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Travel Guides: All Countries / Europe / Italy
|  | Travel Reviews : Italy |
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| | | | The hidden secrets of la Serenissima
Where do writers get their ideas? Novelists can be vague about what sparks the beginnings of a book - but Daphne du Maurier knew exactly what inspired her finest short story.
She had taken a trip to Torcello, the largely deserted island on the fringes of the Venetian lagoon.
While she was having an alfresco lunch in the sunny garden of the Locanda Cipriani (it's still well worth taking the time to make the journey for a meal), du Maurier recalled observing a young couple at a neighbouring table.
'They looked so handsome and beautiful and yet they seemed to have a terrible problem and I watched them with sadness,' the novelist wrote later.
'The young man tried to cheer his wife up but to no avail and it struck me perhaps that their child had died of meningitis.'
A curious intuition, but du Maurier was able to spin this slender observation into literary gold. She named the couple John and Laura Baxter and they became the central characters of Don't Look Now.
For some cities, you need to pack a guidebook. The museums of Paris, for example, or the classical antiquities of Greece will make little sense without the detailed notes of a glossy Dorling Kindersley or a Blue Guide.
For other places, you would do best to take a novel. E M Forster's A Room With A View brings Florence alive, and you would be mad to contemplate a visit to the San Fermin fiesta in Pamplona without taking Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises.
And nothing quite summons up the ambience of out-of-season Venice as Don't Look Now.
In Penguin's du Maurier short stories collection, Don't Look Now runs to fewer than 50 pages, but each time I read them I am effortlessly transported to the deserted backstreets of la Serenissima.
Guidebooks lay out the menu of a place, as it were, but they don't usually tell you what to eat. With a copy of Don't Look Now in your hand, du Maurier can guide you through her Venice. It's a pleasure worth lingering over.
Travel guide: Italy
Our water baby
When my wife and I first went to Venice together, in January 1990, the city took something of a back seat to our brand new relationship. The five days we spent at the Gritti Palace Hotel come back to me now only as disconnected flashes.
I remember the impossible grandeur of our corner room over the Grand Canal - its chandelier and giant 18th-century writing-desk, and the regular churning of vaporetti water-buses below our window.
I remember the magical emptiness of the city off-season, when St Mark's Square was filled only by mist and pigeons, and the loudest sound after dark was footsteps on centuries-old flagstones.
I remember the dalmatian we saw squatting on those same flagstones with its tail stuck out like a ramrod, and Sue's words as we hastily looked away: 'If I ever show signs of wanting a dog, just remind me of this moment.'
Most of all, I remember the moment in our room at the Gritti when we decided to become proper grown-ups, settle down and have a baby.
Now, 13 years later, our 'baby' is a bustling pre-teen, and at the end of the Christmas holidays we returned to to Venice to show Jessica what inspired the best idea of our lives.
Not that we were sure of a positive outcome. Pre-teens can be stubbornly impervious to history or culture. Wanting her to love it so much could, we knew, have the very opposite effect.
We needn't have worried. Our Venice baby was hooked from the moment we landed at the new Marco Polo Airport and sped across the lagoon by water-taxi.
We reached the Grand Canal just as everything was lighting up for the evening. Christmas trees still sparkled in the shops over the Rialto Bridge, and the windows of the waterside palazzi glowed pink or gold.
Ahead of us came six crowded gondolas, moving dead abreast and in perfect time. One gondolier sang an operatic aria while another played an accordion.
'Pretty gorgeous, isn't it?' I said to Jessica. 'Yeah, it's cool,' she replied. Venice could wish for no higher accolade.
Travel guide: Italy
On the waterfront
From the Mail on Sunday
For me, it was love at first sight. In the summer of 1946 I was 16 years old and we were staying at my parents' favourite hotel, a ravishing little 15th century building on the very edge of Lake Garda. The proprietor was a drunken old Irishman whom my parents loved; despite the hotel's considerable discomfort, they went every peacetime summer for a quarter of a century.
One day my mother said: 'Let's go to Venice.' It was only two hours or so away. We left early by car, arrived midmorning and went straight to St Mark's by gondola. In those days gondolas were cheap and a perfectly normal means of transport. They did not cater exclusively for tourists (then still mercifully few) as they do now, and I remember that 40-minute journey down the Grand Canal as if it was yesterday.
After lunch my mother went shopping, while my father took me on a long walk through the city and taught me one of the first and most important lessons about Venice - that the whole is greater than the sum of the parts; that however beautiful the individual churches and palaces may be, the ultimate miracle is the ensemble, the city itself. 'And so,' he said, 'we shall go into just two buildings: to begin with, St Mark's; to finish, Harry's Bar.'
For the rest we walked and he talked; and all too soon the day was over and we were back in a gondola, returning to the car park and the outside world. Night was falling, the lights were coming on, Venice was becoming more romantically beautiful every minute. Never have I left anywhere with such aching regret.
As the years passed I returned whenever I could. By now, 55 years after that first visit, I must have clocked up at least a couple of hundred more but the magic has never faded; my love affair with Venice continues undimmed - every time is as good as the first.
When the airport launch turns into the first canal - and Venice, being a tightly knit group of islands, has no suburbs - my heart quickens its beat. Then I hear the old, familiar Venetian sounds - the churning of the vaporetti, the wash of waves on the quaysides, the constant ringing of the church bells - and there wells up within me a feeling of homecoming.
I still go several times a year. Nowadays it tends to be for two or three days at the most, talking to business conferences or taking small groups round the city; but that, too, I love - there's no fun like infecting other people with one's own enthusiasm. A murmured 'Wow!' - or even occasionally a 'Gee whiz!' - is more than enough reward.
Travel guide: Italy
On the trail of love
First, the vital statistics. He was 6ft 1in, a giant among men in 18th-century Venice. And as he tells it in his memoirs, he was a giant in other respects, too . . .
The odd thing is that few Venetians pay much attention to the Casanova legend.
If you come to the city in search of a statue or museum, you will look in vain. Yet there could have been no better backdrop for his amorous antics.
Venice is a city built for intrigue, a place of labyrinthine canals and backstreets so narrow you can reach into your neighbour's bedroom.
It's a place where disguise was - and still is - a flourishing industry, with a mask workshop down every alley.
Born to actor parents in 1725, Casanova's glory days in Venice, before imprisonment, flight and exile, are savoured in salacious detail in the memoirs written in his dotage.
No fewer than 2,000 women fell under his spell. We have to take his word for it, since not one love letter survives.
But now some modern Venetian women are reviving the seducer's flagging profile with a new city tour, Casanova And The Age Of Decadence.
Just launched, the walk is run by a team of women and guided by excitable enthusiast Dr Maria Colombo.
There were four of us on the tour. The other three were men: a management consultant, a retired academic in sandals, and a balding novelist.
Why is the tour always dominated by men when it was women who adored him? Maria was perplexed.
'Casanova was so loved by women in his lifetime,' she stressed. 'He was a really charming man who respected his lovers.'
Travel guide: Italy
Its enchantment will bring you back
Always respect Venice and it will respect you. The people are kind and friendly, and will help you in every way, but do respect their lifestyle.
Don't try to enter their beautiful churches and elegant palaces scantilty dressed. Save that for the beach on the delightful Lido.
I always walk round with a light cotton pair of trousers to slip over my shorts. It saves disappointment when you come across a church by chance.
And you will come across the most exciting places by just strolling round the alleyways and along the canals.
Food and drink is inexpensive if you are sensible. Treat yourself to a sit down drink at least once in St Marks Square listening to the orchestra.
Put one day aside to take the boat trip to Murano for glass, Torcello for history, and Burano for lace.
Buy a pass for the vaporetto (water bus) for the number of days you require. Get up early one morning, board it at the Piazza Roma (first stop), dash for the front of the boat, and glide all the way down the grand canal and over to the Lido. All the romance of the Titanic, without the iceberg.
If you go once, you will go many times in your life, such is its enchantment.
Be happy.
Travel guide: Italy
Island hopping
From the Mail on Sunday
Every couple of months, visitors to Venice are shocked by a loud siren wailing over the city. Rather than look up to the sky, though, this is a warning to look down, as it announces the arrival of 'Acqua Alta', the high tide.
Within hours, the Piazza San Marco will be flooded with water, everyone clambers gratefully on to makeshift bridges, and shops rapidly sell out of Wellington boots.
With the Acqua Alta, the sea demonstrates its control over the Serenissima, a reminder that despite its grand palaces, baroque churches and intricate network of canals, Venice is still just an island on the lagoon.
What's more, it is only one of 34 islands dotted around a 200-square-mile wetland separated from the Adriatic Sea by the fragile strip of sand known as the Lido.
The great majority of travellers who pour into Venice are so overwhelmed by this unique city -and usually so exhausted after traipsing from sight to sight - that they don't even realise that there is another world to explore out on the lagoon. A world captured so romantically by David Lean's 1955 film Summer Madness, set in Venice and starring Katharine Hepburn and Rossano Brazzi.
For Venetians, though, going out on to the peaceful waters is their secret of putting up with the daily invasion of thousands of tourists.
More than a dozen islands are still inhabited, but you don't need your own boat to spend a day island hopping. The much-maligned city waterbus, the vaporetto, provides an excellent service all over the lagoon.
So leave the crowds behind and wander through the backstreets till you come out at the Fondamente Nuove, which looks out over the northern part of the lagoon. Jump on the first vaporetto you see, and set off on a surprising adventure to discover ancient monasteries, medieval fortifications, artisans carrying out centuries-old traditions, and delicious Venetian cuisine at old-fashioned trattorias where you won't get ripped-off.
The first stop for any vaporetto is just a couple of minutes away, the island of San Michele, where the boat moors outside a magnificent Renaissance church, with the waters of the lagoon lapping at the door.
This is the city's cemetery, as beautiful and fascinating to visit as Pere Lachaise in Paris. It is not only the final resting place of Stravinsky and Ezra Pound, but there is a moving corner reserved for gondoliers, their tombs decorated with carvings of sleek gondolas.
Travel guide: Italy
Honeymoon in Venice
From the Daily Mail
We married late in the summer, and decided on the spur of the moment that of all the places in the world we had been to, there was nowhere we would rather be alone together than Venice in the autumn.
A Venetian friend recommended we stay in an apartment. As the price of a double room at the Cipriani, Venice's only grand hotel with a swimming pool, is from £2,000 for a week, the idea of an apartment was appealing. Because in a hotel like that, however shiny the marble and polished the service, you still have the perma-tanned jet-set stumbling over their dropped names.
On the Internet, under http://www.venice-rentals.com, we found a company called Venetian Apartments and began an email correspondence with its founder Anne-Marie Doyle, in which she showed me detailed pictures of the Palazzo apartments she has let for Venetian families over 12 years. Seduced by the idea of an old apartment with a big terrace, we booked and ordered a private water taxi to meet us at the tiny airport.
When you first race out onto the water of the lagoon and see the delicate shapes of Venice tracing the horizon, it is like poetry. It takes your breath away. We sat close together at the back of the high speed launch silently gazing, while a gull, perched on a huge wooden pillar, scratched itself and the sinking sun poured crimson over the domes and steeples of the skyline like clouds of silk.
Our boatman manoeuvred us neatly into Cannareggio, the area behind Fontamente Nuovo where the ferries leave for the smaller islands, Murano and Torcello. The climb to the fourth floor of our building was steep, but at the top I flew out onto the terracotta rooftops to hear the chiming of bells from a dozen churches.
Our apartment was spacious enough for three couples. The ancient furniture and groaning plumbing was in stark contrast to the high-tech kitchen. The owner was particularly proud of the new cooker and vast fridge, but my husband was entranced by the gleaming proscuitto (ham) slicer, and immediately wanted one to take back.
The whole point of finding a home for a week was so we didn't have to go out all the time. We wanted the option to cook. We piled the table high with fresh fruit, tucked the pasta and fresh rocket away in the fridge and laid in a supply of Nino Franco Prosecco, the Venetians' favourite sparkling wine.
The flat became home overnight. The lapping of water sent us to sleep, the calls of gondoliers woke us up. An old Venetian wardrobe creaked open without warning every night, and rococco candlesticks held scented candles which I found in the local shop. In a romantic haze we floated back 300 years.
Travel guide: Italy
Flat out in Venice with the Dimblebys
From the Mail on Sunday
The oddest things make you realise you're getting older. There comes a grey morning, usually in January or February, when suddenly you realise that the era of the family holiday is probably over.
All those miles you drove with the little ones in the back squawking: 'But when will we be there?' All the splashing about in various pools, with the cries of 'Watch me, Mum!' - when you secretly longed to get back to that fat novel. And the determined herding of teenagers through museums and cathedrals, with the promise of a little shopping at the end-
All over. They've grown up and want to be with friends and sweethearts now. You can do what you want, but suddenly realise that you don't want that at all. For me this painful realisation came hand in hand with another one: that my husband, broadcaster Jonathan Dimbleby, and I had raised two children, Daniel, 25, and Kitty, 19, without ever showing them the jewel of Europe - Venice. It is a place we always want to go back to, and yet we had failed to do the civilised thing of sharing it.
Suddenly I was overwhelmed by the need to show my kids the city I love. I wanted to be there at their first glimpse of the Grand Canal, to see their faces when they first set eyes on the glittering basilica of St Mark's or the white dome of Santa Maria della Salute at sunset. To walk with them around the Accademia Gallery and point out my favourite paintings.
There is nothing like introducing people you love to a place which has had a profound effect on you. And I wanted to sip wine with my grownup kids in a Venetian bar.
My husband and I were in our twenties when we first saw Venice. Overwhelmed by the beauty of the threatened city, we visited nearly every church. Since then we've returned twice, once on the magnificent Orient Express and staying at the Hotel Cipriani.
On the next visit we spent four days at the Hotel Danieli shortly before the publication of Jonathan's biography of the Prince of Wales, when we needed to fortify ourselves in the lap of luxury. Obviously the idea of very grand hotels is attractive to the greedy young, but who could afford it for so many? Because I realised now that one way to get our children to come away with us would be to take the boyfriend and girlfriend too. So the plot was laid.
The obvious solution would be to rent an apartment but, unsure how to go about it, I did nothing. Then fate intervened. I was idly scanning the classified pages of a small literary magazine when I saw an advertisement for a flat in central Venice at £700 a week.
For six people that sounded like good value. After all, you would save on restaurant meals by cooking when you felt like it, and for me the idea of having a little Venetian 'home' for a short time was very appealing. With the key to a real front door, you could fantasise that you were not a tourist at all. For one week you can all cram into even a small flat, and don't have to worry much about cleaning.
I made plans for a washing-up rota, paid the deposit and set about finding cheap flights. It turned out that my whim was an inspiration. Now I'd much rather rent than stay in the very grandest hotels.
Eventually my husband had too many work commitments to come with us, so the kids and I invited a close family friend, the photographer Robin Allison Smith, to share (and snap) what turned out to be one of our best-ever holidays. Daniel took his partner Mandy Sherwood who, like him, works in television. Kitty invited her boyfriend, Pete Ledwitch, the manager of a camera shop, who would be additionally useful since he speaks Italian. All of them ('my brood', as I called them) were keen to discover La Serenissima but didn't quite know what to expect.
The point is, no matter how many pictures you have seen, nothing can quite capture the spirit of the city. The quietness of the little back alleys in the northern Cannaregio area, where suddenly you come across the house where the greatest of all Venetian painters, Tintoretto, died. The thrill of seeing refuse collected and shopping delivered by water. The rusty tones of romantically crumbling old buildings reflected in the ripples of small canals. Rounding a corner to see a sudden fragment of forgotten architectural splendour. The smell of fresh pizza. Just riding the vaporetto (water bus) for fun. All that - and more.
Travel guide: Italy
Exclusive Venice
Pop! Pop! Pop! I have never heard Bollinger being uncorked at such a rate. It was like an episode of Absolutely Fabulous.
The first bottle was opened as we lifted off from Farnborough, the second as we flew over the Alps, the third as we boarded our yacht, moored off Venice.
Getting to Venice had never been easier. From parking my car at Farnborough to seeing my first paunchy American couple in a gondola - the quintessential Venetian vignette - took just two-and-a-half hours.
Say what you like about the rich, but they have made an art form of getting from A to B as quickly and painlessly as possible.
By flying at 45,000ft, high above the plebs in the slow lane, the pilot of our eight-seater Learjet, an ex-Concorde captain, was able to shave 15 minutes off the time of scheduled flights.
Customs, security and passport control were negotiated in minutes. As our water taxi sped across the lagoon, taking us into the heart of the city, I felt like Leonardo DiCaprio arriving for the Venice Film Festival.
So far, so fabulous. But La Serenissima, the dreamiest, most glamorous city in the world, was not going to yield without a struggle.
Venice is both a magnet to the super-rich and an obstacle course from which the super-rich retire defeated.
There is a proud, mulish streak in the Venetian character, as if to say: 'We will take your money, but take it on our terms.'
Private jets are tolerated rather than encouraged. We were lucky, according to our captain, to be allowed to park the Learjet overnight at Venice airport, squeezing into a small gap next to Alan Sugar.
Space is limited and most planes get diverted to Treviso, 20 miles away. Pilots of private jets will tell you horror stories of getting the brush-off from Venetian air traffic controllers.
Travel guide: Italy
Breath in Venice
See Venice and sing! And what better way to experience the magical vibes of this historic city than to sing your heart out to music by Venice's most celebrated son, Antonio Vivaldi.
I was one of 300 amateur choral enthusiasts travelling with the Concerts From Scratch organisation, landing at St Marco airport with a song in my heart and a street map of Venice clutched to my bosom.
Stone me. How on Earth does anyone manage to find their way around Venice?
Every bridge, canal, and alleyway looks identical. Follow the street signs and you seem to walk in circles.
Study your map and you realise a 200-yard walk has taken an hour-and-a-half up steps, over bridges and along passageways.
But once I'd vaguely got the hang of the vaporettos (water buses), getting lost in the back streets was all part of the adventure.
Any music-lover can join a Scratch tour, provided you sing. It helps if you can sight-read, and it helps even more if you've listened to the CD of the work to be performed.
People go alone or with friends. Some non-singing partners go to listen to the glorious music.
We singers were scattered across the city in various hotels, mine on the Lido, a narrow strip of island across the lagoon from Venice.
Our instructions were to congregate after breakfast for rehearsals at the majestic Gothic Church of Santi Giovanni e Paolo.
Our wonderful conductor, Sir David Willcocks, raised his baton, we opened our scores and off we went - sopranos, altos, tenors and basses - rusty to start with but rapidly warming up as we rehearsed Vivaldi's Gloria.
Travel guide: Italy
A feast for the eye
Nothing had prepared me for the beauty of Venice. However much you read about it, being there is just amazing.
Why would anyone build a city on water, you think? Then you see it and know why. The labyrinth of canals and the beautiful old houses that line them are best seen from a gondola.
It's expensive, but it's a one-off experience that my husband Don and I decided was too special to pass up and we didn't regret it - gliding along in these unique boats is unforgettable (and despite the cost, the gondolier will still expect a tip).
We also went mad and had coffee in St Mark's Square. Venice is not the place to come on a budget. Nothing is cheap here, from eating out to buying souvenirs, and we spent more in three days than we might normally do on a week's holiday in Greece.
Take sensible walking shoes as you'll walk miles (especially if you keep getting lost like we did). Also take plenty of film for your camera - you'll take far more photos than you'd thought.
Travel guide: Italy
Forget the gondola
You've seen them on holiday in Italy or France, those healthy-looking individuals who bound into the restaurant as you stoke up after a hard day by the pool.
'We're starving!' they cry, in tones of virtue, before cracking open a map zigzagged all over with highlighter pen.
Most of them look sober; some, surprisingly mature.
Finally recognising my uncharitableness as naked envy, I persuaded an old friend to join me for a week's cycling holiday.
We chose Venetia, the area of Italy that lies west of Padua, some 30 minutes' train ride from Venice. Criss-crossed by canals, it looked reassuringly flat.
Let's just say I'm the sort of cyclist whose husband complains that he can't keep abreast with without toppling off through sheer lack of momentum.
In the distance rose the Euganean hills, beloved of the English poets Shelley and Byron.
Good: we could have mountain scenery without mountain legwork.
Better still, the route map looked crammed with interest: medieval towns, patrician castles, sumptuous country villas - plenty of excuses to dismount.
As increasingly stressful lifestyles take their toll, cycling holidays for the less-than-gung-ho are booming. As a recent convert, I can see why.
Travel guide: Italy
Umpteen attractions of Umbria
From the Daily Mail
Bang on Tuscany's doorstep, Umbria benefits from living in the shadow of its more famous neighbour. It's cheaper, many believe just as pretty, and certainly less crowded. While most tourists focus on Florence and Siena, the Tuscan hills and Chianti wine, Umbria is less troubled by visitors.
There are bottlenecks of course - Assisi and Perugia especially - and tour operators offer a growing number of villas in the Umbrian countryside. But turning up at one of the little walled hill towns, such as Spello, Spoleto or even Orvieto, you still feel more like an explorer than another tourist - especially outside the peak summer season.
Sure, the Renaissance architecture isn't as famous, the paintings not so glamorous, the wine as intoxicating or the cache as great. But Umbria is as pretty as Tuscany. The green rolling swathes of oak forest are as enticing, the red of the poppies shimmering in the wheat as brilliant and the sense of escape stronger.
NORTHERN TOWNS
PERUGIA: For anyone visiting Umbria, Perugia is a 'must-see'. First approaches to the region's capital are not promising - the traffic-choked streets leading up to the old town can be very off-putting. But persevere, find a parking space and set off to explore this remarkable place. The heart of the town, which is built around a great, flat-topped hill, is a vast pedestrianised area which combines two main squares and the grand Corso Vannucci, lined with Gothic palazzi.
You could spend a day in a pavement cafe here, watching the life and bustle of the place - it's a university town, so something is always happening. It is chocolate-making that Perugia excels in, so look out for specialist shops among the swish boutiques on the Corso.
ASSISI: An earthquake in 1997 damaged some parts of Assisi, but its greatest sight, the Basilica of St Francis, is open to visitors. Don't, as many tourists do, miss the rest of the town, which still has traces of its Roman origins, some peaceful squares and quiet backstreets.
GUBBIO: Built on a hillside in remote, mountainous northeast Umbria, it's a striking town with parallel streets, piazzas and terraces stacked one above the other in neat tiers. Definitely worth a day trip, even if you don't stay near here.
Travel guide: Italy
This culture club is a hit for family campers
From the Mail on Sunday
The moment I heard the words I knew I had walked into a trap. We were midway through our annual negotiations over holiday destinations and the three children were determined to go to Italy.
'Are you mad?' I asked. 'Do you have any idea how far Italy is? We have to take the car, and gîtes (or whatever they call a gîte in Italy) there cost a fortune.' There was a pause, then the feared words. 'We could go camping-' It is, I suppose, the moment virtually every parent dreads. Along with divorce, moving house and bereavement there can be few worse experiences than when the children suddenly decide it's time for a camping holiday.
To them camping promises adventure, exploration and balmy nights under canvas. To the parents, it conjures up images of shared toilet blocks, seas of mud and two weeks of barely concealed squalor.
All of which, of course, is nothing new to parents. We've been there and, with the wisdom of age, have no desire to go back. It hadn't entered my head to spend a full summer holiday on a campsite since I was a teenager, when the cheapness and nomadic nature of it all seemed so appealing.
Since those days of gales in Avignon and furnace-like heat in Montpellier I had become a fully paid-up member of the Gîte Set. I've done them all, through the length of France, from Normandy in the north to Perpignan in the south, even venturing as far as the Costa Brava in Spain. All of these holidays had certain things in common: a roof over our heads, integral plumbing and electricity. And that was just fine by me.
So camping had not only not featured high on my list of holiday priorities, it hadn't featured at all. But the children were determined and promised it would be cheaper and more fun than staying in a 'boring old house'. The brochures promised luxury mobile homes if you didn't want to languish under canvas (a big yes to the mobile home from the parents and a plea for tents from the children), swimming pools, tennis courts, restaurants, bars and shops all on site.
Of course, I didn't believe a word of it. I'm not that stupid. But eventually we chose Tuscany (all that sunshine, red-roofed towns and the Blair family) with a week at two separate campsites.
Travel guide: Italy
Scary roads and scorpions in the bedroom
From the Mail on Sunday
When you book a self-catering property, it is often a triumph of hope over experience. A hard-bitten journalist, especially, should be sceptical. I realised this when we stalled our car on the vertiginously rising farm track deep in the heart of the Chianti countryside. The light was failing fast, our daughters, Flora, ten, and Alice, seven, were crying and frightened on the back seat and we had no idea where we were going to spend the night.
Hopelessly lost, I desperately tried to coax the hired Fiat Punto into a hill start, but admitted defeat as the car slid back. Gingerly I reversed to the bottom of the hill. Changing into first gear and slamming the accelerator to the floor, we took a wheel-juddering, stone-popping run at the brute. At its summit some Italian holidaymakers - who were trying to help us find the farmhouse where we were meant to be staying - waited patiently.
Having driven from Pisa airport that afternoon, we had successfully navigated our way to the start of the farm track leading to Borgo Navico. It was here that our troubles began. The directions said: 'Drive between two small farmhouses on to an unmade road, then follow the signs left for Navico.' Someone, however, had turned the two signs to Navico around to face the wrong direction.
Nothing in the promotional literature, moreover, had prepared us for the sheer steepness, roughness or hairpin twistiness of the unmetalled road. It rose and fell like a twisting roller coaster, curling its way precipitously through the Tuscan agricultural countryside. It also forked. Our first stab at finding the apartment took us shuddering and bucking up into a gloomy farmyard where we were promptly surrounded by snarling, leaping alsatians.
Trying a second fork, we climbed steadily until we ended up outside another farmhouse. This one, however, was shuttered and barred, although signs warned of guard dogs. We retreated once more. By now night was descending. As a last resort we enlisted the help of some young Italian holidaymakers staying in a farmhouse at the foot of the track. In convoy, we set up the track yet again. This was the point when the car stalled.
Travel guide: Italy
Island hopping off Tuscany
From the Daily Mail
Nothing comes close to the euphoria you feel when you first see your very own yacht, although this was not strictly ours, I suppose. Our group - myself and five youngsters - had chartered the 38-footer with three double cabins and two bathrooms or 'heads' as they are called in nautical parlance. It also had a CD player and all the latest navigational aids and was to be our home for a week.
Before I found the yacht's details on the internet, I imagined it would be a trip too expensive to even contemplate. Yet, by taking her before the main holiday season, we managed to reduce the price to less than that of an average hotel - even with the services of a skipper included.
We had paced the house trying to imagine exactly how long 38ft was, and what it would be like living with five others - plus our captain - in that amount of space. We wondered how we would fit our luggage in and if there would be any room to sit out of the midday sun, or to find a private place to sunbathe on the deck.
The questions were about to be answered. A one-and-a-half drive from Rome airport brought us to the charming little Tuscan town of Porto Ercole, stopping only at the supermarket to load up with local wine, salami and mozzarella.
We then met our captain, Scianti, at the Bar Centrale in the main street before following him to the harbour. Things were looking promising. Although only 26, Scianti - whose parents had named him after the Indian word for peace - was reassuringly capable-looking.
He was deeply tanned and appeared strong enough to coil the ropes singlehandedly, or even climb the rigging on the lookout. And then, there she was, the boat herself - the Blue Stream - with a gleaming white hull and spangly rigging. It was flying the Blue Ensign and moored among a veritable forest of sailing boats, fishing vessels and cabin cruisers at the little jetty.
It must be one of the prettiest ports in Italy, dominated on all sides by 17th-century Spanish castles. Half an hour later, having stowed everything according to the captain's instructions, we could not wait to get into our bikinis and plaster ourselves with factor 60 suntan lotion - very necessary at sea.
We then putted out of the harbour looking for wind and, soon after, Scianti hoisted the mainsail. Though there was no more than a slight breeze, he pointed the yacht, with the engine still running, towards the little island of Giglio, about two hours away.
It was the start of a perfect holiday. It was great to know that boat owners have no commitment to demanding timetables, in fact, no master at all - other than the weather.
Travel guide: Italy
Fabulous at Forte
Fifty years ago, Forte dei Marmi was a summer playground for the international set, the place where Edith Piaf and Charles Aznavour came to live the real-life Dolce Vita.
By the Seventies - when I visited every summer with my family - the glitterati were gone, leaving Forte to its wealthy obscurity.
Now the Tuscan resort has been rediscovered by a retro-hip crowd of fashionistas who love its mid-century architecture, beautiful beaches and chic shops.
That's why I've returned for a long weekend to find out if it's truly back in fashion - even hoping to spot a celeb or two.
Giorgio Armani bought an enormous house here several years ago, paving the way for fellow fashionistas such as Paul Smith and Miuccia Prada, who have become regular visitors (Prada's factory - and its excellent outlet - are only two hours away, south of Florence).
Avant-garde celebrities including David Bowie and Yoko Ono have also visited and photographers regularly shoot fashion spreads on the beach.
In fact, that beach is Forte's greatest draw - one of the best in Europe, with wide, pristine sands and dozens of immaculate bagni, or bathing houses. Models from those photo-shoots return here to holiday.
The beach is private so you'll pay for the privilege of sitting under an umbrella, but the amenities more than make up for it.
I'm tipped off that if I'm looking for the A-list I should try Annetta, a bagno at the end of a long, lush driveway. It's like a colonial club, filled with bamboo furniture, and has a large pool surrounded by thatched umbrellas.
The crowd's chic enough but I don't recognise anyone, so I head to the Hotel Augustus - a five-star beachfront property favoured by the famous and once a holiday home for Fiat's Agnelli family.
When I was a child, the hotel behind enormous hedges seemed exotic and out of reach; today it looks exactly the same, only less forbidding and twice as chic.
Travel guide: Italy
Easy Pisa!
A heady mixture of superb Renaissance cities, beautiful rolling hillsides clad with vines, medieval castles and spectacular hill towns - these are the charms of Tuscany, according to the tourist information blurb.
But how old do you have to be before those words make you salivate with anticipation - 35? 37? 62?
While all the world agrees that this Italian region is one of the finest tourist spots in Europe, all the world may not have consulted the children.
What would three siblings aged 15, 12 and nine make of all those rolling hillsides, clinging vines and medieval buildings? Since we had booked ourselves a Tuscan villa a good six miles away from the nearest spectacular hill town, we were about to find out.
Normally, the lure of a swimming pool is enough to amuse my children. But we were travelling out of season, and we'd been told the pool would not even be in use.
As we drove along the tortuous country roads towards our destination in the heart of Tuscany, I started to panic about the lack of obvious child-friendly amusements in store.
Perhaps Frances, our 15-year-old, had read my thoughts. 'You know what, Mum,' she said in all seriousness, 'this place seems pretty remote to me. We're a long way from anywhere.'
'But that's the idea,' I replied with an over-cheery smile. 'We're in the middle of all this beautiful countryside. It's so peaceful.'
She gave me a look somewhere between incomprehension and disdain. Following printed directions, we turned down a dirt track, further from civilisation than even Frances had imagined.
In every direction there were hills, like a roughly-made duvet. Birds wheeled overhead. The sun beat down, baking the hard earth and rows of ugly brown vines.
Travel guide: Italy
Could I cater for more in Tuscany?
From the Mail on Sunday
Tuscany, as everyone knows, is the middle-classes' Benidorm, Umbria the up-market Costa del Sol. On sunny afternoons in Spoleto or Siena, you'd be hard-pressed to spot an Italian among milling Nigels and Lucindas, guidebooks in hand, peering up at Romanesque vaulted porches or talking about dining at the Braggs's villa tonight.
It's as if all Islington has been bussed to central Italy. Still, they're not wearing Union Jack shorts or wrecking pavement cafes. And, as I'd have two small children, Betty and Bill, and an elderly father in tow (none of whom could be expected to walk far) a Tuscan farmhouse complete with pool and surrounded by some of Italy's finest architectural treasures seemed ideal.
The Casa Rosa, in the village of Palazzone on the Tuscany/Umbria border, wasn't easy to find in the twisting twilight lanes, especially as we'd dawdled too long in the beautiful square before Orvieto's splendidly ornate cathedral. And when we arrived at what we thought was the house, we were informed - in a guttural German voice - it wasn't the Casa and we were sent packing.
After another hour driving round the lanes, hopelessly lost in the dark, we found a telephone and spoke to the local representative of the tour company in pidgin Italian. The mystery was solved: the Germans had been lying. The Casa Rosa was a great big place, split into two villas with a shared pool. Either that or the Germans knew it by another name - Das Rose Haus, perhaps?
In daylight, our new home proved to be a lovely place, relaxed and palatial, with antique furniture in every room. There was just one problem: as it was self-catering accommodation, we were in dire need of supplies.
There was no soap, washing powder, matches, salt and pepper, sugar, or washing up liquid, and precious few lavatory rolls. Nor did we have any fresh food: in Orvieto on a Sunday, we'd been able to find only salmon-coloured pasta and jars of porcini mushrooms in scented olive oil. No matter, we thought, we would stock up in Montepulciano.
Travel guide: Italy
Tuscany from the comfort of a caravan
The usual image of a holiday in Tuscany is a stylish, secluded villa set in the picture-postcard scenery of the Italian hills.
But a villa is not to everyone's taste. They can be expensive and isolated, with nothing for children to do and only available in weekly packages.
So put aside your pretensions, pack your shorts and head for a caravan in the hills.
Of course you're not allowed to call them caravans but that's what they are - even if they don't have wheels.
The poshest have fully-equipped kitchens, two or more bedrooms, shower room and dinky wooden decks outside, with dining table and parasol.
The campsites are well planted with lots of trees so you aren't immediately aware of sharing your Tuscan idyll with 1,000 or more caravans and tents.
Your holiday home is billed as a "modern living space with an open air feel".
There's certainly a feeling of the outdoors - in reality, there is little privacy. You are living your holiday in a Big Brother bubble.
Walking past a row of caravans is like hospital visiting - you don't want to look at other people but can't help a sneaky peek into their personal lives.
On a holiday parc (as they are called) you can hear your neighbours chatting and eating and you see their washing on the line. But if you like people and you like the outdoors, that's not a problem and you can't help but make friends along the way.
Travel guide: Italy
Two ways to Turin
British people took more than 42 million trips into Europe last year but only about 300,000 travelled farther than Paris or Brussels by train. We seem to have lost our appetite for the railways.
Yet in France, the number of passengers travelling on SNCF (Societe Nationale des Chemins de Fer Français), the company that owns much of the nation's rail network, was up 12 per cent in the first quarter of this year compared with the same period in 2001.
This sharp increase in passenger numbers is largely due to the highspeed TGV Med service, which travels at speeds of more than 180 miles per hour from Paris and Lyon to the Mediterranean.
The popular Paris-Marseille route now takes only three hours to complete by rail and 60 per cent of people now make this journey by train rather than air.
The train companies point out that the European rail network is continually expanding, something that may make rail travel more attractive.
Turin by train:
The journey began for me at the Eurostar terminal at Waterloo. Eurostar has been criticised for its delays and chaos, but I was fortunate - we left London on time.
A meal and wine is included in the price of first-class tickets; in second class, you have to buy snacks, and legroom can be tight. Three hours later, I arrived in Paris.
From Gare du Nord I had to catch the RER (Reseaux Express Regional - trains much like the Metro but run over-ground in the suburbs), then the Metro, to Bercy.
This entire journey took only around 20 minutes and was child's play for anyone who has had to navigate the London Underground in peak hours - provided you have packed light and you don't have small children in tow. There are plenty of stairs and tunnels between changes.
From Bercy Metro station it is only a short walk to Bercy railway station, where I boarded the overnight service run by Artesia, a consortium of the French and Italian railways.
Travel guide: Italy
On the trail of the unexpected in a city with a discreet facade
From the Daily Mail
'Never stop at the facade,' Laura, my guide in Turin, told me. Why not, I wondered, surveying with pleasure the baroque harmonies of Piazza San Carlo? But Laura is right. Like the hazelnuts that go into its famous Gianduiotti chocolates, this city has a shell that's worth cracking.
Why has Turin lurked for so long on the fringes of the tourist map? To dismiss it as an industrial city is to miss the dignified and intriguing reality that lies only a short flight from Gatwick. My guess is that, long before the Olympic Winter Games are here in 2006,Turin will become one of Italy's major city-break discoveries.
Despite its 14 baroque palaces, relics of the ruling House of Savoy, Turin's initial impact is one of restraint. The luxury shops that line the Via Roma are filled with the understated British style beloved by this northern city: Burberry and waxed jackets, cashmere and pearls.
'No matter how rich a Torinese has become, you'll never catch him driving a Ferrari,' says Laura. 'Showing off is simply a no-no here.' But behind its discreet facades, I find Turin full of the unexpected.
Such as the church of San Lorenzo, the sober exterior of which gives nothing away of the gorgeous extravagance within, an interior full of flying angels and twisted marble columns. A door, looking as though it might lead to a set of legal offices, opens on to another flamboyant church, the Consolata.
In the vestry hang thousands of pictures, offered over the centuries by the Torinese to the Virgin Mary. Every picture lays bare a moment of joy or suffering.
Travel guide: Italy
In search of a good cappuccino
Today in Britain we are facing a rising tide of fashionable, frothy coffee. Cappuccino has become a mass marketing phenomenon.
For many people it is a 'lifestyle statement', which is quite an achievement for a warm drink.
But where did this phenomenon come from?
'The thing is,' explains Alessandra Smith of the Italian Tourist Board, 'the Italians do not really drink cappuccino very much.
'We created it and gave it to the world. But in Italy we prefer to drink an espresso. Or maybe a macchiato - an espresso 'marked' with a little dash of milk.'
If Italians do drink a cappuccino, they only drink it in the morning - rarely after 10.45am.
And, in common with porridge, hot dogs and mushroom vol-au-vents, they believe it should be consumed standing up.
Alessandra thinks that cappuccino's origins must lie somewhere in the north of Italy. 'Perhaps,' she suggests, 'Turin.'
Turin certainly has a thriving and long-established cafe culture. Its elegant streets and squares are speckled with cafes: the grand, the humble, the new, and the old. Some of them date back to the 18th century.
There is the charming little cafe Al Bicerin, a narrow-panelled room with small marble-topped tables, where Cavour used to contemplate the unification of Italy over his breakfast; and the Platti in Corso Vittorio Emanuelle II, at the bar of which Cesare Pavese would sip small dark coffees.
Or the San Carlo, founded in 1822, with its opulent gilding and tinkling chandeliers.
Travel guide: Italy
A Venetian adventure
From the Mail on Sunday
When it comes to travel, serendipity - the faculty of making happy discoveries by accident - has much to recommend itself.
If you saw Mike Leigh's wonderful TV film Nuts In May, which told the story of Keith and Candice-Marie's camping trip to Dorset, you'll remember they had to do everything according to a timetable in which every minute of their holiday was painstakingly planned down to the last tiny detail.
This must always be a recipe for disaster.
If everything goes well, all you ever feel is relief.
But, if the car breaks down, the hotel's half-built or a child suddenly develops a garlic allergy, you experience that dreadful frustration of having catered for every eventuality except what usually happens - Murphy's Law.
Bentinck's Serendipity Holidays will never go wrong because they are never planned in the first place.
The one thing our two serendipity holidays have had in common is difficulty in finding a decent bottle of wine.
Three years ago Judy and I cruised around the Ring of Kerry with no definite plan, allowing ourselves to be blown in whatever direction the (extremely strong and mostly wet) wind blew us.
The Portland Hotel in Portumna had recently been gutted by fire but, with that remarkable combination of practicality and absurdity unique to the Irish, they had rebuilt the ground floor, waterproofed the ceiling, and left the upper floors to the ravages of the elements.
Not unsurprisingly, we dined alone and, on asking for the wine list, were rewarded with the magnificent question: 'Would you be wanting the Blue Nun or the French?'
Travel guide: Italy
Venice without the crowds
From the Daily Mail
Most passengers arriving at Treviso, the pretty Italian town just half an hour north of Venice, regard the place as little more than Venice's second airport. Somewhere rather inconveniently far from the desired destination, but near enough, given that you can get cheap flights here, to warrant the additional bus journey.
But this is much more than a place to hurry through en route to better things. In high season, when Venice becomes a claustrophobic tourist trap, Treviso stays relatively crowd-free. And its cafes and squares buzz with students and Italian families rather than coach parties.
