of the questions you may have!

Things to know before going to Italy

• Really think about what time of the year you want to visit. We visited in June and it was 90-100 degrees Fahrenheit and extremely touristy! Everywhere we went it was so crowded and Rome was extremely hot to be walking around in. According to the locals, the best months to visit are in May and September – plan accordingly!
• Remember to bring clothes that cover your knees and shoulders if you want to visit Vatican City. While you can enter the city itself with less clothing, you do need to cover up if you want to go into the Sistine Chapel, which likely isn’t something you want to miss!
• Pick pocketing is talked about A LOT in Italy but if you are smart, you won’t need to worry. Make sure to have a cross body bag (like this popular Lululemon one) and keep your essentials in it, on the front side of you. Sure, if you go around with a large backpack with your wallet and passport hanging halfway out, you’re just asking for it. 🙂
• You can grab some water for free around a lot of the cities! Cities like Rome, Florence and Venice all have perfectly safe, clean and free drinking water in town squares. Take a reusable bottle with you and fill up as you walk around so you can save some cash money!
• A lot of places have air conditioning, but it’s not like the air conditioning you might be used to. If you are from the United States, you might keep your thermostat anywhere from 68-72 degrees Fahrenheit, right? Well, in Italy, when it’s 95 outside, don’t expect to cool down in 70 degrees inside. They will have it cooled down to a nice 78-82 degrees inside. Expect to continue a small sweat everywhere you go if you visit June-August.

Getting from Rome to Sorrento & Back

Here’s the kicker – there isn’t a direct train from Rome to Sorrento. It’s unfortunate, but luckily it’s really not that difficult to get from city to city. There are trains going from Roma Termini to Napoli Centrale about twice an hour, but it can take you anywhere from 60 minutes to 3 hours depending on the train you pick. There are three types of trains that go from Rome to Naples: the frecciarossa, the intercity, and the regionale. You can buy tickets online for any of these trains, and we highly recommend buying them in advance! We took the frecciarossa, which is the fastest and most expensive one and we are glad we did.

Once you arrive in Napoli Centrale, you can get to Sorrento a few ways. (Also, make sure your train does not go to Napoli Afragola or Campi Flegrei because the Circumvesuviana, the train taking you from Naples to Sorrento, only leaves from Napoli Centrale.) The Circumvesuviana train comes every 30 minutes, although there are two types: D and DD. The DD makes fewer stops and is faster, but whether you catch it or not is a matter of luck since the two types alternate. The train itself isn’t the best, but it’s not horrible either.

You can also get to Sorrento two other ways: take a ferry or private car. The 40-minute ferry ride runs at 9 am, 11 am and 5:15 pm Monday – Friday. The boat leaves from Molo Beverello in Naples, so you would have to taxi there (adding to the duration of your travel). The last option is to book a private taxi from Naples to Sorrento. Obviously this is the most expensive option, but good for those wanting to get there quick and efficiently. Make sure to book your private car ahead of time though!

Day 1: Rome

We had two full days in Rome during this 5 day trip to Italy, so we chose our first day to be packed full of sightseeing. We woke up semi-early to try to beat the tourists and dropped our luggage off at the train station (trust me, you will not want to lug anything around!) It was a solid 95 degrees this day, so it was a bit of a struggle, but we hit all of our sights!

We walked 10+ miles this day and hit the below sights:

• Colosseum
• Piazza Narona
• Fiumi Fountain
• Trevi Fountain
• Quirinale Palace
• Pantheon

In between the sightseeing, there are pizza spots to grab a bite to eat! We ate near the Trevi Fountain at Pizza in Trevi, which was absolutely delicious. There are also many, many Gelato spots all around Rome – you cannot go wrong with any of the spots!

One thing to note about our sightseeing, we did not go into all of the places listed in our original itinerary. We decided based on the time crunch that we just wanted to see each of the popular landmarks but didn’t have time to do any tours. We ruled out the Spanish Steps because we were too hot and lugging our luggage over there was too daunting. One piece of advice we have for this trip – if you are only doing a quick pitstop in Rome on the front end, pick a hotel close to the train station! Then leave your luggage at the hotel while you are sightseeing.

After we literally walked 10+ miles through the blazing heat in Rome, we took the train from Rome to Napoli and then the tram from Napoli to Sorrento. We arrived in Sorrento around 9:30p at night and hit the hay pretty quickly!

Leaving Luggage at Roma Termini

This wasn’t as easy as we had hoped. First off, it takes a while to even find the area where you should drop off your luggage. You will see signs that say “Luggage Drop Off” (or similar terms) that show you need to go outside of the station. That is correct! Walk OUT of the train station, and walk along the outside for a few minutes. It’s fairly far down toward the middle of the station and odds are you might walk past it the first time.

When we went there was a long line (we got there around 10:30a/11:00a) and waited in the line for approximately 45 minutes. This is a lot of time to waste when you only have one day to see everything! The luggage drop off was in a post office/FedEx looking place, which was a little odd. If you Google luggage drop off in Roma Termini it says there are luggage lockers somewhere within the station, but we couldn’t find them. We might have been able to if we continued our search but we wasted so much time in this station already!

