…tomorrow! yay i’m excited!!! i’m going all over the country with my school and we’re going for 17 days. i’ve been waiting years for this trip, and it’s the first time i’m leaving north america, so i am really psyched!
just thought i’d share… 
Excellent. I’m sure you’ll enjoy it. Florence (and Tuscany in general) is just simply fantastic. You’ll have a ball.
What’s your itinerary?
Have fun! I just got back from an 11 day trip to Italy on Monday and had a good time.
Where are you going? We went to Rome, Florence, Naples and Sorrento so I can give you some pretty much up-to-date tourist insight from those…
Lucky bastards 
I coulda been thereabouts, 'xcept for those damn people at the labour office in Munich… turned down my application for a work permit…
tanstaafl you hit all my spots.
We were in Naples for three years. We loved Naples and would loved to return to the area, on a permanent basis would be nice. I can give suggestions on the Naples region, if anyone needs them.
I’ll give them anyway:
Go to Capri and Ischia even if off season, early april and may or late september are best, the rest of the time the crowds will make you crazy, okay, they did me.
Eat at as many different places as you can, we used to never eat at the same place twice so we could try everything but we were eventually tripped up in Rome when we found a favorite place off Campo di Fiori.
Go to Pompeii and the Naple museum that has alot of the things excavated from there, sorry, can’t remember the name of the place.
Go to Vietri del mar for ceramics, major industry there.
In high season, if a place is on/off the Amalfi coast road, try to find another route, it will probably be quicker and less dangerous.
You can take a ferry to Sorrento from Naples. It’s an inexpensive way to get there.
Try the mozzerella di bufulo while in Naples. Notice the lovely difference between neapolitan pizza and american pizza. Noticwe the difference between espresso in Naples and espresso in Rome. Naples is better, it’s the sulphur in the water, I swear.
Skip the grappa, it’s hideous, but try the limoncello and bring me some back. Order the house wine, red and white, it’s generally made locally. Most of the time it’s really good, occasionally it’s not, but it’s a new experience, try it.
No, I didn’t enjoy my time there at all.
and I thought I’d caught all my spelling errors. :smack
Yeah, it was a fun trip… Loved Pompei though my guidebook is insane in that it says you can do the whole thing in 2 hours. (Yah, right!).
We did take the ferry from Sorrento to Capri and spent a day there; beautiful place. Don’t miss the lift from Anacapri to the peak.
The pizza in Napoli was good but my favorite was actually this ultra-thin and crispy crust pizza from a wood oven place in Roma. Either way though, I’ll never be able to eat US delivery pizza again!
I’ll second this. I thought the wine was quite good and I’m generally not much of a wine drinker. And the limoncello is wonderful! A restaurant in Sorrento brought us some after our meal the first night there. We wound up bringing back our limit in it. 
Oh yes. It was such a horrible trip. 
Grappa isn’t hideous – it just takes a bit of getting used to. Put some in yer espresso, and you’ll be fine. Well, not you, aaaaaarrgg – I don’t know if you’d be allowed to have it.
Where exactly are you going? Both north and south?
tanstaafl - The wood stove is one of the secrets of the great pizza. I haven’t been able to eat at an ‘italian’ restaurant since we got back, and yeah, american pizza sucks, but I was tired of it before I left for Italy.
Glad we learned how to cook while we were there, though I’d love to find a place where I could find at least some of the ingredients we miss from Italy.
And I want some Nostromo tuna, italian canned tuna is somehow different than what we have here, took almost two years to find a suitable replacement.