Like Venice, you can find a network of canals and marble-clad bridges. And long before Benetton - the town's big-wig family - set about uniting them, Treviso was going crazy with colours. One look at the grand facades painted brick red and burnt orange, or the fresco fragments of angels and mythological beasts that cheer up even the humblest building, and you'll think you've stumbled onto a stage set.
Treviso is also rich in art treasures. The old city pawn shop boasts painted Renaissance ceilings. There's a Titian Annunciation tucked away in a side chapel of the cathedral, and remnants of a Roman mosaic floor beneath the walkway outside.
The arcaded main street, Calmaggiore, connects the cathedral to the Piazza dei Signori - the magnet for Treviso's cafe society. To the east lie a tangle of cobbled streets leading to the market. Treviso is a foodie's dream - in winter, the stalls sell mortadella sausages the length of torpedos, bunches of fat asparagus, piles of courgette flowers and the prized radicchio - the bitter, red-leafed salad Trevisans eat any which way.
In the Bottega del Baccala, one of the town's many speciality food shops, I found jars of preserved radicchio, seven radicchio grappas - the chokingly strong Italian liqueur - and even radicchio jam. The town is famous, too, for prosecco - the sparkling wine that has become fashionable throughout the trendy bars of Europe as an affordable alternative to champagne.
But in the Osteria da Arman, it is primarily old men - from market stall-holder to university professor - who knock back the bubbles. Ettorina, the patron's sister, keeps these septuagenarians in order, calling time, when that quick ombra - the Italian equivalent of our 'snifter' - turns into an all-day event.
Travel facts: Ryanair has inexpensive flights from Stansted to Treviso. Details on 0870 1569 569 or at http://www.ryanair.com.
Travel guide: Italy
Capture the joys of Italy's elusive butterfly
From the Mail on Sunday
Where in Italy, beginning with T, do you find glorious scenery, ancient piazzas and palazzos, perfect pasta and some of the country's best wines? No, not Tuscany, but the province of Trentino, a huge butterfly shape pinned like a brooch to the north of Lake Garda. The River Adige runs through it en route to Verona, meandering across valley floors fleeced with vineyards and apple orchards, while all around rise the foothills of the Dolomites.
Years ago, when all I'd seen of Italy was the background behind Audrey Hepburn in Roman Holiday, I remember scooping up an armful of brochures at the Italian Tourist Office in London. Rome, Venice, Florence - Europe's jewel box of artistic treasures - inevitably out-glittered the rest. But a small leaflet also caught my eye. It had a picture of a cowherd standing on an Alp at sundown, silhouetted against a giddying phantasmagoria of mountains and ravines stretching away into the far yonder.
After Rome, Venice and Florence, I promised myself, I'd go there. It was Trentino. Last summer I finally did - and wondered why I'd waited so long.
If you want to get away from pop stars and prime ministers, pay less for superb food - the best I've ever eaten in Italy - swallow lungfuls of air like spumante (they produce this sparkling wine here) and feel really fussed over by the locals, try Trentino. This hinterland tends to get bypassed because it flanks the route down from the Brenner Pass. As with all gateways, people are always rushing through it on the way to somewhere else.
Travel guide: Italy
Long march to heaven
Guidebooks describe the walk along the famously lovely stretch of the Ligurian coastline in North-West Italy known as the Cinque Terre as 'easy'. Unless you are a mountain goat, however, this is a bit misleading.
Some footpaths are indeed a doddle. The locals stroll along them in flip-flops, pushing baby-buggies, to the disgust of Germans in full hiking gear. Other tracks, however, hugging cliff sides hundreds of feet above the sea, are a different matter.
They require stout boots, a head for heights, and stamina. A walking stick and binoculars to spot the originators of unceasing birdsong will also come in useful. Thus equipped, one could find no more rewarding a place in all of Italy for a short walking holiday.
The rewards are the purposeful exercise, ravishing scenery, and, best of all, the assurance that at the end awaits a reviving shot of espresso, a cold beer or a flagon of icy white wine and a dish of mussels.
The Cinque Terre, or 'five lands', are a quintet of pretty villages clinging to the rockface of a vertiginous 10-mile stretch of coast north-west of La Spezia. Their names, from north to south, are Monterosso, Vernazza, Corniglia, Manarola and Riomaggiore.
For hundreds of years, until the train tunnelled its way along this coast in the last century, the only way of reaching them was either by sea or by the ancient system of footpaths which today forms the Cinque Terre's chief attraction.
The absence of roads is especially appreciated by the walkers who, once they set off, can enjoy the slight frisson of knowing that unless they turn back, their only way of reconnecting with civilisation (ie reaching the next bar) is by means of their own legs.
There are times when even this inducement barely suffices. The beginning of the hike from Monterosso to Vernazza is less a path than a steep stone staircase that climbs almost vertically for flight after flight of uneven steps.
Halfway up - too drowned in perspiration to see, never mind appreciate, the dizzying vistas - I heard a strange, mantra-like moaning coming from my wife. She was quoting Christina Rossetti under what remained of her breath:
Does the road wind uphill all the way? Yes, to the very end. / Will the day's journey take the whole long day? /From morn to night, my friend.
This was unduly pessimistic. In fact, though the Monterosso-Vernazza footpath is one of the longest, and certainly the most arduous, the distance is only about three miles on the map - longer, of course, when you include the ups and downs.
Travel guide: Italy
On the great truffles hunt in the Appennines
From the Daily Mail
For the second time that morning, I slipped on the muddy path, landed on my bottom and had to grab a nearby branch to stop myself taking off down the steep incline.
The path - well, more a track - stretched through woods of white pine, alder and chunky oak bushes. I was out in the wilds of the Bolognese Apennines, halfway between Bologna and Florence on a hunt for that rare and expensive delicacy - the truffle.
Vallisi Corinto, who gave up being a security guard to become a 'tartufaio' (a truffle hunter), was leading the way. At £35 for less than 4oz, just three months of truffle hunting earns him a living for the whole year.
Truffles grow under oak or chestnut trees, and Vallisi had his own oak wood and two enthusiastic small dogs to help in the search. At first, we had little success.
'Truffles like the full moon,' he told us. But before too long, we unearthed the goods and I found myself clutching several highly pungent truffles in my hand.
It was a memorable part of our walking tour in the Apennines, which began in the mountain village of Pianaccio, in the Corno Alle Scale Regional Park.
A stroll through the village with its sandstone and slate roofs and boxes of bright petunias brought us to the visitors' centre. There are three centres in the park. The theme of this one was man and nature, and as we arrived there was a power cut.
But we managed to see enough to learn that chestnuts and charcoal had been two important industries and there's a move underway to encourage young people to take up these old skills. Already one stone chestnut house near the village is working again and, if funds can be raised, it's hoped there will be four eventually.
Travel guide: Italy
Raining fire and brimstone on my head
From the Mail on Sunday
'You must go now,' said Gioacchino, the captain of our chartered yacht, tapping his watch and smiling his goofy smile. 'Five o'clock, yes? Your guide is waiting for you.'
In other seas and on other boats you may land on an island. On Stromboli, you tie up to a volcano: a massive cone; a giant, black and grey mountain of cinders; a huge, menacing iceberg of burnt rock. Our little anchor was now lodged on its enormous flank, like a staple in an elephant.
We clambered into the rubber dinghy. I turned to Bob as he lowered himself on to my hand. 'What are those things on your feet?' He looked down. There had been instructions to wear hiking boots. He was wearing his Johnny Moke cowboy loafers. 'Well, they'll do,' he muttered. The last of a few Sicilian bathers was picking her matching black-bikinied form and sable froth of curls off the black beach. Bob put a foot in the surf and squeaked.
The eight of us hurried up the pavement-wide lane between the squat, earthquake-proof houses. Behind low clay walls were gardens and caper bushes, weathered boards and broken roofs. Stromboli may lack the polish of Panarea, its neighbour in the Aeolian Islands, where the wealthy have imported an airbrushed lotus-eating style (from Indonesia for some reason), but here, where the hot 'bombs' might fall out of the sky at any time, the place seemed more lived in.
Under the cafe, opposite the church, was a little room papered with giant maps of Etna and Stromboli. It was full of swarthy men concentrating on the serious business of taking money off tourists. A fat bloke in red shorts raised two hands spread out towards me: 'Otto?' 'Si.' He pushed a pink ticket at me and I wrote out my name laboriously in triplicate. 'I just think he wants you to sign it,' said Robert. 'Sign it Otto.'
Red Shorts handed out eight torches and plastic hard hats. He looked up at Bob, and then down at his shoes. He made vigorous gestures. 'No, no,' he said and passed him some ill-fitting climbing boots.
It seemed we eight were now part of a much larger group of about 20. The man with the officiousness of a short Italian possessing something signed in triplicate started gesturing again. 'Duo!'
'I think they want us in some sort of crocodile.' 'How many does that make then?' Robert counted as we marched off. 'Difficult to say. I don't know if that man is coming on the mountain trip or just walking his dog.' We were walking, two by two, along what appeared to be a perfectly ordered promenade. Joggers whistled by. A little boy on a tricycle tootled on ahead. I took off the hard hat and tried to attach it to my rucksack.
Travel guide: Italy
So much to see
My husband and I stayed in the Carlton Hotel in Sorrento in March. Sorrento is an excellent place to visit with so much to see and do. The Amalfi coast has breathtaking scenery and, of course, Pompeii and Herculaneum are fascinating.
Most of all we enjoyed wandering around the small alleyways where there was a multitude of tiny shops selling exquisite porcelain and marquetry, or we would just sit in the square people-watching. The Italians know how to dress-up and, at times, it proved quite entertaining watching them over a cup of delicious cappuccino and tiramisu cake.
There are two small harbours which have some fine fish restaurants and, of course, from one of them you can catch the ferry to the island of Capri or to Naples. Capri is excellent for shopping and the lift chair ride to the highest point on Capri was relaxing and enabled us to see the magnificent views.
We thoroughly recommend this place to anyone - however, one thing to beware of is the mopeds. Go early season and you won't be disappointed.
Travel guide: Italy
Picture postcard views
It was dark when we reached our hotel, so in the morning we were stunned when we threw open our wooden shutters and stepped out onto a balcony with a stupendous view of the Bay of Naples, a hazy Mount Vesuvius in the distance.
Sorrento clings to the hillside in a picture postcard way, like other towns along this coast, a mass of colourful buildings with red tiled roofs. After breakfast we tottered down the hill to the elegant town centre and explored the interesting little alleyways.
Sorrento is lovely, but we managed to tear ourselves away and take a day trip to Capri - just a short ferry ride. This is also the perfect base from which to visit two major archaeological sites - Pompeii and Ercolano, both only about 10 miles away.
Pompeii was awesome, but my friend Christine and I preferred Ercolano - less messed about with, so it has more atmosphere and less famous so it's easy to imagine real people living here. It's also better preserved.
The only danger for two single gals in Sorrento? The rampant waiters, who act as if they haven't seen a woman in years - one Sicilian took the hump when I spurned his advances and refused to serve me the rest of my meal!
Travel guide: Italy
Horses go for glory
From the Mail on Sunday
Describing the Palio as a horse race is a bit like saying the World Cup is just a game of football.
Guide books tell you it's a fiercely contested competition between Siena's 17 contrades (districts), held in honour of the Virgin Mary - and that the rules are: there are no rules.
What they don't tell you is that the pride and passion which binds members of each contrade make the Corleone family look like the Andrews Sisters.
And the Virgin Mary had better stand clear or she'll get knocked down.
Marina, my oldest and best-travelled friend, once witnessed it and was keen to see it again. 'It's so exciting,' she said. 'And it's run around one of the most romantic squares I've ever seen.'
'Sounds fab,' I said, and off we went for the weekend.
We arrived in Siena - one of those almost supernaturally beautiful medieval cities found in Tuscany - to discover coachloads of languid American tourists wandering around a scene of hysterical busyness in which every square, dominated by a church, prepared for the eve-of-Palio banquet that night and the race itself on the morrow.
In the area devoted to the Civetta contrade, we found 15-year-old Lorenzo and his brother Stefano laying a trestle table for the feast and decorating the side alleys with lights and flags.
The brothers are fourth-generation Civettese (marrying outside one's district is still frowned on).
Like every other horse in the race, theirs was being guarded round the clock - doping and nobbling by rival areas is by no means uncommon.
'Oh, Palio, Palio,' Stefano told us. 'How do you explain to the English? Palio is Siena and Siena is Palio.'
Travel guide: Italy
Soothed by Sicily's sensuous charm
From the Daily Mail
Mid-afternoon in Sicily. The sun beats down; the only sound is of whirring cicadas. The tiny station of Enna is deserted for the siesta. In the bar a stubbled barman pours espresso, and a three-legged dog hops across to make my acquaintance.
The suspicion that someone from the Sicilian equivalent of Central Casting has made arrangements for my reception grows with the arrival of the local taxi driver, a Mafioso type in wraparound sunglasses. We race up the hill and pull up in Enna's town square with a squeal of brakes.
'Ecco!' grunts the driver. We're here. Now that's the way to arrive in small-town Italy.
Taking a train around Sicily is the best way to appreciate the charm, and people, of this ancient, quirky island - and the beach is never too far away. What's more, train travel won't send your blood pressure soaring, unlike driving. In a taxi heading to Palermo's Stazione Centrale, I'd lurched and swerved through the gridlocked traffic as my driver's temperature rose faster than that of the capital's sweltering streets.
The Sicilians have an expression for this situation: 'Che camurria!' which translates as 'I can't stand it! Let's get moving!' I couldn't stand it, either.
The 12.05 diretto to Enna was waiting at the platform, a modern diesel train with bright yellow destination plates on each carriage. We left on time, running along Sicily's sparkling north coast before climbing inland through hills carpeted with wild flowers.
My travelling companions were a group of schoolchildren, some peasant women dressed all in black, two priests and a moustachioed gentleman in a battered trilby. He offered me a drink of wine from his bottle, bowed, and disappeared at the next station, doffing his hat. I'd been on the Sicilian rails less than an hour and already I felt among friends.
Travel guide: Italy
In Sicily with the Roman bikini girls
From the Mail on Sunday
Sicilians consider themselves to be a different sort of Italian, and we all know what that means. Sicily, for instance, attracts a distinctly different type of tourist from the rest of Italy.
The elegant cliff-side pool of my Palermo hotel, with its built-in fragment of ancient Greek temple, was populated by a familiar variety of thickset American: burly, greying at the temples, invariably with an implausibly uplifted blonde in tow.
'Hey Mikey, my main man. Whaddya doin' here?' 'I'm in town to hook up with Fat Tony. Louie and the boys are flying in from Chicago tonight to see to Santorini, y'knowwhaddamean?' What did he mean? Perhaps he and his friends were simply interested in the finer points of Doric architecture.
That's the way it goes in Sicily: fragments of the old contrasting with the brash and new. But what fragments. Long before the Romans, Sicily was Greek, the land of Archimedes and Dionysus, and the Greek legacy survives in a series of stunning set-pieces.
There are mighty temples to rival the Parthenon in the hills at Segesta, by the sea at Selinunte (sacked by the Carthaginians in the 5th century BC, the ruins still piled high) and on a ridge below the town of Agrigento. The latter, a complex of huge temples several miles across, is Sicily's most famous site, but I preferred the other two.
Agrigento's temples are fenced off from the tourist hordes, with the traditional competing irritations of ice-cream vans, over-flowing bins, wasps and traffic. Segesta and Selinunte have rural charm, and you can clamber over the remains of a civilisation two-and-a-half millennia old to your heart's content.
The Romans are remembered in Sicily though, thanks to Piazza Armerina, the palatial home of the Emperor Maximianus, who ruled in tandem with Diocletian in the 3rd century. The walls and roof were swept away in a medieval mudslide, but the mud preserved the most outstanding collection of Roman mosaics anywhere, which remained invisible until the Fifties.
Here, countless millions of tiny coloured tiles illuminate an area 3,500 square yards across. There are vibrant scenes of 3rd century Roman life, with clear contemporary echoes. Ten girls in skimpy bikinis play ball and work out with weights in a gym. Huntsmen follow the hounds in pursuit of a fox. Lions and elephants are brought from Africa to be displayed in the circus. Crowds roar on racers in the national stadium. A half-dressed young couple embrace.
There can be few places so guaranteed to create both a feeling of empathy with our ancestors and a sense of our own mortality.
Travel guide: Italy
From Don 'til Dusk
From the Daily Mail
When we arrived at Bar Eden in the central square of Forza d'Agro, high in the eastern Sicilian hills, it was eerily quiet. Barely a soul stirred in the mid-afternoon heat.
There was not much to the place: just a few tables, a mute television set and an impassive bartender.
But there, hanging on one wall, was a set of black and white photographs taken 30 years ago, each depicting scenes from the filming of The Godfather movie in this remote village.
One picture had a youthful Al Pacino marching through the square; another had the director, Francis Ford Coppola, playing the tuba.
Coppola's masterpiece about the Corleones - an Italian-American mafia family - used a number of locations on the island.
It was easy to see why Forza d'Agro had been one of them.
With its winding, cobbled streets, its astonishing views of the Mediterranean, its ruined castle and ornate church, it perfectly evoked the rich beauty and sense of the past which so infuses the island.
'What makes this beautiful country so violent?' Anthony Corleone asked of his father Michael, the character played by Al Pacino, when they are in Sicily. 'History,' replied Michael.
The island's long history of oppression and occupation has created a culture which still views outsiders with suspicion.
It is a place where Anglo-Saxon expectations seem naive.
Timetables, directions and traffic regulations - all so necessary to tourists - can be confusing because, to Sicilians, they are transient.
Travel guide: Italy
Doctor in the villa
After five years of filming the House Doctor television series in Britain, I understand why people here are forever going on holiday.
It's called survival. Coming from California and Mexico, I took blue sky and sunshine for granted. But not any longer.
Deciding where to go is an interesting process. I tend to steer clear of packaged trips, but when I was presented with the option of a week in a villa in Sicily, I began some research.
I learned that Sicily is the largest island in the Mediterranean (translate to miles of beautiful coastline), has an incredible history which includes Phoenicians, Greeks, Romans, Muslims and a brief period of British rule (translate to incredible architectural and cultural mix) and that the weather is almost guaranteed to be perfect at this time of year.
Then I received an e-mail from UK agency Tuscany Now, with information and photos of the villa.
The word villa can have many meanings, but this was the real thing.
Torre Castelvetrano, a 250-year-old olive 'fattoria' in the district of Trapani, beautifully restored, surrounded by olive groves and orchards, with a lake and swimming pool.
Within days, my partner Timothy and I were zooming down the autostrada in our hire car, heading for Castelvetrano.
Its outskirts were uninspiring, to say the least - row upon row of bland shops and houses.
But as we rounded the corner we gasped. Surrounded by lush countryside and flanked by two palms, a magnificent stone tower gleamed in the sun. Was it possible this storybook vision was our home for the week?
Travel guide: Italy
Size doesn't matter in San Marino
As a lad of six or seven 30-odd years ago, I was the proud owner of a big red stamp album.
It had pages for every country in Europe and was soon filled with stamps from every corner of the continent - Greece, Portugal, even Romania and Poland.
But one page remained blank. No one ever seemed to visit the Republic of San Marino - a country as mysterious and elusive as Tibet.
It wasn't until last month that I finally received a card from San Marino. And, to my surprise, I got a tingle of excitement when I saw its colourful, shiny stamp.
For if this strange little country is known for anything, it's for stamps.
Philatelists used to go wild about these highly-prized rarities, even if they had no idea where to find San Marino on the map.
It lies 50 miles to the east of Florence - a pinprick of a state that has been independent for 1,701 years.
Founded by a solitary monk called St Marino in 301 AD, it is the oldest republic in the world.
It must also be one of the smallest. So small that its annual Grand Prix has to be held at Imola in neighbouring Italy.
Being just eight miles across at its widest point, and served by neither an airport nor a railway, it'll take the best part of half-an-hour to do a complete circuit of San Marino's borders.
Allow a further 15 minutes if you wish to visit the post office.
Travel guide: Italy
Rome isn't seen in a day
Turning out a cupboard recently, I came across an old diary, an account I'd written of falling in love with Rome. Just 19, I had escaped for a week from a grim university gap-year job. After the rigours of teaching in Switzerland, arriving in Rome was like falling into a champagne bubble bath.
I bought frivolous clothes in the Via Condotti (a linen dress for not much more than £1!); hammered the sights, fending off lascivious postcard vendors; watched incomprehensible Italian films; and discovered, to me, the brand new joys of pizza and mozzarella.
I seem to have remembered bits of Julius Caesar in the Forum and to have coped with Roman buses: 'You have to battle your way to the door at least two stops ahead, shrieking "Permesso" and sticking your elbow into people's chests while treading on their toes.' An English boarding school education had clearly not been entirely wasted.
Rome had had much the same effect on my husband, who first visited the city as a student. Last month we decided to make the most of a long weekend and head back together.
But first we took a vow. To imagine that you could do Rome in one weekend would be sheer folly. Pavement pounding was out. Instead, we would spoil ourselves. We would stroll in the late autumn sunshine, each choosing one or two favourite places to revisit. We would eat good, carefully chosen meals. We would take taxis if we felt like it. And if the Via Condotti designers' alley proved short of £1 dresses, at least we could enjoy window-shopping.
Travel guide: Italy
In search of La Dolce Vita
From the Daily Mail
He was about 6ft 2in, olive skin, dark, slicked-back hair, chiselled features. The tan was perfect, and he wore a swagger as insolent as his perfectly cut denim outfit.
The wraparound shades were Gucci, the designer stubble topiarised.
If all the Romans looked as cool as the airport baggage handler, this place was going to live up to my expectations.
I reviewed those expectations as I made my way from the airport to the beautiful hotel, driven in a stylish car by a handsome driver past transcendental classical ruins.
They centred around adolescent viewings of Fellini's 1960 classic, La Dolce Vita. Featuring Marcello Mastroianni as a louche, sexy journalist and Anita Ekberg as a pouting, memorably top-heavy movie star, it portrayed Rome as the apex of cool elegance and bohemian glamour.
With this in mind, on arrival, my partner and I immediately headed for the Trevi Fountain, where Anita had famously cavorted with Marcello beneath the rearing sea horses.
The journey took us down the equally famous Spanish Steps, virtually invisible beneath a gaudy, screeching carpet of tourists, Euro-students and backpackers.
An immaculately dressed woman walked past holding a pollution mask to her face.
German tramps and punks with dogs on ropes appealed harshly for surplus euros.
The route took us past McDonald's, Pizza Hut and, tentatively, across several main roads, which almost cost us our lives.
At least the legendary and permanent recklessness of Roman drivers hadn't changed since the Sixties.
Travel guide: Italy
Rome's darkest age
From the Mail on Sunday
We were 50 feet beneath the earth in catacombs off the Appian Way, looking at a small stone coffin a few feet away in the gloom.
Some 1,700 years before, St Sebastian - the one you see portrayed pierced by arrows - was originally laid to rest in this casket, not far from where the bodies of the disciples, Peter and Paul, were secreted briefly during an imperial persecution.
So where was he now? The archaeological guide pointed directly upwards, to the altar high above us at ground level in the baroque basilica. 'I can assure you,' she said firmly, 'that the bones that were here are the ones that are there, right over our heads.' The cheery African nun by my side gasped, and made it clear she thought it was time to head for the light of day.
Rome's dark corners have that effect on you. Out of nowhere you feel yourself touched by the heady blast of history. The Eternal City is full of stories, as befits somewhere continuously inhabited for almost three millennia.
Tales of early martyrs, and the vivid signs of their lives which we can see and touch today, often take a back seat to Rome's glitzier attractions.
It's a shame. There are characters here that make Hannibal Lecter look like Bob the Builder . . . and you find them in the most unexpected of places.
The Arch of Constantine, a wonderful piece of triumphant architecture by the Colosseum, is a good starting point for a black tour of Rome.
In the 4th Century Constantine turned pagan Rome over to Christianity and paved the way for the power of the Catholic Church. He built the first basilica to honour St Peter. His mother, Helena, visited the Holy Land, supposedly bringing back fragments of the true cross and staircase which Jesus climbed in Pilate's house, both of which can still be seen.
So why is one of the fathers of the modern church who founded Istanbul as his own capital, Christian Constantinople, hardly known today? Because Constantine was also a brutal human being who had his son executed, probably for little reason, and ordered his wife to be smothered to death in her baths. Apparently he was unfailingly kind to Christians though - more than can be said of his pagan predecessor Valerian.
Walk from the Colosseum to the stone boat which marks the entrance to the park of Villa Celimontana and you begin the most shocking martyr's journeys in the world.
Travel guide: Italy
A slice of history
Rome is like a big cake with all its mouth-watering layers of history. The Colosseum, where the real gladiators slogged it out, is awesome and the Forum is fascinating. We loved the spooky catacombs, too.
Everywhere you go in Rome, you're falling over bits of its magnificent past.
The Vatican is impressive, but no sign of the Pope. You can't go into St Peter's unless you're well covered up, so I went in with a cardigan on, but my boyfriend in shorts had to stay outside. The Sistine chapel was crowded, but it's a must-see, so we gritted our teeth.
We got a bit history-ed out after a while - like eating too much cake, really.
We found eating out was pricey - even a cup of coffee is expensive, especially in more fashionable pavement cafes. But as our feet were killing us, we splashed out around £3 for a cappuccino, a long sit down and people-watching session.
Travel guide: Italy
A Magnificent Roman holiday
From the Mail on Sunday
As we stagger, dripping, into Piazza Navona, it is dusk and the black cobbles look damp with perspiration. The ancient buildings, their facades washed in wonderful shades of orange, ochre and red, appear to be sagging in the heat.
I am carrying my two-year-old daughter on my shoulders and her ice cream is dripping on my head. We were warned that we should on no account come to Rome in August. But we have. And we're loving every minute of it.
It must be the most monumental city on earth. The ancient emperors left their great columns and arches. The popes turned the place into a gigantic religious stage-set, while 19th-century planners and Mussolini, that failed heir of the Caesars, added grand avenues and monstrous constructions, like the marble monument to King Victor Emmanuel, which seem to have no purpose other than to overwhelm with their sheer scale and splendour.
Everywhere you're reminded that you're in the home of one of the great religions, a place that was for eons the centre of Western civilisation. But you don't have to go into every church and every palace. You don't have to go into any of them. The mere fact that they're there gives the place an atmosphere that is like nowhere else.
I first visited in 1973, on a Three Cities In Seven Days air-and-coach tour, with my mother and sister. Each city seemed more amazing than the last and, after the canals of Venice and the quaint lanes of Florence, everything about Rome was epic and Biblically enormous: the Colosseum, the great basilica of St Peter's. Yet the climate of the place was tropical, sensual, romantic.
To my 16-year-old mind, full of Pink Floyd and bad poetry, there was only one word for it - cosmic! I remember wandering off from our party one night, getting lost by some palace gardens and a man on a moped giving me a lift back to civilisation along boulevards lined with glittering cafes straight out of La Dolce Vita.
Our hotel was miles out in the suburbs and I remember catching a bus back there one day, staring at three local girls, who all stared back with the biggest, deepest, darkest eyes I'd ever seen, as the bus careered around the hillsides, with the Eternal City spread out in a white haze below.
Travel guide: Italy
My Italian job
From the Mail on Sunday
To be perfectly frank, I hadn't the foggiest idea where Ravello was when I took off for a weekend to Naples, picked up a rented car and headed south down the coast. And fog was certainly the last thing I expected.
We drove up to the mountain summit of touristic excellence through a thick, swirling, zuppa di piselli of a mountain mist. Headlights flickered.
From time to time, we interrupted our painful upward process to slew into the not-quite-distinct-enough roadside, as another driver came whacking out of the gloom, mostly from behind, overtaking on double hairpin uphill tracks in an utter white-out.
Life in southern Italy is obviously so monstrously enjoyable, any risk is worthwhile to live it. The bellboy who showed us our room gestured to the blank white window.
'Just like London,' he said. Ravello, I discovered the next morning, as obscurity wafted away under a weak morning sun, is perched high above a famous squiggly bit of the Mediterranean coast.
I recognised the general layout from the lurid murals on a restaurant wall in Old Compton Street. So there we are. It was just like London, but of course, in reality breathtakingly different.
Rocky escarpments, clothed in terraces of lemon orchards (the lemon trees themselves clothed in black netting, like citrus in mourning), dropped away from our window to an azure sea.
Teeny, fanciful villages and pretty little villas clung to their outcrops. They are painted lemon yellow and pink and ochre and look sweet enough to be edible.
Since the Romans first booked in with Tiberian Travel, the wealthy tourist has taken advantage of the picturesque jewel-like setting of this coast, but, as one might have expected, it is beginning to show.
Not, I hasten to add, in the quality of service or the delicate bounty of the well-appointed hotels. Our palazzo, in a little street of palazzos at the very top of the town, on the very top of the mountain, was a gothic wedding cake of white marble: a wipe-clean hotel for a sweaty day.
Travel guide: Italy
Where's the football?
We are sitting at a large wooden table on a stone jetty in Atrani, a small fishing village on the Amalfi coast, savouring the first real day of our Italian holiday.
Hot, hot sunshine, a pink linen tablecloth swishing in the breeze, above our heads blue unbroken sky, at our feet gently lapping sea. A bride and groom are emerging from the bargello-domed church on the next promontory. Rice, white satin, cameras snapping.
Down on the beach, our two boys, Raph and Jake - unable to believe their luck at finding a trickle of river flowing into the sea - are busy building a dam. 'We're trying to change the shape of Italy!' Jake yells, red faced from the exertion of heaving small boulders.
Our daughter Chloe, meanwhile, is trotting up and down, bringing me pieces of vase polished by the tide: satisfyingly smooth knobs of terracotta iced with blue or mauve.
We're staying in Ravello, an hour's walk from here - a place of cool, dignified shade and steep winding streets. We know it's an hour's walk because we've just done it. They tell us at reception that you can walk down via a 'stone staircase ... you just go 'giu, giu, giu [down, down, down]'.
It sounds like an adventure so we grab our sun hats and set off. At first, the steps seem a really convenient alternative to those precariously twisty coastal roads where buses - seemingly always getting stuck on the S-bends - honk and cars swerve furiously round.
Despite aching calf muscles, we continue down past olive and lemon trees, barking dogs, and chicken enclosures, through bracts of acid-bright euphorbia and fragrant wisteria.
At last, the path darkens and we're descending real stone streets, before tumbling into the welcome glare of the piazza. Old men gaze at us from dark tables. A dog runs in circles. The children scream at the sight of the sea. Jonathan and I agree that all we need now is a drink - and quickly. We're not even going to think about the journey back up.
As it turns out, by the end of the week we're quite used to hills. Ravello itself is built on nothing but. Even our hotel, the Villa Maria, is unreachable by car.
An elegant terracotta villa perched haughtily above the olive groves and gazing down its nose at the sea, it's a breathless six-minute walk up stone steps that bend and twist like a drawing by Escher.
Travel guide: Italy
Everyone's a winner
People often ask me whether, as a literary agent, I am influenced in my assessment of a manuscript by the mood I am in or by the circumstances in which I find myself while reading it.
I try not to be, but if I'm honest I would have to say that my level of enjoyment is enhanced by where I happen to be (and how I happen to feel) when I open the manuscript box and begin reading.
In the Eighties I represented the best-selling author Irving Wallace. When he announced he had completed a new novel, I would fly out to LA.
After a night at the Bel Air Hotel, I would be installed in the beautiful tropical garden of Irving's mansion, where a table had been set up with a perfectly typed manuscript and a fabulous lunch.
Sitting there, among the palm trees and tropical flowers, soaking up the California sunshine while London was in the middle of a grim winter, it would be hard not to love what I was reading!
Similarly, I remember reading (and loving) a new Iris Murdoch manuscript by the side of the swimming pool at the Cipriani Hotel in Venice.
Many otherwise boring plane rides to and from New York or LA have been considerably enhanced (and shortened) by the experience of reading, en route, a wonderful new book by one of my clients... currently Freddie Forsyth's marvellous new thriller Avenger, his first for eight years.
There was always a risk that I was stacking the deck in Michael Winner's favour when I decided to read the manuscript of his memoirs during a visit to a much-touted new hotel in Italy - the Masseria San Domenico.
I had never been to Puglia - the heel of the boot of Italy - despite often being urged to visit the area by knowledgable friends (like my client Lord McAlpine and his wife Athena, who have just bought an old monastery there and opened it as a bed and breakfast).
Those in the know about Italy insist that, unlike Tuscany and Umbria, Puglia is uncrowded and unspoiled. But until now I had resisted. Until, that is, I found a hotel there that suited my sybaritic tastes.
The Masseria San Domenico is built around a stunning 14th Century fortified farmhouse. Stark white stone buildings, housing wonderfully comfortable rooms, are interconnected by a series of arched passageways and spacious, open piazzas.
Travel guide: Italy
An Italian cliffhanger
From the Mail on Sunday
From where Virginia Cinque stood that sunny day in 1944, on a rocky road high above the Gulf of Salerno, all she could see from the Bay of Naples in the north to the Cilento hills in the south were warships. Hundreds of them.
There were American and British aircraft carriers, destroyers, cruisers, submarines, battleships and troop carriers in the biggest armada the Mediterranean has ever seen. Suddenly, coming around a bend towards her and her brother, was an open Jeep with a big white star on the bonnet and five GIs singing as if the War was a million miles away, and there wasn't an invasion fleet out there at all.
When the soldiers saw the two children hiding in a cave they stopped the Jeep and came over with chocolate bars. Virginia remembers it well. The little boy put his Hershey Bar to his mouth. A chocolate bar in Amalfi in 1944 was a very big deal. Even before a bite had been taken his big sister suddenly sprung forward, ripped it from his mouth and politely gave it back to the soldiers.
Until that moment the only soldiers the fishermen and their families in Positano had known were Germans, and by that stage of the War there was no love lost between the two allies. Mother had told Virginia never to take sweets from the Germans. These were soldiers in the Jeep, so to the little girl they must be Germans.
Virginia Cinque remembers the story as if it were yesterday. She is sitting on the spectacular terrace of the San Pietro hotel - with its extraordinary panorama of Positano, a vertical landscape of pink, cream and yellow villas that tumble like a waterfall 1,000ft from the corniche above, with views beyond the town to Ischia and Capri - laughing at the memory of her brother's face as the chocolate was snatched away and recalling how everything here got started. It's some story.
There was a time when the San Pietro was the centre of the celebrity universe. When Richard Burton was first romancing Liz Taylor, when Nureyev was as big as the Beatles, when Laurence Olivier was trying to patch up his marriage to Vivien Leigh, and Zeffirelli the hottest thing to come out of Italy since olive oil, this hotel was a campsite for the paparazzi. All the stars came here. It was one of those fabled playgrounds of the rich that defined the phrase jet set. Physically there had never been anywhere like it.
Travel guide: Italy
Bargain hunting in Portofino
From the Daily Mail
No-frills airlines Ryanair and Easy-Jet have suffered a spate of complaints lately, but at least they are helping to bring the fares down.
And British Airways has announced it will slash prices to more than 40 of its European destinations in an effort to win back traffic from its upstart low-cost rivals.
One of the destinations is Genoa - which means short breaks on the Italian Riviera have become more affordable.
From Genoa you can go west to the resorts near the French border or east to Sestri Levante and La Spezia.
But the best-preserved and most pleasant spot on the Italian Riviera is just 20 miles from Genoa's Christopher Columbus Airport - the Monte di Portofino, a rugged, luxuriant spur of land that stretches out into the deep blue Mediterranean.
At the tip of the peninsula is Portofino itself, a former fishing village that has become the Italian St Tropez, except smaller and much more exclusive.
During the summer, Portofino's tiny harbour is packed with multi-million-pound yachts.
On a hill above is the Hotel Splendido - the name sums it up - where standard double rooms can cost between £500-£600 a night.
Portofino consists of one street, the Via Roma, lined with expensive boutiques and art galleries, the harbour and a few narrow lanes.
It's very pretty and you can walk round it in 10 minutes, but frankly there's not that much to see.
Eventually you'll join everyone else in one of the cafes around the harbour, where you can eat out and watch the people on the yachts pretending not to notice the day-trippers staring at them.
It's fun for a while, but when you get the bill you'll realise just how expensive Portofino can be.
Travel guide: Italy
An Italian beauty
Ask any Italian about the island of Ponza and he'll say 'che bella, che bellissima' - how beautiful, how very beautiful! But he's unlikely to have been there.
This is all very typical of the Italians, a people utterly convinced that their country is the most beautiful in the world with the finest wines and most delicious cheeses.
Well, all these rave reviews of a place hardly anyone seemed to have actually visited made me incredibly curious to discover just what this tiny, mysterious Mediterranean resort is really like.
So when I recently planned a trip to Rome, the natural starting point for visiting the island, it was impossible to resist the urge to set aside a long weekend for a Ponza expedition.
And I have to say that I should never have doubted this bubbling Italian enthusiasm, for Ponza is not just stunning visually, surrounded by a crystal-clear turquoise sea, cheap to stay in and packed with excellent value trattorias serving the freshest fish imaginable, it is also one of those rare destinations that can honestly claim to be utterly unspoilt.
Unlike the far more famous islands on this part of the Italian coast such as Capri, Ponza is deserted most of the time, except in July and August, when it is invaded en masse by Italian families on their summer holidays and should be avoided.
Getting there is no easy task, which explains why it remains undiscovered, but as soon as the ferry sails into sight of the island's craggy white cliffs and pulls into a quiet harbour tightly encircled by whitewashed houses, you know the journey is worth the effort.
Although tourist brochures may tell you that a rapid hydrofoil service operates from either Rome or the historic port of Anzio to Ponza, half the time they don't actually leave because of choppy seas or a lack of passengers.
We set off for Anzio, which is certainly worth a visit with its excellent Second World War museum, but after wasting a day there waiting for the elusive hydrofoil to depart, we jumped on a train to Formia to catch the old-fashioned ferry, which always leaves on schedule.
There was time before the boat left to grab something to eat at the nearby waterside restaurant Zi'Anna.
Travel guide: Italy
The lean machine
The Leaning Tower of Pisa wins my vote as the perfect tourist attraction.
For a start, you know what you're getting: it's a tower, it leans, it's in Pisa. If only other places were so clearly labelled.
You know all you have to do is climb it and move on to the next place on your visiting list.
Unlike some tourist attractions that can eat up your whole day - the Great Wall of China might gobble up your entire holiday - the LTOP sounds as if it ought to be tackled in an hour.
I first visited it in 1988. It was a wet March day and the tower seemed to be overrun by the Italian equivalent of the Bash Street Kids: excitable, denim-clad youths hung from every floor, hollering down to their equally volatile chums below.
At the spot where Galileo is reckoned to have dropped weights to test his theories of gravity, these proto-louts were tossing down sweet papers and cigarette ends.
We decided to give the tower climb a miss. 'Let's leave it until next time.'
Within a couple of years, however, concern about the tower's progressive lean led to its closure. I had missed my chance - I might never be able to climb the tower.
This would have been a shame because I felt an affinity for this Tuscan tourist attraction, a bond forged in intense embarrassment.
When I was at primary school I confidently informed classmates that the building in question was the Leaning Tower of Pizza.
Yes, I insisted: the tower was located in the home of Italy's best-known meal.
I was adamant: the frankfurter came from Frankfurt; Bordeaux wine hailed from Bordeaux; and beefburgers originated in, er, Beefburg.
People believed me, until someone checked in Arthur Mee's Children's Encyclopedia or Look And Learn and smugly pointed out that I was a complete idiot.
It was Pisa - and, what's more, pizzas were invented in Naples.
Travel guide: Italy
A passion for more than pizza
From the Daily Mail
For those who think they know Italy, Palermo comes as something of a shock. The capital of Sicily, the Mediterranean island at the foot of the country, it's a brash city with an exuberant reputation. It's noisier, earthier and livelier than the cities of the Italian north, with a cultural mix that blends elements from an Arab, Norman and Spanish past.
Lining its narrow old-town streets and cobbled squares are Baroque churches, patched-up mansions, sculpted fountains and ornate Renaissance palaces. Food is an all-consuming passion, in riotous street markets, trattorias and ice-cream parlours. And with the pound at a favourable high against the lira, you'll be able to indulge yourself all weekend.
