October-November Italy

[elusivek]

Right.

Travel Trio has decided our next long-haul trip. Italy for some 10 or 12 days.

Flight ticket prices look good for now (looking at around USD 950 or EUR 900 on Emirates). I'm just going to check with my regular travel agent to see if she has a better deal, if not, we might do the OTAs instead.

With the draft itinerary of what cities to visit, I've booked all hotels/apartments accordingly. Everything can be cancelled until October, so if nothing better comes up, we have some passable stuff on hand. I'm just not sure about going to Positano in October (by far the most expensive one night compared to all the other places), but since now we are going to properly look into the itinerary, we'll probably change or fine-tune stuff.

Does anyone know if in Italy (Rome/Florence/Milan) and Malta, it's like in the UK? Everything cashless? I do have some euros on hand, and am on the fence if I should just chuck them all into the bank with some on hand or not.

That reminds me I have to look more into Malta; should we rent a car or is public transport a breeze over there... I dunno. We'll see.

Comments

[days_unfolding]

Funny, I was just discussing payments with my Italian teacher. He said that there still are places that take only cash, but there are fewer of them in the cities.

[elusivek]

Thanks for letting me know.

I don’t mind having the option to pay by credit card. I’m just wary of my experience in London, even for a $1 dollar or GBP 1 ice cream I have to use a credit card card.

I’m still used to using cash for low-value purchase and credit card for larger amount.

[magictreehouse]

It's been four years since I've been to Malta but I imagine you'll be fine with some cash. However, Covid pushed a lot of money transactions to electronic so that might have changed. What I will say is that there is a good and extensive public bus service in Malta. We stayed in Sliema and got the boat across to Valetta when needed (I really like Valetta). There's also some hop on hop tour buses that go to all of the main tourist sights. We managed to see the whole of the island that way fairly easily.

[elusivek]

That’s good to know about the public bus service. One of my friends was planning to rent a car to drive. “It’ll be so cool to drive in Europe.” But I’m really reluctant as it would be an added responsibility to take care of the car and then parking and stuff.