Day 2: Sorrento

Day 2 of this 5 day trip to Italy was one of my favorites. A lot of times, trips are jam packed with things to do with no down time. This travel itinerary has a whole day of down time! For the first day in Sorrento, we slept in (we were exhausted) and spent the day by the pool. It wasn’t the best weather so mid-afternoon we took a break in our hotel room before dinner.

Dinner was special in itself! I don’t even know where to begin with explaining this delicious dinner that we had. We went to Terrazza Bosquet and it is one of those dinners that is unforgettable. I wasn’t sure what to expect, but please plan on being at this dinner for around 3 hours, if not more! I mainly booked this restaurant due to the views, but the food was exceptional as well. Managed by the talented Michelin-starred Executive Chef Antonino Montefusco, Terrazza Bosquet is an incredible experience.

This menu shows the multi-course meals that you can pick from. We had a glass of Prosecco when we arrived and some finger food compliments of the chef (think: a Caesar salad but it’s a tart….). From there, we went through our menu! It was mainly seafood based, so if you aren’t a seafood person, they did have a vegetarian menu! We also got a bottle of white wine that was recommended by our waiter.

You can see below all the different courses that we had ranging from fish to ravioli to chocolate mousse!

Day 3: Sorrento

After waking up full from the delicious meal the night before, we ventured down to the Port of Sorrento for our boat tour around the Amalfi Coast and a visit to Capri! I downed some sea sickness medicine because I wasn’t sure how choppy it would be. The whole bottle of white wine the night before wasn’t sitting totally right! We got to the port around 8:45a for our boat to take off at 9:00a. We booked a boat tour through Viator which was decently priced and only had up to 12 people on the boat.

Overview of Capri Boat Tour

Our captain took us around the coast, straight to Capri in the morning (which thank goodness because it was getting extremely crowded when we were leaving!) On the island, we took the chairlift Monte Solaro to Anacapri which was a little hair raising getting up there! The chair lift is very safe but you aren’t really strapped in… so don’t go swinging on it! Once you are up at the top there are gorgeous views, and there’s a bar to get drinks and snacks.

Once we went back down on the chairlift we took a taxi to the square in the center of Capri Town, Piazza Umberto I. Here is where it started to get crowded! We only walked around for about an hour, did some window shopping and got some delicious gelato! The town has many high end shopping stores so you will see people dressed to the nines here. It was very busy with backpackers, tour groups and the locals running around as well!

After Capri, the captain picked us up and gave us a tomato & mozzarella sandwich for lunch. We stopped by Bagni Regina Giovanna, I Faraglioni, White Grotta, Green Grotta and Punta Carena Lighthouse. We hopped off the boat for a 1 hour swim in the ocean which was glorious because it was a hot day out! After the swim, we went to the Blue Grotto to check it out. It was extremely busy and was over a 30 minute wait. We decided to not wait (apparently it’s only a 2 minute experience and is €14 pp). We will check it out another time when we return! 🙂

Overall the boat tour was fantastic, reasonably priced and our tour guide was amazing! He brought limoncello, wine, beer, water, sodas, you name it onto the boat for us. 10/10 recommend!

Day 4: Travel from Sorrento to Rome

Our 4th day on this 5 day trip to Italy was mostly travel as you have to take 2 trains to get back to Rome. We hopped on an 11a train to Napoli Central, then a 1:30p train to Rome. We arrived back in the city around 3:30p and went to our hotel to drop our luggage off.

For the afternoon we went up to Gianicolo Hill for the sweeping views of the city of Rome. It was a little bit of a hike to get there, nothing too horrible but definitely not disability friendly! We spent some time admiring the view before heading down to explore Trastevere for the rest of the evening. We walked through the cute streets, got Aperol Spritzes before dinner and ate pizza and pasta (when in Rome!)

After dinner we went to Mr. 100 Tiramisu – let me tell you. This was the best dessert I have ever had. They had 100 different types of Tiramisu on the menu and they are also a wine and cheese shop! We ended up getting a bottle of wine to go with our dessert (not needed, but again… when in Rome). After filling ourselves up way too much again, we went back to the hotel for a good nights rest!

Day 5: Rome & then Home

On our last day of this 5 day trip to Italy, we slept in some because we were exhausted. Luckily our hotel had A/C so we slept in until about 9:30a and then started getting ready for the day. We left our hotel around 10:30a and walked over to Vatican City. Our 5th day was on a Sunday, so we lucked out and got to hear the Pope speak to the crowd! That was super cool – very crowded, but cool. We didn’t end up going into the Sistine Chapel as it was crowded and we didn’t want to wait on a line. Seeing it from the outside is still amazing though!

Our flight home was in the evening, so we had about 5 hours to kill before we had to head to the airport. We walked around Vatican City, did some shopping, and had our last pizza and gelato. Shopping wasn’t on our original plan, but we wanted some A/C and we love to spend some money! We went to Via dei Condotti (didn’t buy anything there as it’s all luxury brands) and then also to side streets where we found Zara, Ralph Lauren, etc. There are a lot of cute streets for some good shopping – especially for leather!

Once we did some shopping, we had a late lunch with some pizza and grabbed some gelato. We then picked up our bags from the hotel & hit the road! We were exhausted at this point and were ready to come home!

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Below is a PDF version of our 5-day trip to Italy! Feel free to download it and use it yourself if it is helpful! You will notice we strayed slightly from our itinerary in Rome due to the high amount of tourists and the heat, but overall we hit everything we wanted to. 🙂