Scheduled flights are via Milan but, even so, a lunchtime departure from London Heathrow can have you in Palermo in time for a sundowner either in one of the city's bars, or overlooking the fine sandy beach at Mondello, just seven miles to the north.
ESSENTIAL INFORMATION
Do you need to worry about the Mafia? In a word, no, since Sicily's most famous export, organised crime, has little relevance for tourists. But Palermo does have a petty crime problem, so keep your wits and your wallet about you in crowds and at night. Leave jewellery in the hotel safe, carry shoulder bags slung across your body (as local women do) and hang on to your camera.
MY FIRST STOP?
Make a pilgrimage to the Antica Foccaceria San Francesco (Via Pater-nostro 58), Palermo's oldest traditional pizzeria, in business since 1834. Then cross the square for a homemade Sicilian ice cream.
AND THEN?
As long as you don't fly out on a Saturday, first stop next morning should be the exciting Vucciria market (closed on Sunday). Best buys? Dried herbs, preserved olives and chillies, porcelain pasta bowls, espresso cups stovetop coffeemakers. Snacks to avoid? Chopped boiled octopus and fried tripe sandwiches.
Wind through the city streets, ducking down alleys little changed in centuries. Pass the Piazza Pretoria and its Florentine fountain surrounded by nude statues, on your way to the serene church of La Martorana. Then on to the Cathedral and the Royal Palace, whose mosaics in its Palatina chapel (closes at noon on Saturday and 1pm on Sunday) are one of the city's artistic gems.
Travel guide: Italy
Italy on the quiet
Think northern Italy, then think art and architecture and two names leap to mind: Venice and Florence. Prime destinations for short breaks - but they are not the whole story.
Near them are towns and cities full of equally sublime Renaissance buildings and paintings, but less crammed with tourists. And the good news is that they are well served by the burgeoning no-frills airlines.
Italy is Europe's oldest holiday venue. From the 17th century it was part of the Grand Tour through Europe, where intrepid young British aristocrats would immerse themselves in culture.
No short breaks for them: the snail-like pace of travel meant they stayed away for a year or more.
Last autumn I spent two-and-a-half weeks tracing part of the route followed in 1613 by the architect Inigo Jones when he rode through Italy with his patron, the Earl of Arundel.
He was overawed by the villas, palazzos and churches built by Andrea Palladio and his contemporaries in the 16th century, harking back to the clean, classical designs of ancient Rome.
Returning to England, Inigo used Palladio's work as models for his own masterpieces, such as the Banqueting House in Whitehall, St Paul's Church in Covent Garden and the Queen's House in Greenwich.
The miracle is that so many of the buildings that inspired him are still standing and open to visitors.
He entered Italy from Switzerland across the St Gotthard pass. A museum at the top explains how his party would have had to load their belongings onto mules or pack-horses for the long climb up and down the steep, narrow path - parts of it still visible from the modern road.
From there, they rode across the Plain of Lombardy to Milan where, like today's visitors to northern Italy's principal city, they could have viewed that masterpiece of Renaissance art, Leonardo da Vinci's fresco of The Last Supper.
Painted on a refectory wall in the monastery of Santa Maria della Grazie, it has been wonderfully restored.
Travel guide: Italy
Treasures of the Amalfi peninsula
From the Daily Mail
As usual, we wanted to do everything at once. We wanted to see Pompeii, and Naples, and spend some time on the stunning Amalfi peninsula with its steep wooded mountains and painted cliff-edge towns falling down to the sea.
It should be possible to do all that in a week without spending a fortune, we thought airily.
'You're going to the Amalfi peninsula? So charming,' said friends, without telling us that the first problem would be finding somewhere so charming to lay our heads.
I had researched a list of the most promising Sorrento hotels but when I called them from Britain every one claimed to be fully booked, although it was nearly mid-September.
There are more than 100 hotels in Sorrento, yet this small town on the northern coast of the peninsula, facing Vesuvius across the Bay of Naples, sucks up some 600,000 visitors each year.
It might have been easier to find a base in Amalfi itself or Positano on the far side of the mountain range but every guidebook warns tourists not to drive in Naples if they value their sanity. People who don't want to see Naples and die are advised to approach it by rail, which is where Sorrento comes in.
A slow but delightful train called the Circumvesuviana begins in Sorrento and trundles round the Bay, through tunnels, over a gorge and then along the depressingly built-up coast between Vesuvius and the sea. It calls at Pompeii, Herculaneum and a dozen other stops until it arrives in the heart of Naples.
We took the bus from Naples airport to the one Sorrento hotel which had grudgingly admitted it could offer us accommodation for the first couple of days. (On our arrival, it offered us a room for as long as we wanted.) It had a balcony with a glorious view of the Bay, and the next day we took the train into Naples.
Lord Nelson described Naples as 'a country of fiddlers and poets, whores and scoundrels'. Certainly, it is noisy, dirty, flamboyant and full of energy. Smart shops and elegantly dressed signoras co-exist with an atmosphere of Third World poverty.
But the famous street life of Naples, in the centre at any rate, has been displaced by the traffic of small cars, motorbikes and scooters which pelt up the narrow cobbled lanes between tall palazzos and apartment blocks.
Travel guide: Italy
In pursuit of the perfect pizza
From the Daily Mail
Nine o'clock on a Wednesday night, and there I was on the street with a horde of Neapolitans patiently holding numbered tickets.
It was like trying to get into the most fashionable nightclub in town - but this was one of Naples's rougher quarters and we were queuing for pizza, not a party.
And the oddest thing about pizzeria Da Michele was that there were only two choices.
After an hour's wait (the norm, said those in the queue) I was in.
Within three minutes my margherita was steaming in front of me: sloppy, parchment-thin and the size of a bicycle wheel.
The challenge was on: I'd been told that unless I consumed it in three minutes, the mozzarella would turn rubbery, the crust cold and the tomato sauce tepid.
All around me people hacked, tore, folded and sliced at their margheritas (buffalo mozzarella, tomato, basil) and marinaras (tomato, garlic, oregano) while sweating staff fed the insatiable wood-fired oven with dough.
It was my sixth pizza in three days. I was flagging, but I was still learning.
Pizza has become the staple fast food of the western world.
But to a Neapolitan, the deep-pan base and its mish-mash of greedy toppings (ham and pineapple; bacon and egg) are a travesty.
Here in Naples where it all began, pizza must be thin, soft and sloppy, of huge circumference and delicately topped - then cooked in a wood-fired oven.
Travel guide: Italy
Where are all the Romeos?
How far will a woman travel to meet a man? The local wine bar? Singles' night at Safeway?
The self-help romance guides say it's the man's job to come to you. But a girl can't kick her heels all day waiting for that to happen, so my friend Nicola and I went to Milan.
Of course, it's possible that singles' night at Safeway is buzzing with chivalrous, olive-skinned, rippling-thighed, designer-suited Lotharios, but somehow Northern Italy seemed more promising.
After a bleak winter, a girl can't help daydreaming about sunshine, cocktails and Italian footballer Alessandro del Piero - or, at the very least, his cut-price equivalents, who seem to stand at every Italian bar and loiter on every Italian street corner.
The great thing about Italians is that the men seem to fancy every girl they meet - especially at night, when they're wearing sunglasses and can't see a thing. Perfect if you're having a bad hair day or are bulging out of your size 10 dress.
We took the train, which is so much more romantic than flying. It's very difficult to flirt when you're wedged into an aeroplane seat trying to keep down your Chicken Supreme during turbulence.
There is an overnight sleeper but we chose the daytime journey (starting on Eurostar at 5.15am, to arrive by dusk) so as to appreciate the long, sexy, undulating trip through the Alps.
We were barely out of Paris on the connecting train before a gaggle of gorgeous French skiers had stopped us in the buffet car with the challenge: 'I bet I can touch your bottom without touching your trousers.'
After the bumbling shyness of your average British chap, this was an impressively direct approach.
At home, guys take a fortnight just to ask you for a drink - and even then they only sit you down in the pub and talk about football. Nevertheless, we weren't looking for Frenchmen.
Travel guide: Italy
The elan of Milan
From the Mail on Sunday
When I was 14 I made my parents take a massive detour on the drive to our campsite in the South of France. The family's Morris Traveller was forced across the Alps to Italy so I could make a pilgrimage to Milan.
Was I intending to pay homage to Leonardo da Vinci's Last Supper in the Cenacolo Vinciano at the Santa Maria delle Grazie church? Not really.
Had I been lured by the outstanding late Gothic splendours of the Duomo? Late Gothic what?
Was I keen to inspect the city's burgeoning fashion business which was already nurturing the likes of Gucci? Gucci? I bought my hipsters at the Co-op.
No, the object of my devotion was San Siro stadium, home ground of Inter Milan.
I was a faithful subscriber to Football Monthly magazine which, at the end of the Sixties, would wax lyrical on the arcane subject of sweepers and catenaccio defences. The Inter defender Giacinto Facchetti was a god and San Siro was where he had to be worshipped.
We parked our car at the stadium and I simply wandered in, unchallenged, to stroll around the hallowed turf and gaze in awe at the huge banks of terraces (in its heyday San Siro had a capacity of 150,000). It was a profound and mystical moment.
While San Siro was a treat, the rest of Milan, in comparison, struck my teenaged eyes as rather insipid - an Italian equivalent of Manchester (which equally had a devotion to football and a similarly unimpressive urban landscape).
We must have seen the Duomo, the famous Galleria and La Scala opera house, but they made little impression.
Ah, the blindness of youth. I know now that Milan is a jewel of a city - even if 40 years ago it was a diamond in the rough.
Like Manchester, Milan has robustly reinvented itself over the past 20 years (the San Siro stadium, for example, was dramatically modernised for the 1990 World Cup).
Travel guide: Italy
Shopping in Milan
From the Daily Mail
On the back of my travel pass, in tiny English print, came the rather strange warning: 'Valid for 24 hours after the obliteration.'
'Perhaps it's for the Tram Riders of the Apocalypse,' said my Italian friend, Lorenza, as we boarded an old-fashioned streetcar, duly 'obliterated' our passes in the franking machine and rattled off towards the centre of Milan for some serious Christmas shopping. It seemed quaint to be heading for the vortex of European fashion and design aboard such an incongruous mode of transport. Polished, slatted wooden benches ran along the sides and picture windows offered a fine view.
The route was lined with sleek, modern shop fronts and grand old buildings - some in sandstone, others in genteelly fading yellow ochre. The odd medieval wall, Roman ruin or ancient dome poked out between facades.
Lorenza had lured me to Milan on the promise that I'd be able to get all my Christmas shopping in one go. She doesn't know my Uncle Jim. Anywhere that can come up with a gift he hasn't got, has some use for and doesn't consider a waste of money is a top shopping city in my book. I decided to give it a go.
First stop was the Piazza del Duomo, a huge city square in front of Milan's magnificent cathedral, a multi-steepled extravaganza so big that on a clear day you can see it from the Alps. Next door to this cluster of saint-topped spires is the Galleria Vittorio Emanuele, a majestic crucifix-shaped arcade, built in 1878 and crowned with an arched glass roof. The walls are lined with carvings and sumptuous plaster decoration, the floors a kaleidoscope of coloured marble.
Even though McDonald's and Burger King have crept in, the Galleria is still home to some of Milan's finest shops. I managed to pick up a couple of smart silk scarves and tasteful ties for relatives less demanding than Uncle Jim.
'The architect fell from the roof and died the day before the Galleria was opened,' Lorenza informed me, ever helpful on the local lore front. Under a gigantic glass dome in the arcade's centre is a floor mosaic of zodiac signs. 'It's good luck to stand on Taurus's testicles,' she continued, as we headed for Borsalino's where I could try a Bogart-style hat.
Travel guide: Italy
Milan, the masterpiece
From the Daily Mail
Milan, Europe's fashion capital, is also home to one of the world's most celebrated artistic works, Leonardo da Vinci's hugely influential fresco The Last Supper. As for the rest of the city - Renaissance art and churches, an eye-catching cathedral and shopping (or at least window-shopping) are beyond compare. The flight from London lasts just two hours, so a couple of nights gives time to see the sights.
MY FIRST STOP
If the Last Supper is to be your first stop, plan ahead. It's at the church of Santa Maria delle Grazie but despite the long opening hours, booking is essential. It's preferable to do this before you leave home (from the UK: 00-39-02-8942 1146) or the minute you arrive in Milan (call: 199 199 100). You'll be allocated a visiting time: go to the church to pay at least 30 minutes before your actual visit, which is limited to 15 minutes.
AND THEN?
If you don't get to see the Last Supper, all is not lost. Da Vinci's statue sits outside Milan's other great cultural draw, La Scala opera house. Tickets for performances are equally hard to come by but the costumes and exhibits in the Scala museum are some compensation. Art buffs shouldn't miss the Pinacoteca di Brera, Milan's best art gallery though its one da Vinci painting is not on general display. You'll have better luck at the Pinacoteca Ambrosiana, which displays da Vinci's Portrait Of A Musician. All galleries and museums are closed on Mondays.
Travel guide: Italy
Go shopping-mad in Milan
From the Daily Mail
A few weeks ago I bought some high-fashion shoes. When I got them home, I looked at the chunky, wedge shape and the squared-off toes and realised they were ridiculous. So I flung them to the back of my wardrobe and forgot about them.
The day before our weekend break to Milan, however, they'd been placed on top of my suitcase by the wife.
Everyone in Milan, she said, would be wearing absurd shoes, it being the fashion capital of Europe.
Fashion is booming, eating up more space in newspapers, and Milan is booming accordingly. This was the reason my wife wanted to go there.
On the plane, everyone had square-toed shoes and most passengers were experimenting with strange styles of collars, tinted sunglasses and so on.
Many of the women seemed to be fashion models, judging by the way they were so thin, and so ill-looking.
The superbly dressed young woman next to me enjoyed an in-flight lunch of two sips of white wine and three mouthfuls of a vegetarian concoction.
In between watching her eat - or not eat - I read my guide book to Milan.
It was not promising. As well as very fashionable, it seemed, Milan was also expensive and posey.
At one restaurant, the book promised, you could 'sip over-priced drinks among the designer-dressed clientele'.
Another restaurant was commended in some respects, 'though the prices are extortionate'.
Travel guide: Italy
A Ferrari cry from the Renaissance crowds
From the Mail on Sunday
If you're a fan of Italian culture, history and architecture, you'd be very disappointed in the village of Maranello. There are no crumbling palaces, Renaissance churches or museums crammed with art. There isn't even a colour-washed castle on a hilltop surrounded by vineyards. It must be Italy's least likely tourist attraction.
Yet this nondescript modern village has become one of Italy's most visited spots. Tourists arrive from all over the world. And it's all because of one thing - its car factory.
The tiny Italian company, Ferrari, may not sell many of its exotic and expensive sports cars, but it is reckoned to be the world's best-known trademark (after Coca-Cola). Combine that with a successful Formula One team featuring Michael Schumacher and you have a recipe that brings car enthusiasts from every corner of the world.
Ferrari's 'tifosi', or nutty enthusiasts to you and me, are clearly obsessed. They sleep outside the Maranello factory gates, spend days in the hedge overlooking the vehicle test track or clamber on top of lorries to peer over the factory wall. But the name Ferrari is big enough to lure ordinary tourists to the village too.
They may be seeking a day out with a difference after being overloaded with history and culture. Or perhaps he needs something to do while she spends a day shopping in the boutiques of Milan or Bologna. Whatever, more than a quarter of a million visitors are expected in Maranello village this year - and many of them are from Britain.
What is there to do there? I visited to see what Maranello offers someone who is moderately interested in cars. Would I see Schumacher strolling around? I was secretly hoping that, having gone all the way to Northern Italy, I'd get to drive a Ferrari. There's certainly not much chance of me ever buying a Ferrari back home. Even secondhand, they cost more than my house.
Hiring one in Italy is even more difficult. Ferrari disapproves of its motoring status symbols being available to any Tom, Dick and Luigi who walks into a rental office. I found only one operator prepared to hire to tourists. The Italian Connection offers rental Lamborghinis, Bugattis or Ferraris from a base in Genoa. The awkward details are that if the car is stolen you must pay 20 per cent of its value - at least £25,000.
A humble Ferrari 348 cost £522 a day, while a top F40 cost £1,841 a day or £11,049 a week. So, naturally, I collected a rented Seat Cordoba estate at Bologna airport. I wasn't going to make the tifosi gasp, but at least my life savings were intact.
Travel guide: Italy
Where the sands of time slip away
From the Daily Mail
At Mandas one does nothing. At Mandas one goes to bed when it is dark, like a chicken. At Mandas one walks down the road like a pig that is going nowhere. Or so one desperately disgruntled resident told the writer D. H. Lawrence back in the Twenties. Little has changed.
Like Lawrence, I was in Mandas to catch a train, the Trenino Verde (Little Green Train) - a narrow-gauge midget that puffs (it really does puff, pulled by an ageing steam engine) through Sardinia's wild, mountainous interior to Arbatax on the coast.
Mandas was very, very quiet. Not so much sleepy as completely comatose. Granted it was Sunday and edging towards siesta time, but I had been hoping to pick up a picnic for the journey. Not even the chance of a packet of crisps, it seemed.
Under a tree in the town centre sat the row of old men that seem standard issue in Sardinian villages. Tweedledum, Tweedledee and Tweedleditto, sucking on their moustaches and staring at me glumly. Beside them were an English couple tucking in to a packed lunch from the Hotel La Bitta in Arbatax. They'd caught the morning train to Mandas, and were returning that afternoon. A far more sensible arrangement, I thought hungrily.
We met up again on the station platform. The only other passengers were an old Italian couple, a local farmer, and a Dutchman whose partner was driving on to meet him a couple of miles up the track. Disappointingly, the steam engine was out of service, so we were to be pulled by a chugging little diesel, just like the one I whizzed around a toy train track as a child.
Only four or five trains a day pass through Mandas. The station staff bustled about, happy at last to have something to do. They almost outnumbered the passengers. One engineer carefully used a different pair of gloves for each of his tasks. Thick greasy ones to couple the train to its single carriage and to test the brakes, bright orange rubber ones to fill the water tank, and a pristine white pair worn underneath the others.
The train gave a Toytown toot-toot and, with an equally storybook tik-ah-ca-tick, trundled out of Mandas into the surrounding farmland. 'Sit on the right hand side,' the old Italian man advised. 'Much better views.'
We passed vineyards and vegetable fields, and went over level crossings with bells ringing wildly. Often the conductor would shout out a greeting to a crossing attendant, or ask after family. A succession of tiny stations went by. At Sadali the driver dropped off a parcel for a friend of his wife's. Near Villanova we had to slow down and toot to get goats off the track.
Travel guide: Italy
Lucca charms in rainy Tuscany
Lucca is the perfect place for a short break - even when it's pouring. 'Dogs and cats it is raining,' said the man behind the desk at the Hotel Ilaria. 'This is how you say it in England, yes?'
Tuscany's most handsome town is clearly no stranger to inclement weather because the hotel had a large pot filled with brollies for guests' use.
By the time we reached the thick red city walls, however, the rain had passed, giving way to blue skies. The walls still circle Lucca's old centre - you can walk or cycle them along an uninterrupted path that runs for two and a half miles.
The walk becomes addictive, we did it morning and evening, rain or shine. Ten years ago, barely anyone had heard of Lucca. Now it's the big new attraction for British people looking for a second home in Chiantishire.
It's not hard to see what draws them: Lucca is everyone's dream Italian town. The walled city is packed with great bars and restaurants and wonderful shops.
After you've done the circuit of the walls, you can easily spend another couple of hours strolling the narrow streets, most of them pedestrianised.
And, unlike most Tuscan towns which cling to some hill top, Lucca is as flat as an Italian pancake. The locals usually get around on bikes, which isn't something you generally see in Italy.
Never mind a weekend, I could have happily spent a week bumbling around the town. There's much to see: a Puccini museum in the house where the composer of La Boheme and Tosca was born; San Martino, a wonderful 11th Century cathedral, and the famous Anfiteatro Romano - the square where the Roman amphitheatre once stood but which is now the Piazza Mercato.
However, I needed to satisfy a hankering to see the seaside village of Gombo. It's Tony Blair's fault we have never managed to get there. When we first visited Lucca three years ago, we set off one Sunday morning to find the seaside village - about 30 minutes' drive away - where the body of the poet Shelley was washed ashore in 1822 after his boat sank during a storm.
His body was cremated on the beach. His heart, however, wouldn't burn; this was kept wrapped in a page of Keats's poetry and given to Shelley's wife Mary (the author of Frankenstein, funnily enough).
Mary Shelley took the heart with her wherever she went after that. (I'd like to have seen the security people at Gatwick dealing with that particular piece of carry-on baggage.)
We were keen to see the Shelley monument on the beach. This is why one goes on holiday, after all, to look at monuments. But when we got to the San Rossore 'environmental park', which you have to pass through to reach Gombo, the police had closed off the access road.
Tony Blair was taking his summer holidays in a villa in the park - definitely no admission.
Travel guide: Italy
Lucca round you
From the Mail on Sunday
Approaching the old Tuscan city of Lucca the first thing you notice is the walls. It is impossible not to notice them. From whichever direction you are coming, this cliff of age-darkened red brick looms up before you, about 40ft tall, running unbroken for nearly three miles around the city.
The walls of Lucca took 100 years and an estimated six million bricks to build. They were completed in 1650, bristling with fortified ramparts and cannons, and were never once tested by real aggressors thereafter.
Opinions are divided as to whether this means they were a brilliant deterrent or a complete waste of money. Some Lucchesi jokingly pretend to the latter view - they have a reputation among Italians for stinginess - but in reality Lucca without its walls is unimaginable.
Originally there were just three gates. The Porta San Pietro to the south - with its snarling lions and the city's one-word motto, Libertas, carved in capitals above the arch - was, in effect, the city's front gate. All visitors had to pass through here.
The Porta Santa Maria to the north was the backgate, smaller and less formal, giving on to the old artisan quarter of Borgo Giannotti and the banks of the Serchio river beyond. The Porta San Donato looked west towards the coast of Versilia. The Mediterranean is only 15 miles away, though the city has an inland feel.
Three more traffic gates have since been added and there are some dank, twisty passages giving access by foot. Entering by one or other of these routes, you are in the historic centre of Lucca - 'Lucca dentro' as opposed to 'Lucca fuori' - which is home to about a tenth of the city's population of 100,000.
Immediately the forbidding walls take on another identity entirely. All around the top of them runs an avenue shaded by limes, ilex and plane trees. This traffic-free boulevard is both a useful way of getting about town and a perfect place for cycling, jogging, rollerblading or, above all, the people-watching stroll of the passeggiata, which can be taken at any time of the day but which is religiously observed at the hour before sunset.
It is somehow typical of this subtle-minded town that the military requirements of the past have been transformed into this splendid civic amenity. The walls are Lucca's park, with an ever-changing view of rooftops and Romanesque bell-towers within, and a skyline of wooded hills and rugged mountains beyond. Though stunningly beautiful in places, the old centre of Lucca is certainly not a picture postcard for the tourist.
It is a living, working town, with a bustle of commerce and an abundance of small, family-run food stores, hardware shops, bars and restaurants. Traffic is light within the walls, but has not - wisely in my view - been eliminated altogether. The relative tranquillity of the city has attracted Italians from all over the country. Lucca is 'vivibile' (liveable), says Claudio de Cicco, a Roman hairdresser now settled and married here.
It is not too big and not too small. But he finds it also frustratingly slow and resistant to change. 'Everything is covered with mould here,' he says. For all its Italian flair, Lucca is at heart staid and provincial: a market town. The businessmen wear smartly waxed Barbours, the local football team languishes in the lower reaches of Serie B and the burger chains that are sprouting everywhere in Italy have yet to find fertile ground here.
Travel guide: Italy
Jewel in the crown of Tuscany
From the Daily Mail
Oh no,' I thought. 'Not Andrew Lloyd Webber.' I was in Lucca, jewel in the crown of Tuscany and one of the loveliest towns in all Italy, when his music stole up on me like a thief in the night.
'Don't cry for me, Marge and Tina ...' The accent was excruciating, the voice like the death throes of a hyena, but there was no mistaking the composer. 'The truth is... I never left you!' It was like turning on the television in Los Angeles and seeing a close-up of Delia Smith whisking egg whites.
The hyena, it transpired, was dying on a specially erected stage beside the ducal palace, watched by a small audience of passers-by. A band played in the background. Two policemen with cigarettes in their mouths tapped their feet in time with the music. The show was part of some seasonal festivities, and if the choice of music seemed heretical in the birthplace of Puccini, it was also symptomatic of a cosmopolitan town that has shaken off some of the cobwebs of its historic past.
Not so long ago, Lucca was strictly for culture buffs. One stopped there en route from Florence to Pisa, ticked off the cathedral and the church of San Michele, and left it at that. Even its famous walls were too good to be true. They were built as fortifications during the Renaissance, but nobody bothered to attack the town so they remained intact, giving Lucca more the look of a stage set than a working community.
But you could not say the same of modern Lucca. Dying hyenas apart, it was throbbing with life. Every cafe overflowed and every street was jampacked with shoppers. There was real excitement in the air. Romeos roamed the streets like feral cats. Juliets loitered in doorways, adjusting their make-up. It was like a 24-hour party, with the whole town joining in.
Travel guide: Italy
Treated to the sound of silence
The shrine to Italy's greatest composer is not in the great cultural centres of Florence, Venice or Rome, but in an ordinary-looking block of flats in Lucca, a smallish city that is about 45 minutes by train from Pisa.
Born in 1858, Giacomo Puccini grew up and was taught music by his parents in the stuffy apartment at 30 Via di Poggio.
His former home is now a museum and is brimful of his love letters, scores and pianos.
This local-boy-made-good remains a national hero despite having died nearly a century ago: almost every Italian can whistle a tune or two from his operas, which include Tosca, Madame Butterfly and La Boheme.
Like Puccini, Luccans are stylish, energetic and affluent people who have carved a niche for the city as the most popular place in Tuscany for music, dance and film festivals.
Some piazzas become open-air cinemas during the summer, others a stage, but its main one, Piazza Napoleone, is regularly transformed into a mini stadium for pop concerts. Recently, David Bowie and Oasis played there.
Lucca's more traditional attractions include the main church (Duomo) on the Piazza St Martini and the black-and-white marble church of St Michel in Foro.
My wife Katy and I also scaled the city's famous 100m tree-topped tower (Torre Guinigi), where the city can be seen in panorama.
On holiday, I prefer hanging out in cafes, while she is obsessed with buying clothes. So, in a spirit of compromise, we ended up walking slowly down the main shopping drag, Via Fillungo, arriving in the Piazza Antiteatro for several scoops of the artery-thickening ice-cream served there all day.
Piazza Antiteatro is a pretty, circular open space that used to be the city's Roman amphitheatre.
But best of all, it is cut off from the noise of the main shopping streets and its walls contain several workshops for the city's musical instrument makers.
Travel guide: Italy
Great for novice skiers
For skiing virgins Italy's Cavalese proves a great place to start.
Reached via a heart-in-mouth trip along ribbon-thin roads in the Dolomites, it is one of 10 pretty resorts that make up the picturesque Val di Fiemme.
With 40 miles of piste, the surrounding Alpe Cermis mountains offer a handful of gentle nursery slopes for the new and nervy, and some tantalising blue, red and black runs for the brave, though this isn't really a resort for advanced skiers.
For someone who can't carry a cup of tea into the room without getting it on the ceiling, the instructors for the learn-to-ski group had their work cut out.
But a three-hour introductory lesson with Francesca is enough to settle frayed nerves and steady those enormously long new feet that take some getting used to and have an annoying habit of tripping you up when you least expect it.
A mixed group of 10 (mainly Brits and ranging from 10 years upwards) seems a bit big at this nervy, hanging-around-forgetting-how-you-just-did-that stage but it also means you get to see plenty of others ending up in undignified heaps, which certainly breaks the ice...
Ski school is Mon-Fri, from 10am to 1pm on the first and last days and 11am to 1pm on the days in between. You get the afternoons to practise by yourself.
After an intense first morning learning to snowplough - your breaking method, which can come in handy now and again! - things start to get a little easier.
Striking up that knock-kneed leaning-forward pose feels precarious and alien at first, but give it time and it will soon feel like second nature...
On mastering the essential snowplough, the Alpe Cermis slopes begin to look like a different place. A beautiful rather than scary selection of icing sugar-coated runs and bumps which experts shimmy down elegantly. The traffic is reassuringly manageable too.
By the second day, the group moves from the "baby bump" to the next, noticeably longer and lumpier nursery slope via a gondola lift - which can amass big queues in the morning.
The instructor for the rest of the week, GianCarlo, is patience personified, and the results are impressive. Never have the words "take it as slowly as you like, I will be right here" sounded so comforting!
Soon the group are executing snowplough turns, getting to grips with the tricky drag lifts - a personal bug bear - and are desperate for the next challenge.
As the week progresses, you'll find that you do too. The penultimate day and the instructor decides we are ready, with our burgeoning parallel ski efforts, to tackle a blue run.
Some people sneak off at this point, others tremble their way down, while the rest whizz down the descent like pros.
And efforts are rewarded: we all receive a bronze medal and certificate saying we have passed a series of beginners' tests at the end of the week. There are more satisfied smiles on show than requests at the bar for the amazingly popular local local drink, Vin Brulee (like a spicier mulled wine).
Travel guide: Italy
Skiing in safety
I returned from a week's holiday in Livigno on 31st March. My requirements: safe, supervised skiing for my 11-year-old daughter and a relaxing time in the sun and in cafes with a book for me. I chose the Hotel Valandrea because it sounded quiet. It was: no entertainment, no bar, no restaurant, no thumping disco - just peace! The hotel was built recently and to a high quality. With eight rooms to let, it overlooked three of the ski lifts and it was possible to ski right back to the hotel.
I spent several afternoons drinking coffee in the sun and reading my book at the next-door cafe which had a seating area over the snow. There is an excellent ski-school at the top of the Mottolino. I had booked on a half-board basis, meals being taken at the Hotel Pontiglia which was a very short walk up the street (pedestrians only). The standard of the food was okay, particularly if you like pasta and escalopes. Shopping was very good and Livigno is duty free. Altogether excellent.
Travel guide: Italy
Where Callas found a kind of peace
From the Mail on Sunday
Sometimes, when Onassis had been especially cruel to Maria Callas, ordering her to go back to her cabin on the yacht Christina and change her dress just as she had sat down to dinner, claiming he didn't like the colour but actually because he was in that kind of dark mood, she would retreat to her cool villa to try to reclaim her pride.
It was always tranquil here at the Villa Meneghini, near the town of Sirmione on the shore of Lake Garda. In the summer Callas would sit in the garden, her privacy protected by banks of guardsman-straight cypress trees, the air perfumed by pine, the eye dazzled by the pink-tinged oleander.
There would be late afternoon cruises on the Madonna-blue waters of the lake, where the giant peaks of the Dolomites seemed to reach clear to the sky, and she would look at the beauty around her, an exotic mixture of Alpine and Mediterranean, of snow-capped mountains, and palm trees, and swear she would never go back to the Greek.
And then the telephone would ring somewhere inside the cavernous, Romanesque, five-storey villa and it would be Ari, promising this and that, and within a few minutes the great diva's bags would be packed and the only taxi in the ancient fort town of Sirmione summoned. Then she would be off again, back to Athens, or Paris, or New York, or wherever he was.
Before returning to the arms of the Golden Greek, she would sometimes pause for a moment to say goodbye to her friends at the Villa Cortine, the spectacular, sugar-white, neo-classical palace, with its extravagant fountains, statues, grottos and acres of sub-tropical gardens, that had its elaborately-gated entrance right opposite Villa Meneghini.
They were always sorry to see her leave but knew it wouldn't be long before she returned .
The cream-jacketed barman standing before me in the Villa Cortine's open-air terrace restaurant is Enzo Cali, a better-looking version of the Sixties Italian movie star Vittorio de Sica, all beautiful white hair and immaculate teeth. Behind him is Danielle, his youthful, black-tuxedoed assistant, who holds a silver tray which he has carried 50 yards from the bar and upon which are perched two Bellinis. Enzo takes the drinks and sets them down very carefully on the blue tablecloth.
Travel guide: Italy
Taking to the water
Malcesine on Lake Garda was perfect for a holiday with my elderly mum, who has trouble walking too far. After pottering around this charming little town and exploring its medieval castle, we took the cable car up Monte Baldo for a bird's-eye-view of the lake.
Mum was anxious to get out on the water so we took one of the many steamers that pootle up and down the lake and crossed over to picturesque Limone. We had coffee at a terrace cafe on the lakeside and snapped up a few bargains - a handbag and gloves for mum and shoes for me.
Next day we were bolder and took the longer journey up to Riva - quite spectacular as the lake narrows and the mountains close in.
Riva is in the foothills of the Dolomites. It's quite a bustling little town with lots of trees and flowers and many more shops with leather bargains. We had lunch on the promenade by the lake and watched the energetic windsurfers.
The best thing about being on the lake is that the little towns, themselves, are mostly on the flat so people like my mum can explore easily, but you're surrounded by dramatic mountains and the steamers ferry you around so easily.
Travel guide: Italy
Eat your heart out, Highgrove
Prince Charles, who knows a great garden when he sees one, realised when he saw La Mortella that he was in the presence of excellence.
In the foreword to a new book on these spectacular gardens, he describes them with classic royal understatement as 'wonderful'. (As he writes this, you know full well he is justly chewing his royal green fingers with envy.)
'As a very amateur gardener myself, I can empathise with the sheer determination and imagination it must have taken to create such a garden,' he wrote.
If the gardens have been a labour of love to create, they take every ounce of ingenuity simply to visit.
In Naples, taxi drivers see customers as walking cash machines. Hailing a cab is practically an invitation to have your wallet emptied.
We wanted to go to the island of Ischia in the Bay of Naples. Susana Walton, widow of composer Sir William Walton, was expecting us for lunch at La Mortella.
Afterwards she was treating us to a personally conducted tour of the celebrated gardens at her home.
To ensure our punctual arrival, Lady Walton had provided precise instructions. We had to ask the taxi driver to take us to the port.
'Tell him you want to catch the next hydrofoil to Ischia.'
As instructed, we got into the taxi and duly informed the driver. He sucked his teeth ruminatively.
'Hydrofoil? Hmm.' 'What?' 'Well, I believe the hydrofoils are not operating at the moment. Bad weather. Rough sea.'
Carving huge peaks in the air with his hand, he mimed the sort of gigantic waves that swallowed George Clooney in The Perfect Storm.
'We could go to the port and see,' he added after a pause. 'But the traffic is bad.'
'Bad?' 'Very bad.' One felt he might be leading up to something. 'Or we could go to Pozzuoli - it's nearer to Ischia and they have big boats there which operate in all conditions.'
Travel guide: Italy
Italy with strings attached
From the Mail on Sunday
You can spot the violin makers in Cremona. The spiritual descendants of Amati and Stradivari wear jeans, have few possessions, a social conscience and live in old houses.
The house and workshop where, three centuries ago, Stradivari created the world's finest violins is at 57 Corso Garibaldi, minus the terrace where his violins hung out to dry.
It was an essential port of call for us passengers on the MV Casanova on its maiden voyage up the River Po, with banks lined by poplars but a hinterland full of industrial estates which have made the water unsafe to bathe in, let alone drink.
Cremona, a northern Italian town in sensible shoes, has been capital of the violin-making business ever since Andrea Amati set up his family workshop in the 1530s. Today, hidden away in small rooms, up narrow staircases, more than 100 liuterie (violin makers) create magnificent modern instruments, among them Aldo Brugnini and his wife Eva Beck, the first woman to win the Triennale, a prestigious, international violin-making competition.
As they tell me of the art and science of their craft, two violins gleam on a workbench behind them, ribs of shaped maple back and spruce front painstakingly carved and planed. Months later, 40 coats of varnish will be applied to bring out the sound and preserve the wood.
The latest 'secret of Stradivari's success' says it's all in the borax, the preservative he used against woodworm. Eva dismissed this as the sole reason, favouring Einstein's belief that it's impossible to explain the physics of a violin.
In his lifetime, Stradivari made 1,200 instruments. Today they can fetch up to £1 million. Eva makes three a year. They sell for £5,000 each.
In the Palazzo del Comune in Cremona's historic centre is the Sala dei Violini, which nurtures a changing display of six rare instruments: violin's Hall of Fame.
There are violins by the Amati family, a Guarneri del Gesu and Stradivari's '1715 Cremonese'. The curator plays them for five minutes a day and if you'd like a brief concert, the mayor's secretary will arrange one.
Travel guide: Italy
Why all kids love real Italian pizza
'Bravo, Bravo!' cried the Roman waiter every time he passed our table. 'You eata your pasta, you getta strong muscles!' I paraphrase, but you get the idea.
The object of his admiration was eight-year- old Joseph, who was shovelling in spaghetti so fast he looked like a pasta-making machine in reverse.
Italians love children; British children love Italian food. It's a match made in heaven. But what exactly is it about the pasta-pizza diet that induces even the fussiest eater to indulge?
Suspecting that Italian children eat clams with linguine and ask for shavings of truffle on their pizza, we went in search of some answers.
My children prefer uncomplicated food: Pizza Margherita is the height of Joe's desires, while Alice, 12, likes mushrooms scattered on hers.
Frances, 14, is more adventurous, but she is vegetarian. Unable to find a decent meal in the whole of France, she was hopeful the Italians would, at least, understand.
We started in Umbria, the 'green heart' of Italy. In Montone, a hilltop village, Marco, three, and his mother were on their way home with a takeaway pizza.
Marco begged a corner, and when she broke off an edge, a small crowd of children gathered round. Each was given a share, until none was left. Mama looked happy to be feeding the 5,000.
In the searing heat of the afternoons, children cycle the streets, handlebar in one hand, a triangle of pizza in the other. Mothers buy bags of small focaccia, 10 at a time, for children to snack on.
In Castel del Piano, an Umbrian village, I meet the Chiuchini family to find out what Italian children eat.
Although there is the occasional McDonald's, this is considered food for tourists - Guila, eight, and Luca, four, have only ever tasted burgers hand-made by their grandma.
Travel guide: Italy
Sample the rich taste of Umbria
From the Daily Mail
Jars of black truffles the shape of miniature grenades festoon the windows of every grocery store in Umbria, in central Italy.
I stared in and tried to work out how much they would cost - the larger and better quality ones could run into hundreds of pounds - it was like guessing the weight of the cake at the school fete.
Every restaurant in Umbria, from the most basic trattoria to the swishest ristorante, offered the prized black truffles - spread richly over toasted bread smothered in olive oil and served as a starter, or grated liberally over pasta or risotto. If there was a bad restaurant in Umbria, I failed to find it.
It would be equally hard to stumble upon an ugly town. Such is the wealth of resplendent spots that my guidebook was struggling - 'a beautiful, well-preserved medieval town, situated on a hilltop covered with olive groves' was the description it gave, accurately, for Gubbio - a narrative repeated again for Spello, Assisi, Trevi, Spoleto and just about every other listing.
The area benefited from the power struggles that took place centuries ago between city governments and magnate families, such as the Baglione in Perugia. Each sought to protect their interest by producing fine town halls for the locals, as well as palaces and castles for themselves.
Devotion to St Francis - of Assisi - resulted in a high culture boom, with offers of patronage to some of the finest painters of the day.
Both historic factors are good news for the tourist. And yet in the psyche of the British holidaymaker, Umbria still remains the poor relation to its better-known neighbour, Tuscany.
Umbria, which borders Tuscany, is less polished, more bucolic and yet easily as handsome. The landscape is similar - rolling hills dotted with stone farmhouses, winding rivers and pretty, silvery-leafed olive trees, opening up to more rugged landscape towards the valley of the River Nera.
I spent my time town-hopping, forcing untrained hamstrings up steep, cobbled streets, under ancient overhanging arches and past - and sometimes into - abbeys and monasteries.
From Trevi, famous for its olive oil production, and Spello, where the streets retain their original medieval paving, you can look right across the valley and glimpse the spires and domes of Assisi, the birthplace of St Francis, where the Basilica displays important works of art, including frescos by Giotto.
It was here that I started out, relieved to find that the town is well on the way to recovery following the earthquake of 1997.
