Table of Contents
- Advanced Planning: 4 Days
- Flight Route: Zaragoza, Spain to Bologna, Italy
- Cost of Round Trip Tickets for 4 People: 153.83€. That’s 2 adults, one 10 year old, and a 4 year old.
Day 1: Travel Day & a Short Tour of Bologna
We flew from Zaragoza to Bologna. Since we only travel with one book bag each & a stroller, we are able to do some sightseeing, in case we arrive too early for check in. Because of this, we had a small lunch in Bologna, and went to get cannolis.
We stayed in an airbnb that was located near a few bus lines, a grocery store, and the metro. Here is a quick tour of that airbnb. https://youtube.com/shorts/TZMa4BMVG-U?feature=share
We enjoy shopping at local grocery stores for food. In this case, they also had a cafeteria (coffee and pastry type of snacks) and a laundry center:
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The metro ride to and from the Bologna airport to the city center is a bit different from other cities we’ve been to & expensive. They had relatively small cars on their small tram and the trip took too short of an amount of time for the cost. They did have bilingual help to purchase tickets at the machine. The 4 year old’s ticket was free. Here you can see that they only have a capacity for 25 per car (2 cars total), combine that with luggage, and it’s not much space at all.
Buses were on time in Bologna, where we spent the first day, and then took a train to Rome and did a day trip on day 2.
Here are the famous porticoes of Bologna, Spain. In total, they are a UNESCO site, so make sure you take note of them!
Day 2: Day Trip via Train from Bologna, Italy to Rome, Italy
We arrived in Rome, Italy at around 11:30 am, where we took a pre-planned (by me) walking tour of Rome. We were back at the train station at 6pm, headed back to Bologna on that same day. Here is my walking tour, if anyone wants it:
The whole day trip, not including the train ride, was 6.5 hours long. Your time may vary, depending on how many stops you make along the way. We stopped for a “quick” lunch in an open air restaurant aka tourist trap, but it worked well for a short break.. And then we took another “pause” to eat the pizza outside, we also made a stop to buy bottled water, and after the Vatican, we even had time to stop for ice cream and cool off, before we got on the metro to head back to the train station for our trip back to Bologna.
Due to the fast pace of the trip, we did not go inside any museums in Rome. It was a sightseeing tour: quick and fairly affordable for a trip we booked only days in advance. Since we live in Europe, we can take another random trip to Rome whenever the prices and time work out for us. This might not be an ideal situation for everyone, but it worked well for us, and I would do it again in a heartbeat!!
We ate pizza by the fountain, at a place called Trevi Pizza. If you follow my walking map from the Colosseum to Trevi Fountain, you will walk right by it. It is literally right at the corner by the fountain. It was listed as a must eat place. You pick which pizza you want, and they charge by weight. This account was more than enough for us. We could have done with a little less.
Our walking trip ended at the Vatican, where we walked to the closest metro and took the metro to the train station. You can use google maps to get back. We took the train back to Bologna that evening; got back at a reasonable time to be able to rest and get plenty of sleep. Kids were tired. This was a trip different from any we have done before- early flight and early-ish trains and almost no rest, but it was a fast trip, so it was worth it. We wouldn’t travel like this for a longer time period. We like our rest. The next day we took the train to Venice.
Day 3: From Bologna, Italy to Venice, Italy via Train
The trip from Bologna to Venice was the same type of trip, walking only, but the islands are smaller, so we were able to go into a few more places. We were actually finished and ready to leave an hour earlier than planned. The train company would not let us leave one hour early, even though the cost was the same and the train had space. We buy our tickets for almost all of our travels on trainline dot com. I like their app because I can pay with Apple Pay right from my phone.
Venice recently started charging a tourist fee to enter the city, but we happened to travel on a day when they did not charge. In other words, they don’t charge this fee every day of the year, so if you plan your trip in advance, be sure to check and see if you will have to pay this fee or not. You can do that here.
While there, we ended up eating at a restaurant with a COVER CHARGE per person for tables!! I eventually found out that this is normal, but sometimes they include the fee in the cost of food. You have to look at the menu to be sure. It really increased our cost, so I don’t recommend it.
Went into a thrift store and bought this doll, which ended up being a vintage grandpa doll, that we only paid 2 euros for.
We stopped at a popular book shop and bought a magnet and bookmark. 
Side note: My favorite souvenirs to buy are always magnets, socks, coffee cups etc. I find they are useful items, but are also small so they are easy to pack in our limited luggage space.
I bought some spices at this market that we came across after getting off the water taxi, which is an affordable quick option for taking a ride on a gondola.
Day 4: Travel Day & Another Short Tour of Bologna to See More Sites
The last day of our quick trip to Italy was also a travel day, so we had to use our time wisely. We had to check out of the airbnb by 10am, so just as we utilized that extra time between airport and check in on day 1, we did the same for day 4 (and we do this often to maximize time, but minimize cost. Since we had a later flight, we were able to do some more sightseeing in Bologna.
All in all, we had about one day’s worth of time in Bologna, divided up over two half days. We used this time to go see some things I had marked on my map for places to see, including getting some gelato and seeing the Santo Stefano complex, which consist of what was historically 5 different churches of various origins
From Bologna, we flew back to Zaragoza, Spain. We get to and from the airport in Zaragoza via the new bus route that goes to and from the city center based on the flight schedules. The schedule is posted online.
Recap and Review:
We thought the food in Italy was way overpriced. We did not have good food wins in Italy, aside from the pizza. That is probably because I didn’t have much time to plan or research, so we just kind of winged it.
We didn’t go inside any of the museums. It’s a shoulder season, which is the most economical time to travel, but was still incredibly busy. We wouldn’t have gone inside of any of these places anyway, due to the required advance planning of buying tickets and waiting in long lines. You’d have to stay in Rome for daaaaays, maybe weeks to be able to do that, which wasn’t practical for us.
My walking route above includes our pizza by the slice stop in Rome. It doesn’t include the spot we stopped at after everything was done (at 3pm) to SIT AND REST over some gelato and coffee. We also stopped after the Forum/ Colosseum at a quick eat place we found randomly for a little fast lunch. You can connect the last stop (Vatican City) with the train station via the metro (Ottaviano), which I have pinned as the last stop (the end of the walking path). It gets you right back to the train station easily.
If I did it again, I take a bus from the train station to somewhere around the first stop. That 20 min walk wasn’t very fruitful when it comes to sightseeing, but it did cost us time. All in all, we had a great trip. I don’t regret the pace of it, because it was the only way to see what we saw in the amount of time we had to see it. We normally keep our train trips under 2.5 hrs due to our kid’s ages, but that is changing quickly (yay!). It was a more exhausting trip than what we normally do, but I think it was good for us, and that we would take a trip like this again in the future…even if we only had a few days to plan it!
This is not an exhaustive description of our trip, but I hope it has helped to inspire you to take your own! You can follow me on IG here or support my writing by buying me a coffee.
