Published: 04 April 2011

The Italian accommodation decision has been a bit trickier than I'd envisioned!  Having planned trips like this multiple times I was thinking I'd be done with it fairly quickly but I've spent the past few days mulling over different options and I think it will be helpful to others to see how things have evolved.  I started out with a list of the different cities/locations that we wanted to go to and then fit them into our dates.  The only non-negotiable was Amsterdam at the end (because the ticket is already booked) and I knew that our first stop was going to be Rome simply because that's where the plane will deposit us.  Knowing that most apartment-style rentals require at least 3 nights I used that as a minimum amount of time to be in each city.  We knew that we wanted to be in the northern lakes region of Italy around the weekend of August 20th because that's when our relatives would be there.  I decided to start with that area first and see what I could find.  Well, that was tricky.  It turns out that unless you want to camp or stay in a luxury hotel the options are very limited.  The only vacation rentals are for a minimum full week Saturday to Saturday and that didn't fit into our plans at all.   Interestingly enough that area of Italy is also home to Gardaland - a giant theme park that seems Disney-like in the style of accommodation around it.