Yet the only inhabitants appear to be tourists, pilgrims or ecclesiasts, and the shops cater accordingly with window-displays alternating between local delicacies, such as leg of air-cured ham, to intricately patterned ceramics.
Gubbio, to the north of Assisi, and Spoleto, to the south, are both livelier and more workaday, and yet just as picturesque.
Travel guide: Italy
La bella Italia!
Which other country offers great food, a superb climate and amazing variety? We offer a personal guide to the very best of Italy
Best for FAMILY BEACH holidays: Sardinia
The Italians are a social race, and their idea of a perfect beach holiday is one spent as close to other people as possible.
For the brightest waters and the whitest sands, head for Sardinia. The natives refer to it as a continente, and it does offer a rich variety of seaside charms.
There are expanses of dazzling sand in the south, while along the Costa Smerelda - the wild northern coastline 'discovered' by the Aga Khan in the Sixties - sandy coves nestle amid the rugged landscape.
Citlia offers one-week package holidays http://www.citalia.com tel: 020 8686 0677.
Best for WALKING holidays: Dolomites
The finest walking is in the Dolomites, the eastern section of the Alpine range that runs through the heart of Europe.
There are well-maintained paths, maps are readily available and there is a network of huts (rifugi) where you can find shelter and food during the official hiking season, June 20 to September 20.
Sherpa has guided walking tours http://www.sherpa-walking-holidays.co.uk tel: 020 8577 2717.
Travel guide: Italy
Kiss from Bologna
From the Daily Mail
The noise was as if a collection of dainty animals - Burmese cats, say - were simultaneously pulling their feet delicately out of a sea of mud.
As it crescendoed, the cheerful table opposite erupted with a cry of 'Silenza!'
We were experiencing for the first time the effect of a roomful of pretty girls executing the Bolognese Kiss, an epic affair that has to be heard to be believed. Not for these northern Italians the effete mwaahmwaah London air-kiss of greeting that gives both parties' cheeks a wide berth.
Instead, they get and give a full-on, succulent osculation that can be heard the other side of the room - as with the all-female birthday party now in full swing in the trattoria where we were eating.
I was in Bologna with my daughter for a weekend of culture-cum-serious shopping.
For both, the bed-and-breakfast Hotel Touring was a good jumping-off point, with its central position round the corner from Bologna's throbbing heart, the Piazza Maggiore.
Here, is almost everything the (female) heart could desire.
First, there is the square itself, fronted with the immense facade of the Basilica di San Pietro - unfinished, say the Bolognese, because the then Pope refused to allow any church bigger than St Peter's in Rome to be built - with classical arcades surrounding the rest of its huge space.
Marvellous Renaissance architecture in brick and sandstone, its glowing facades painted in peach, terracotta and gold, makes merely strolling the streets an intense aesthetic pleasure.
Our first visit was to the city's famous twin towers, one half the size of the other and leaning drunkenly to one side, to climb the 498 steps to the top of the taller, the Torre degli Asinelli (entry 5,000 lira, £1.60).
Travel guide: Italy
Keeping it all in the family
For the tired and cynical traveller from northern Europe, it can be all too much. Yet the energy and incessant vitality of Italy is what I most love about it.
Cinque Terre, the cliff-bound coast in the top-left 'armpit', below Genoa, is just one of many areas of the country I could write glowingly about.
It is too thin and steep for big roads, so the best ways to get around are by train and boat, or perhaps by foot.
The villages that hug the shore are bound together by the threading railway, by the sea and by a sense of blessed isolation from the mad, uncertain century we inhabit.
The hotels are, simply, warmly Italian. More than that, they cost as little to stay in as you might pay for a B&B in an English seaside town.
True and mysterious. Let us investigate further.
We begin in Portofino, Italy's minuscule answer to St Tropez.
The Piccolo Hotel is modest, family-run and immensely friendly. It has its own little beach and serves delicious regional food - all for about £50 per person.
From here you can take a boat to Moneglia, to stay in the Villa Edera and see an Italian family at work.
Orietta manages the hotel; her husband and brother-in-law are waiters, and her mother Ida a brilliant cook and devotee of fresh, local organic produce.
Travel guide: Italy
Italy on a plate - a gourmet's tour
Back when the French were painting pictures of cattle on the walls of caves, people on the Italian peninsula were feasting on sumptuous meals washed down with superb wines.
Italy produces the world's best olive oil, serves the best coffee, and is the birthplace of pasta, pizza, ice cream (as we know it now), parma ham, sublime cheeses, balsamic vinegar, and the chocolate bar.
This nation makes more wine (and more types of wine - over 2,000) than any other, and its best easily equal those from France, Germany, Australia and the US.
The appeal of Italy would be powerful even without food: its art, architecture, opera, beaches, hill towns, mountains and, especially, its people, have enticed visitors for 2,000 years.
They have discovered a nation that is very regional in orientation, so much so that a local recipe prepared in another region just does not taste as good because the ideal ingredients and tradition are not there.
So, pesto is best in Liguria and pizza is best in Naples, as you can discover for yourself. With direct flights from the UK to many Italian cities, these delicacies can be sampled in the places where they were born.
Olive oil: Imperia, Liguria
Although Tuscan oil is more famous, connoisseurs know that the olive oil from Liguria (the Italian Riviera) is unequalled in delicacy and flavour.
Unlike most oils, which are made from a blend of olives, Ligurian oil is made entirely from the Taggiasca olive grown near San Remo. These produce an oil that is fruity and smooth - with none of the peppery burn in the throat that most oils provoke.
Ligurian oil is used not only in cookery, but as a condiment on fish and vegetables and in pasta sauces.
This part of the Riviera can be reached by rail or car from either Genoa or Nice. With sandy beaches, hill towns, and agriculture devoted to fruit, olives and flowers, Liguria is ready to be rediscovered.
Imperia, the provincial capital, has an important olive oil museum and nearby Cervo, a stunning hill town facing the Mediterranean, is the home of the San Giorgio restaurant, where olive oil is used as a magical potion for incomparable cookery.
Badalucco is the town that produces some of the best oil.
Where to stay: Royal Hotel, Corso Imperatrice 80, San Remo. Tel: 00 39 0184 577577; fax: 00 39 0184 661445. Hotel Europa, Corso Imperatrice 27, San Remo. Tel: 00 39 0184 578170; fax: 00 39 0184 508661.
Where to eat: Ristorante San Giorgio, Via Alessandro Volta 19; tel and fax: 00 39 0183 400175. Outstanding pastas, seafood, vegetables, and wines. Two charming rooms available for lodgers.
Ristorante Il Ponte, Via Ortai 3, Badalucco. Tel: 00 39 0184 408274; fax: 00 39 0184 408000.
Travel guide: Italy
Italian for beginners
From the mail on Sunday
My first Italian lesson was brief. I was in Florence working as the world's oldest au pair and my charges' maternal grandmother and I had become great pals even though we barely spoke a word of each other's language.
We communicated through lots of hand-waving and her speaking so loudly and frantically that it sometimes reached a pitch only dogs could hear.
After a few weeks, I announced I would be studying at a local language school and the grandmother looked at me clearly shocked. 'Cosa vuoi sapere?' she said, asking me what I wanted to know.
I mumbled that I needed to learn tenses, verbs, understand the rudiments of Italian grammar and she laughed.
'I'll teach you all you need,' she said, and grabbed an orange and waved it in the air yelling: 'Arancia!' With that, she declared lesson one over and we went to pick up the girls.
When learning a language, CDs and cassettes can be useful, evening classes are a test of dedication after a day at work and learning via the Web is convenient for busy or lazy people, but you just can't beat actually living in the country to understand its language and culture.
According to the Council of Europe, after a month at standard beginner level, students should be able to understand familiar words and very basic phrases concerning oneself - and be able to interact with people in a simple way provided the other person is prepared to repeat or rephrase things. You can just picture those delighted shopkeepers.
Throughout Italy there are schools offering standard and intensive courses of Italian language such as the Dante Alighieri in Rome and the British Institute at Acqui Terme in Piedmont.
The Centro Italiano in Naples believes that 'language is a vehicle and mirror of the society in which it is used' and so offers language courses and cultural activities costing as little as £26.
These include Italian wines, the History of Naples, Italian cinema, Neapolitan music, Italian literature, creative writing and archaeology with excursions to Pompeii and Herculaneum.
Travel guide: Italy
The Prada secret
From the Mail on Sunday
All I had to do was solve the clues and I could win myself some swanky clothes at crazy knock-down prices. It was like a designer label treasure hunt.
Somewhere in the lovely Tuscan countryside, within a short drive of Florence, were the official factory outlet stores of Prada, Gucci and Dolce & Gabbana. And I had been supplied with the sketchiest of directions on how to find them.
I started with Prada. I was told it is in a small town about a half-hour south of Florence. Ultra-fashionable Prada is keen to get rid of its surplus stock but, like the other two fancy companies, it doesn't want to make much fuss about it. And it has succeeded in keeping its outlet a state secret.
I found the town of Montevarchi but from then on I was more or less flying blind (and with no Italian, asking directions from locals wasn't an option).
I crawled along, peering left and right in search of this shopping holy grail. Just as I had almost given up I found a likely road running down the back of an anonymous factory. A car park already filling up with minibuses disgorging parties of Japanese gave the game away.
I followed the Japanese across to a machine, took a numbered ticket and slipped past a security guard into the modern, stylish Prada shop. I had arrived.
Travel guide: Italy
Five of the best
Sunshine, beautiful scenery, splendid art treasures and a rich historical past - Italy is a charmed land, which seems to have been stuffed full of good things like some giant Christmas stocking.
All the great things in life - beauty, food, wine, opera, football, art, religion, ice cream and the pursuit of happiness - matter more in Italy.
It is no wonder that the British have been going there for more than 1,000 years, as pilgrims, adventurers, poets, on the Grand Tour and as package tourists.
But it is important to remember that Italy is a modern invention. The nation came into being only in the 1860s, and it retains strong regional differences.
This diversity - of cuisine, art, outlook, landscape - is one of the great joys of the country, making it a pleasure to visit and re-visit.
There are lots of different Italys to discover. Here are five of them.
Travel guide: Italy
Escape the crowds
From the Daily Mail
There comes a time in every family holiday when we must put away childish things: buckets and spades, pneumatic Orcas and frisbees.
But when our daughter turned 18 and went on her own holiday, we found we couldn't give up Santa Maria di Castellabate.
This unpretentious resort on the Cilento coast of Southern Italy has been a fixture in our summer calendar for five years.
There is the medieval jumble of Castellabate, the 'mother' village, on its lofty ridge above the sea; there are the Blue Flag beaches; there is the parish church of Santa Maria. And there are the mighty walls, terracotta tiles and terraced gardens of the Palazzo Belmonte, where we have often stayed.
The teenager's nostalgic parents have come back to Santa Maria in May to find the light soft, the beaches empty and the restaurants quiet.
We investigate the unearthly silence around the palazzo's swimming pool. This 17th-century palace, once a hunting lodge of the Belmonte family, is the centrepiece of Santa Maria.
Inside the walls - 'Like a secret garden!' gasp newcomers - are five acres of trees, shrubs and avenues, and three wings of apartments where the present prince of Belmonte entertains paying guests.
The palace is somewhere between informal hotel and stylish self-catering complex. It has a private beach, a poolside bar, and an open-air restaurant looking out on to sunsets over distant Capri.
This time, we have a hired car and south of Ogliastro the coast becomes spectacular.
Here are medieval watchtowers and fishing villages. We investigate these and much more, yet only scratch the surface of this wonderful corner of Italy. We can't see ourselves exhausting Cilento - and as for Santa Maria . . . 'Great place to bring grandchildren,' muses my husband.
TRAVEL FACTS:
There is a limited range of quality hotel and self-catering accommodation on the Cilento coast, but the region is taking steps to improve its tourist infrastructure. CV Italian World, tel: 020 7591 2811, has packages to Palazzo Belmonte. Hotel-based holidays in Santa Maria, San Marco and Palinuro are offered by Citalia, tel: 020 8686 5533.
Travel guide: Italy
A weekend in Genoa
When I was a schoolboy, the one thing which everybody knew about Genoa was that it was the birthplace of Christopher Columbus.
These days, the most famous thing about this salty old Mediterranean seaport is that it was the birthplace of pesto, the delectable pasta sauce made from basil and pine nuts.
But those are not the only good reasons for spending a couple of nights in Liguria's premier city, perhaps en route to Portofino or Santa Margherita on the palm-fringed Riviera di Levante, or a walking holiday in the Cinque Terre.
Not least among Genoa's attractions is its small, uncrowded airport just a few minutes from the city centre.
The taxi's route is via hideous concrete flyovers and terrifying tunnels, so it is hard to get a clear idea of the town until one is right in the middle of the old city.
Turn off the main boulevards with their banking houses and palazzi, reminders of the era when the great merchant metropolis was known as La Superba, and you're soon lost in a web of tall, narrow, twisting back streets which the guidebooks barely attempt to map.
The most pleasurable way to spend a Genovese day is to let serendipity lead you aimlessly through the maze of medieval lanes.
You find a bookbinder here, a pasta-maker there and round the corner, a trio of tightly-skirted prostitutes lounging in their doorways.
Travel guide: Italy
Genoa - Europe's next culture capital
At first glance, the sprawling Italian port of Genoa seems a jumbled, noisy place - and an odd choice for 2004's European Capital of Culture.
By the airport, tall, salmon-coloured flats stack against a hill and the harbour is ugly, all clogged roads and dusty-looking, hole-in-the-wall shops.
Once in Genoa's centre, it's easier to see how the birthplace of Christopher Columbus was granted its latest honour.
The capital of northern Italy's Liguria province was already a thriving port for merchants in the 12th century, and is still a major shipbuilding city and cruise ship stop.
Modern buildings in the newer Brignole part of town are less pretty than the Old Town's Ducale Palace - scene of 2001's stormy G8 summit riots - in the Piazza de Ferrari. Rubens paintings hang in the gothic cathedral nearby.
The city's striking Roman Catholic cathedral, off Piazza de Ferrari, has gold stucco, lots of niched statues, coloured marble columns and even a religious relic.
"St John the Baptist is Patron Saint of Genoa. They say his ashes were brought here from Jerusalem in 1099," guide Rosanna Villa says matter-of-factly. The saint's severed head is said to have rested on a green plate which is also in a museum behind the church.
One of Genoa's most charming spots is down the Via Boccadasse. The narrow street opens into a teeny little bay, where green-shuttered apartments look onto painted fishing boats bobbing on the water. The fishing district hasn't modernised at all in 400 years.
Travel guide: Italy
Grand palace of Garda
The legend of a truly grand hotel is something that usually takes a lifetime to build up. Yet every so often, one of these pleasure palaces opens its doors and immediately there is the sensation of something special.
Italy already boasts several of these mythical resorts - think of the Cipriani in Venice, Portofino's Splendido, the elegant Villa d'Este at Como - and now there is a new address that stands in the same class, though it has been open barely a year.
Villa Feltrinelli is a fairytale pastel castle dominating the shoreline of Lake Garda, surrounded by exquisite sub-tropical gardens, a swimming pool to die for and a backdrop of craggy, snow-topped mountain peaks. There is even an immaculate croquet lawn.
The hotel sits at the heart of what Italians call the Riviera dei Limoni which runs along the western bank of the Lago di Garda.
Although the 'Lemon Riviera' might not sound very glamorous, this peaceful corner of Lombardy was once the preferred stop-off for Victorian Britons.
Literary figures such as Byron and Shelley, James Joyce and Somerset Maugham travelled to the lake, while D. H. Lawrence declared it to be 'one of the most beautiful places on earth'.
They would all undoubtedly have been delighted to stay at the Villa Feltrinelli had it not been the private residence of one of Italy's wealthiest families.
But a few years ago, after lying empty for years, the villa was bought by one of the world's most renowned hoteliers, the American Bob Burns, who invested almost £20million in his pet project to transform this romantic mansion into a unique luxury hotel.Discovering the pleasures of Villa Feltrinelli is also an ideal opportunity to explore the Riviera dei Limoni, which today is unspoilt and waiting to be discovered, unlike better-known resorts in the Italian lake district.
Visitors will be disappointed if they are expecting the classic deluxe hotel treatment of eager bell boys, doormen doffing their caps, suave concierges and an immaculately groomed hotel director waiting to greet them.
Instead, the feeling is of being invited to spend a privileged few days at a wealthy friend's country residence.
Travel guide: Italy
Nearer to God and Dr Lecter
From the Mail on Sunday
At a cafe near Florence's Duomo, a couple at the next table were mulling over their breakneck Grand Tour of Italy as they scribbled messages on postcards. 'Rome?' mused the man: 'What did we see in Rome?' The Colosseum, I wondered silently; the Sistine Chapel, St Peter's, the Piazza Navona?
'That's where we saw that guy get knocked off his scooter by the taxi near that ruined building,' said his wife.
The modern tourist has to grab whatever mental souvenirs he can get. In Florence, for example, you may come in search of culture but you may find other experiences much more satisfying.
Actually, if you are a woman and are deemed to be dressed too immodestly, the culture may be off-limits. Bare shoulders are considered an affront to religious dignity in Santa Croce church, so my wife and daughter were abruptly stopped at the turnstile (while I was allowed to enter wearing no less immodest shorts!).
I wanted to look at the Giotto frescoes which feature in E. M. Forster's novel A Room With A View. The Ascension of St John - 'the fat man in blue' who is depicted rising up to heaven 'shooting into the sky like an air-balloon', according to the novel' s Mr Emerson.
Santa Croce is so gloomy and so crowded, you can barely see the walls, let alone the priceless, centuries-old frescoes which decorate them. We find the monuments to Machiavelli and Dante but no air-balloon saint. Eventually my son locates St John the Evangelist in the Peruzzi Chapel. To view the fresco, we have to drop lira coins in a machine that gives us a minute of bright light.
Like Mr Emerson's son George, we silently contemplated the happy prospect of being tugged up into Heaven by waiting friends (in the picture, Heaven seems to be in the attic not such a delightful prospect).
Travel guide: Italy
Madonnas (with child)
When I first went to Florence as a child, the scrums in the Uffizi were so bad that I had to stand on tiptoe to see the naughty bits on Botticelli's Venus. The place was a zoo.
I was determined to give my daughter a less-stressed introduction to the jewel in the crown of Tuscany. The solution is to visit out of season. Forget summer. Forget early autumn. You will not be able to move.
The historic centre of Florence is far, far smaller than the equivalent parts of Rome or Venice, leading to complete meltdown at busy times.
What chance of appreciating Michelangelo's David when you have had to fight your way through the modern equivalent of Dante's Inferno - a sea of sweaty backpackers?
When I visited Florence with my daughter, the weather was crisp rather than sultry. We would not come home with suntans, but neither would we come home exhausted by battling coachloads of tourists.
Even at the Accademia, where Michelangelo's David can be found, we got in without queuing.
As we took in that great statue - one of those monumental works of art that no photograph can capture - our only companions were a few Japanese students and an elderly French woman with a battered guidebook.
The art treasures of Florence do not come cheap - six euros (£4) here, 10 euros (£6.90) there... and discounts for children cannot be guaranteed.
At the Uffizi gallery, I spent a futile five minutes doing a Victor Meldrew impersonation after the woman at the ticket counter refused to accept that my 12-year-old daughter was under 18 without seeing her passport.
'Pathetico!' I screamed. 'Molto pathetico!!' No good. It was like trying to get a smile out of a 14th-century Madonna.
Luckily, Botticelli was on hand to cheer me up ... and Titian, Leonardo, Michelangelo, Giotto, Fra Angelico, Piero della Francesca and hundreds more.
Travel guide: Italy
21st Century Renaissance
From the Mail on Sunday
Florence doesn't feature heavily in any hip city guide so it's easy to forget that it was once one of the most modern cities on earth.
We're going back a bit but, during its Renaissance heyday, artists and scholars from around the globe flocked to this hotbed of creativity or looked on in awe as Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo, Botticelli and their contemporaries reinvented art and science for a new, expanding world.
Nowadays, understandably, the city still trades mainly on its glorious Renaissance past. Year-round the streets are packed with American and Japanese coach parties gorging on the unparalleled high culture fix it has to offer and, in Britain, it has a slightly 'blue rinse' reputation.
I'm not taking an ageist stance here. Indeed, as the end of my 30s hurtles toward me, I've taken to browsing various shades of lavender at my local hair salon in preparation for my twilight years.
But, for the independent traveller, there is a Florence to be experienced away from the madding crowd.
Thanks to my best friend making it her home, I've become a regular visitor over the years and I admit a particular affection for this ancient city.
Now, as it slowly emerges from its long hiatus as a museum to past glory, it's augmenting its rich array of antiquities with some thoroughly 21st Century attractions.
The beginning of this mini-Renaissance was heralded by fashion magnate Ferragamo's decision to create a couple of much-needed modern hotels. The results of his endeavours are two state-of-the-art places which provide accommodation for the discerning traveller eager for a historical experience that doesn't extend to cranky plumbing and a dingy room.
Entering the Hotel Gallery Art you could be forgiven for thinking you'd missed a turning and ended up in Manhattan. Tucked into a side street near the Ponte Vecchio lies this super-trendy oasis for the young fashion crowd.
I arrive at 7pm and a leggy young model is being photographed in the minimalist monochrome lobby bar. Orchids dress the glass table tops and white sofas beckon. An exhibition of computer-generated photographs by Olivio Barbieri graces the walls.
Travel guide: Italy
It's never too late to take to snow
Skiing has never been more popular with good-value packages and neither age nor ability now a barrier.
From toddlers to pensioners, it seems we're all more keen than ever to take to the slopes.
Later this year, Saga will offer ski holidays for the over-50s; once again proving it's come a long way since being lampooned as the "Send A Granny Anywhere" company.
Saga summer holidaymakers are familiar with the village community of Fiera di Primiero in the Italian Dolomites.
The Hotel La Perla is popular between April and October and is one of two places to stay in the resort for Saga's new ski season.
Regular buses stop outside the hotel for the short transfer to the slopes and ski school in San Martino.
Ski and boot hire, expert fitting and lift passes are arranged in the resort but aren't covered in the package.
The choice of slopes at San Martino isn't as extensive as that of other, better-known ski resorts, but with good snow cover, there's more than enough choice for the skiers of all abilities.
For the novice, or those who need to brush up on technique, ski lessons (in English) are available at extra cost.
The lack of snow in Italy and France has left many skiers disappointed this season, but hefty local investment in snow cannons has kept most runs open at San Martino.
Travel guide: Italy
Apennine way of life
From the Mail on Sunday
Can you believe there's a region of Italy only a few hours from Bologna and Florence where you can walk all day and not see more than six people?
Better still, when you take your boots off and sit down to supper, your hosts present you with home-made ravioli, wild mushroom risotto, local wild boar sausages and wonderful cheeses.
Tuscany can be overrun with tourists and English voices. So I was curious to hear that the Corno alle Scale regional park, in the part of the Apennines that spans Tuscany and Emilia, is being developed as a place to walk in spring and autumn.
This group of peaks (up to 6,500ft) is popular with Italians for skiing holidays and many have chalets where they come in their holiday month of August, taking the chairlift up to the high ridges for picnics. The focus of the park is the rocky summit of Corno alle Scale, with steep valleys and dense forests. But there are also charming villages sitting beside tumbling rivers and, out of the skiing season, the area is deserted.
My week would be spent walking with three friends through the park, staying at two and three-star hotels, our luggage transported on for us each day. Nothing left to worry about except the size of the picnic lunch.
Our first night was in Lizzano on the northern edge of the mountains. It's a good starting point, nestling at the foot of a couple of peaks, and the Hotel il Fondaccio had a charming host who brought us tea and cake before discussing our proposed routes. As few local Italians speak English, we made do in French.
We decided to make some of our walks more strenuous, as there seems little point in visiting this area if you are not prepared to climb above the treeline for the views. If that seems too much, a local taxi will take you higher up the roads for about £6.
But to begin with we took a tour around the town, with its Byzantine-inspired church, sleepy square and tempting delicatessens.
Venturing the hill by chairlift, we immediately got lost and fought our way through nettles to return to a bar for a drink. Rule number one - take a compass and keep watching for the distinctive red path marks on trees.
Travel guide: Italy
Why Italy is terre-ific
From the Daily Mail
Sometimes the best holiday is one that unfolds at the last minute. My friend Kit and I decided on a rainy Thursday that by Saturday we had to be somewhere different. Somewhere quintessentially Mediterranean in flavour, where we could top up on sun and good living for five days.
Logging on to the internet, I trawled through the cheap flights offered by Go, Buzz, easyJet and Ryanair. Between them I found Marseilles (£80), Lyon (£65), Bordeaux (£90), Geneva (£70) and Milan (£85). On the basis that Italy almost never disappoints, and that from this starting point we could jump on a train to the Italian Riviera, I booked two flights to Milan with Buzz. The whole process took less than half an hour.
Forty-eight hours later, we were at Milan central station, drinking espresso alongside glamorous Italians in Valentino sunglasses and Prada shoes. From here we caught a train to Genoa - a great, shambling hybrid of a city, crackling with energy. Along the docks, North Africans in white robes bought cornets of fried fish from men with gold teeth and tattoos; seagulls circled restlessly in warm wind.
Our first meal that night was a wakeup call to the taste buds. Twists of pasta in emerald green pesto, for which Genoa, and the Ligurian coast, is famed. We ate in silence, thrilling to our change in circumstances. One computer transaction - and here we were.
The next morning came the train journey to end all train journeys - the Genoa-Pisa line, famed throughout Europe for its heart-stopping scenery. Blasted through the cliffside, the track slips along the coast, in and out of pitch-black tunnels, greeted by bursts of bright sunshine and colour - parasols, bougainvillea, sky and sea merging in seamless, silvery blue.
We were heading for the furthest of the Cinque Terre - five small coves with big reputations - having read in our guidebook that the fifth was the prettiest, with 'lively cafes and rocky beaches'. First came Monterosso al Mare, more touristy with sandy beaches; then Vernazza, the only cove with its own port; then Corniglia, high up on the cliffs with a pebble beach far below; then Manarola, its rainbow-hued houses clinging to a great black rock.
Travel guide: Italy
Oasis of calm in the shadow of Mt Etna
From the Daily Mail
Mount Etna has been at it again. Plumes of smoke, fountains of red sparks and a slow-moving lava flow down its south flank have held the world's attention all week.
Close-up, it looks terrifying. But from a comfortable distance - such as Catania, 20 miles south-east of Etna's green foothills - it is said to look quite beautiful.
Far from it being a national disaster, most parts of Sicily are functioning pretty well as normal. Etna has been erupting for half a million years; it is the world's most active volcano.
This month's fireworks are by no means the most spectacular, and the trickle of lava, nearing the rather bleak ski resort of Nicolosi at 700m, is thought to be slowing down.
The only interference with daily life for east coast Sicilians has been a light dusting of ash which closed Catania airport, five miles south of the city, for two hours on Monday.
But the main tourist areas, Taormina, 15 miles north-east of Etna, and Syracuse, 40 miles to the south, have merely enjoyed the spectacular view of the volcano's smoking summit.
For the scores of tour operators featuring Sicily's most glorious coastline, it is business as usual.
Catania, for one, has seen far worse. Nature has wiped the resilient city off the map no fewer than seven times, and each time it has rebuilt itself.
In the 17th century, after the worst eruption in Etna's history swiftly followed by an earthquake, it was rebuilt as a showcase of Sicilian Baroque, wowing young aristocrats on their Grand Tour of Italy. Today it is known as the Milan Of The South for its buoyant economy.
As we sped through miles of grim suburb, it seemed hard to imagine anyone putting Catania on their Grand Tour. But then Tarmac gave way to paving stone, and ornate facades and wrought iron balconies replaced concrete.
Travel guide: Italy
Out on a limb with the glitterati
From the Mail on Sunday
What does the name Capri conjure up for you? Is it the sweet, homely face of Gracie Fields, seagull-voiced working-class heroine, who retired to the island after the war, sparing we baby-boomers a great deal of auditory grief?
Or do you think of the snarling, tinny grille of the sporty-ish Seventies Ford, in whose cramped interior many of you did your first serious grappling (go on, admit it)?
If either of these is all the name means to you, then fear not - I was in the same boat until recently.
Only it wasn't really a boat that I took to this Italian haven. It was a rather bouncy hydrofoil, skittering over the sea to Capri from crowded, noisy Naples harbour.
Forty-five minutes later, we found ourselves staggering onto the quay at Capri's small but perfectly vulgar port. My guidebook told me Capri was the sophisticated haven that captivated the Aga Khan, Sophia Loren and Douglas Fairbanks Senior and Junior. How could this be?
Then the dapper porter, sent by our hotel to meet us, explained that Capri town itself is actually just over a mile away by road, or a few hundred yards uphill by funicular railway.
There isn't room for a whole town at sea level because, essentially, Capri is a lump of picturesque rock and the few towns had to put down their roots on whatever scrap of flat land they could find.
The roads between them, some dating back to Roman times, wind narrowly up and down the cliff face. It's a nightmare scenario for Italian drivers, forced to give way politely at every turn. And as for the poor policemen - they have the cool uniforms, the snazzy caps and the mirrored sunglasses but they have to ride around on vehicles resembling milk floats.
Despite the island's diddyness, thousands of day-trippers tramp or minibus around it every day, looking at, well, each other mostly.
The proud and charming locals are clearly bewildered at the influx: the adjacent mainland is overstuffed with beautiful resorts and magnificent Roman ruins, one of which is quite a large site called Pompeii...
Travel guide: Italy
Italian time travel for beginners
The Medieval hilltop village of Casperia offers an intimate insight into Italian history, overlooking a landscape marked out with olive groves, sweeping valleys and dark green woodland - all just 45-minutes (and less than £2.50) by train from Rome.
It is one of a number of fortified Italian villages in the Rieti province of Lazio built to keep out invaders after the fall of the Roman Empire. It was originally called Aspra, meaning bitter, because of the taste it left in the mouths of its enemies after they'd failed to penetrate its thick stone walls.
Completely pedestrianised, Casperia is now home to just 350 people and many of the buildings are empty, but this adds to the atmosphere. Overlooking stunning scenery, it is beautiful, dramatic and moreover, it's a place with a past. This gives it far more substance than a shiny, modern resort.
Visit the Forani Palace, the mysterious, brooding home of the counts of Casperia, at the heart of the village or the Church of St John the Baptist. Hidden away at the back is a scale model of the village. Meticulously recreating every nook and cranny, it took a local man 10 years to complete.
Two holiday companies provide accommodation within the village itself, giving you the opportunity to stay in an original 15th-century building with the modern comforts of home.
Sunflower Retreats (tel: 0116 2599422) offer daily yoga classes, holistic therapies and free bike hire. The founders are advocates of eco-tourism, supporting the community economically and putting profits back into local festivals and functions. They work hard to raise the area's profile and preserve its environmental and cultural heritage.
La Torretta (tel: 00 39 0765 63202) organises walking tours and climbing in the nearby Sabina mountains with a qualified instructor. They also specialise in organising weddings and run short cookery classes for foodies.
Casperia and the surrounding area is known for its cow, sheep and goats cheeses, as well as delicious organic ice-creams. There's plenty of fresh pasta and the locally-produced Sabina olive oil is an award winner. Olive oil and wine-tasting are both available within the village.
Take advantage of the free guided walks through the countryside. The surrounding forests are home to a wealth of wildlife, including porcupines, snakes, wild boar and visiting wolves from the Abruzzo mountains.
High up in the hills, you can also visit the hermitages where those searching for divine illumination spent their days in the darkest, coolest recesses of the caves.
St Francis of Assisi lived and taught in the nearby mountains and the town of Assisi is two hours away. Here, you'll find the spectacular Basilica of San Francesco, one of Italy's most important religious monuments, which also houses the most impressive collections of 13th and 14th-century art outside a gallery. For more details, see assisionline.com
Although hooking up with excursions to local sites of interest is easy with either La Torretta or Sunflower Retreats - and gives you the chance to meet people - you will have more flexibility if you hire a car in Rome on your arrival.
Orvieto, an hour away from Casperia draws holidaymakers with a love of art, culture and history. The Corpus Domini Festival is held there every June and involves a costumed parade through the streets.
Travel guide: Italy
Chill out away from the crowds
My sister Kathy and I visited by boat from our base at Sorrento. From the ferry port we took the funicular up to Capri Town and had coffee in the attractive main square.
It wasn't long before hoards more tourists started to arrive and the square became crowded. So we hopped on a bus and went up to the higher point of Anacapri.
Up there we found peace and quiet at the Villa San Michele. This lovely house, on the site of an ancient Roman villa, was built by Swedish writer Axel Munthe, who lived here in the 1920s.
You can wander round the house, now a museum, and the little terraced gardens which have some interesting sculptures, and there are fantastic views over the Bay of Naples. We gave up all ideas of joining the crowded tour boats to the Blue Grotto and just chilled out here.
Later we returned to Capri Town and explored some of the old narrow streets leading off the square, had a pizza washed down with local wine and bought a few souvenirs before heading back to Sorrento. And, of course, there were more lovely views from the boat as we left this pretty little island.
Travel guide: Italy
The city that sings an aria to soccer
From the Mail on Sunday
The Stadio Renato Dall'Ara, Bologna, Italy; 3pm, one Sunday. The referee put the whistle to his lips to start the match with Vincenza. But we never heard his shrill blast. All known sound was drowned out by a very lifelike impression of Vesuvius, first exploding, then erupting.
Duel by firecrackers is the normal start to Serie A football matches. The voguishly coutured couple in front - their three-year-old sitting between them in white fur coat and fur hat - hardly looked up at the raging pyrotechnics at both ends of the ground, where rival supporters sat.
This is a piece of football ritual everybody knows by heart. If it follows the script, the fans throw the firecrackers, still gushing brilliant scarlet smoke, on to the racetrack around the pitch. Every ground has firemen standing by, and they know exactly what to do. They toss the still blazing fireworks into a pit filled with water. It's the football equivalent of the big operatic overture.
We were in Bologna to do something which is not so easy at home. Not only are tickets very hard for neutrals to buy at Premiership games, the contests are profoundly tribal. Imagine saying to the person next to you at Liverpool v Everton / Arsenal v Tottenham / Sunderland v Newcastle: 'Actually, I don't support either side. I'm just here to see fair play.'
This is why it was much easier for us to take a low-price Go flight from Stansted to see top-flight football in the northern Italian city of Bologna, than book to see Man U at Old Trafford. The Italians may be some of the most passionate football followers around, but, strangely, they don't fill their grounds. I've been to Rome, where they have matches most weekends featuring either Lazio or Roma. They share the magnificent Olympic stadium, so big there is almost always room, except when they play each other. That's when you stay out of town.
And this isn't a gender thing. My wife had seen enough of Euro 2000 and Channel 4's coverage of Serie A to appreciate silky Latin skills. Perhaps shapely thighs too, and the uncanny resemblance many Italian stars have to the subjects of Botticelli paintings.
Travel guide: Italy
The River Cafe cooks' tour
From the Mail on Sunday
We are lying on the grass outside Stansted Airport in beautiful sunshine waiting for our flight to Naples.
We have brought our own sandwiches made with fresh buffalo mozzarella, rocket from the River Cafe garden and some Italian vine tomatoes, and a bottle of Chianti Classico from the Isole e Olena estate - a taste of things to come.
A few weeks earlier, being close to completing River Cafe Cook Book Easy, we had vowed that when it was published we would take a short holiday to Italy, the inspiration for the food we cook in the River Cafe.
When we opened the restaurant 15 years ago, we had both lived there and wanted to cook the kind of domestic, regional food we had come to know but which was impossible to find in London.
We have travelled throughout Italy, so where to go on our mini-holiday? Almost in unison we decided on the Amalfi coast - we hadn't been there together for many years.
Amalfi, with its soaring limestone cliffs plunging into an azure sea and a string of small villages which were once only accessible by boat, is said to have the most beautiful stretch of coastal scenery in the Mediterranean. It is a paradise of lemon groves and olive terraces.
Driving from Naples in the late evening, on a road which winds around small mountains and through cliff-side tunnels, we descended into Meta, south of Sorrento, just as the churches were emptying, to follow a torch-lit procession.
We arrived in Positano after dark. Positano lies at the centre of the Amalfi coastline. It is a vertical town spilling down from the road to the sea, with colourful buildings painted orange, yellow and pink.
John Steinbeck once described it as 'a dream place that isn't quite real when you are there and becomes beckoningly real after you're gone'.
Our hotel for the next five days was to be the Sirenuse, the former home of the Neapolitan family Sersale to whom it still belongs.
Our mozzarella supplier, Francesco Moncado, turned out to be a close friend of theirs.
Travel guide: Italy
Cavalese - where ski beginners get the bug
For skiing virgins Italy's Cavalese proves a great place to start.
Reached via a heart-in-mouth trip along ribbon-thin roads in the Dolomites, it is one of 10 pretty resorts that make up the picturesque Val di Fiemme.
With 40 miles of piste, the surrounding Alpe Cermis mountains offer a handful of gentle nursery slopes for the new and nervy, and some tantalising blue, red and black runs for the brave, though this isn't really a resort for advanced skiers.
For someone who can't carry a cup of tea into the room without getting it on the ceiling, the instructors for the learn-to-ski group had their work cut out.
But a three-hour introductory lesson with Francesca is enough to settle frayed nerves and steady those enormously long new feet that take some getting used to and have an annoying habit of tripping you up when you least expect it.
A mixed group of 10 (mainly Brits and ranging from 10 years upwards) seems a bit big at this nervy, hanging-around-forgetting-how-you-just-did-that stage but it also means you get to see plenty of others ending up in undignified heaps, which certainly breaks the ice...
Ski school is Mon-Fri, from 10am to 1pm on the first and last days and 11am to 1pm on the days in between. You get the afternoons to practise by yourself.
After an intense first morning learning to snowplough - your breaking method, which can come in handy now and again! - things start to get a little easier.
Striking up that knock-kneed leaning-forward pose feels precarious and alien at first, but give it time and it will soon feel like second nature...
On mastering the essential snowplough, the Alpe Cermis slopes begin to look like a different place. A beautiful rather than scary selection of icing sugar-coated runs and bumps which experts shimmy down elegantly. The traffic is reassuringly manageable too.
By the second day, the group moves from the "baby bump" to the next, noticeably longer and lumpier nursery slope via a gondola lift - which can amass big queues in the morning.
The instructor for the rest of the week, GianCarlo, is patience personified, and the results are impressive. Never have the words "take it as slowly as you like, I will be right here" sounded so comforting!
Soon the group are executing snowplough turns, getting to grips with the tricky drag lifts - a personal bug bear - and are desperate for the next challenge.
As the week progresses, you'll find that you do too. The penultimate day and the instructor decides we are ready, with our burgeoning parallel ski efforts, to tackle a blue run.
Some people sneak off at this point, others tremble their way down, while the rest whizz down the descent like pros.
And efforts are rewarded: we all receive a bronze medal and certificate saying we have passed a series of beginners' tests at the end of the week. There are more satisfied smiles on show than requests at the bar for the amazingly popular local local drink, Vin Brulee (like a spicier mulled wine).
Travel Guide: The Dolomites
Go for the Italian double
Given our obsession with football and our addiction to all things pasta-like and pizzery, it's surprising Britons don't spend more time in Italy where they treat all these things seriously.
Both Milan and Rome have plenty to recommend them for a weekend break. The first is celebrated for its fashion and shopping and the capital has history ingrained into its very pores. And if you are a footie fan you might be able to slot in a match too.
And remember to put plenty of time aside to enjoy leisurely meals of Italian delectibles - long gorgeous lunches on shady terraces where you can experience pasta the Italian way, decorated with mouthwatering, freshly-made sauces.
You'll soon find there are rules about food in Italy. For most of those who live there, breakfast is an espresso coffee and a cornetto (croissant) consumed standing up at the cafe's counter. Lunch is strictly between 12.30pm and 2.30pm so unless you just want a sandwich don't plan on a late meal. Only tourists drink cappuccino in the afternoon, but as a visitor you'll get away with it. To avoid ridicule, never ask for parmesan cheese with a pasta dish that includes fish - the waiter probably won't deliver it and will be shocked at the inadequacies of your palate.
