ROME -- There is probably never going to be a "perfect time" to visit Italy. Some months and seasons will be better to visit than others for different reasons.
For instance, visiting Italy during the summer might be great for families with kids on summer break, but it's brutal for crowds. Visiting in January or February might avoid crowds but might not avoid colder weather.
And while those times of the year come with their own set of advantages and disadvantages, one thing I've learned in the few days I've been in the country in April is that everyone loves touring Italy -- including the Italians.
I've been here in Rome for a few days now with Italy specialist Perillo Tours, getting a look at one of the company's signature itineraries, the 10-day Vesuvius Tour, which visits Rome, Sorrento and Florence, along with visits to Pompeii, Capri and Venice.
It's late April and while the crowds I encountered in places like St. Peter's Square and the Colosseum were not totally surprising, I did have to laugh to myself when I got to Trevi Fountain, which I visited on my own. The crowd there was worse, or at least comparable, to the crowds I've seen gather in front of the Mona Lisa at the Louvre in Paris at any given time of the year.
The crowd at Trevi was densest in the center, which offered the most direct, head-on view of the fountain. I took the sight as my cue to stick to the side of the fountain and nestled into a corner that luckily had enough space for me to stand without packing in too tightly with others.
Some people were definitely pushier than others at the fountain and other places we visited, which can be a little frustrating. But all I could think about was how much more challenging it would be in the summer, when everyone is here and you have the harsh heat of the summer sun bearing down on you, making that kind of behavior a little more grating.
A crowd packs the Vatican Gallery of Maps at the Vatican Museum. Photo Credit: Nicole Edenedo
In any case, my guides said simply uttering the word "permisso" gives people the clearance to push back a little in getting to where they'd like to go.
Irene Capano, our tour director who has been with Perillo Tours for the past 17 years, explained that the particular weekend our group was touring Rome, April 26-28, was busier than usual because of the holiday that had just passed on April 25. (The holiday on April 25 is National Liberation Day, or Il Giorno Della Liberazione, which celebrates the end of the Second World War in Italy.)
Capano said that while there were international tourists in town at the time, most of the crowds were Italians who were taking advantage of the holiday, which fell on a Thursday, and took Friday off as well, making it into a long holiday weekend.
That might explain why I felt I was hearing so much more Italian spoken than other times I've been in Italy during the height of the tourism season, when I'm hearing more English-speaking travelers.
Capano, who is from Rome, also said that typically, Italians will travel outside of tourist destinations at this time of the year and head to places likes Calabria, Puglia, Sicily and Sardinia, where they like to stay at all-inclusive resorts.
Some also travel to the mountains in the summer, such as the Italian Alps, to escape hot weather.
But it's in the spring months, Capano said, when Italians participate in more sightseeing tours of their country's most popular attractions and cities.
Even with the crowds, I couldn't have asked for a better time to visit Italy. The weather has been close to perfect for much of the beginning of our trip. Perhaps a little too good.
In Rome, our first day in the city was cool and sunny, hovering around the upper 60s and low 70s. It was the perfect kind of weather to stroll around with just a couple of a layers, like the light knit sweatshirt and pants set that I topped with a light trench coat that I usually reserve for the spring months.
Tour groups at the Roman Forum. Photo Credit: Nicole Edenedo
The second day was even warmer, somewhere in the upper 70s, but it felt like it could have been 80 degrees, given it was a clear and sunny day and we spent much of it touring Vatican City and St. Peter's Square and the Basilica, which have a number of outdoor spaces or atriums that are exposed to direct sunlight.
And my third day in Rome has been the hottest, and included the most time we spent outdoors, as we toured the Roman Forum and the Colosseum, with the former being a completely unshaded outdoor site, and the latter being a mostly outdoor unshaded area.
As we start to head south toward Sorrento, we'll probably hit the peak of the warmer weather in Pompeii, before cooling down once we're actually in Sorrento and Capri.