Milan, Genova, Pisa, Florence and above all Cinque Terre, with it's beautiful sea and colorful villages - you'd say with a 1 y.o. baby in a backseat one cannot visit all of them in a week. Well, one could :)

We traveled to northern Italy in the middle of June by car from Zurich. As it was our first family car trip we didn't want it to turn into a disaster, so decided to drive no more than 4 hours a day. In most of the cases it was around 10-12 or 18-20 when we were in the car, so baby was peacefully enjoying her morning/afternoon nap and that made it much easier for everyone else involved. The weather was just alright, probably a bit hot in the middle of the day, but to not suffer much we were just making our lunch break at that time.

I chose the "radial" type of the root, meaning, we stayed in one town all the week, and every morning we would go to a new place and come back in the evening. It served us a great deal, 'cause packing/unpacking every single day all of the baby's stuff would cause quite some time loss.

We stayed in La Specia, there were quite a few options available on airbnb.com. And it turned to be a very positive experience for us. The apartment was spacious, bright and clean. It was great, that I was able to cook for a baby myself. From La Specia one can go to Florence (2 hours one way), Pisa (1 hour one way) and most importantly Cinque Terre - it's easily accessible both by train and boat from there. We took a train, and the ride itself took us no more than 15 minutes - very convenient.

I'm sure that once you decide to discover Cinque Terre you can easily find tons of information about it, so I won't say much. Only that it's very much doable with a 1 y.o. baby. We had a baby carrier, some baby food and fruit smoothies, cookies and water. And our daughter quite easily made it through the day :)

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I can say the same about Florence and Pisa - both went without any problems. Sure, Florence is worth way more than just one day, but as we already did that some years ago this time one day was just enough. For Pisa, I'd say, it's more like half-a-day trip.

On our way from Zurich we spent the night in Ticino region, in a small town near Bellinzona. We did the same on the way back, just in a different village a bit higher in the mountains. I find it very convenient as my husband didn't have to take any extra days off: we started our journey at 18:00 on Thursday and arrived back to Zurich at 10:00 on Wednesday. Our Swiss hosts were amazing people, by the way, but that's yet another story.

We managed also to spend a day in Milan on our way from Ticino to La Specia, and in Genova on the way back from La Specia to Ticino. Have to say we've already been there before, so maybe that's why we used our time to simply enjoy the days.

Below you'll find couple of photos from our journey. In case you have any question, please don't hesitate to contact me :)