Apart from the joy of food tourism, for the first-time visitor to Rome, the must-sees are the Vatican Museum, St Peter's and the Coliseum. Expect a long wait at the Vatican (up to three hours) before the queue winds its way to the door and you can find your way into its heart swollen with art treasures.
Because of the heat, many people try and visit first thing in the morning, but instead opt for lunchtime when the queues tend to be shorter, otherwise you could be lining up for around three hours in peak season. Some of the world's most famous works of art are on display inside the museum, but even if you spend a whole morning there you won't be able to take it all in. It gets hot, sticky and very, very crowded.
Concentrating on a few areas may be wise - the Sistine Chapel and the incredible mosiac maps of Italy are unmissable. At the end of the museum you will trip out into the sun, past the Swiss guards, dressed in uniforms as stripey as a child's ice lolly, before heading for St Peter's.
To get the most out of a Roman summer holiday, factor in how hot it will be, especially in the middle of the day. It's a good idea to start your sightseeing early while it is cooler and then take a long lunch break, as the Italians do, starting again around 3pm. Expect a horde of tourists at many of Rome's must-see locations, so use insider knowledge to skip the worst.
Buy a Rome archaelogic card (E22) for seven days of visits to nine sights, including the Colisseum, and beat the ticket queues at this most famous of Roman arenas. Alternatively buy a joint ticket at the entrance to the Palatine Hills, see a stunning view across the city from the hilltops from under shady tall trees, before queue jumping those poor souls who are enduring the queue at the Colisseum.
During the most scorching excesses of the midsummer sun, a wonderful haven is the shady parkland surrounding the Villa Borghese, once the private home of one of Rome's most influential families. It is now a public park with ice cream vendors (ask prices before you buy to avoid rip offs), fountains and a serene art gallery in the villa itself.
At sunset, catch an usual perspective on Rome's skyline and a view of all the monuments from the heady heights of the tethered balloon in the Borghese park. There are honey-coloured buildings as far as the eye can see. And as the balloon soars the adrenalin starts flowing, putting you in the perfect mood for an apertif (apertivo), an pre-dinner Italian tradition.
Rome is packed to the gills with fabulous restaurants and bars so you will have plenty of choice. But try and stay away from the touristy haunts and head for somewhere with a bit more local colour.
We dropped into a little-known neighbourhood close to Termini station, a friendly little couple of streets including Bistro on Via Palestro. Roman cuisine is famous for its use of bits and pieces of animal innards that Britons are usually too squeamish to try. For the less brave, try Roman specialities like pasta all'amatriciana (chilli, tomato and bacon pasta) or saltimbocca, a traditional recipe of veal, ham and sage. Equally delicious, but without the yuck factor. Another find was central La Taverna Degli Amici on Piazza Morgana, with a great atmosphere, and a lovely shady terrace. Try the bucatini, a Roman pasta special.
A couple of minutes walk from here is the busy Piazza Venezia. Try and cross the road here. Tagging behind a nun is a wise way of making sure the cars really do stop on the zebra crossing The kind of craziness of the motorists is well worth avoiding.
Travel guide: Italy
Abruzzo: Italy's hidden treasure
A seaside swim in the morning followed by an afternoon skiing in the mountains is just one of many options open to visitors to Abruzzo in Italy.
Abruzzo is known as Italy's "green region". Its three national parks, home to brown bears and wolves, offer what must be some of Europe's most stunning mountain scenery.
The region also boasts 129km of white beaches along its Adriatic coastline.
The region of Abruzzo lies halfway up the eastern Italian coast and covers an area of around 11,000 sq km.
Over 65% of the region is occupied by mountains, littered with small towns and villages that seem untouched by time.
The region's main centre is the coastal city of Pescara, with a population of 150,000. Ryanair flies into the city from London Stansted once a day.
Abruzzo is largely untainted by large-scale foreign tourism. Those who do visit are mainly there for the wide range of mountain pursuits.
Organised hiking, alpine skiing and pony trekking in the imposing mountain countryside are all on offer from local tour guides in the three parks: Abruzzo, Majella-Morrone and Gran Sasso Laga.
A hire car is probably needed to make the most of the parks. Driving through gorges and along the winding mountain roads is the best way to appreciate Abruzzo's natural beauty. You'll also stumble across many of its medieval towns and villages steeped in rich history and tradition.
Places like Caramanico, Scanno and Penne have churches and architecture dating to Roman and medieval times.
Most of the buildings are built from Abruzzo's trademark white stone, and towns are an intricate maze of atmospheric narrow alleys, winding staircases and quiet piazzas.
Travel guide: Italy
Up to your eyes in Italian mud
Spa holidays might have become trendy recently but in some parts of the world they've been the way to unwind for centuries.
The town of Abano Terme in Veneto, northern Italy, is one of the oldest spa resorts in Europe — its spring waters and mud have been known for their healing properties since Roman times. Nestled in the Euganean Hills, it's a great place for a relaxing trip. The thermal water used in spa hotels in Abano Terme flows to the town from the Pre Alps. On the journey it is enriched with mineral salts and heats to 87C.
The water is pumped into swimming pools and used for spa baths. It's also put into huge mud-filled vats where, over several years, it matures the thermal fango (mud). During that time the mud absorbs the thermal water's minerals.
If you have an ailment there's a chance the mineral and water treatments can help treat it. They are used for disorders including rheumatism, osteoarthritis, respiratory disorders and gout, as well as to aid the healing of broken bones and fractures.
But mud treatment isn't for the modest — you have to strip naked before being slathered in the stuff. Once bare, a woman applies mud to your back from shoulders to the top of your legs. It's also put anywhere that needs treatment, like the elbow. You're wrapped in plastic — Twin Peaks fans eat your hearts out — and left to lie and sweat it out. After 20 minutes the mud is hosed off and you are given a massage that helps rid the body of toxins and benefit the muscles and nervous system.
Lying in the mud is an odd experience but afterwards you feel wonderful. It is believed treatment in Abano Terme's "sweat grottos" (a steam bath in thermal water) can aid weight loss, gout and diabetes.
Although set in beautiful Italian countryside, a lack of planning restrictions (read ugly tower blocks) means Abano Terme isn't a pretty town. But there are many wonderful day trips. You can trek, cycle or horse ride in the Euganean Hills National Park.
There are lovely trips to villas and medieval villages while Venice, Verona and Lake Garda are all within an hour or two. Not too far away is the beautiful Villa Dei Vescovi which offers wine tasting or you can simply sample the delicious Italian food at one of the local restaurants.
By no means is this a party town and it seems to be frequented by predominately mature people and many retirees visit annually.
If it's peace of mind and tranquillity you want, Abano Terme is perfect.
Verona is the closest airport to the resort. There are flights from Gatwick and many towns including Manchester, Newcastle, Glasgow, Belfast, Cardiff and Exeter. It takes two to three hours. The currency is the euro.
Thomson Lakes and Mountains brochure has seven-night holidays in Abano Terme from £405 in May to £629 in August. Tel: 0870 606 1470.
Travel guide: Italy
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| | | | du Maurier's visits to the city
Before we embark on this literary pilgrimage, we need to address the matter of the film version of Don't Look Now. When good fiction is brought to the screen, the results are often dire (The Shipping News, for example).
Yet when the filming of Don't Look Now began exactly 30 years ago this year, it was to prove that rare creature: a film that managed to match the quality of the book.
And while films normally cut and compress fiction, Don't Look Now director Nicolas Roeg needed to extend and amplify the original story.
So, remarkably, the film and book complement each other - something that du Maurier was happy to acknowledge when she saw a special preview.
There are differences. In the film, John Baxter, played by Donald Sutherland, becomes an agnostic church restorer who travels to Venice with his wife Laura (Julie Christie) after their young daughter had drowned.
In du Maurier's story, as we know, the Baxters' daughter died of meningitis - and John and Laura are simply enjoying a short holiday in Venice.
But the central tale remains mostly intact. The main elements of the story were all observed by du Maurier on her visits to the city.
She had seen two sisters, one of them blind, and she had seen what she thought was a little girl in a coat with a pixie hood - the misapprehension that provides the awful twist in the tale.
The plot hinges on a series of episodes linked with clairvoyance and psychic precognition - subjects that fascinated du Maurier.
In a restaurant - on Torcello, of course - John and Laura meet two Scottish sisters, one of whom, named Heather, is blind and clairvoyant. She tells Laura that she has seen her dead daughter sitting at the restaurant between her and John, smiling and happy.
The blind sister also reveals that the daughter is warning John and Laura not to stay in the city because their lives are in danger.
Grandeur and charm
We were once again staying at the Gritti Palace. The hotel still has its mixture of solid grandeur and casual charm. I remember how, when Sue and I were shown to our Dogesized accommodation in 1990, I feared it might not be romantic enough and asked for something 'smaller'.
The puzzled manager offered us half a dozen other sumptuous rooms, including the one always kept for Princess Margaret.
On the day we returned came news of a definitive plan to stop Venice sinking, as it has been doing for more than 200 years. A floating dam at the mouth of the lagoon, code-named Moses and costing £3.5 billion, should be in place by 2012.
It cannot come a moment too soon. We found St Mark's Square flooded as it now is for about 100 days per year; you cross it via wooden walkways.
Even in early January there were heavy daytime crowds thronging St Mark's Cathedral and the Doges' Palace. But after dark the crowds melted away. We could walk through an almost empty warren of alleys, bridges and squares, imagining ourselves back in the 16th century.
Among myriad guidebooks to the city, by far the most companionable is JG Links's Venice For Pleasure (Pallas Guides, £12.95 in paperback).
Links can tell you about every church, monument and art gallery in the most exhaustive detail. But he also tells you the location of the best cafes. If it's a choice between a church and a coffee, Links has no hesitation in picking the latte.
We popped into the Peggy Guggenheim Museum. Looking at Picassos and Miros on top of looking at Venice felt almost sinful, like the three desserts our Venice baby had put away in the Gritti dining room the previous night.
The draw for Jessica was the souvenir shops, filled with garishly coloured glass animals and masks commemorating Venice's fabled water carnival.
Sue and I argued over where exactly we'd seen that squatting dalmatian. So it was that Jessica finally discovered why, whenever Mummy showed signs of getting her a dog, Daddy could squash it by saying: 'Remember the dalmatian in Venice.'
Byzantine history
What is Venice's secret? First of all, the lagoon. Most travellers take it for granted, seeing it as nothing more than a broad and frankly boring expanse of water that has to be crossed before the fun begins. In fact, the lagoon is Venice's entire raison d'etre: without it the city would never have existed. Why, after all, should any sane person dream of building a village - let alone the most beautiful city on earth - in such a setting?
Simply because the first Venetians needed protection. In the 5th and 6th centuries the barbarian hordes swept down from central Europe, plundering and destroying everything in their path. The inhabitants of the coastal cities fled for their lives, and the lagoon offered them precisely the security they needed.
It must have been uncomfortable at first; but at least it was safe, and as time went on the people of Venice came more and more to appreciate their lagoon. Those two and a half miles of shallow water - and shallow water is a far better defence than deep, since without expert knowledge of the shoals and sandbanks it is virtually unnavigable - continued to protect them.
While the rest of northern Italy gradually disintegrated into countless city states, all more or less at war with each other - Guelf against Ghibelline, Emperor against Pope - the Venetians, superb seamen as they had to be, were able to dissociate themselves altogether from the mainland and look instead to the East. And from the East they drew two things: their culture and their wealth.
Let's take the culture first. It came above all from Byzantium. In the 6th century, when Venice was little more than a few thatched huts in the marshes, most of north Italy was subject to Constantinople - which is why Ravenna, the capital of the Byzantine exarchate, boasts the most stunning early Byzantine mosaics to have survived anywhere.
Then, in 727, Italy rebelled, splintering as it did so into a number of city-states. One of these was Venice; but unlike the others, Venice continued to think of herself - despite her new-found independence - as being far more Byzantine than Italian.
That is why St Mark's looks the way it does: nothing like any cathedral on the Italian mainland but a riot of polychrome marble and mosaic beneath five bulbous and distinctly oriental domes. Consecrated in 1094, it is based on Constantine the Great's Church of the Holy Apostles in Constantinople.
And then there are its mosaics. On the west front, alas, four out of the five above the main doors are perfectly hideous replacements; but that on the extreme left, representing the carrying of the body of St Mark into the Basilica after the Venetians snatched it from Alexandria in 828, is glorious 13th century work.
And the interior - particularly if you are lucky enough to see it when the recently installed floodlighting is on - is literally dazzling. Strangely enough, however, the greatest mosaic of all is not there; it is in the eastern apse of the Cathedral of Torcello. Still, the 40-minute trip to that lovely island is - heaven knows - no hardship, even if, like most people, you can't afford lunch at the Cipriani.
Age of Decadence
He was also a philosopher, medic, astronomer, linguist - 'and,' she exclaimed with raised eyebrows, 'a seducer', who couldn't go without sex for more than 48 hours.
The tour took us back to the dissolute 18th century, when Venice was the Bangkok of its time and Casanova was just one of many louche adventurers in what became known as the Age of Decadence.
'This is where he was jailed,' said Maria, pointing at the forbidding Doge's Palace.
Casanova's romantic antics had made him jealous enemies, and at the age of 30, they succeeded in landing him in prison for immoral behaviour, spying and witchcraft.
Casanova, popular with his guards, was the only prisoner to escape in 300 years. Hailing a gondola, he fled Venice and didn't return for 17 years.
We moved to a nearby small square, Campo San Moise. 'This is where he gambled,' said Maria, pointing up at shuttered windows.
It was in Venice that the term 'casino' was first used - a 'little house' rented by young bloods for after-hours gambling . . . and pleasure.
Orgies in 18th-century Venice were commonplace. So was cross-dressing. 'This is where he had a threesome with a nun and a cardinal - the French ambassador,' said Maria, as we ducked down another backstreet.
Here was the theatre district, Calle del Teatro, where Casanova's mother performed and where her son had a job as a young violinist.
He was saved from insignificance by a wealthy patron called Bragadin who, dying of thrombosis by the side of a canal, was spotted and treated by the young Casanova.
Bragadin paid off his debts and put him up at his palazzo. The Casanova Tour lingered outside its imposing facade: a great step up for our hero.
Our walk, which explored the quiet underbelly of Venice's most popular tourist quarter, San Marco, was not chronological. 'This,' said Maria triumphantly, up another alley, 'is where he had his first sexual conquest - aged 12.'
Five tiny islands linked together
After San Michele, the boat soon arrives at Murano, known the world over for its glass, which has been produced here since 1291.
But the path to purchasing something tasteful and authentic at a fair price is a slippery one, and don't be surprised to discover that many of the souvenirs on sale in tacky boutiques lining Murano's main drag are actually made in Taiwan.
The best plan is to go into the free demonstrations at workshops and only bring out your credit card when you're sure you're happy.
Murano is actually five tiny islands linked together and it's worth crossing the bridge over the Canal Grande di Murano to wander among the palaces and convents that witnessed many of Casanova's exotic adventures.
In the morning, you'll see fishermen and farmers arrive in their boats to set up a small floating market, and on the Fondamenta Cavour is the Antica Trattoria, a pretty restaurant that serves wonderful sea bass and gnocchi cooked with tiny black squid.
A little further is the grandiose Basilica Maria e Donato, often neglected by guidebooks but with one of the finest facades in all Venice.
Cross the bridge opposite the Basilica and you'll spy the Duomo Bar, a co-operative pub owned by local glass blowers. A steaming plate of pasta of the day is only £2.50, and you won't see a single tourist.
After lunch, walk over to the vaporetto stop at the lighthouse, and choose between sailing to Mazzorbo, Burano and Torcello, or the little-visited Vignole and Sant'Erasmo
Vignole is enormously popular with Venetians. As its name implies, it comprises mainly of vineyards and allotments, and you'll find a couple of friendly, cheap restaurants here.
But for a really great meal, it is worth carrying on to Sant'Erasmo, the best-kept secret of the lagoon.
Larger than Venice itself, this is one vast market garden, its fields planted with artichokes, asparagus and red radicchio.
Luxury home from home
On our first day we tried to find our way, without a map, to St Mark's Square, thinking we should have coffee at Florians, watch people and pigeons, take a gondola ride, go to an art exhibition, or to our friend Holly Snapps' gallery, just behind the Palazzo Grassi, to buy ethereal prints to take home. We quickly learned that gondoliers take you only where they want to, and that Venice loops around the Grand Canal so people without maps go in circles.
Next day we found the water bus (Vaporetto) station at Ca d'Oro three minutes' walk away from our apartment. The boats come every ten minutes, it's one stop to the great Rialto Bridge and for around £11 you can get a 72-hour tourist ticket which takes you anywhere.
We bought fruit, vegetables, cheese and hearts of artichoke from Rialto market, and fish which writhe and glitter on great marble slabs in the Campo di Pescheria. But the best fun was learning about our area (sestriere), Cannareggio. Each 'sestriere' has a square ('campo') with its own church, coffee bars and cafes. The shops were full of local produce, from proscuitto to porcini (dried or fresh mushrooms) to home-made pasta, which I bought for less than £3.
All of these tasted better cooked at home by candlelight with the moon shining on the terrace. Out late one night, we found ourselves in the deserted Rialto market. There we saw a marketeers' wine bar, Osteria Andrea, where you stand up to drink and eat. But upstairs is a tiny six-table restaurant with vaulted ceilings and saffron walls, where we enjoyed a perfect dinner for about £29 and decided that, in its simplicity, it was our favourite restaurant.
My husband is an art critic and writer, so he was in heaven. In one small area can be found some of the greatest art in the world. Along the Grand Canal lie the Guggenheim Museum of Modern Art, the Galleria Accademia, the Museo Correr and galleries showing new artists in the Biennale.
Chugging along the Canal the views are endlessly dazzling: great private Palazzos painted in jewelled colours, graceful hidden gardens, the magnificent domes of the great churches of San Giorgio Maggiori and the Santa Maria della Salute.
Exploring winding alleys, we found the Fortuny Museum tucked away behind the Campo San Maurizio, and discovered that the sensuous beauty of the pleated Fortuny fabrics makes them as tempting to a modern woman as they were to the beauties of the 1920s. My husband bought me (for £194) a bronze pleated silk scarf edged with crystal which transforms at the stroke of a hand or the whirl of a hip into anything you want, from cape, to scarf, to skirt to an entire dress.
Just before we left, we visited the Palazzetto San Lio, near St Mark's Square, where I found the place to stay when we come back for our anniversary: an apartment with a four-poster bed and real Venetian hand-painted wedding wardrobe. But that's for next time. For now, the perfect honeymoon is over.
A key to the city
My brood was delighted by the simple, comfortable little flat in the Dorsoduro area, five minutes' walk from a vaporetto stop, and 10 minutes from the Accademia. We had three bedrooms, two bath/shower rooms and a well-fitted kitchen/ dining room, leading off a prettily furnished sitting area.
The apartment was situated in one of the few large squares, the Campo Santa Margherita, and you easily could spend 20 minutes lounging at the window watching the activity below. First thing in the morning the fruit and vegetable and fish stalls would set up, shopkeepers opened the shutters, and a smell of fresh bread and coffee drifted upwards.
Then you'd see the Venetians hurrying to work - all smart clothes and briefcases - before the children took over the leafy open space, chasing dogs and pigeons, shouting to their mothers and whizzing about on roller blades. Gradually the cafes filled up and all through the day non-tourist life continuously swirled beneath us. And when we leaned out of our windows to hang our washing on the outside line, as all Venetians do, we felt we truly belonged.
The first thing to be said about renting in the company of grownup children is that you can get them to shop and cook for you. I felt rewarded for all those years when the reverse was true, since I cooked only one meal all week. Daniel has a chef's diploma, vegetarian Mandy makes a better avocado dip and salad dressing than anyone I know, Pete is a very keen cook and Kitty is just discovering the joys of proper food, with the satisfaction of seeing people enjoy what you have produced.
They all liked deciding who would cook and then buying the vegetables from laden, colourful stalls (one actually on a barge moored a short walk away). There was a supermarket across the square for basics. And we bought wine from vats, taking empty water bottles to be filled with the ultimate (delicious) plonk.
Had we been staying in the cheapest hotel the week would have cost five or six times as much. As it was, we ate out each day on our trips around the city, but had dinner 'in' every evening, talking until late around the comfortable table, jazz, blues or Vivaldi playing on the little CD player we took with us.
Somewhere ultra-exclusive
Accommodation is also problematic. It's all very well nipping over to Venice for the weekend, but the fantasy loses its bloom unless you can stay somewhere ultra-exclusive that sets you apart from the herd.
In the 19th and early 20th centuries, when the centre of Venice was regarded as smelly and unhealthy, the super-rich stayed at the grand hotels on the Lido.
But you would have to be mad to stay there today. The first things you see are motor cars - not the Venice of the postcards.
Of the famous hotels in the city proper, the Gritti Palace enjoys a fine situation on the Grand Canal but has non-stop hordes of French tourists tramping past the back door.
The Cipriani has a more secluded setting, but in terms of atmosphere is too remote from the historic heart of the city.
As for the magnificent Danieli, the last time I stayed there the lobby was under 2ft of water. When Venice floods, the hotel is in the front line.
There was no danger of flooding on the Santa Cruz Tres, the floating pleasure palace where we spent the night.
This sleek 140ft super-yacht has just been refitted at vast cost by its British owner, a washing machine tycoon.
There is gold in them thar tumble-driers. No expense had been spared, no detail overlooked.
Even the artificial flowers which filled every cabin in Technicolor profusion looked as if they had been put through a full 60-minute programme with an anti-crease cycle.
You could have swung two cats and a dog in my double-bedded cabin, which had every mod con imaginable. And the books! Any yacht-owner whose library includes the memoirs of Sarah Ferguson is not short of a bob or two.
Talk about transcendental
Talk about transcendental. Hats off to the inspirational and sprightly Sir David who, at 82, kept us all on our toes as he skipped about the podium like a young mountain goat.
The trip wasn't all singing. There was plenty of time to explore.
After rehearsals, I'd hop on to a vaporetto and travel round for hours, spellbound at the glorious palaces lining the Grand Canal, including the one where Lord Byron's mistress jumped off the balcony after a lovers' tiff and had to be hauled from the water.
I glimpsed vivid images - a wedding party in gondolas, a waterborne coffin, a Japanese tourist stepping backwards into a canal, and a mile-long queue to visit the Basilica in St Mark's Square.
I saw three of my sister sopranos taking photos from the Rialto Bridge, a Scratch couple from Yorkshire being serenaded in a gondola, and dozens of other fellow Scratchers shaking their heads in bewilderment as they studied their maps.
On the evening of the Scratch Banquet at the Hotel Principe, Sir David introduced me to his wife, Rachel, to whom he has been married for 55 years and with whom he fell in love 'because she was the only girl in the choir whose eyes were on my baton while the rest had their faces hidden in their music'.
The downside of Venice is that you can't just hop in a taxi and head home.
Traipsing through the deserted streets at midnight desperate for a vaporetto to get back to the Lido is no joke.
There were four of us, our footsteps echoing alongside the misty canals, half expecting to catch sight of a midget scuttling through the shadows in a red duffel coat... creepy or what?
Wobble with conviction
Book with the kind of company which makes all the arrangements, provides maps and carries your luggage to the next hotel and it's as easy as falling off a gel saddle.
You get exercise; you get sightseeing; you get pampered; you get fit.
And you get a good conscience to go with the substantial country fare on offer in these parts.
Just as well, really - Venetia is home to wonderful mature cheeses, cured ham and fruity Tokay wine, whose grapes grow nowhere else outside Hungary.
Sitting down with a local family which has grown almost everything on your plate and wants you to enjoy it is, to me, one of the great pleasures of agriturismo, Italy's farm guesthouse system.
But the best thing about an independent cycling holiday is the freedom to go at your own pace; to make your own discoveries: a rustic restaurant, a perfect picnic spot, a gem of a country house.
Take my advice and wobble with conviction. Ignore the Lycra brigade, whizzing past like kamikaze wasps.
We covered our 20km to 40km a day with enough time to smell the hawthorn in the hedges, to pick a sprig of lavender, to listen to lark-song spooling out above the fields.
One look at Vicenza and we abandoned the bikes for the day. We stuffed our panniers with goodies from the market before concentrating on local-boy-made-good, 16th century architect Andrea Palladio, father of the classical country house style.
Thanks to his gorgeous Teatro Olimpico and array of minipalaces, Vicenza's citizens inhabit a town resembling a lavish stage set, but one without the tourist crowds of nearby Verona.
But before setting off, it's well worth bearing in mind some of the tips I was given by the experts:
A bit of advance practice might not go amiss.
Don't pack too much. You won't need anything formal.
Do bring your own cycling helmet, rain gear and plenty of sun protection. Floppy hats are out.
Trainers are fine. And the leg-wear? The fact is if you haven't ridden a bike for the past five years, you'll be grateful for cycling shorts. We're talking extra padding here.
TRAVEL DETAILS:
Headwater offer eight-night, independent, cycling holidays in Venetia. Bike hire, dinner and continental breakfasts are also included. Tel: 01606 720099. http://www.headwater-holidays.co.uk
The treasures of small hill towns uncovered
Some of Umbria's greatest attractions are the small hilltop towns scattered mostly in the south and west of the region. Many have Roman origins, retaining their original defensive walls and grand gateways as well as some sublime stone palazzos and cathedrals dating from medieval and Renaissance times. Because of their hilltop locations, the views are often wonderful, too. All of these are worth a day trip, for linking together for a touring holiday, or using as a base.
SPELLO: A tiny, compact settlement a little way south of Assisi, Spello has some of the most remarkable and best preserved Roman remains, in particular the walls and gateways of the town. Also, hidden away in the cobbled streets is the church of Santa Maria Maggiore, which has some wonderfully colourful frescoes.
MONTEFALCO: Dubbed, rather cornily, 'the balcony of Umbria', Montefalco does, nevertheless have some glorious views from its high ramparts.
ORVIETO: You've probably heard of the wine - a refreshingly dry white - but if you've not been to the town you're missing a treat. Clustered around its 15th-century cathedral, this is a classic medieval combination of steep cobbled streets and fine old stone houses and palaces. The brilliant-coloured facade of the cathedral - a fantasy of geometry, decorative stonework and guilded mosaics - is arguably the grandest in Umbria. The surrounding countryside is also extremely attractive. I'd vote it top spot for a hotel or villa holiday.
TODI: It boasts a magnificent central square - the Piazza del Popolo, flanked by the duomo and three palaces, in contrasting styles which date back to the 13th century. A good option for a lunch stop.
Motoring through the mountains
Our first destination was a small town called Figline Valdarno, just south of Florence. The car was loaded on to the Motorail at Calais, which took us overnight down to Nice. It is a surprisingly gruelling drive from Nice to Florence, not helped by the fact that once you cross the border into Italy you notice something strange: there is always another car attached to your back bumper.
You will go through more tunnels on this stretch of motorway than just about anywhere else in the world. Every one of them has a name, meaning that somewhere in Italy there is a huge government department whose only job is to think up names and measure the length of tunnels.
Eventually, hot and fractious, we arrived at Camping Norcenni - and it was huge. The brochure had described it as a large site, and they weren't joking. It sprawled across the hillside, an amazing small town of tents, caravans and mobile homes. It had four swimming pools, several restaurants, bars, shops and even a nightclub. In fact, much to the jeering delight of the children, everything the brochure had promised.
It was not so much a campsite, more a resort. The children soon abandoned their familiar pose of weary cynicism and plunged into campsite life - and the swimming pools. Our mobile home did much as promised, too. It did accommodate three adults and three children, if not in palatial splendour, at least in adequate comfort. But you do have to use the outdoor table as part of your living arrangements - which is fine in summer in Italy, but maybe not so great at the same time in Normandy.
What you will get on modern campsites are facilities of a high standard, reps to help with everything (if you travel with one of the camping companies) and virtually all you'll need for your holiday. You could spend an entire holiday here without once leaving the site.
What you will not get is a great deal of space or privacy. At our first site the caravans were so close together that if someone walked around next door, it sounded as if they were joining you in your bedroom. These larger sites are a form of resort living - and you have to be prepared for that. If you are searching for the remote, the quiet and the uncluttered, don't even think of a campsite.
Hot and bothered
With the help of the Italians we eventually found Borgo Navico. We gratefully shook hands with them and retired to bed, nerves frazzled and utterly exhausted. In the middle of the night, I awoke to find my wife sitting bolt upright in bed following the crab-like progress of a large black beastie across the beamed ceiling.
After strolling to the kitchen for a glass of water, I froze momentarily in the sitting room after spotting a black scorpion clinging to a wall. I killed it with my shoe and retired. During the next two days, another scorpion was scooped from the swimming pool and my wife suffered 12 mosquito bites in one evening. Unfortunately our second-floor apartment lacked curtains or mosquito netting on the windows to keep the wildlife out.
We resolved to keep the windows shut. It was, however, desperately hot inside. The tail end of the Greek heat-wave was just sweeping through Italy and the ensuing week passed in a slick of sweat. With the temperatures stuck in the high 90s and low 100s, we were anxious to find shade and cool, especially for the children.
While there was a small terraced garden area about 50 yards away, it sported a pathetic parasol nowhere near large enough to shade a family of four and had two broken sun loungers. But swimming in the shared pool was lovely - apart from being dive-bombed by kamikaze horseflies - and the views of the surrounding rolling and sun-soaked Tuscan hills were stunning.
No amount of sunshine and pastoral peacefulness, however, could lessen the strain of having to drive 'the track'. I would hurtle up the hills and hug the brake pedal gingerly edging down the declines, praying that the tyres held and no stones shattered a windscreen.
Staying in a self-catering apartment involved trips to Castellina, five miles away, for groceries. On these journeys my daughters invariably hugged each other and prayed on the back seat. Whenever we failed to make the top of a precipitous incline and were forced to take a second run at it, I would grunt, 'Lyme Regis' - this having been my favoured summer destination.
Off the beaten track
We could sail off the beaten track as whim dictated, anchoring in coves which would otherwise remain unexplored, or we could follow the crowd into fashionable harbours for a little shopping and a long lunch.
If we liked, we could sail the boat ourselves, rely on the skipper, or a bit of both. The Giglio and Giannutri islands are tiny and sit near the Argentario peninsula. Popular with rich Romans as a holiday destination, neither is more than a few hours from the other or the haven of the mainland.
On that first day we immediately sank into the rhythm of the waves, taking turns to steer the boat while Scianti filled us in on her history. We sat back on the cushions with a glass of white wine and soda, watching rocky Giglio get closer and closer.
And what a pretty island it turned out to be, with a tiny port and sandy beaches. Once safely secured we dived in, then swum ashore through surprisingly cold currents. Meanwhile, our captain filled the little tender with towels, sunglasses and suntan lotion before rowing to join us. We felt we were experiencing the height of luxury.
After pizza and wine on the beach, we were ready to swim back to the boat. We bought fuel for the little dinghy and then took the Blue Stream to a bay on the far side of the island where we anchored by moonlight and ate inside the cabin to avoid the night chill.
Next morning, at first light, we discovered we had anchored in completely clear water just off a deserted sandy beach, and could not resist a swim before breakfast. Afterwards we decided to go ashore to check out the lay of the land and discovered a charming small hotel and a couple of shops.
Eventually, we puttered back to the boat to finish our exploration on the other side of the almost deserted island. By now our sea legs were in good enough shape to make the seven-hour trip to Elba, the island where Napoleon was imprisoned.
As we got closer the waves got choppier, although there was still no wind. The combination of heat, stillness and lack of air produced our first case of seasickness. Happily, it did not last, and as soon as we got to our harbour in Elba's Porto Azurro we were ready to go ashore for pizza and then to turn in early, as usual.
The next day we woke to the unfamiliar sound of raindrops on deck and the scream of wind in the rigging. We rejoiced in a brief respite from the heat and ate while we got wet.
We puttered out of port into a mistral, and were finally able to hoist both sails and do away with the engine. The boat keeled over at an exhilarating angle and ripped through the water. We were sailing.
Fish have 24 virtues
One reason the town's now so trendy is that it's changed so little in 50 years - local building rules even govern the colour you can paint your house (earth tones only, please).
But laws have also brought one change - many locals, piqued at having to wear crash helmets, have traded in their beloved bikes for tiny, Smartie-coloured Smart cars that zip through the narrow backstreets like overgrown mopeds.
I dawdle over a drink at the Augustus but there's still no sign of any celebrities, just a well heeled, well dressed Euro crowd.
The next day I decide to splash out on lunch at Lorenzo's, a fish restaurant famous throughout Tuscany that's a surefire place to snag a glimpse of the glitterati.
Sitting alone amid pairs of Prada-clad women, it's obvious that this is where the local ladies who lunch lunch.
But the closest I come to starspotting is the formidable matron presiding over her son and daughter-in-law, who was clearly the inspiration for Bunny McDougall in Sex And The City, right down to the oversized velvet bow in her hair.
Owner Lorenzo Viani, a dapper, whirlwind presence, is fanatical about freshness: fish has 24 virtues, he laughs, and loses one for every hour it waits to be eaten.
I devour my spectacular starter, a crisp, delicately flavoured fritto misto of paper-thin prawns and baby octopus, then follow it with barely seared tuna basted in marjoram, rosemary and other aromatic herbs.
Lunch in Italy is a ritual, and after gorging myself at Lorenzo's it's easy to remember why an afternoon siesta is essential: even the shops close to allow assistants a quick nap.
The next day I lounge away the afternoon at La Barca, another local institution: all dark woods and old photographs, it's like a beachfront gentlemen's club.
Waiters in dinner jackets bring me mineral water in bulbous, blown-glass jugs and a delicious version of the local speciality, il cacciucco, a soupy seafood stew with a sweet, peppery kick.
But the only Armani I've seen so far is other people's suits.
The grandiose appeal
My middle-aged heart skipped a beat at the sight of an old stone building at the bottom of the track. 'And this,' I said, 'is where we are staying.'
Inside our villa there was a cool, shadowy atmosphere typical of dwellings built for long Mediterranean summers. Heavy wooden doors and whitewashed walls, cold tile floors and shuttered windows were designed to keep out the sun, insects and heat.
But children, of course, aren't interested in interior design. Just outside the window, mine spotted a tennis court - and within two minutes, they had gone.
They played tennis for two hours that first day, never even glancing at the dazzling scenery around them.
And when they returned, only Frances seemed interested in venturing further afield. 'Can we go into the nearest town tomorrow,' she asked, 'to see the shops?'
Your nearest town in Tuscany is unlikely to have a branch of Top Shop, but it will have other attractions.
Whether you want the grandiose appeal of Florence, Siena or Pisa, or the discreet charms of a hill-top village, there's barely an ugly building in sight.
Siena is one of the great medieval cities of Europe, but Pisa was the biggest hit. I've never seen children so excited by a mere monument.
That leaning tower alone is worth the flight to Italy. My three wanted to run round it, climb up it, photograph themselves 'leaning' against it and return for a night visit.
They seemed to find its lack of vertical correctness hugely amusing - revelling, perhaps, in the searingly-obvious blunder of a bunch of grown-up builders.
Wonderment and despair in Montepulciano
Montepulciano is one of those breathtakingly situated medieval hill-towns that stud the Tuscan landscape, perched implausibly on towering crags. There are so many that it's not obvious why Montepulciano itself is so famous, unless the local red wine plays a part in its reputation.
Much of the beauty of such towns is that they are so perfectly preserved: no ugly suburbs wash against the lower slopes. No launderamas, video libraries or amusement arcades. No normal shops of any kind, in fact.
By the time we'd walked a mile up to the summit of Montepulciano (the Italians situate all town car parks at the bottom of extremely long and steep hills) we were in a curious state of wonderment combined with despair. Wonderment at the narrow cobbled lanes, the wrought-iron balconies and peeling plaster, the panoramic views of the countryside far below that flickered between the dark houses.
Despair that there was no soap, no washing up liquid, no lavatory rolls, no fresh food. Only gift shops and delicatessens selling 27 different varieties of sun-dried tomato. Perhaps it was early closing day for the real shops, we comforted ourselves, ever so slightly unconvincingly.
The next day we headed north to San Gimignano, a stunning city of ancient skyscrapers. It's a medieval Manhattan. To walk its streets is to travel back 900 years, always assuming that 900 years ago nobody washed or ate meat. We did at least find a precious lettuce and a green pepper among the olive-wood chopping boards and ten-inch-square herbal scented candles.
From the summits of San Gimignano's towers one can look out across a Tuscan countryside so perfect it looks as if it has been created by a landscape gardener. Geometric fields of ochre and pale green form elegant patterns on sunlit rolling hills. Dark poplars are the verticals. Everywhere there are terracotta-coloured farmhouses, cracked old outbuildings, little churches alongside sudden fields of bright yellow sunflowers.
But, for God's sake, is there anywhere to buy a lamb chop? Does anyone even know the Italian for 'lamb chop'?
Stop being a snob
This really is a holiday for families, especially those with small children, known as toddler families.
But with families comes equipment. Most sites have buggies, cots and high chairs. Some take the children off your hands while you unpack.
And there are kids' clubs split into different age groups and pools suitable for small children, although you have to wear horrible swimming hats.
Holiday parcs have got wise that visitors need more than a caravan and running water.
They have swimming pools, a gym and spa, a good restaurant - reasonably priced - a pizzeria and, importantly, a takeaway and a supermarket which isn't a rip-off.
Sites are busy and crowded but have a welcome siesta when no cars are allowed to move and shops are shut. It also gets very quiet after 10.30pm.
You can do this holiday flying but it's much easier to drive, especially if you have children's stuff. You'll also need to take your own towels.
You will need a car for sightseeing. The Norcenni Girasole Club is set in Chianti country and good for visiting Pisa, Florence, Rome and Siena.
Within an hour's drive is San Gimignano - a stunning hillside town which has a medieval festival in June.
You can arrive any day so you're not tied to Saturday-to-Saturday holidays. And you can stop off at camps along the route to break up the long car journey.
So this is a flexible, outdoor holiday which will delight your kids and do away with any pretensions or snobbery you may be harbouring.
A three-night stay at the Norcenni Girasole Club with Eurocamp is from £67 by car. Details 0870 366 7552.
Sturdy-looking bunk bed
The train leaves Paris just after 10pm and arrives in Turin the following morning a little before seven.
I travelled in an Excelsior car, which contains seven cabins - single or double, all with en suite shower room and toilet.
The price tag on this mode of transport is a hefty £364 return, but at least the company does attempt to lighten the blow by offering complimentary champagne as you board. Breakfast is brought to your cabin the following morning.
The Artesia night service has a good range of cabins - from the Excelsior suite to double, triple or quad sleepers (£114-£165), and four or six-berth couchette cabins (£96).
Be warned, however, that the couchette is nothing more than a fairly sturdy-looking bunk bed. Even first-class cabins can be noisy - my sleep was fitful and often disturbed by the sound of shower doors slamming.
However, I did manage to drop off, and arrived in Turin on time - which will no doubt come as a pleasant surprise to most British train passengers.
What it cost: Eurostar: from £79 return. Travel across Paris: approx £2. Paris to Turin return: from £96 to £364.
Total cost: £177-£445. Total time from home to hotel: approx 13 hours.
The religion of film
The longer I stay, the more cracks appear in the veneer of Turin's famous restraint. There's certainly not much sign of it at Teatro Regio, where the opening night of The Barber Of Seville finds the opera house awash with furs and champagne, with laughter, hand-kissing and cries of Brava!
More laughter echoes around the bizarre Mole Antonelliana, a building once destined to be a synagogue. The stunning National Cinema Museum, which opened here in July, is reason enough for visiting Turin. This is more of a theatre than a museum, a place where every visitor is part of the action.
The opening exhibitions resound to the gasps of children, the PlayStation generation delighted in their turn by the magic lantern shows and simple optical toys that entertained their 19th-century forebears. In the vast central temple, worshippers recline, gazing skywards at a series of ever-changing screens, or pay homage at the eight-sided chapels dedicated to different film genres.
Turin plainly loves and celebrates food. The vast market in Porta Palazzo has flourished here since Roman times. Stacks of glistening cheeses and freshly baked bread perfume the smallholders' section, where stalls totter under heaps of nuts and honey, live rabbits, chickens and bunches of herbs.
In Turin's restaurants, thinly sliced truffles come served in walnut shells with fondue sauce or with Jerusalem artichokes; risotto with asparagus or porcini mushrooms; fresh cheeses with truffle oil.The dry Martini that ushered in my meal and the Lavazza coffee that ended it were both born in Turin.
The former, by the way, should be stirred not shaken. '007 got that completely wrong,' says Martini & Rossi company barman Adriano Ronco. Dear me. But that's Turin - definitely a no-no for show-offs.
Leisured ladies of Turin
Perhaps the most elegant is Baratti e Milano, in Piazza Castello. Its sumptuous stuccoed dining room is a focus for the leisured ladies of Turin.
I drank a cappuccino in each of the historic cafes, as well as one at the less historic station bar, and asked all the barmen what they knew of the origins of the great beverage.
There was a consensus that the cappuccino was a very recent invention, dating from the beginning of what we must learn to call 'the last century'.
Cappuccino beginnings, I was told, depended upon the development of the compressed-steam espresso machine. Excess steam from the machine could be used to froth the milk to pour over the espresso.
But, according to the barista at the Station Cafe the espresso machine was really only perfected - by Achille Gaggia - in 1946.
If the historical background to the cappuccino remains stubbornly obscure, though, other things became very clear. For one, a cappuccino in Italy is a very different drink from the coffee-tinted foam served up in most British cafes.
It is very much better. It actually tastes of coffee, and is strong, yet soothingly milky. It is over sooner, too.
The Italian cappuccino is a small item, served - not in a cardboard wastepaper basket, nor a basin with handles - but in a modest white porcelain receptacle resembling a coffee cup.
By a process of what is probably called 'capillary action', some of the single shot of espresso at the bottom of the cup is drawn up through the milky foam, patterning the surface with a stain of brown.
The veteran barmen of Turin are able to control and predict this process with such skill that they can 'draw' stylised flowers, hearts, or other motifs in the foaming milk.
Deserted film sets
This year we flew to Trieste (this time without teenage sons) mainly because the flight cost 4p.
Well that's what the flight itself cost - but with airport tax it was £39.
Oh, and the train to Stansted was £45, the car hire was £180, leaving it until late evening to find a decent hotel in Croatia was a bit hairy and the day out in Venice was expensive.
Still, if it hadn't been for Ryanair's generous offer, we'd never have gone in the first place - and never found the wine list at the Hotel Ambassador in Opartija.
Under the grand heading Crvena Vina - red wine - was a single entry: Merlot.
We were in Croatia because Trieste is the eastern outpost of Italy, bordering the former Yugoslavia.
I knew this because my late father had been garrisoned there after the Second World War, defending the town 'against the Jugs'.
He'd been wounded and taken prisoner as the British Army pushed up through 'the soft underbelly of Europe' - a campaign that was anything but soft - and, after three months of being a prisoner of war, ended up in Trieste.
He told me they'd been stationed in a castle and I'd always imagined some old ruin.
Not a bit of it. The Castello de la Miramare is an enormous luxury holiday home built in 1870 for the Emperor Maximillian of Mexico. Jammy Pa!
There's something wonderful about summer resorts during the off season. Places that are designed for crowds of boiling holidaymakers feel a bit like deserted film sets when empty and cold.
Epicurean temptations
My first evening turned out to be unusually dank for the middle of June, but was instantly brightened by dinner in a fairytale fortress at the edge of Lake Toblino. About an hour from Riva, Toblino Castle would have been worth it for the surroundings alone - Renaissance turrets floating in the mist - but the food was aristocratic, too: delicate pasta with subtle sauces, wild mushrooms predominant, something clever with veal, strawberries and a warm souffle.
You might have paid £80 for it in London, but I'd hit the start of Mangiar Bene, 'eat-well' week, during which top local chefs whizz up five-course gourmet menus including copious wine for around £35 a head. Eat-well week almost proved my undoing.
Luckily, I was in the passenger seat next morning as we headed for the wooded hills, hairpin-bending up to the Fassa Valley and the Passo San Pellegrino. The vistas grew more bella by the minute, the most magical being the sight of tiny green alpine meadows slotted into the mountainsides, each with a few houses and outbuildings, sometimes a church: micro communities that seemed to have no visible support - or access - yet whose mint condition proclaimed prosperity.
The main sources of livelihood here are the production of food (cheese, hams, game, mushrooms) and, of course, attracting tourists to consume it. Trentino is a firm favourite with the Italians themselves, especially those who live in hotter spots further south.
Ominously, a lot of cows with bells were lying down as we left fitful sunlight and entered the vapour of a cloud (you know, of course, why cows lie down before it rains - so they'll have somewhere dry to lie). This elbowed the idea of zooming up in the ski-lift for an overview, but a walk in the effervescent air helped to drum up an appetite for lunch at the Funchiade Refuge. Just a bite and a beer, perhaps. I'd forgotten about eat-well week.
Oh, the platters of air-dried ham and smoked pork, the gnocchi with venison, the pappardelle con funghi. Impossible to resist, especially lulled into acquiescence by the sweet notes of some strolling players - a regular occurrence in the mountains.
Meeting and greeting
Walking in the Cinque Terre is not for those who want solitude. Hardly 10 minutes pass without a meeting and greeting. The game is to guess the nationality of oncomers. Is it to be buon giorno, guten morgen, good morning or bon jour? In view of the number of Aussies one encounters, g'day also comes in handy. Native Ligurians hail you with salve, as in Roman times.
In just under the guidebook's target time of one hour 45 minutes we descended into Vernazza, whose small, unbelievably picturesque main square by the harbour was in Sunday uproar.
Church bells sounded the end of mass, holidaymakers guzzled ice-creams, boatloads of visitors arrived, and the trattorie already crowded with local families settled down for a long, noisy seafood lunch.
Filled with a sense of achievement, several slices of focaccia and a litre of sparkling frizzantino, we caught the boat back to Porto Venere, where we were staying, in time for a siesta before dinner.
Thus was set the pattern for our Cinque Terre sojourn. A fit person could probably walk the whole length of the footpaths linking the five villages in the same number of hours. But better to spread it over three days, we decided, using boat and train to reach our starting point each morning.
Best of all is the three-mile section between Vernazza and Corniglia. It begins with another of those thigh-testing granite stairways, but eventually the path begins traversing the hill-face, among bursts of scarlet poppies and mauve valerian, and you look down on the seagulls skimming the cliffs below.
Since Corniglia has no harbour, we took the short train ride to Monterosso for an afternoon on the beach, before catching the last boat back to Porto Venere.
Porto Venere is a good base for the Cinque Terre, larger and less crowded than the five villages but just as ravishing. Our marble-floored apartment, in a 19th-century villa, overlooked the bay of La Spezia, which so inspired Byron and Shelley that it is known as the Golfo dei Poeti.
We also looked out on a little island called Palmaria, about half-a-mile across the water, from which, after dark, came the jolly sounds of Italians dining.
The source was the Locanda Lorena. We booked a table for our last night and the restaurant sent its launch to pick us up. It was the best food we'd had: prawns with a yellow pepper pate, squid au gratin, octopus salad, brandade of salt cod, anchovies and mussels from the bay.
A band played, and its members joined us on the launch for the journey home. Unbidden, they serenaded us with a tarantella as we sped towards the lights of Porto Venere. No wonder the poeti inglesi were keen on the place.
TRAVEL DETAILS:
Vacanze In Italia features the Villa Emilia in Porto. (Tel: 08700 772772, http://www.indiv-travellers.com).a
Chestnut cornucopia
We climbed just over 1,500ft a day on our tour. We walked on wide paths that wound up through wooded hills. Tiny spiders drifted in the mist, there was the sound of soft rain, and then - boar tracks (but it was to be the nearest we came to seeing one).
We stopped in Poggiolforato for a look round the Museo Etnografico's displays on country life. Over the weekend, we had an early morning visit to a cheese cooperative to see how Parmigiano Reggiano is made and then it was on to lunch at the Everest Hotel in La Ca where a lunch made entirely of chestnuts awaited.
This was an eye-opener. There were dried chestnuts, stewed ones, polenta made from chestnut flour, and chestnut marmalade. It turned into a meal to remember.
After that, Giorgio, the owner of Il Fondaccio, our hotel in Lizzano, took us to the 16th-century stone church of the Madonna dell' Acero. The Madonna is said to have appeared in a maple tree to two young shepherd boys caught in a blizzard. One, unable to speak since birth, had his speech restored, and the site has been a shrine ever since.
On our last afternoon, the lure of a street market in Lizzano proved too much. Some time later, laden with purchases, I emerged into the by now dark square lit by a full moon. My thoughts were immediately back with Vallisi searching out the biggest truffles.
Travel facts: Valerie joined a shortened Inntravel walk. Return British Airways flights from Heathrow to Bologna, seven nights half-board and the transfer of luggage from one hotel to another are included. Walking notes and maps are also provided. Details on 01653 629010 or visit http://www.inntravel.co.uk
A godlike guide on the path to the heavens
The clay walls and low houses dropped away. We took an upward turn. Student couples coming down the mountain gave the party curious looks. It was getting darker. We had pitched our comments up, hoping to needle the guide, but we still weren't sure which one he was. The man in the red shorts was too fat to be climbing nearly 3,000ft twice a day. He'd stayed in the cafe to count his pink slips.
It had to be the lithe blond with the little curly Greek-god beard. He had a professional sort of tube poking out of his rucksack so that he could access fluids while still hanging by his fingernails. His shorts looked equally rigorous. Made of some new-age material, they were spray-moulded to his buttocks and winked disconcertingly at us.
'Do you think he shaves his legs?' whispered Rebecca. They were the colour of a glass of sweet wine lit by a shaft of Aeolian sun and disgusting to behold. When we reached the last house, Adonis turned casually and called to a young man, who looked at him nervously and began to translate with apologetic gestures.
'I am a qualified mountain guide.' He wasn't, of course. He was a bespectacled young student from Genoa. 'We will be ascending to 900 metres to the, er, ben, to, er, examine the volcano.' This was good translating. 'We will be stopping, er, every 20 minutes.
'After 400 metres,' he swallowed nervously, 'it will not be possible to go back.' He was sweating now and fiddling with his collar. Luckily we weren't relying on him, but the actual guide who stood next to him looked both laconic and businesslike, an oddly reassuring combination.
He swept our pallid faces with his mountaineer's steady gaze. Behind him, next to a battered Union Jack, the notice proclaimed, in a kind of English: 'It is not permitted to return for parties after the sundown.' And even as he finished, a setting sun worthy of Judith Chalmers was turning the Tyrrhenian sea a lurid scarlet.
A cavalry charge
Desperate to illustrate the race's magnitude, he said: 'When my contrade don't win, I cry.' In fact, the Civetta district last won back in l979, so there isn't a year when Stefano hasn't cried.
There was no crying that night, though, when we joined the Civettese for their pre-Palio banquet; just lots of singing and drinking and banging of spoons and scarfwearing (loyalty to one's contrade is marked bysporting a scarf in its colours).
'I wouldn't stay too late tonight if I were you,' warned Doug and Margaret, a Canadian couple and the only other tourists there.
They never missed a Palio and were planning to stake out their spot in the Piazza del Campo from 5am the next morning until the race began at 7.45pm.
To get a seat - virtually impossible for a non-Sienese, you need to book six months in advance and pay at least £200.
We arrived in the Campo at noon next day to find the entire circumference of the square three deep in people and not a prayer for a spot by the finishing post.
It was a strange experience, waiting in the Tuscan sun for the best part of seven hours with 40,000 other people for a race that would last 75 seconds, but it passed quickly.
There was no drunkenness, no rowdiness and no aggression, just the occasional roar of pure schadenfreude from the Italians as one American tourist after another came a cropper on the freshly dampened dirt track which was as slippery as an ice rink.
Sometime around four the parade began, a long, glorious pageant, steeped in the 15th Century; knights in armour, four enormous white oxen bearing the Palio (a large white banner), a cavalry charge at full gallop, costume after elaborate costume and then, suddenly, an incredible, unsolicited hush as, one by one, the 10 competing horses were led from the chapel, where they are blessed by a priest, to the starting line.
The start of the race - so very different from our own Derby - was a riotous affair. The jockeys fought, the horses fight.
Circumnavigating Mt Etna
Enna is a mountain town built on a high rocky bluff, a traditional bastion of defence against the many invading armies - Greek, Roman, Saracen, Norman - that have tussled over Sicily's territory in the past few hundred years. From the 13th-century castle there are spectacular views across the rugged countryside to Mount Etna.
At twilight, the streets are noisy with the passeggiata evening stroll, but the crowd falls silent as a funeral cortege drives by. In deeply traditional Sicily, death is treated with maximum respect. I turn in early at the town's only hotel, the Grand Albergo di Sicilia, and fall asleep to a lullaby of church bells.
The best way to see Mount Etna is from the Circumetnea railway. This ancient train rattles around Europe's biggest volcano, from the suburbs of Catania - passing so close to the buildings that you can almost reach out and touch - them to the open spaces of Etna's lower slopes. Here citrus plantations, vines and nut trees add a splash of colour to the black lava. Etna last erupted a few years ago, and even now her snow-capped cone gives the odd puff of smoke.
Halfway round we stop at a tiny station, and what sounds like a pair of competing foghorns start up at the other end of the carriage. It is two old boys from a mountain village who have just joined the train. They sit opposite each other, bellowing and cackling in that peculiar Sicilian dialect that adds a granite-like edge to every vowel and slurs everything else. By the time we reach the coast near Taormina my ears are ringing.
Taormina is Sicily's most famous resort, with a Roman amphitheatre and a glorious mountain setting. But after the humble villages of the interior, it seems too sanitised, too eager to attract tourists, and a bit too pricey. But the local ice cream is wonderful. I have a huge dollop of produzione propria - home-made vanilla - then, refreshed, I rattle down the coast to Syracuse.
If Taormina has seen better days, then Syracuse went permanently out of fashion 2,000 years ago. This was once the most important city in the Western world, but centuries of misrule by various tyrants slowly destroyed its power. Now it's a sun-baked backwater with an astonishing mixture of architectural styles, from Classical Greek to Italian Baroque.
I sit outside the ornate cathedral, people-watching and reading, then find a hotel where the desk clerk is contentedly asleep over his newspaper. He is only slightly put out at being woken up.
The Norman bequest
After the Romans came the Arabs, who founded a mosque or two and the labyrinth that is Palermo market. Then the Normans left a series of castles perched on vertiginous crags. But more than this, they left the magnificent cathedral of Monreale, decorated with huge, glittering mosaics of a more spiritual kind.
Completed in 1182, and dominated by indigo and gold, the nave boasts Old Testament scenes (including a detailed Noah's Ark), the aisles and choir display the teachings of Christ, while the side apses show Gospel stories. Great bronze doors illustrate more Biblical scenes, while the inlaid mirror tiles and richly carved pillars of the cloisters are unparalleled anywhere in Christendom.
The view down the mountain to Palermo (which also contains a number of gorgeous Norman mosaic churches) is breathtaking, even with a distracting slice of pizza in your mouth at a balcony restaurant. The countryside that punctuates the great milestones of human achievement does not, sadly, provide a fitting backdrop.
Sicily is, by and large, a land of dry scrub, what views it can muster all too often intruded upon by cement works or rusting chickenwire. Modern Sicilian towns - although they often follow a jumbled medieval layout - are usually a mass of tower blocks, jostling for position with each other right up to the edge of town.
In fact, I don't think I've ever seen so many tower blocks. Picturesquely rotting they may have been in places, with painted shutters and lines of washing hanging out to dry, but tower blocks they were nonetheless. If high-rise living engenders crime, then perhaps all that Mafia activity has finally been explained.
To be fair, on an island prone to earthquakes, it's unreasonable to expect the past to linger, except in its most solid, magnificent manifestations. A scattering of baroque buildings along the south coast bears witness to destruction.
In fact, Sicily really has only one city that is entirely harmonious to the eye, a gorgeous confection piled up a cliffside: Taormina. Picturesquely situated beneath smoking Mount Etna, perched high above the bays of the Ionian Sea, Taormina has certainly been discovered by tourists, but in the nicest possible way.
Elegant hotels with flower-bedecked balconies afford delightful views of beach umbrellas far below. Designer shops line the cobbled medieval main street, where no cars are allowed. A cable car ferries holidaymakers between the town and the many beaches.
Some of the candlelit bars and restaurants, where I enjoyed freshly caught local swordfish with rocket salad, are exquisite. It's the Mediterranean holiday cliche made deliciously real.
Travel facts: Italiatour (01883 621900) offers a range of holidays to Sicily, including return flights to Catania from Heathrow. The eight-day Jewels of Sicily escorted tour is includes return flights, full-board accommodation in four-star hotels and travel by air-conditioned coach.
General spirit of anarchy
What really seems to matter on the island is what endures: the family, the church, the miles of unspoilt coastline, the vast blue skies and the mountains, which are both mysterious and protective.
The Sicilian violence which Anthony Corleone referred to is not obvious to the visitor.
For all the pull of history, many of the younger Sicilians are desperate to be rid of the island's Mafioso image and are eager to embrace a modern, European future.
Superficially, Sicily appears as safe as anywhere else in Europe: indeed, I experienced far less anxiety walking through the back streets of Palermo, the capital of Sicily, than I usually do in South London.
We began our stay in an apartment in a small complex overlooking the seaside town of Patti, which lies about two hours drive north of the international airport at Catania.
Though the neighbourhood gave us a flavour of the terrain of Sicily, Patti itself was a disappointing town with little to see.
We were grateful to leave after two days and move westwards to Palermo.
The coast road from Patti to Palermo is probably the most exhilarating I have been along in my life, with mile upon mile of fabulous scenery: rich blue sea on one side, rolling green mountains on the other - though it was not always easy to appreciate the beauty from behind the wheel of a car.
I'd been warned about the problems of driving on the island, but nothing could have prepared me for Palermo, where a general spirit of anarchy prevailed.
Drivers honked incessantly, scooters zoomed from one side to the other and any concept of respect for lanes and traffic lights disappeared.
At times I felt I was in a particularly demanding video game.
Their welcome gifts
As we drove through the iron gates, Signor and Signora Falco emerged, smiling, from the gatekeeper's cottage.
They presented their welcome gifts - local wine, freshly baked bread, cheese, a bottle of the olive oil for which Castelvetrano is renowned, fresh tomatoes-and olives from the garden and good, strong espresso - and then showed us around the villa.
The dining room's French windows opened on to the patio leading to the pool and lake. Inside, two antique olive presses flanked a grand dining table.
The stuccoed living room was decorated elegantly with antiques and perfectly co-ordinated soft furnishings. Even wearing my House Doctor hat, I could not fault a thing.
Of four upstairs bedrooms, we chose the one with a balcony and a view stretching to the sea. We opened a bottle of wine, fixed a light antipasti and headed for the villa's tower to catch the sunset.
Shining in the distance was the dome of a 16th Century cathedral and, as we sipped our wine, the moon rose slowly over the Mediterranean. Life doesn't get much better than this.
Our first morning started with a swim in the turquoise pool, breakfast under olive trees and a leisurely walk around the grounds.
Before we knew it, it was nearly midday. This became our daily pattern and because in Sicily, as in most of Italy, everything shuts down from 12.30pm until at least 4pm, we would arrive at our first destination just in time for the main meal.
Sicilian cuisine is spicier and sweeter than in other parts of Italy, with an Arabic influence. And the wine selection is amazing.
Crenellated battlements
It comes as some surprise, therefore, to discover that San Marino is dominated by a truly gigantic mountain - Mount Titano.
You can see this looming hulk from miles away. As you drive towards this mountainous country from Bologna - one of the nearest airports - you slowly become aware of a bluff of white rock.
Perched on top, half obscured by clouds, is the ancient and historic capital, also called San Marino. From afar, the city makes for an impressive sight.
Bedecked with crenellated battlements and crowned by three monumental watchtowers, this impregnable citadel stands almost 2,500ft above the surrounding countryside.
It looks too perfect to be real - a toy-town model complete with arrow-slits and cannons.
If you come here in April or October, for the twice-yearly state ceremonies, it's even more unreal.
Half the population dresses up in 19th Century costumes, with shiny brass buttons, gilded epaulettes and extraordinary feather-covered helmets.
After marching, drilling and blowing their brasses, the assembled throng heads to the battlements to fire crossbows into the thin mountain-top air.
This diminutive state is altogether more eccentric than its Lilliputian cousins, Liechtenstein, Andorra and Monaco.
It has steadfastly refused to join the European Union, yet is allowed to issue its own euros.
A city of beginnings
October, often claimed to be the best month for Rome, turned up trumps. We found balmy, no-need-for-jackets weather and the spring and summer crowds of visitors reduced to a trickle. The majority seemed to be middle-aged British couples like ourselves. Rome remains walkable, which is lucky; few cities offer such grand scale combined with such intense detail.
The streets smelled of traffic fumes and incense and coffee, the rotting whiff of the Tiber mixed with the scent of the season's first roasting chestnuts. We lurked beside pushchairs at crossings as the best tactic for avoiding the swarms of motor scooters, apparently hell-bent on pedestrian destruction.
We reclaimed our memories, walking through the narrow medieval alleys that join square to light-filled renaissance square, each with its fanciful fountain or solemn statue. Fragments of classical masonry poked everywhere, like old bones, through the surface of the city. Cats patrolled tumbled arches, peeling stucco glowed with earthy, edible colours; apricot and mushroom, saffron and ginger.
'What does this building say to an architect?' I asked a Chicago student, who was attempting to sketch the perfect dome of the Pantheon. 'I can't begin to explain,' she replied. 'This is it. It's the beginning.' Rome piles up beginnings, layer upon layer.
We revisited San Clemente, where a fourth-century basilica and a medieval church are stacked above a Roman temple. What happened to the lightheartedness in Christian art that gave San Clemente's dazzling mosaics their charm and intimacy? We traced the 17th-century architect Bernini from the water-spouting Tritons of his splendid fountains all the way to St Peter's, feeling just in the mood for the baroque flourishes that help make Rome the gorgeous show-off of a city it is.
Romantic, magical, majestic
When we arrived at the fountain, two things were apparent. The fountain was beautiful - rococo, romantic, magical, majestic. And everything surrounding it was ugly.
The sound of the water was drowned by the chatter of camera shutters. Flower sellers bothered at your heels like irascible terriers. The mob ruled.
Cavorting in the bleach-diluted water was out of the question.
Rome being famous for its sunsets, we decided to watch the approach of nightfall from the terrace bar at the Eden Hotel.
The views spread out before us like a panorama cut from a dream. It was wonderfully deserted and magnificently free of piped Euro-pop.
This experience fed the hope that perhaps La Dolce Vita did survive, as an echo, a surviving memory trace.
That night we made our way to a recommended restaurant, the unbookable Fiaschetteria Beltramme, described as 'hugely trendy'. Madonna had visited.
The queues that were promised were absent. The streets around the Piazza di Spagna were romantically deserted save for a lone violinist.
We got a table immediately - it felt like we were in mamma's front room. I've never had such amazing classic Italian food - who knew you could pull such a paintbox of flavours out of a simple Tonnarelli alla Carbonara?
And for about £40 for two. Dolce, dolce.
On our last day, we went to look for the 'real' Rome - the quiet streets of the once working-class Trastevere. The calm contrasted with the Centro Storico.
Site of grisly martyrdom
Imagine it is August in the year 258, 50 years before Constantine conquered Rome. A Spanish Christian, Lawrence, is handing out money to the poor from the church's coffers.
Vlaerian, ever on the look-out for some money, wants his share and sends his aides to ask where the riches are. Lawrence greets them and points to the poor, saying, ' Here are the treasures of Rome.'
We can still follow in St Lawrence's footsteps. The guards dragged him to his trial through the cryptoporticus, the long corridor that runs through the ruins of the Palatine hill. In the church of San Lorenzo in Fonte you can see the cell where he was imprisoned and the font he used to baptise his fellow captives.
San Lorenzo in Panisperna was built on the site of his grisly martyrdom. Here he was roasted to death over a barbecue, an event portrayed in a fresco. He lies buried in the catacombs at San Lorenzo fuori le Mura.
In a small chapel in San LOrenzo in Lucina, off the Via Corso, is a barzier which looks like it's from a Roman feast. It was on this cruel mechanism, legend has it, that San Lorenzo expired, after joking with his executioners to turn him over because he was done on one side.
The Via Corso jeans shops seem inappropriate after this, so hop on a bus to Trastevere, accross the river - a weekly ticket takes you on any tram, train or bus.
In the lanes to the south lies the pretty church of Santa Cecilia - a nobleman's wife who lived in a mansion on this spot. When her Christian husband was martyred she tried to bury his body and was sentenced to death by smothering in the baths of the house - a fate favoured for patrician women.
Cecilia failed to die, and still survived the maximum three blows of an axe which the law allowed. Mortally wounded, she sang hymns, converting many with her courage and became the patron saint of musicians. She was buried in what became the crypt of the church.
In 1599 her tomb was opened and her body found to be miraculously well preserved. The sculptor Maderna made sketches of the shrouded figure, then carved the effigy of a young human figure in a delicate shroud which now lies beneath the high altar, with three clear axe marks on its neck.
Singing on the Steps
Not surprisingly, I've had a warm feeling for the place ever since. Now I'm back with my own family in tow. We're not staying out in the sticks this time, but bang in the centre, at two of Rome's most splendid hotels.
The D'Inghilterra is a luxurious old-world establishment, just off Via Condotti, the Bond Street of Rome, stamping ground of the Gucci and gold handbag brigade. Many famous names have stayed here down the centuries, from Liszt and Mendelssohn to Ernest Hemingway, and our room with its heavy mahogany furniture and amazing marble bathroom suggests the place has barely changed in 100 years.
The Hotel de Russie, a stone's throw away down Via Babuino, is an old palace, elegantly refurbished, with palm-laden, terraced gardens that become a restaurant by night. After dark, the area's narrow streets are crowded with visitors window shopping at the designer boutiques, with everyone converging on the Spanish Steps, a huge marble staircase flanked by rose-coloured mansions, which is perpetually packed with a perspiring mass of international youth.
I was one of them on my first visit and thought it was the most romantic place on earth. Now I find the youthful hordes frighteningly green and gauche - sitting there singing, chatting each other up in a dozen different languages or just staring into space. But it's all quite wholesome - like a big youth hostel kitchen - and our daughter loves it. Every night as we're trying to whisk her off to bed, she keeps bawling to be brought back to 'the music square'.
The Italians love children and Rachel, with her blonde curls and big blue eyes, is feted wherever she goes. Machine-gun-toting policemen give her little waves, Gucci-clad women point her out to each other and complete strangers rush up to be photographed with her.
Walking into a rough-looking bar in search of a lavatory, we find the crowd parting as they notice our grimy, tousled offspring, her face smeared in chocolate ice-cream, and the whole place dissolves in a chorus of cooing and sighing.
Inching through Amalfi
There is an unmistakable aura of unflappability that hangs around long-suffering resorts. In Switzerland, in the Venice Lido, in Paris, the big hotels trade on their echoing stillness beyond the mad rush of 'out there'.
The staff at the Palazzo Sasso were no less charming and solicitous. Perhaps they were used to soothing the nerves. The nerves need soothing.
Years ago, perhaps in the Fifties, when would-be Hemingways looking like Jude Law parked their yachts in the cove and binged on village rusticity, there might have been a quiet, reserved, remote charm to these poor, benighted townships.
But that would have been before they built the coast road, before, perhaps, 'oor' Gracie Fields fancied a bit of posh 'oop' Capri way, 'appen. Before the ragazzi laden with gold jewellery and leathery, saggy, brown bodies sloped into town, before the place became famous.
Nothing really kills a place like a reputation for quaintness, and the international heritage, coastline, legendary, picturesque poison has worked its way into the grain of this coast. 'The most beautiful road in the world' is a permanent traffic gridlock from end to end.
We drove down into Amalfi. And hooted, twisted, kangaroo-jumped, stalled and inched our way through it. There was a sudden glimpse of narrow streets and awnings to our right, and just as suddenly we were leaving and corkscrewing out the other side.
There was nowhere to park our ecologically unsound car, but, paradoxically, it was impossible to get there by any other means, except possibly tourist coach. Had I shown the foresight to hire a bus I might have had more luck. The main visible feature of Amalfi is the huge coach park, where the harbourside once baked in the Adriatic sun.
Don't think for a moment you can avoid this road. One of the disadvantages of many scenic routes is that building them is such a labour that it precludes side roads, turnings, B-roads or alternative routes. Just like everybody else, you go lurching, revving, haltingly, straight through.
Cocktails and canasta
But it's worth it. Small enough to feel intimate, but imposing enough in its decor to feel glamorous. The views are breathtaking and the staff seem to love the place as much as the guests - there's an air of happiness, of holiday.
The drawing room makes you want to drink champagne cocktails and play canasta, while the huge outdoor terrace with its wrought iron tables boasts a lunchtime panorama that's almost too perfect. 'If I could own a house around here, this is the type I'd have,' announces Raph. I agree. But how would you get anything up here?
Even our suitcases were brought up on a donkey - they stop you in your tracks when they appear round a corner plodding relentlessly upwards.
Raph also really likes the piazza. He has now played football with boys in squares all over the world - something about kicking a ball breaks the ice between people of every nationality - but he decides this square is one of the best. This suits us.
There's Cafe Calce in one corner and what we christen the Sport Bar - think eight men glued to a TV screen with racing cars droning - in the other. We shift from one cafe to the other to sit in constant sunshine, drink coffee, eat cake and keep an eye on the children.
Except we barely need to watch them. One of the best things about Ravello is how safe and compact it feels: a play town.
Later, Chloe and Raph explore the twisty pathways on their own, always finding us again, but having experienced the brief and delicious frisson of 'getting lost'.
Halfway through the week we get in the car and drive south into Campania to Santa Maria di Castellabate for two nights at the stunning Hotel Villa Sirio, which by contrast is right on the sea.
It's a place of bright turquoise rooms, light-filled corridors, balconies and heart-stopping vistas. Open your bedroom shutters and the water is crashing down on the rocks below.
It would be wonderful to lie on the beach and sunbathe. Unfortunately, the weather has turned unpredictable. The skies are grey, shutters bang forlornly in the wind and teenagers mooch up and down the streets.
'Like Christmas!' smiles our cheery waiter, whom we've affectionately christened 'Lurk' on account of the fact that you can come upon him anywhere in the hotel at any time (but never quite when you need him).
Immaculate tropical gardens
To the south is the Adriatic, viewed over a sea of ancient olive trees; to the north are scenic mountains. The hotel opened in 1996 and, despite a major expansion three years ago to 50 rooms, it still feels like a small, perfectly run family enterprise (the owner lives in the old farmhouse at the end of the grounds).
Through immaculate tropical gardens is a vast saltwater swimming pool. For those who prefer their salt water au naturel, a lovely walk down to the sea along an avenue of olive trees ends at a private beach for hotel guests, with comfortable chairs and cold drinks on tap.
I plumped for the side of said swimming pool, stretched out on an incredibly comfortable deckchair, armed myself with some iced tea and dipped into Mr Winner's opus.
By the age of 14, he had talked himself into a job as the showbiz columnist for the Kensington Post - in which role he managed to interview many of the major stars of the day.
His career at Cambridge was another chapter of brilliant manoeuvres and then he began, at a very tender age, to direct major films. The book is full of hilarious anecdotes about the stars and, for me, the funniest was his description of walking along the beach with John Cleese one Christmas Day in Barbados.
The sunshine was sparkling on the waves, the scent of tropical flowers was in the air and the two of them had just had a fabulous Christmas lunch at the Sandy Lane Hotel with friends and family. 'Surely,' said Cleese, 'there is more to life than this?'
Apart from very joyfully reading Winner's manuscript by the pool, I also played golf on a brand new, well designed 18-hole course built just for hotel guests.
In addition, my wife and I made use of the spa each evening, she for thallasotherapy and I for massages. And then there was, of course, the food. It was excellent.
Best of all was the lunch, a cold buffet served on a shady patio, where you helped yourself to fabulous seafood salad, poached sea bass with a delectable rosemary sauce, baby artichokes, roasted tomatoes and endless perfectly grilled vegetables, all drizzled with the local olive oil.
The only downside to the trip - which I gather will be remedied in September - is that there are no direct flights from London to Bari, which means you have to change planes in Rome.
Our return flight to Rome was cancelled, but even this dark cloud had a silver lining: the fourhour wait gave us an opportunity to wander around the old town of Bari - a strange, compelling warren of souk-like streets and a 12th Century basilica. But once they sort out the flights, the Masseria San Domenico is a winner of a weekend break.
All in all, a perfect way to spend a guilt-free weekend away and still feel some work was done: a beautiful hotel, great food and service, golf, massage and an amusing (and commercially valuable) manuscript to read.
Like Michael Winner himself, it doesn't take much to make me happy!
TRAVEL DETAILS:
Abercrombie & Kent. Tel 0845 0700 612.
For bookings at Il Convento di Santa Maria di Costantinopoli, owned by Lord McAlpine, call 07736 362328 or 07802 619181.
The legacy of Zio Carlino
To start with, the San Pietro is built on a vertigo-inducing sheer cliff face. It is literally carved out of the rock. A brilliant feat of engineering, 300ft above blue boulders washed by the Mediterannean, the hotel is really a series of discreet balconies and steps hung with purple bougainvillea and fire engine red hibiscus that dizzyingly descend through scented pine trees to the sea below. It has terraces, with seats tiled with blue and gold mosaics depicting fables from Greek mythology. The views from this eagle's nest reach to infinity. At night the stars look like diamonds gleaming on a black velvet tray in Tiffany's and the scent of the South American orchid tree perfumes the soft air.
Nobody around here doubts the Amalfi coast is the most beautiful in the whole of the Mediterranean, perhaps the world. The road, the 25 miles between Naples and Salerno, is a fluttering ribbon of devil's elbows and craggy peninsulas that shoot down to the brilliant turquoise-coloured waters below the sea-polished cliffs, dotted with picture postcard fishing villages. This sounds very picturesque, but remember they are the kind of half-shrouded-in-clouds roads like the one on which Princess Grace of Monaco died when she was driving herself and failed to take a corner.
For most of history you could only reach these fishing villages by boat. According to mythology, Hercules was seduced here, Ulysses becalmed and the sirens of The Isle of Galli, that little rocky outcrop just a ten minute boat ride away, would sing sweetly at dusk to the gods. Nureyev was so entranced by the fable he actually bought the island. Stars like Taylor and Garbo would come here in a more innocent age, before the coach parties discovered Amalfi, and feel they were closer to Heaven than earth.
Virginia wasn't much more than a teenager with two young sons when Carlo Cinque, a close relative, a kind of uncle figure, began building San Pietro. He was already a legend along this coast. At just 20 he had opened the small picturesque hotel The Miramar right on the waterfront in Positano, but kept running out of money. He didn't even have enough cash to put running water into the bathrooms. Then the Allied troops arrived in their Jeeps and staff cars. They wanted to make Positano a rest centre for exhausted British troops, before they were sent back to the front, and had plans to requisition The Miramar as a recuperation centre.
Carlo didn't like the idea of that. Foot soldiers would bring the prestige of the town down. Why couldn't officers be billeted here, he wanted to know.
Virginia takes up the story: 'The generals said they would only go ahead with the plan if there was running water at the Miramar so the officers could have baths. My uncle told them he did not have the pipes for the water, so they said they would give him the pipes, spare stuff not needed for the War, and if he would install them Positano would become an officers' rest centre and keep its prestige. He went to Salerno with a young Canadian officer, Lieutenant Smith, and they got twice as many pipes as they needed, a few thousand metres I think, and set to work, so the Miramar could be an officers' hotel.
'After the War, all the English officers who were billeted here returned with their families. They loved Positano, and they were so grateful to have survived the fighting, they wanted to come back and show their wives and children this place. And that's really how tourism got started here.'
Deckchairs and parasols
Fortunately there are other places on the peninsula, which are much more reasonable and rather more congenial.
A few minutes away by car, along the narrow, scenic coastal road, is Paraggi, a tiny village at the head of a long, slender bay.
Paraggi consists of just a handful of hotels and restaurants, but it does have a beach.
On this rocky and hilly coastline, that's rare, so every inch of sand is covered in deckchairs and parasols.
A few minutes farther on from Paraggi on the coastal road is Santa Margherita Ligure, another one-time fishing village that became a fashionable resort at the turn of the last century.
Built around two shallow bays, and flanked by verdant, low hills, the town is a maze of little, traffic-clogged streets that open up onto a long, lively seafront corniche.
By and large, Santa Margherita has been spared over-development, though there is one rogue high-rise hotel from the Sixties that stands back from the front, but is just enough to spoil the view.
Apart from that, the town is a colourful vista of muted ochre and orange buildings from the 18th and 19th centuries, surrounding the white spires of two churches.
Santa Margherita is also where the night-life on the peninsula happens, and that mostly takes place around one tree in the middle of the Piazza Martiri della Liberta, where at night throngs of teenagers gather.
The other major resort on the peninsula is Camogli, on the north side of the Monte di Portofino.
Less known than Portofino and Santa Margherita, it is built on the slopes of the peninsula's spine and looks north, towards Genoa.
The town is like a corkscrew, with its main road spiralling down from the hills to a scenic harbour where, unusually, there are real fishing boats rather than yachts.
It remains the most unspoiled spot on the peninsula and is no more than 10 or 15 minutes by car from Santa Margherita or Portofino, so you can easily tour the peninsula in a weekend.
And you can thank the airlines' price war for making it all affordable.
Most memorable seafood
The place looked like a tacky pizzeria, but I had one of my most memorable seafood meals ever in Italy - everything from marinated anchovies, clams, prawns and mussels to baby soles, red mullet, calamari and scampi, accompanied by an excellent chilled bottle of Greco di Tufo white wine, all for the grand total of £10.
This guaranteed arriving at Ponza in just the right mood.
Ponza is the largest of an archipelago of volcanic islands that rise steeply out of the blue waters of the Mediterranean.
The Romans found it a convenient place to banish Christians, 18th Century Italian Bourbon kings built most of the town you see today and the present population of just over 3,000 is made up mostly of fishermen, whose colourful boats crowd the harbour.
The first impression on arrival is more of a Greek island, with brightly painted houses offset by dark green vegetation clinging to the mountainsides and brilliant-white jagged cliffs sheltering narrow inlets and bays perfect for scuba diving or just snorkelling.
There aren't too many proper hotels on the island, but you'll soon discover that just about every single inhabitant has some kind of accommodation to rent, ranging from basic budget rooms to comfortable, well priced apartments.
There are also some seriously exclusive properties where you can spend a luxurious week lazing at the poolside.
The narrow island stretches for five miles, with tiny villages linked by a series of spectacular winding roads and, though there are places to stay all over Ponza, the best plan is to book a place where you get off the boat and which has easy access to the maze of back streets of the main town that surrounds the port.
This is where you will find all the best restaurants, bars and shops. It is also the ideal place to rent transport, be it a car, scooter, bike or boat.
Having dumped your bags, grab a table and sit out on the shady promenade above the quay at the aptly-named 'Welcome Bar' sipping a cocktail as the sun sets.
Daft and heroic
So, when I read that the Tower was back in business after 11 years, I decided that I ought to grab my chance.
Plenty of towers lean in Italy - in Venice most of them seem off kilter, The Campanile on St Mark's Square toppled and fell at the beginning of the last century - but none leans as splendidly as Pisa's.
When you catch your first glimpse of it, as you drive into the city, it looks daft and heroic at the same time.
The tower's lean has been restored to the angle it was 162 years ago, thanks to ingenious civil engineering by Professor John Burland, of London's Imperial College.
The Italian authorities have imposed a limit on the number of visitors.
No more than 30 people can visit at a time, each visit lasts 35 minutes and admission costs a hefty £9.30, even for locals, who are rightly furious.
You must buy a timed ticket - on a wet February Wednesday, when I visited, I had to wait half an hour for the next tour. During the summer peak, I imagine, you might have to wait for days.
An Internet booking system is promised but there are no signs of this.
Visitors are warned that 'substantial physical effort' is needed to climb the 300-step spiral staircase - 'not recommended for people who suffer from dizzy spells'.
No children under eight are allowed, eight to 12-year-olds must be led by the hand and 12-18-year-olds have to be accompanied by an adult.
The warning notice is at pains to encourage good behaviour: 'In any case, be most prudent and orderly.'
The group I joined - a curious mixture of Russians and Japanese - was a bit giggly and slightly disorderly. The tour is described as 'guided' but the two guides were nothing more than sheepdogs.
Mercifully, there was no historical background, no fund of fascinating or amusing anecdotes - just the trip up. Surprisingly, from the top, the lean is practically undetectable.
We had 10 minutes to enjoy the view and take snaps before the stroll back to earth.
And I wouldn't have missed it. It would be nice to report that nearby there was a 'Leaning Tower Of Pizza' restaurant where I had lunch. Sadly there is not.
TRAVEL DETAILS
British Airways Holidays http://www.british-airways.com (tel: 0870 442 3828)
Convent of horrors
DON'T MISS?
The Cappuccini Convent west of the Cathedral (take the bus from Piazza Independenza). Visitors walk through corridors lined with the bodies of 8,000 local bigwigs which have been preserved since the 18th century. It's like being in your own horror film. Not for the young or easily rattled.
GETTING AROUND
It's a long ride in from the airport (up to an hour) and taxis cost around £25, though there is a bus (just over £2) which drops you at Central Station. Don't even think of renting a car or bike. It's easy to walk to most of the old town sights, though be careful of scooters that seem to buzz around everywhere. Buses charge a flat fare of 50p a ride and there's a circular minibus service to the most visited destinations, including the market. Taxis are a safe way to get around at night.
DAY TRIPS
With a day to spare, make the five-mile trip to the hill town of Monreale and its magnificent mosaic-clad Cathedral - take the bus from Piazza Independenza. Locals picnic on the Pellegrino mountain with its shaded paths and shrine to Santa Rosalia, Palermo's patron saint. There's a torchlight procession and fireworks in July to celebrate the annual festival in her honour.
EATING
Try an arancino (a deep-fried rice ball) available in any market or bar. The pizzas at the backstreet Pizzeria Italia (Via Orologio 54) are legendary, though it's much more atmospheric to sit outdoors in the pretty Piazza Bellini. Try Sicilian ice cream at Ilardo (Foro Italico Umberto I), while locals head to the beach at Mondello to parade around in their finery and eat seafood - buses run there all night.
Colossal brick pilasters
East from Milan, the old town of Bergamo stands on a hilltop, where you will find Italy's oldest municipal hall and the extraordinary facade of the 15th-century Colleoni Chapel, faced with multi-coloured marble and exquisite statues.
Like Inigo, I followed the road east. In the adjoining fields, now as then, are rows of grapes for wine-making, stretching far to the hills beyond.
His next stop was Verona, with its gigantic Roman arena - used for summer concerts - and an historic town centre with the balcony where, by tradition, Juliet was wooed by Romeo.
Inigo's target, a few miles west of Verona, was Vicenza, a small town that has named its main street after Palladio because of its array of the architect's finest work.
Palladio's first commission there was to put a new classical skin over the Basilica, the Gothic central exchange and indoor market that has become the town's symbol.
Facing it, behind a busy pavement cafe, is his Loggia del Capitaniato fronted by three colossal brick pilasters, begun in 1571 as a residence for the Venetian Governor.
Most of his buildings in town were palazzos, grand mansions for dignitaries.
Two are now museums - the Palazzo Barbaran, dedicated to the work of the architect, and the Palazzo Chiericati, containing a collection of paintings by masters such as Tiepolo and Van Dyck.
More Palladian villas dot the countryside between Vicenza and Padua, the ancient university town and home of Europe's oldest botanic garden.
Between Padua and Venice, on the picturesque bank of the Brenta Canal, stands the Villa Foscari or Malcontenta (discontented), so-called because of the grumpy look of a woman depicted in one of its frescoes.
From Amalfi to Ravello
Our destination was the National Archaeological Museum, which every tourist should visit before going to Pompeii. The excavations of Pompeii have gifted it with probably the finest collection of Roman mosaics and wall-paintings to be seen anywhere, which give a touchingly domestic and detailed picture of everyday life in a city of the 1st century AD. After this, Pompeii itself was almost an anti-climax.
Many of the streets and houses are roped off, and the task of disinterring the city and its inhabitants from the lava flow which engulfed it when Vesuvius erupted in AD 79 still has a long way to go.
Yet enough remains on display to provide an insight into the astonishing sophistication and luxury with which rich Romans surrounded themselves. There is the arcaded courtyard with its pool and fountain; the rooms, brightly decorated with painted scenes of hunting, feasting and love-making, leading off the courtyard on each side; and the shady porticos.
Take the train a couple of stops further to Torre Annunziata, walk down an unremarkable suburban street and you come the Villa Poppea in Oplontis. Only the slenderest evidence suggests that Emperor Nero's wife (who died two years before the eruption, after Nero kicked her in the stomach during one of his rages) once lived here.
But it is certainly grand enough, with its swimming pool, courtyards, arcades and servants' quarters, and its wonderful vermilion and turquoise wall-paintings, somehow freshly preserved for 2,000 years under layers of lava cinders and ash.
If you are not on a guided tour, it is all too easy to wander into Pompeii with just a guidebook, hoping that the atmosphere of the place will somehow make sense of it. But you need at least an audio-guide, and preferably a personal guide, arranged in advance or on arrival, who knows how to make the ruins come alive.
Having finished with the Circumvesuviana, we hired a car quite cheaply in Sorrento and took off to the other side of the peninsula.
On the south side the cliffs rise steeply out of the sea and in the days when travellers stopped at the little fishing villages clinging to their sides, or took a ship to the ancient town of Amalfi, they must have been magical places.
Nowadays, a picture postcard town such as Positano, with its houses stepped in pastel-pink terraces above the bright blue sea, is crammed with noisy cars and scooters.
Amalfi, which 1,000 years ago rivalled Venice as a marine republic, has much more to see - but we felt the need for open spaces so we took the corkscrewing road up from Amalfi to Ravello.
Dilapidated historic quarter
It was once poor man's food, and still is - but now everyone in Naples eats it: as a street snack, as a main meal, even as a starter.
The term 'pizza' was first recorded here mid-16th century.
Now, to distinguish the real thing from the Pizza Expresses there is a Neapolitan hallmark: 'Pizza DOC' - grown locally, cooked locally in a wood-fired oven.
The best pizzerias are in Spaccanapoli, the noisy, dilapidated historic quarter.
But I booked into the graceful Hotel Santa Lucia on the Bay of Naples, a favourite with grand tourists of the 18th century for whom the city was a byword for sex, sloth and easy living.
The place to begin my pizza hunt was Brandi, in business since 1780.
Here the margherita is said to have been invented by a pizzaiolo who cooked, for the delectation of Queen Margherita, three types of pizza in her back garden (the leafy palace residence up at Capodimonte).
One particular version was pronounced 'buonissima', according to the letter (1889) framed on the wall. The rest is history.
Brandi's walls are lined with photos of Pavarotti (one margherita, one capricciosa, seafood spaghetti and a steak), Chelsea Clinton (marinara - less fat) and scores of pizza-chomping Hollywood stars.
Its pizzas deserve their fame, swimming with an almost alcoholic fusion of tomato juice and olive oil, the mozzarella soft and sweet, the basil sprigs intensely aromatic.
Milanese hot chocolate
We pulled into Milan at 6pm, just in time for us to slip into little black dresses and drink cocktails in the piano bar at the Hotel Excelsior Gallia. And that was partly the problem.
When you've been travelling since dawn, it's tempting to stay within such surroundings, with a lovely twin bedroom and satellite TV. It's hard to maintain the energy levels required for Friday night flirting.
But after a good night's beauty sleep we were ready to snare our Casanovas.
Milan, we discovered next day, is not as straightforward as Florence or Rome, where the men shout 'Bella!' at you in the street.
The Milanese are more reserved, proud and require encouragement - but not much.
Nicola asked one sleek fellow the way to Via Spiga, and within minutes he and his friend were buying us a cup of hot chocolate.
Milanese hot chocolate is the best aphrodisiac: a smooth, rich, pitch-dark gulp of pure silk. But we couldn't linger with our new friends because we did want to have a quick look at the haute couture shops.
I say 'quick look', but four hours later as I wriggled into another evening gown and Nicola twirled in a gauzy skirt and matching hat, I whispered: 'Are we really likely to meet heterosexual men here?'
'No,' admitted Nicola, 'but when we do, this will make an excellent wedding dress.'
We went for a post-shopping coffee served by an aloof waiter. But again, as soon as Nicola asked for directions to the Duomo, he invited us both out for a drink.
We already had plans for Saturday night but agreed to meet him for tea on Sunday afternoon.
First major boutique hotel
Even The Last Supper has had a facelift. Leonardo painted it 500 years ago on the wall of the refectory for the monks to contemplate-while they were eating and it's astonishing that this amazing painting has survived.
Over the years it has had to withstand the 17th Century reshaping of the dining room - the raising of the floor cut a metre off the bottom of the painting - not to mention Napoleon's troops stabling their horses in the refectory, certainly not ideal conditions for a historic work of art.
And when the church took a direct hit from an Allied bomb in the Second World War, it was miraculous that Leonardo's work emerged from the rubble largely unscathed.
Strict controls are now in place to preserve the painting; the number of daily visitors has been limited to groups of 25 every 15 minutes - advance booking is necessary to be sure you'll get in.
The delights of The Last Supper came hard on the heels of another pleasant surprise: checking in at the Westin Palace and discovering that our bedroom came with a Turkish bath which boasted a city view.
The bathroom looked as if it had spearheaded an effort to exhaust the world's marble supplies. Here was luxury and elegance in the sublime Italian manner.
The city's new hot property is the Sheraton Diana Majestic, on the Viale Piave. The main event here is evening drinks at the Diana Garden, where you have to fight your way past willowy models to grab a table.
This is, surprisingly, Milan's first major boutique hotel - long overdue in one of the world's premier fashion centres.
While Milan has an excellent - and inexpensive - underground train system, the charm of the place is that you can easily walk to most of the sights.
The key retail area lies between four main streets just north of the Duomo: the Via della Spiga, Via Sant'Andrea, Via Monte Napoleone and Via Manzoni - an area known as the golden quadrilateral.
Ticket for the end of the world
She didn't need to tell me that the word 'millinery' derives from this city of fancy goods. From the Galleria, we walked up to the Montenapoleone district, the focal point of Italian fashion. Designers on the way up inhabit the side streets, but the emporia of Versace, Gucci, Valentino and their ilk lord it along the Via Montenapoleone.
The boutiques are so classy you feel you have to dress up just to gain entry. At the multi-storeyed Armani store, the hunks at the door - all in black with a big 'A' on their sweatshirts - looked more like style police than security guards. Haughty ladies in furs and willowy models strutted along pavements that ought to have been carpeted. Their shopping bags were so smart that in another country they'd be marketable.
Some of my trendier cousins got ticked off the shopping list, while I fantasised about an Armani over-coat, but dismissed the idea of a £300 pair of rabbit-fur boots. There was nothing much for Uncle Jim, though I was momentarily tempted by an indoor 'Putter's Practice Gallery' complete with cheering crowd sound effects, in a corner of the Brigatti sportswear store.
After a few hours, footsore and fashion-fatigued, we headed home. I was sneakily relieved that there was nothing on at the great La Scala opera house that night. So risotto not Rigoletto filled our evening - a Milanese speciality of delicious saffron risotto with juicy, steaming osso bucco (veal shank stew) and lots of Lombardy wine.
Next day kicked off with a little culture: Leonardo da Vinci's magnificent mural of The Last Supper, newly restored and awe-inspiring in the refectory of the convent of Santa Maria delle Grazie. The shop next door provided a wealth of Leonardo computer mouse mats, jigsaws and calendars for farther-flung relatives.
Then we visited the Ticinese quarter, once Milan's dockland and a rough realm of sailors' bars, but now becoming increasingly arty. The canals that once connected the city to the sea are lined by romantically crumbling old buildings. Short alleys lead to cobbled courtyards, many occupied by studios where artists both work and sell their paintings.
We browsed through the Fiera di Senigallia, a Saturday flea market that's a good source of African carvings, bright Peruvian knitwear, fake Gucci handbags, rare LPs and antique knick-knacks. That evening we returned to Ticinese. The quarter is hip, but not yet unbearably trendy - full of excellent little restaurants, bars with live music and cafes in barges along the canals.
By the end of the weekend I had quite forgotten Uncle Jim. He'll just have to make do with a travel pass that's valid for 24 hours after Armageddon - something he can't possibly have been given before.
Eat, drink, shop and go
EATING
City-centre restaurants are notoriously overpriced. Old-style trattorias include Al Cantinone (Via Agnello 19, closed Sunday) and Trattoria Milanese (Via Santa Marta 11). Picnics don't come much fancier than those from Peck (Via Spadari), Milan's century-old gourmet deli. In-the-know diners head for Ticinese and Navagli, where superb pizza joints such as Premiata (Alzaia Naviglio Grande 2) or Pizzeria Tradizionale (Ripa di Porta Ticinese 7) nearly always have a queue outside. The family-run trattoria Ponte Rosso (Ripa di Porta Ticinese 23, closed Sunday) is a surefire winner: three courses, wine and coffee for around £22.
THE HIGH LIFE
The price of Milanese style is around £3 to £5 - what it costs for a drink in the cafes in the elegant glass-domed Galleria Vittorio Emanuele. Families plump for the gallery's McDonald's, where the regular cost of a coffee or milkshake gets you a ringside people-watching seat. After 9pm the canal-side Ripa di Porta Ticinese turns into one long run of fashionable bars and cafes.
SHOPPING
Designer labels are thickest (and prices highest) in the so-called Quadrilatero d'Oro, the exclusive shopping district between via della Spiga and via Monte Napoleone. Shopping galleries and department stores lie along Corso Vittorio Emanuele, via Torino and Corso Buenos Aires. For funky fashion, antiques and home decor visit the Navagli district. The best markets are on Saturday near Porta Genova station the street market on Viale Papiniano and the Sinigallia flea market on viale d'Annunzio.
GETTING AROUND
The train or bus from Malpensa airport (for flights from Gatwick) into Milan takes 40 to 50 minutes. A taxi costs around £33 and isn't any quicker. From Linate airport (Heathrow or Stansted), take the bus or taxi, a 20-minute ride. You can walk around the central sights but to reach the Last Supper, the castle or the Navagli district, the underground Metro system is useful. At first sight, the graffiti-covered Metro is a bit off-putting, but it's safe to use.
It's like a film
My first real exposure to Milan was on the old tram that took us from our hotel, in the north-western corner of town, to the city centre. It was beautiful, with delicate glass lanterns.
The people on board were beautiful too, or at least beautifully dressed. Everyone was wearing clothes that coordinated not only with each other, but somehow with the tram.
'It's like a film!' whispered my wife.
We walked into the Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II - the ornate 19th century shopping arcade that adjoins the Piazza del Duomo. My wife made straight for Prada, where handbags and wallets are displayed in glass cases like exhibits in a museum. There were no price tags.
Amid the clothes and shoes downstairs, I saw a woman pick up a pair of pink suede boots. 'It's a very easy pink,' she said. Easy to ruin, yes.
Leaving my wife to Prada, I tried to find the famous bar called Camparino, where Campari was invented.
It turns out that Camparino has been called Zucca in Galleria for the past four years. It's still at Piazza Duomo 21 - a grand place of burnished wood and golden lustre.
Everything shone, including the waxy faces of the barmen, who were all young, tall, bald and terrifying.
I ordered a Campari. It was too bitter for me, but I liked the colour - it was a very easy pink, and, at roughly £2, not as expensive as I'd feared.
Then my wife came to collect me, dragging me off to an area just north-east of the Duomo.
One shop had only one shoe in the window, mounted on a plinth. Another window display was being photographed by a couple dressed all in black. A third shop was simply called 'Expensive!'
In pursuit of a fast car
Maranello is a short drive from Modena, an hour to the west of Bologna. This apparently quiet rural patch is actually the centre of the world's supercar and bike industry. Within a few miles are the headquarters of Ducati, Maserati, Lamborghini and Bugatti. You may get a factory tour at these, but it's Ferrari at Maranello that draws the crowds. The Ferrari museum has become the region's most popular attraction - it's more crowded than the artistic and historic collections of Bologna and Modena.
While I was there I saw coaches of Germans, Americans, Italians and French tourists. The museum car park was full by midmorning. On one day alone last autumn 10,000 people gathered in Maranello village square to watch Ferrari lose a Grand Prix race on a giant TV screen. On a rainy Thursday morning I found huddles of devotees sheltering by the main factory gate for no apparent reason. Further down the road a few fans were getting soaked standing in a hedge watching a Ferrari roar round the company's test track.
Maranello's streets are lined with Ferrari souvenir shops, Ferrari bars and restaurants. There are vans selling Ferrari T-shirts outside the factory, Ferrari flags flying from many private houses and even a special Ferrari bus-stop, decorated with Ferrari images. I waited for ages but the bus that turned up was an ordinary one. Even the village barber has a Ferrari grand prix tyre standing proudly in his window.
The Ferrari museum houses a collection of lovely red cars ranging from old single-seat racers to exotic modern sportsters. This year there's a special gallery celebrating the 100th anniversary of the birth of founder Enzo Ferrari, and even a full-size recreation of his office. Enzo evidently liked toy cars; his cabinets were full of them. The museum is probably fascinating for enthusiasts. I found it moderately interesting, but the sense of Ferrari reverence was off-putting.
At least the souvenir shops like Formula One or Bottega Via Ferrari and the bars like the Pit Stop or Ferrari Bar are bizarre enough to be entertaining. Apart from souvenir pens, mugs, key rings and posters, shop shelves are stocked with essentials like Ferrari cheese, Ferrari toothpaste, Ferrari wine and Ferrari shampoo. I liked the replica red driving suits for babies marked 'driver of the future'. A Ferrari tie costs about £30, a Nigel Mansell postcard £1.50 (he used to drive for Ferrari) and a presentation pack of Ferrari jam £12. There was Ferrari crockery, perfume, olives, sunglasses and thousands of model cars at up to £500 each.
Diners at the Ristorante Cavallino enjoy tablecloths decorated with prancing horses the Ferrari symbol and may rub shoulders with Ferrari bosses or even a Ferrari star like Michael Schumacher. Drinkers will find Nello's Bar in the village square is decorated with bits of cars, such as nose cones, wheel nuts and engine valves.
I was still, however, no nearer to getting my hands on an actual Ferrari. The museum marked all cars with 'do not touch' signs and, just in case, removable parts like wheel nuts or gear knobs are super-glued to prevent theft. Several shops sold child-sized Ferraris powered by pedals (£100) or electric motors (£400). I tried, but unfortunately I couldn't fit in. The factory itself is protected like Fort Knox; evidently enthusiasts are constantly trying to sneak in. Only Ferrari owners get tours.
Finally, at the Warm Up shop on Via Dino Ferrari, I had some success. I found a Ferrari Testarossa that I could just afford. It may be all of five inches long and stamped 'Made in China' underneath, but it was worth it to be able to write on my expenses claim form: 'One Ferrari - £3.'
A elegant escape amongst the dunes
At Seui we said goodbye to our Dutch passenger. The road wound off into a valley, but the little train headed through tunnels into the mountains. It was a good, old-fashioned carriage with windows that opened wide, so I could hang out for a prime view of tough, red-rock ravines and shining lakes before we disappeared into thick forest, and finally even thicker mist, high up on the range.
By the time we reached the mountainside village of Arzana, we were getting glimpses of the sea. But the sun was already setting, and we rattled down towards the coast in darkness. Next morning I was quite happy to make the four-and-a-half-hour journey all over again. Going back in the opposite direction offered such a different set of vistas that it seemed like another trip entirely.
But I sped out of Mandas as quickly as I could, and headed off to the west coast. There, I had been told, was a dream hotel in the dunes. Through the small town of Guspini, around hair-raising hairpin bends of a mountain pass, and along five miles of lonely dirt track I reached the Hotel Le Dune.
There wasn't another building in sight. The dunes beside the hotel rose so high that people were snowboarding down the slopes. A white-sanded beach stretched for miles and, on it, nothing but a cluster of the hotel's blue canvas chairs and bright umbrellas. Hotel Le Dune is converted from a 19th-century mining storehouse - I'd passed the ruins of abandoned mineral-mining villages along the way, built out of the same pretty pink stone.
I decided on full-board. Not that there was much option, with no shops or restaurants anywhere near. That didn't mean low standards. Lunch was alfresco - a sumptuous buffet of fresh fish, pasta, salads and vegetables grilled Italian style, with light olive oil.
All the guests sat at two long tables under a roof of reeds. One of the tables seemed occupied by a single party, half of them casually dressed, the rest in suits. At the head, an elderly patriarch was holding forth. 'He's a former president of Italy,' the woman next to me whispered. 'The men in suits are Security.'
Despite such grand clientele, the hotel was extremely relaxed and unpretentious. My room was simple, with bamboo furniture and colourful fabrics - and a small balcony that was just right for sipping Campari on at sunset. Long meals, cooling swims, and hours spent lying lazily in the sun seemed a perfectly acceptable way of filling a day - though from time to time I went on an energetic hike through the dunes to help dampen any niggling feelings of guilt over the indolence.
To talk of slipping into the rhythm of life at Hotel Le Dune would be misleading. There doesn't appear to be any rhythm. Just a charming stillness that becomes increasingly difficult to leave. Soon I was so adept at going nowhere and doing nothing that I thought I'd be a good candidate for Mayor of Mandas.
Pathetic tourist attraction
When I was back in Lucca last year, I drove down to the coast looking for the San Rossore park but, having forgotten my map, I couldn't even find the way in. Two-nil to Gombo. This time, I had the map and Tony Blair was safely ensconced in Downing Street. Nothing would stop us.
But on entering the park, we found our way to Gombo blocked once more. 'The park is open only on Sundays,' said the man at the barrier. Three-nil and game over - I fear that Shelley's monument will remain unvisited, by me at least.
I had other places on the visiting list, however. Collodi, a village 10 miles east from Lucca, has one significant claim to fame. A journalist called Carlo Lorenzini used to come here as a child - it was where his mother was born.
In his 50s, he began writing children's stories. In 1881 he sent a story about the life of a wooden puppet to his friend who edited a newspaper in Rome. Would he be interested, he wondered, in publishing this 'bit of foolishness'?
The story was Pinocchio and it was an immediate success. The author chose, as his pen name, the name of his mother's village: Collodi.
Tuscan-born actor Roberto Benigni, who won an Oscar for Life Is Beautiful, has just made a film of the Pinocchio story - the most expensive film in Italian history.
It is a local box office success, but the critics panned it. They were lucky they only saw the film - they should see the theme park. The local council in Collodi cashed in on the literary connection by building a Pinocchio theme park in the village.
Sadly, I have to report that it is possibly the world's most pathetic tourist attraction. It's hard to imagine how they justify an entrance fee of £4.50 - beyond a mosaic and a couple of wimpy statues, there is nothing to see.
'Did it rain any dogs or cats?' asked the man at the hotel desk when we returned. 'I did step in a poodle,' I said.
Well, I thought it was funny.
TRAVEL DETAILS:
Inntravel offers breaks in Lucca. For details call 01653 629 010 or visit http://www.inntravel.co.uk
Medieval alleyways
The medieval parts of the city are a network of secretive alleyways and disregarded dead-end courtyards where cats glare at you from broken archways. Elsewhere, the style is more Napoleonic: handsome faded piazzas, pollarded plane trees, graffiti-scrawled statues.
But these are later layers in Lucca's history. The centre of the city is Roman. Having first been settled by Ligurians (who gave it its name, from the Ligurian word luc, meaning a marsh) and then by Etruscans, it became a Roman stronghold in the third century BC.
And it flourished as a trading centre at the junction of three major roads - the Via Aurelia, the Via Cassia and the Via Clodia. In 56BC it was the site of the meeting between Caesar, Pompey and Crassus, which resulted in the power-merger of the First Triumvirate.
Roman Lucca was already a walled town - the present walls are the latest and largest of three distinct enclosures. Remains of the Roman walls can be seen in the church of Santa Maria della Rosa near the cathedral. There was an amphitheatre, just outside the city walls, and thermal baths at Massaciuccoli to the west.
The forum of the Roman city is now Piazza San Michele, the church of which, built in the 12th century, is still called San Michele in Foro. The piazza remains the heart of the city: a meeting place, a haunt for street performers (including a Geordie ballet-dancer, Stephen Ward, who regularly performs here) and, from time to time, a market. It is dominated by the marvellous marble facade of the church, whose colours change in every light.
If you stand in the right place in the piazza you can see the jewel sparkle on St Michael's wrist, 200ft above you on the top of the church. A small knot of squinting tourists usually marks the spot. From here it is a short walk to the city's main shopping street, Via Fillungo, a narrow but elegant thoroughfare with sunlight angling down on to mauvish stonework.
If the hour is right and you have no pressing duties ahead, you might try the delicious but deadly aperativo della casa mixed by the Neapolitan barman at the Caffe Fillungo. If not, you can take a coffee at Di Simo, a favourite haunt of the Lucca-born composer Giacomo Puccini.
Walking north up Fillungo you come upon the ancient curves of the Roman amphitheatre. Revamped in the 18th century, it is now a graceful circular piazza enclosed by houses, and is the perfect venue for al fresco jazz on a summer's evening.
The golden age of Lucca was in the early medieval period, when competing families of merchants built their stout palazzi and flung up the famous towers which made Lucca seem like 'a forest of towers'. Most of these have since crumbled, though there remain the Torre dell'Ore - the medieval town clock which stopped long ago but will soon, it is promised, be started again - and the Torre Guinigi.
The latter is probably the city's most famous monument. Its slender silhouette, with its characteristic topknot of evergreen ilex trees, can be glimpsed from all over the city. Lucca's prosperity was largely built on its textiles, particularly silk.
Cycling around the city
Our presence in Lucca was pure fluke. We were staying in the area with some friends from Australia. They didn't want to come to England, it was too far, and we didn't fancy the long haul to Australia; so we met in the middle - well, almost. But as so often happens, a chance excursion proved more fun than the most meticulously planned holiday.
As the centre of Lucca is flat and mainly car-free, we hired bicycles, saved on the shoe-leather and had a fine old time. Only one word of warning to anybody thinking of doing the same: there is a black-and-white mongrel who seems to regard the Via Guinigi as his personal fiefdom. Avoid him. His bark is worse than his bite, but he speaks no English and appears to be provoked by red socks.
Cycling around the city ramparts, nearly three miles in all, was a charming experience. An unbroken promenade, lined with trees, ran along the top of the walls. In the distance, plump little mountains glowed in the afternoon sun. Within the ramparts, red-tiled roofs were punctuated by elegant archways and campaniles.
It all seemed such a peaceful, orderly world, with the streets laid out to a grid plan and the cobbles immaculately maintained. But it was also brimming over with life and character. At the top of one of the towers, as if put there by a practical joker, two miniature oak trees poked their heads cheekily above the parapet.
Every square, every alley, offered fresh surprises. Sometimes it would be something little, local, intimate: chestnuts roasting on open braziers; priests scuttling out of bars; tiny shops stuffed with cheeses, herbs and fresh pasta.
At other times, it was something quite majestic. The Piazza Napoleone, with its effortless, tree-lined elegance, belonged in a much larger city. The Romanesque facade of the church of San Michele seemed to soar into the sky, column upon column, gargoyle upon gargoyle.
The most extraordinary sight of all was the Roman amphitheatre. Its ancient origins are lost in the mists of time: it is just a circular piazza, ringed by medieval houses. But the symmetry of the design, and the bustling street market that now occupies centre stage, were irresistible to the eye.
Fat black and green olives
We stumbled upon a violin workshop, where a young man worked in the gloom. Rosewood shavings built up around his feet as he carved the back of a violin out of the amber-coloured wood.
After a little persuasion, he picked up one of the violins hanging on the wall and played us a few bars from the opening of Vivaldi's Four Seasons, took a bow and returned to his workbench.
But the best thing we found about Lucca is that most motor vehicles are banned from its central streets. It is easy and safe to explore the city on a bike, which costs an economical £15 a day to rent.
We hired a couple and set off in the cool air early one morning. By chance, we rode into its fruit and veg market (Via Busdrachi).
It's where the chefs from the local restaurants get the food they need and, judging by the noise levels, the gossip that helps get them through the day.
Many of the stalls in the stone hall sell the fat black and green olives for which the area is well known: they are sold haphazardly by the fistful rather than the kilo and are used to cook a speciality unique to Lucca, a starter made from roasted olives, orange juice and garlic.
Our appetite for this gentle method of exploration was whetted and that afternoon we tackled the 15-mile round trip to the three beautiful, large country villas (Reale, Mansi and Torrigiani) in the hills surrounding Lucca, built by wealthy local industrialists during the 19th century as summer retreats.
Sadly, all of these ornate villas turned out to be closed for lunch when we arrived at their gates, but the restaurant Osteria del Vecchio Pazzo in nearby San Pancrazio came to the rescue.
As it used to be the local watermill, its massive metal wheel is still attached to the side of the building and many of the tables inside are old grinding stones.
To the hotel, and the Residence Veronza offers panoramic views of the resort, cosy Alpine-style bedrooms and a wellness centre in the basement offering spa treatments, massages and saunas.
The one downside is that the hotel is three miles out of the centre of Cavalese which means getting a shuttle bus which runs every 50 minutes to get to the slopes.
Worth noting too is that the bus takes a two-hour break from 12.30 in the afternoon.
There is a healthy enough sprinkling of shops and cafes in the Medieval village (five minutes walk from the slopes) to ensure you pass the time pleasantly though.
Another slight bug bear is that the resort doesn't run taxis after 10.30pm which is fine if you're based in the centre of the village but we weren't.
Undemanding Cavalese is a great place to catch the ski bug but it doesn't offer a great deal of apres-ski.
Night time entertainment is mainly hotel-based although there are a selection of classy restaurants, Il Cartuccio and the fondue at the nearby Bella Vista hotel, being two.
One thing you can't afford to pass up on though is a night-time snow-shoeing tour through the Predazzo Valley which lasts an hour and a half and ends with a huge meal in a mountain hut restaurant.
Now is the time you feel truly close to nature with nothing but endless snow around you, clear black sky above you and huge tennis racket shaped contraptions strapped to your feet. Bar the odd inevitable fall into the dense, untrammelled snow, this will bring your trip to a magical end.
Prices for Thomson's seven-night break to Cavalese start from £495pp, including flights, full-board accommodation, six days' lift pass, ski and boot hire and tuition. Ring 0870 606 1470 or visit www.thomson-ski.co.uk
For hiring ski gear, contact Ski Force Ltd, Unit 19, Britannia Way, Lichfield, Staffordshire, WS14 9UY. Tel 01785 225737 or visit skiforce.co.uk.
More like a sea than a lake
Although Bellinis were invented at Harry's Bar in Venice by the man who started the Cipriani hotel, Enzo considers he makes the best in the world. In Italy, barmen are judged by the quality of their Bellinis: it is a mark of attainment. Enzo smiles gravely and invites me to taste.
The peachy drink fizzes gently with prosecco, the Italian champagne. The two barmen, master and assistant, stand a respectful pace back to await my verdict. This is quite a ritual. Of course, Enzo's Bellini is magnificent.
Nectar. How can it not be? White peaches from southern Italy's finest orchards, in season for only one or two months of the year, cut and squeezed into a blender, with four raspberries added and then ice. This is liquidised and finally the prosecco added.
And here it sits for my approval and pleasure.
Once, on arriving at the Cipriani, I asked for a Bellini. The barman said he was sorry but he couldn't serve me one. I asked him why and he said that it was too early in the year (it was May) for the white peaches and only fresh white peaches were good enough for Bellinis.
No peach essence here, not even peach-coloured peaches. Only white peaches from south of Naples will do for establishments of such class as these.
The Villa Cortine, a private residence when Callas used to come here, is today a 50-room hotel, one of the most luxurious in Italy. It is set in a commanding position, like a Roman emperor's villa, its eight great columns supporting the portico facade, high above the clear, deep waters of Lake Garda, at 30 miles long, ten miles wide and in places nearly 500ft deep, more like a sea than a lake.
It was built in the 19th Century by a German politician and during the Second World War - before becoming a hotel - it was a battlefield hospital, Nazi High Command and, later, Allied headquarters.
Today, its voluptuous charms offer an immersion in romance. Inside are frescoed ceilings, rich silk furnishing and Belle Epoque style; outside, exotic gardens running down richly wooded cliffs to the water's edge, phantasmagorical statues of Neptune, trident in hand, overlooking fairytale grottos, while other equally heroic mythological giants standing beneath sweet-smelling pine and cypress trees preside over glades, follies and jasmine-twined loggias.
Sit here for a while and you will hear the bells of the 15th Century church Santa Maria Maggiore chiming the hour or calling parishioners across the lake to vespers. The church stands next to a 13th Century fairytale castle, the Rocca Scaligera, which is surrounded by a moat where swans and mallards bob, palms now filling the courtyard where Dante once slept.
Few towns anywhere enjoy the dramatic position of Sirmione, strung out along a narrow two-and-a-half-mile peninsula that pierces Lake Garda's broad bottom like a pin, or maybe a witch's hat.
Garda is the largest of all the Italian lakes and the most dramatic. In the north the mountains are rugged and draw in close, giving it a fjord-like appearance. These same mountains protect the lake from northerly winds. The southern end of the lake, where we stayed, is flatter and more Mediterranean in atmosphere, with little ports and promenades bedecked with colourful flowers and palm trees and the smell of jasmine floating gently on the breeze.
Taken for a ride
This seemed a good idea. Although such is the dependent state into which you are plunged when you are adrift in a strange country, if he'd suggested we paddle across on a Lilo, this might have seemed a good idea too.
So we set off down the motorway to Pozzuoli. En route the driver told us we would be going outside the Commune of Naples.
'Unfortunately this means I have to charge twice the amount shown on the meter.' We had the faint stirrings of unease.
The driver, however, was in good spirits. He stared at me in the rearview mirror. 'You look like Robbie Williams,' he said after a few minutes.
Robbie Williams! 'He means Robin Williams,' said my wife. 'As in Mrs Doubtfire.'
We arrived in Pozzuoli. 'Birth place of Sophia Loren. You have heard of her, maybe?' Maybe.
We were now beside the sea, which looked surprisingly millpond-like considering the 40ft waves we'd been led to expect.
The meter showed 19.50 euros which he doubled to 40, adding five more for the motorway toll.
We hastily bought tickets for the 'big' ferry and raced aboard just in time. Settled in the cafeteria, I called Lady Walton. 'We're in Pozzuoli,' I said.
There was a blast of noise from the phone of the sort that in comedy films causes someone to hold it away from their ear.
'Pozzuoli! What are you doing there? I gave instructions. The taxi driver has taken you for a ride!'
We felt like prize chumps. We were expected for lunch at 2pm but as it was now 1pm and we had barely left harbour, we feared we would not arrive for hours.
Romeo and Juliet
Back on board Casanova, supper was a five-course chance to get to know our fellow travellers on the tour of Italy's Renaissance cities. Over pork and mostarda di frutta, a Cremonese speciality of fruit in sweet mustard syrup, we met Lisa, a picture framer from Dusseldorf who was celebrating her 60th birthday and had brought along her wistful protegee, Antice from Croatia, who was looking for love.
Happily it was Verona next morning, home to star-cross'd Romeo and Juliet.
There was a bit of confusion over where we joined the guide. Casanova's Excursions Manager, Iris, looked puzzled but smiled brightly until a breathless Italian arrived and whizzed us round the sights.
The Scaglieri tombs, an elaborate commemoration from the powerful Scaglieri family to themselves, the mighty Roman Arena, being banged and hammered into shape for July's opera festival. Then, in a town full of balconies, we find the one designated as Juliet's (it's not only TV soap fans who think the characters are real). Just off the Via Cappello, a street named after the family Shakespeare turned into the Capulets, stands the Casa di Giulietta.
It's as romantic as dinner with Robin Cook. Graffiti starts in the street out-side and covers every surface of the crowded courtyard. Tourists grab at the breasts of the bronze Juliet.
Touch the statue, be lucky in love. Antice emerged from the souvenir shop, dreamily caressing a plaster balcony.
There was less confusion in Mantua, an impressive medieval city whose exotic skyline rises above three surrounding lakes.
It was ruled by another fabulously wealthy Italian family, the Gonzagas: mercenaries who bought themselves nobility and a fantastic art collection - including family portraits in vivid frescoes by Mantegna showing off his ability with the new natural look and the science of perspective.
Their vast home, the Palazzo Ducale, with its swallow-tailed battlements, covers the entire northeastern corner of the town.
Very few chips
For breakfast they have plain biscuits dipped in hot milk.
Their morning snack is fresh fruit, and lunch (the main meal) is pasta with a fresh, homemade tomato sauce, or a plain risotto, followed by grilled meat or fish. Once a week, they eat beans or the tiny Castelluccio lentils.
In the evening children eat soup or pizza. They have never tasted Chinese or Indian food and eat very few chips or sweets.
'At seven months, my children started to eat adult food - always homemade,' says mum Federica. 'We chop the pasta, so the babies can learn to chew.'
Pasta seems to be a magic ingredient. Babies chew it from infancy; sometimes tiny pasta shapes even turn up in the babies' bottles.
The diet that Italians have sold all over the world is actually a food of love.
'Italian food feeds the soul as well as the body,' says Valentina Harris, the cookery writer and TV presenter who runs a cookery school in Tuscany. 'Children are in tune with that.
'The colours are vivid, it's seductive and hugely appealing; never bland, but never overpowering. There are no fatty meats and rich sauces to deal with.
'Italian philosophy is simple: take fresh fruit and vegetables in season and do as little as possible to them.
'In Italy, everyone grows vegetables, even on the balcony.'
Gastronomic experience in Umbria
Spoleto is worth a visit for the Ponte dell Torri alone. This is an incredible, 14th-century aqueduct and viaduct, an extraordinary feat of medieval engineering.
Spoleto was the pinnacle of my gastronomic experience in Umbria. I tasted the best antipasti ever at the unassuming Pecchiarda restaurant on Vicolo San Giovanni. Cheeses and cold cuts of prosciutto, salami and salsiccie were piled high, together with crostini (toasted breads) smothered with truffles, mushrooms and liver pate.
Fortunately, there were ample opportunities to walk off the calories in the Umbrian countryside. I stayed within a natural park in a 16th-century farmhouse amid the foothills of Monte Subasio.
The accommodation was part of the increasingly popular ' agritourism', in which owners of small-holdings let out rooms or apartments on their farmland.
The setting was idyllic, and you couldn't escape the host's generous offerings of home-made pasta, fresh pesto and torta al testo - flatbread filled with cheese.
My only hope of salvation was some vigorous swimming in Lago Trasimeno - the fourth largest lake in Italy. It is also a good spot for walking.
I made a swift circuit around the battlements of the castle attached to Palazzo Della Corgna, a 13th-century tower house, affording excellent views over the lake.
There are also several islands within the lake, which can be reached by ferry. Isola Maggiore - inhabited by 100 people, mostly fishermen - has a Venetian-style, brick-paved street and 15th-century houses. It's quite magical and the restaurants around the lake offer freshwater fish, including carp and perch.
And when I agreed to accompany my husband to the football stadium in Perugia to watch the home team play AC Milan, there wasn't a greasy burger in sight.
Vendors peddled shots of espresso while the vans served porchetta sandwiches - roast suckling pig with crackling, stuffed with fennel, herbs and garlic dished up in crusty rolls.
There was, it seemed, no escape from fine food.
TRAVEL FACTS:
Brigolante offers comfortable farmhouse apartments six kilometres from Assisi. Details from http://www.brigolante.com or call 00 39 075 802250.
Food and history
Best for FOOD: Emilia-Romagna
Outside the pages of cookery books, Italian food can hardly be said to exist at all. It is a collection of regional cuisines: Tuscan, Neapolitan, Sicilian and so on.
But the consensus of outside opinion favours Emilia-Romagna - particularly the charmed gastronomic triangle of Bologna (as in bolognese sauce), Modena (famed for its balsamic vinegar) and Parma (home of the ham and Parmesan cheese).
The region's wines include the foaming red Lambrusco. In Britain, fizzy red wine is regarded as little more than an alcoholic form of cola. But drunk from a good vineyard in Emilia-Romagna, it's the real thing.
Exclusive Italy features stays at the Grand Hotel, Bologna. http://www.exclusiveworldwide.com tel: 01892 619 651.
Best for HISTORY: Rome
Florence was the cradle of the Renaissance and Naples the nursery of the Baroque. Despite these competing claims, there's no place like Rome.
Relics and reminders of its glorious past are apparent everywhere. Each street corner offers a fresh surprise: a glimpse of the Colosseum or of some triumphal arch.
The opening of the new National Museum of Roman Antiquities, as well as the over-elaborate restoration of the Borghese Palace, have provided a foil to the established greatness of the Vatican.
Indigo Holidays features the Hotel Brasile. Tel: 0870 11 22 333.
Names of Italian fashion.
The museums with which Bologna is punctuated are put together to intrigue and entertain without overwhelming. Most occupy the palazzos of the ancient Bolognese aristocratic families.
At Piazza Maggiore is the famous archaeological museum (entry 12,000 lira, £3.90) - Bologna's rich past is layered with Etruscan, Greek and Roman civilisation.
Painted amphorae from the 4th century BC depict naked athletes being crowned with laurel; sarcophagi hold 2,000-year-old bones; cornelian necklaces lie beside ornate gold rings.
Of the churches, most impressive were San Francesco, with its high red ochre sandstone pillars and red-and-white striped roof arches, and the seven-in-one churches of San Stefano.
Under the arched arcades that stretch for 35km down the city's streets and round its squares are the best-known names of Italian fashion.
Something less pricey than Prada, Gucci, Tod's, Fendi or Maxmara, try Coin, a chain store that sells the sparky fashions worn by the young and chic.
Towards sundown, we headed again for the Piazza Maggiore and all the abundant life of an Italian evening. Here groups of people stroll, hardly sparing a glance for the living statues, or group round jugglers and fire-eaters.
Others eat mixed plates of sushi, carrot sticks, ham, toast topped with pate, onion marmalade-and chopped tomato, drink, talk and gesticulate, dressed in their best clothes. Best value are probably the many varieties of pasta, served with delicious sauces. Another speciality is veal, often served with local mushrooms.
These, dried, in neat bow-tied packages, make good take-home presents. But for a real reminder of this vibrant city best of all, perhaps, is fresh parmesan, the cheese that gives the authentic flavour to so much of the famous Bolognese cuisine.
TRAVEL FACTS:
Details from Inntravel tel: 01653 629010 or on its website http://www.inntravel.co.uk
Grottoes, tunnels and statues.
Father is around, too, so perhaps that is the secret of Italy's hotel prices - if the family pulls together, they don't need to plunder their guests.
Another family, the Gianis, live on the site of a ninth-century monastery high up above the coast, again delivering superb organic food, much of it from their own animals.
The rooms are simple but attractive, and about £20 per person. How do they do it?
Down below, on a point overlooking Moneglia, there is a little castle, the Castello di Monleone, only 100 years old but with its own wooded park with grottoes, tunnels and statues.
Again, it is family-run, by Francesca and her mother Orietta. Such is Orietta's enthusiasm that she will take small groups walking in the hills of the land she loves.
But that doesn't make commercial sense, does it?
On down the coast, or along the railway line, is Levanto, another little jewel of a place.
One mile up the hill is the Barone Giancarlo Massola's Villa, where you can stay and enjoy his conversation.
He lives in idyllic countryside in a handsome house, yet you pay less than £50 a night to stay there.
The question 'How does he do it for so little?' returns to haunt you.
On, by sea perhaps, to Riomaggiore, to be greeted by Giorgio Germano and his son Samuele in their 18th-century house.
It is stylish and quirky; one bathroom is built into the rock. Everywhere there are long and beautiful views over the sea.
Further still now, towards the bottom end of the Cinque Terre, you may find Mariangola Marcoli and her delightful husband.
From pesto to Parma ham
Pesto and focaccia: Recco, Liguria
This is the best place for pesto and focaccia, two of the most glorious Italian foods. Unlike most basil, which can be quite minty, Ligurian basil grows near the sea and is much more delicate and perfumed.
In Recco, basil is artfully combined by hand in a mortar with Ligurian olive oil, Parmigiano and Pecorino cheese, gentle garlic, and buttery pine nuts and pounded with a pestle (hence 'pesto') to produce the most sublime pasta sauce of all.
When served fresh and tossed with local pastas such as trofie or trenette, it bears no resemblance to the industrial jarred pestos that arrive in our markets.
All of Liguria is home to crunchy focaccia, a bread scented with olive oil, salt, and herbs, but only Recco has focaccia con il formaggio, an addictive crepe-like bread.
Where to stay/eat: Manuelina, Via Roma 278, Recco. Tel: 00 39 0185 720779, fax: 00 39 0185 721677 (hotel) manuelina@manuelina.it; Tel: 00 39 0185 75364 (restaurant). The restaurant is a mecca for lovers of focaccia con il formaggio, pesto, wild mushrooms, and seafood.
Parma ham and parmesan cheese: Parma, Emilia-Romagna
Parma ham, prosciutto, is aircured for 14 months and then sliced thinly so it melts in your mouth.
Parmigiano-Reggiano is known as the king of cheeses, and is made only in five provinces (Parma, Reggio, Mantua, Modena, and Bologna) from local cows fed only local grass and hay.
It can be grated over pasta or vegetables, or eaten by the chunk, and it also melts in the mouth.
The ham and cheese are high in protein and are the favoured foods of footballers on Parma's talented side.
They are also thought to be the food of musical genius, having nourished local heroes Giuseppe Verdi and Arturo Toscanini.
Parma itself is one of Italy's most elegant cities. Buildings there are painted in a rich egg-yolk colour called 'Parma yellow', which contrasts wonderfully with the Parma violets that sprout in window boxes.
Where to stay: Park Hotel Stendhal, Piazzetta Bodoni 3, Parma. Tel: 00 39 0521 208057; fax: 00 39 0521 285655.
Where to eat: Ristorante Parizzi, Via Repubblica 71, Parma. Tel: 00 39 0521 285952; fax: 00 39 0521 285027. King Parmigiano rides about in its own cart, and is grated to order on pastas and other foods.
Trattoria Antica Cereria, Borgo Tanzi 5, Parma. Tel: 00 39 0521 207387. Excellent local cookery.
Gastronomia Garibaldi, Via Garibaldi 42, Parma. Tel: 00 39 0521 235606. The place to buy Parmigiano and prosciutto.
Language and culture
It also offers Colours And Flavours Of Naples - a week dedicated to food and drink including the famous Neapolitan pizza and limoncello. With a language course included, the week costs £285 or £190 without it.
Alternatively, on the islands of Capri and Ischia, Centro Italiano offers private language lessons at the student's hotel for £46 for a minimum of two hours a day.
Other schools with a mix of language and cultural courses are the Centro Culturale Italiano in Verona, LinguaSi in Orvieto and the Leonardo da Vinci school in Siena.
A useful site is http://www.it-schools.com which lists language schools by region.
In the heart of the city, the British Institute of Florence (no relation to the British Institutes) offers several options from the four-week Standard Beginners course at £240 up to a year of Italian A-level for £2,300.
The Italian lessons take place in the morning or early afternoon so that students can also take the cultural courses such as history of art, cooking, drawing, film appreciation, watercolour painting, opera, wine appreciation and Dante.
Prices start from £33 for an afternoon of wine appreciation up to £2,750 for a year's course of history of art accredited by the University of Bristol.
The Institute also has a department that organises private lessons (from around £30 per hour) and courses for those with particular needs, whether it be Italian for business, wine making, fashion designing, glass blowing, discussing politics or just because you prefer private lessons.
Francesca Boni, head of the Institute's Italian department, says: 'We have always managed to offer what people have requested and if we don't know something then we study it.'
She also says that these particular courses are good for those on tight schedules as 'the time is reduced and more concentrated and the attention of the teacher is just for you'.
From experience I would say that they are good for the more diligent pupil as there is nowhere to hide in a private lesson if you haven't done your homework.
A shameful binge
After a shameful binge there, the cashier gave me some tips on locating Gucci and Dolce & Gabbana (they are within a mile or so of each other).
I retraced my path to the autostrada and headed back towards Florence, leaving at the first exit and heading towards Leccio.
I knew both shops were on or near the main road, about five miles from the motorway. Was that a fashion factory shop? On closer examination, it sold naff concrete garden ornaments.
A couple of circuits later, the place that advertised itself as a cafe proved to be Gucci.
After my shopping, the security man tried to tell me how to reach Dolce & Gabbana. Directions are useful only when they relate to landmarks. Here in the heart of the country there aren't any.
Once again, more cruising and fruitless knocks on other factory doors. Until I narrowed it down to one modern-looking building which seemed more like a maximum security prison than a shop. But once through the glass doors I was in a wonderful shop packed with extraordinary bargains.
The staff were pleased to see me. 'It's been quiet today,' they said. Given how hard it is to find, I imagine it must be very quiet every day.
Oh, I forgot. I'm not supposed to tell you where any of these shops are, they're meant to be a secret. You won't tell, will you?
Getting there: Italiatour (01883 621900) offers a range of short breaks to Florence. A double room at the Villa San Michele, an Orient-Express five-star hotel near Florence is with Leading Hotels of the World (0800 181123).
Tuscany - heart of Italy
TUSCANY
WHY GO? Tuscany is the heart of Italy - or, at least, the heart of the British idea of Italy.
It is the birthplace of Dante, Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, and the whole Italian Renaissance. Throughout the 15th century, its various city states vied with each other to produce ever more wonderful works of art and architecture - and many of them are still there.
The region has achieved such a pitch of civilisation that even the landscape seems civilised, with its low, rolling hills of well-tended vines and olive trees, plumed with dark cypresses and crowned by the occasional medieval walled hill-town.
There are excellent wines from Chianti and Montalcino and food to rival London's River Cafe in even the humblest trattoria.
MUST-SEES: Florence is the ultimate city of art, home to - among other masterpieces - Michelangelo's David and Botticelli's Birth of Venus. The town centre is like a glorious open-air museum.
Siena is an almost unspoilt medieval city; its famous medieval horse race, the Palio, is run round the main square twice a year on July 2 and August 16.
Visit the Leaning Tower of Pisa and the not-so-leaning-towers of San Gimignano. When 'cathedralled out', head for the hills or to stylish coastal resorts such as Porto Ercole and Porto Santo Stefano.
DRAWBACKS: The danger of bumping into Tony Blair and family. Long queues to get into the churches and art galleries in Florence. The possibility of finding key sites shut due to restoration.
TOP HOTEL: Hotel Villa San Michele, Fiesole, the height of luxury, on the hill outside Florence. The building used to be a monastery in the 14th century, but there is nothing austere about it now.
The elegant loggia is supposed to have been designed by Michelangelo. See http://www.orient-expresshotels.com or tel 0207 805 5100.
RESTAURANT: Dorando, Vicolo del Oro 2, San Gimignano (0577 941 862). Its expensive dishes include historical re-creations such as Catherine de Medici's favourite, chicken-liver pate and pici - a type of handmade spaghetti that comes with mint pesto.
GETTING THERE: Fly to Florence or Pisa. Ryanair flies from Stansted airport, near London, to Pisa from about £100 return. See http://www.ryanair.com or tel: 0870 156 9569.
TOUR OPERATORS: Italian Chapters, specialists in Tuscan villa rentals. See http://www.villa-rentals.com or tel: 0207 722 0722.
Freshly caught anchovies
In Piazza Banchi, with its adorable painted church, a miniature street market displays fresh flowers, bootleg videos and handmade wooden kitchenware.
Down an alley is a stall only selling a silvery cascade of freshly caught anchovies.
On the dockside, the local communists were setting up a street fair to raise funds for a party.
In front of the grand Palazzo Ducale a group of Christians, including a nun in a yellow baseball cap, were blowing up balloons and making paper lanterns in aid of orphans in Brazil.
Genoa's principal tourist attraction these days is the magnificent aquarium, built in the old port for the city's Expo 1992.
The queues are slow-moving and the crowds dense, but it's worthwhile if only for the huge tank of cruising sharks and the bewitching re-creation of a coral reef.
Human finery was on display at the neoclassical Teatro Carlo Felice on Saturday night, where there was a splendid rendition of Beethoven's Ninth, the last in a festival of all the symphonies.
Italian enthusiasm for a festive occasion makes us northerners look dour.
The crowd applauded wildly, for curtain-call after curtain-call, then streamed off to nearby restaurants to eat sea bass ravioli, trofie (squiggly pasta, that looks similar to worm-casts) al pesto and other local delicacies.
TRAVEL DETAILS:
British Airways flies to Genoa from Gatwick. Visit http://www.ba.com or ring 0870 850 9850. Car hire: Alama. Tel: 0870 599 4000. Hotels: The four-star Astor Hotel. Tel: 00 39 010 329 011.
See where Christopher Columbus lived
Wide boulevards make Genoa's centre pleasant for strolling around.
Via XX Settembre - named to mark the date in 1871 when Rome was annexed to modern Italy - is the city's main shopping street, with a good range of clothes stores for all budgets.
Via Roma is one of Genoa's most elegant avenues, lined with designer shops and
in Via Garibaldi you can see grand old 16th-century mansions with courtyards.
Christopher Columbus was born in the city in 1451, and you can visit his humble little house in the Old Town. Unfortunately it's not his real house - that burnt down and was replaced with a replica in 1684, but what's there is certainly worth seeing.
Nearby are some original city gates, massive wood structures built in 1155, and one of five that used to circle the city in medieval times.
Back in the present, Genoa is proud of its arts scene. The Teatro della Corte in the modern part of town - not easy on the eye - often hosts international events and will be a focal point of next year's Capital of Culture celebrations.
Far more scenic is the Palazzo Ducale in the Old Town, which hosts year-round art exhibitions and the opera house in Piazza de Ferrari, built in 1827.
Finally, anyone into food should pick up jars of Genoa's famous pesto sauce, reputedly one of Italy's finest. La Tavola del Doge in the old town, bursting at the seams with all sorts of produce, is a good place to pick up the stuff. And in shops nearby extra-virgin olive oil is a third of UK prices.
True, it's not Italy's loveliest city, but work is under way to make it gleam for 2004 - even more reason to visit.
Opulent marble staircase
Rather than entering a hotel lobby, you walk into a grand Victorian hall with an intricate wrought-iron chandelier, comfy armchairs and an opulent marble staircase decorated with swirling frescoes and stained-glass windows leading up to the guest rooms.
Checking-in consists of writing in a leather-bound guest book while the cool, casually dressed young staff seem to emerge from nowhere whether you want a cup of tea or a dry Martini - and there isn't even the tiresome necessity of signing a bill.
It's a welcome surprise to discover after unpacking that the laundry service is complimentary - as is much of the mini-bar.
Better still, guests desperate for a midnight snack can raid the pantry next to the breakfast room.
Don't expect to immediately recognise the manager, Markus Odermatt, as most of the time he dresses like his relaxed guests and prefers to get to know clients by inviting them for a sunset cocktail cruise around Lake Garda in the villa's private boat.
Although this is the kind of hotel where you could imagine Grace Kelly swanning through the double doors of the ornate Venetian salon out on to the waterside terrace, the history of Villa Feltrinelli is almost stranger than fiction.
Towards the end of the Second World War, with Italian dictator Mussolini all but deposed, the Nazis whisked him off to Villa Feltrinelli to establish a puppet regime known for nearly 18 months as the Republic of Salo, after a rather sleepy seaside resort a short drive along the lakeside.
Although Mussolini must have enjoyed a palatial life, he was pretty much a prisoner of the Germans.
As compensation his mistress, Claretta Petacci, was set up just down the road in another villa, which has also now been turned into a fashionable hotel.
But once the Germans began to retreat, both of them came to a grisly end at the hands of Italian partisans.
In Hannibal's footsteps
Temporarily setting aside E. M. Forster, I turned to my other literary guide to Florence: Hannibal by Thomas Harris - the sequel to The Silence Of The Lambs, the film starring Sir Anthony Hopkins.
The continuing story of Hannibal Lecter is an unlikely guide to the cradle of the Renaissance, but curiously Harris writes very engagingly about Florence (where Hannibal the Cannibal has begun a new life disguised as the respectable academic Dr Fell). I imagined the references to a Florentine serial killer known as The Monster of Florence were fictional until I read that there really was a Monster of Florence who famously preyed on courting couples.
In the book Hannibal visits a fascinating perfumery called the Farmacia di Santa Maria Novella. Fiction or fact? Fact. The place really can be found in Via della Scala - and what a place. A richly patterned marble floor, art deco globe lamps light the vaulted ceiling and the air is full of the rich sounds of soothing classical music.
To Dr Lecter, the sweet-smelling air was itself music: 'Here were pale tears of frankincense awaiting extraction, yellow bergamot, sandalwood, cinnamon and mimosa in concert, over the sustaining ground notes of genuine ambergris, civet, castor from the beaver, and essence of the musk deer.'
The only impediment to complete hedonistic pleasure is the nagging anxiety that you may be sharing the premises with a madman keen to enjoy your liver with a plate of beans. But, no, the only customers are elegantly turned out Florentine ladies who bear bulky packages of sweet-smelling goods to waiting Range Rovers and Jeep Grand Cherokees.
Lift the spirits
You would have very dull offspring if you were unable to inspire them with the excitement of the Renaissance when that excitement is all around in the churches, the piazzas, art galleries, and in the weather-beaten old buildings.
The Duomo, the great red-tiled dome of the cathedral, which dominates the city, would lift the spirits of the surliest teenager.
It was one of the architectural wonders of the world when Brunelleschi built it in the 15th century, and it has lost little of its power to impress.
We climbed to the top of the neighbouring Campanile and had a grandstand view.
We took the Uffizi at a canter, lingered in the church of Santa Croce, where Michelangelo and Galileo are buried, and dawdled in the cloisters of the San Lorenzo.
We spent one of our happiest half-hours perched on a fountain in the Boboli gardens on the other side of the Arno. A wintry sun smiled down on the Duomo. Birds circled above the river.
It was midday and, as the church bells started to ring out across the city, dozens of them, drowning out all noise of traffic, you got a sense of the Florence of the Renaissance, a great city in its pomp.
The Florence of today is a backwater in comparison. In terms of nightlife, opera etc, it lags way behind Rome and Milan. But after gorging yourself on culture, you need not settle for a pizza and an early night.
We ate well. A chargrilled bistecca fiorentina, 1.2kg of prime meat, shared by two, was as impressive as some of the Renaissance art.
Lively, laughter-filled restaurants abounded and, after dinner, there was always that quintessential Italian treat - a to-die-for gelato.
Street markets, selling everything from parmesan cheese to leather gloves, were another treat.
Kick-start to the senses
Calling into question our penchant for 'cultural packaging', Barbieri combines scenes of a remote Buddhist monastery with high-tech visual trickery and turns a photo of a football stadium into an appealing landscape.
It's an apt exhibit as the city gradually opens its doors to that all-important blend of modernity and history that makes London and Paris two of the most fascinating cities in Europe.
Having turned my nose up at the inedible catering on the Meridiana flight from Gatwick to Florence, I'm starving. I've booked dinner at one of my favourite restaurants, Garga, which is popular among young Florentines, where the kitsch, muralled walls pay homage to the city's past but also display a healthy irreverence.
A variety of local artists were encouraged to pick up their paintbrushes and let rip. The result is an explosion of colours and styles inspired by ancient mythology that assault you the moment you enter.
The menu provides a similar kick-start to the senses with its individual take on Tuscan staples.
I've timed my visit to coincide with the arrival of white truffles and porcini on the city's highly seasonal menus. Garga-style this means a delicious plate of fresh grilled porcini followed by a bowl of linguine dressed in olive oil and a generous sprinkling of truffle shavings.
A veritable United Nations of visitors babble away in the background, but my attention is firmly focused on my plate.
I decline dessert but luckily my boyfriend doesn't so I help myself to his home-made ricotta cheesecake and order an espresso. It's a mistake and I spend the rest of the night regretting my foolhardy coffee drinking while tossing and turning sleeplessly in my bed.
With only the institutional white of the bedroom walls for alternative inspiration, by dawn I've rearranged the layout of my flat and solved the current crisis in the Middle East.
I won't forget the Class A impact of a real Italian coffee in a hurry.
See Venice and live like a king
And for those who choose to give the slopes a miss, there are other ways to enjoy the Dolomites in the winter.
Guided hikes and hill walks in the National Park and day trips are optional extras.
The hotel is also a local social centre so expect to be welcomed into a warm, family environment in this resort.
Also be prepared to eat like a king! Four and five-course meals are the norm after a day out on the snow.
Optional day trips (with English-speaking guides) include the lagoon city of Venice - a two-hour coach ride from your ski resort.
No trip to this magnificent city is complete without seeing the gold mosaics in St Mark's Cathedral. Open every day but only 2pm-4pm on Sundays.
Excursions also include wine-tasting at Feltre or a visit to the medieval town of Asolo.
Fiera di Primiero Hotel La Perla (3*) - seven nights' half board from £350 per person.
Includes flights, winter sports insurance, breakfast, dinner and tea, airport taxes and entertainment.
Saga Holidays are available to people aged 50+, although a travelling companion can be aged 40+. For details phone: 0800 056 5880.
Wild Boars and madonnas
The Fondaccio, like all the hotels we stayed in, was empty at the start of June - only a couple of other walkers. I was in bed by 10, which proved to be the pattern of the week, as on TV the Pope on one channel was competing with a wonderful variety show and scantily-clad women on the other.
Next day, after jolly good croissants and home-made jam, we set out up a steep path directly out of Lizzano. I was extremely excited at the prospect of seeing some wild boar, which are in abundance in the park and cause a lot of damage.
After Gianni suggested a longer route for the next day, we followed a forestry road passing a refuge at Sega Vecchia (we filled our water bottles from a local spring) and climbed for two hours. We couldn't see the path mentioned in our instructions, so we took another, contouring around Monte Bubiale at Donna Morta.
Now we followed a ridge with terrific views on either side to Monteacuto, stuck dramatically on a promontory. Dating from the early 13th Century, it has a fine 17th Century church but, like so many villages in the region, its population has dwindled to 20 year-round residents, although many of the houses are being restored as holiday homes.
After a glass of red wine in the little bar (La Grotta) and a chat in pidgin Italian with three old men who were impressed with our route (or it might have been my friend Deborah's short shorts) we climbed down from this enchanting citadel and followed a river to the shrine of Madonna del Faggio, a peaceful pilgrimage spot sadly locked up. I gazed at the Madonna through the bars and posted several thousand lira in the collecting box, silently making a little prayer for eternal youth and no more wrinkles.
The following day we walked mixture of oaks and chestnuts, which used to be harvested. At 3,000ft are beech, laburnum and pine, while the mountain tops are moorland, carpeted with bilberries and alpine plants, all flowering during our visit. Having lengthened our route to ascend Monte Grande, we had fine views over the whole range and admired violets, wild orchids and wood anemones and listened to birdsong before dropping down a steep windy section and entering the forest, anxiously looking for path signs.
Eventually we emerged on to a broad path and walked to the tiny hamlet of Pianaccio where we sat in the bar of our pensione drinking tea, eating chocolate and being taught Italian billiards by our host Gianni.
At a farmhouse restaurant in the hamlet of Ca Gabrielli a gorgeous farmer gave us a free bottle of his wine. The three of us were instantly besotted but pressed on to the deserted hamlet of Poggiolforato. Not even a bar or shop here, so the hotel owners brought us a jug of vino and we played cards until supper - delicious home-made gnocchi and roasted lamb. Now I was glad I was walking seven hours a day to deal with all the calories.
Rooms with a view in Riomaggiore
Last stop was Riomaggiore. Young backpacking couples and salty old men disembarked. We had read that there were rooms to rent, and, this being low season, we had decided to just turn up. It was the best thing to do. The first small agency we came to, on a steep, cobbled street lined with affitta camera (rooms to rent) signs, immediately showed us two small apartments. One up in town, and one down below, with a balcony facing the sea.
It wasn't a difficult choice. But the route was bewildering. Dragging our bags, we were led down, up, down and up tier upon tier of stone stairways. Cinque Terre has a labyrinthine system of navigation. Houses stand back-to-back, shoulder-to-knee, elbow-to-bottom; they are crushed and crammed against each other from the seafront to the summit of each cliff, presenting one tottering, multicoloured facade when viewed from the sea.
We could never pick out our balcony from the beach, nor could we work out a straightforward route from our door to the compact town centre. Every journey back home was a surprise: we would stumble upon a secret garden, or get lost among the scaffolding (many apartments are being restored, as tourists bring in more lire than fish these days), or we would find ourselves entering someone else's front door, to be greeted by rich smells of dinner.
Our apartment was basic, but comfortable. The balcony was superb and from here, with a chilled bottle of Cinque Terre white wine (the vines are grown on terraces hewn into the cliffs), we could sit for hours. Below was a dizzying jumble of colourful fishing boats pulled high up the harbour. Around them sat aging fishermen, pretending to mend their nets but more focused on chat and card games.
To the right were a couple of small, outdoor restaurants where, for £10 a head, we feasted on a fritto misto of fresh whitebait and baby octopus in crisp batter, or glistening squid ink risotto, which turned our teeth black and tasted of the sea. To the left was the sparkling, endlessly seductive sea, flanked by soft ochre cliffs tumbling into a rocky bay. It was to the cliffs that we turned after swimming and sunning, for here a famous footpath lies.
The Cinque Terre walk snakes along the clifftops of the Ligurian coast, under umbrella pines, through aromatic basil and wild flowers. It is recognised throughout Italy as having some of the most glorious views in the country. We weren't disappointed. But the walk to the top - hundreds of stone steps, cut vertically into the cliff - was punishing.
They say the locals have developed a certain physique from coping with so many steps: squat, with stocky, slightly bow legs. And yes, there were pretty stout grannies in town to prove the theory. Hearts pounding, we sat under a pine tree at the top to recover, picnicking on oily focaccia, parma ham and enormous peaches.
Salty wind ruffled our hair as the view stunned us into silence - cerulean blue sea fused with sky, glinting in limpid Mediterranean sunlight. We felt on top of the world . . . And, at 1,120 ft above sea level, we were.
Catania delights at every turn
Our hotel was in a cool courtyard at the top of a steep street lined with orange trees. The proprietors - young and beautiful - seemed unused to tourists.
They showed us our sumptuous rooms with high, frescoed ceilings and antique furniture. 'It is good?' It was more than good; it was extraordinary.
This was not the only surprise. Perhaps because of its lack of hype (guidebooks are unanimously sniffy about the city), Catania managed to astonish and delight at every turn.
We ate simple, exquisite pizza that night alongside the city's in-crowd, young people curious to know what we were doing there. We suddenly felt adventurous and rather pleased with ourselves: this was no tourist trap.
In the bright morning sun, it seemed the most exhilarating city on earth. Straight, sweeping Baroque roads gave staggering vistas at either end - of the sea, or of Mount Etna.
There was a great sense of light, wind and space. Every corner turned gave an unexpected view - some grannies deep in conversation, their kitchen chairs parked in a row on the steep pavement; or a building built on top of a rolling, black lava flow.
Other tourists were rare. We encountered a few curious and well-dressed northern Italians, for whom Sicily is another country. And indeed it is: there is a different vibe on the street and in the air.
The palm trees seem more raffish, the cake shops more kitsch, the baroque architecture more exuberant.
Nowhere did I feel this foreign flavour more than in Catania's famous fish market (daily except Sunday).
An oval arena hemmed in by buildings, it resembled a stage set for The Pirates Of Penzance.
Wild-looking men with eye patches and gold teeth shouted strange dialect over their wares: coils of silver eels, thick as your arm; swordfish heads set on a slab, their snouts rearing up like chain saws.
It was unexpectedly hard to pull ourselves away from Catania, but we were bound for golden Syracuse, an hour to the south, a city that tourists love.
It was a shock to find ourselves among coachloads of Germans, but Syracuse still manages to retain its identity despite the hordes.
This was, after all, the most important city in the Western world from the 5th to 3rd centuries BC; the thriving metropolis of Magna Graecia, home to Plato and Archimedes. Greek reminders are everywhere - the fabulous Baroque cathedral is built around Doric columns.
Intimidating designer outlets
All Capri can boast is a couple of old houses and a ruined Roman palace. The air is sweet and the views are awesome - but so they are on the mainland. It's a mystery, really.
Nevertheless, Capri Town remains a chic and charming place, especially after 6.30pm when the last of the cagoule-wearers has re-embarked.
At 6.31, the glitterati venture out of their luxury hotels and discreet villas and take back the island.
The bustling Piazzetta, a compact square full of sophisticated bars, becomes the centre of all activity as everyone who would like to be anyone meets up to plan the night's events.
Then they hit the network of picturesque alleys leading from the Piazzetta to the expensive restaurants, bargain pizzerias, fabulous shoe shops and tiny, intimidating designer outlets (I'm easily intimidated, OK?).
You'll probably assume that I, as a trainee glitteratus, chose to stay in Capri Town. In fact, we were put up at the Capri Palace, generally considered the best hotel on the island and it isn't in Capri Town at all, so there.
The Capri Palace is in Anacapri, the island's second town. Anacapri sits several hundred yards higher than Capri Town, and it isn't as crowded or as hot in high season.
There's a sense of calm, a feeling that real life still goes on and the bonus of fabulous views out over the Bay of Naples. Anacapri also boasts (or threatens, if you suffer from vertigo) a chairlift that takes you to the top of Monte Solaro, Capri's highest point at 2,000ft.
The Capri Palace is a proper five-star everything-has-been-thought-of-for-you hotel, decorated in a soothing palette of white, cream, vanilla and milk. It's like walking into Harrods' dairy cabinet, only warmer.
If my house were decorated and upholstered in these colours, it would be a grubby finger-printed wreck inside a weekend.
The Capri Palace remains virginally pristine. The day after one of us - all right, me - spilled a glass of Barolo on a white sofa, the cushions were as clean as a polar bear who'd just escaped from a car wash.
Pamper yourself
The thermal baths at Terme dei Papi in Viterbo are worth a day's visit. Spa treatments are available at the four-star Hotel Niccolo V nearby and you can grab a sun lounger under the pine trees to top up your tan.
Just up the road, you'll find bathing pools of sulphur-rich, silky-smooth organic mud. Although the scenery isn't particularly attractive, your skin will feel much softer after a liberal coating.
A holiday in Casperia is all about immersion: immerse yourself in the people, the atmosphere and the past.
For culture vultures and those seeking the buzz of the city, Rome is close at hand. But by getting to know the village and its surroundings, by taking the pace of life down a notch, taking a trip back in time has its own rewards.
If you're not hiring a car, the cheapest and easiest way to reach Casperia is by train from Rome Fiumicino Airport to Poggio Mirteto where a free bus operates to the village.
From Rome Ciampino, you'll need to get a transfer to Tiburtina station before taking the Orte train to Poggio Mirteto.
Feeling inspired? Book a holiday.
A double-header of popular culture
Bologna is still basking in its just-expired status as a European City of Culture in 2000. The city wants and deserves to be known for more than just a certain type of spaghetti dish - which doesn't exist here, anyway.
It has the world's oldest university and the biggest length of porticos - elegant, open-pillared corridors; nearly 25 miles of them keep the visitor drier and more shaded than in any old city on Earth.
Staying in football idiom, Bologna has its twin towers. The 295ft Asinelli Tower in the city centre was dripping from top to bottom with strings of gold lights, like some rich and eminent padrone; alongside is its leaning and slightly shorter partner, the Garisenda. Unlike Wembley's, they are staying up.
We had hoped to make our weekend a double header of popular culture - opera on the Saturday evening at the 18th-century Teatro Comunale, followed by the football next day. But we arrived too late to catch the Flying Dutchman.
No problem, we had an impromptu Wagner performance next day. Walking to the bus stop we heard a man whistling Wagner's Ride Of The Valkyries in the street - all the German composer's operas received their Italian premiere here. But this is the turf of Rossini and Donizetti. I imagined Signor Rossini coming out of his home for many years at 26 Strada Maggiore. 'No, not that stuff, whistle something of mine.'
We stood at the bus stop admiring the medieval houses opposite, recently painted in red and yellow ochre. Pots of purple and white cyclamen stood on windowsills.
At the stadium, home of Bologna FC 1909, dress code was informally smart. M&S - study these Italian turnstile trends. A lady, 60-ish, in a fur coat set the standard. All the men wore smart jackets. In Italy, you dress for the football much as you would for the opera.
Inside, the stewards notched up the sartorial stakes in their fetching designer blue and grey anoraks. None of your mass-issue fluorescent yellow vests here. One politely indicated our seat in the central stand. Plenty of room to sit uncramped in your finery.
Incredibly tender octopus
The restaurant was a simply designed wooden structure with lovely wooden decking supported over the water on stilts and an open kitchen.
We were the only ones there and sat in the sun, listening to the calm swishing of the waves, with almost no sounds of traffic.
We ate a variety of antipasti - incredibly tender octopus with lemon, olive oil and chilli, boiled broccoletti, sweet green chillies, cicoria with black olives, aubergines with tomato and a fantastic hot escarole stuffed with pine nuts, capers, olives and grapes and cooked in olive oil and water - deliciously bitter and sweet.
We had spaghetti with vongole and the dish we had come for, spaghetti with zucchini.
The zucchini were cooked for a long time until they had become a thick sauce, with lots of cheese added which we thought overpowered the fresh taste of the zucchini - a little on the rich side.
That evening we ate at the Sirenuse, in a dining room filled with fragrant, blossoming lemon trees. We had digitale pasta with tiny cubetti of potato, sage and pancetta and our second version of zucchini pasta.
This time there was less cheese in the sauce, resulting in a fresher, more vibrant flavour, and pieces of fried zucchini had been tossed in at the end.
We drank a lovely red wine - a Delius 2002 from Cantina del Taburno, an estate also in Campania, made from 100 per cent Aglianico grapes.
After dinner we took a walk on the beach and passed a restaurant called La Cambusa - apparently a local favourite, full of families eating huge plates of fritto misto al mare, spaghetti with lobster, baked anchovies and grilled small red mullet.
On Saturday morning we were driven to our next destination, Ravello. Though the traffic was ghastly, the road from Positano to Amalfi was stunning - around rugged cliffs with hairpin turns and the brilliantly blue sea directly below.
Where to go for entertainment
To the hotel, and the Residence Veronza offers panoramic views of the resort, cosy Alpine-style bedrooms and a wellness centre in the basement offering spa treatments, massages and saunas.
The one downside is that the hotel is three miles out of the centre of Cavalese which means getting a shuttle bus which runs every 50 minutes to get to the slopes.
Worth noting too is that the bus takes a two-hour break from 12.30 in the afternoon.
There is a healthy enough sprinkling of shops and cafes in the Medieval village (five minutes walk from the slopes) to ensure you pass the time pleasantly though.
Another slight bugbear is that the resort doesn't run taxis after 10.30pm which is fine if you're based in the centre of the village - but we weren't.
Undemanding Cavalese is a great place to catch the ski bug but it doesn't offer a great deal of apres-ski.
Night time entertainment is mainly hotel-based although there are a selection of classy restaurants, Il Cartuccio and the fondue at the nearby Bella Vista hotel, being two.
One thing you can't afford to pass up on though is a night-time snow-shoeing tour through the Predazzo Valley which lasts an hour and a half and ends with a huge meal in a mountain hut restaurant.
Now is the time you feel truly close to nature with nothing but endless snow around you, clear black sky above you and huge tennis racket shaped contraptions strapped to your feet. Bar the odd inevitable fall into the dense, untrammelled snow, this will bring your trip to a magical end.
Prices for Thomson's seven-night break to Cavalese start from £495pp, including flights, full-board accommodation, six days' lift pass, ski and boot hire and tuition. Ring 0870 606 1470 or visit thomson-ski.co.uk.
For hiring ski gear, contact Ski Force Ltd, Unit 19, Britannia Way, Lichfield, Staffordshire, WS14 9UY. Tel 01785 225737 or visit skiforce.co.uk.
Feel inspired? Book a ski holiday.
Let the train take the strain
Italian drivers have a certain reputation - and it's not the safe, taking-notice-of-the- traffic-lights kind. If you don't want to unleash your inner racing driver, then taking the train is an stress-free way to get around Italy. Railways criss-cross the country, and services include both air-conditioned expresses and the slower, puffing, local variety.
Once aboard, take in the Tuscan hills or undulating Umbria without having to worry about an irate Alfa Romeo driver coming straight at you. From the central Roma Termini station you can speed across the backbone of Italy on an express to reach Milan in five hours and have a double centre holiday.
As the country's fashion capital, Milan has a totally different atmosphere to Rome. It is more friendly and approachable - somehow more human.Tell the Milanese you like their city more than Rome and you'll find yourself wrapped in a warm embrace. There is a serious rivalry between the two that manifests itself most obviously on the football field when one of Rome teams takes on AC Milan or Inter.
Lovers of drama can indulge in the sights at famous football ground San Siro or at the city's equally famous opera house La Scala, which has just re-opened after a massive refurbishment. If you have always wanted to see an opera, there's no better place - but have your glad rags ready and book early.
Most of the opera house's seats are in boxes, the alternative is the stalls, and each is equipped with a tiny computer screen, with lyrics in both English and Italian. Even if the big busted sound of opera doesn't touch your heart, you can't fail to be impressed by the occasion and the dresses.
And if its dresses you are after, Milan is a shoppers' paradise. Despite its reputation though, you don't have to pay a fortune. Trendy high street stores, Italian versions of Mango or Top Shop, line Vittorio Emmanuele II street, next to the cathedral. Or if it's the cutting edge fashion district, then catch the pricey windows of the fashion district, around Monte Napoleone, where the pavements are pounded by stick-thin women.
Like everywhere in Italy, Milan is stuffed to overflowing with great works of art. You can get your art fix by just visiting the cathedral. Nearby is the 19th Century Victor Emmanuel Galleria, perhaps one of the most famous sights in Milan. It is an arched glass ceilinged arcade where you'll find the Bar Zucca, where Cinzano was invented. It's well-worth dropping in for an evening drink under the benevolent gaze of its supremely mustachioed owner.
- To book Italian train tickets, ring 870 751 5000 or visit simplyrail.com
- For info on Rome's Hotel Cicerone, visit ciceronehotel.com. For info on Milan's Hotel Principe di Savoia, visit www.hotelprincipedisavoia.com
- Book well in advance for tickets to La Scala. Visit liasonsabroad.com
- Getting around Milan is easy. An E3 pass allows you to use any form of transport including the metro (underground) and the trams. But watch out for taxi scams, particularly in Rome. It pays to know roughly what your journey should cost.
- Ring the Italian Tourist Board at 00 8000 482542.
Feeling inspired? Book a holiday.
Rustic charm
Abruzzo's mountains attract thousands of skiers each winter. The season starts this month, ending in May.
The region has 22 modern ski resorts which have transformed the economy of the mountains. Cross-country, alpine and downhill skiing are all on offer, as well as pistes for snowboarders.
The L'Aquila area in the west is where most of the resorts are found. Thomson runs holidays to the region.
Abruzzo's growing agriturismo industry allows visitors to sample the real rustic charm of the region.
Many farmers have added tourist accommodation onto farmhouses and hire out rooms at weekly or daily rates.
Visitors can observe the workings of an Italian farm and can even help pick grapes or press olive oil from the groves. Rooms cost from around £20 a night.
The more modern face of tourism can be seen on the Adriatic coast of Abruzzo.
In the south, beach resort towns like Vasto have a selection of modern hotels catering for the package holiday visitor, although it's by no means a concrete jungle.
The Abruzzo coast is among the cleanest in Europe - its beaches have held the EU blue flag for around 15 years. Most resorts retain their old quarters.
Food is something Italy is famed for, and the Abruzzo region is no different.
Down on the coast, scampi, prawns and oysters are served by the bucketload. In the mountains, try freshly pressed chittara pasta eaten with wild boar washed down with locally made wine.
For information call Abruzzo Tourist Office on 011-39-085-421-1707. Thomson Lakes and Mountains runs tours to Abruzzo. Book on 0870 606 1470.
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| | | | Charm of its quiet backwaters
In a series of macabre twists - the final one being the most terrifying and unforgettable in English literature - the gripping tale is played out against the background of a largely deserted Venice.
With an economy of language, du Maurier subtly brings the city alive. The evening after their lunchtime encounter with the sisters, the Baxters have their first brush with danger.
The novelist paints a vivid picture of the spookiness of night-time Venice familiar to anyone who has visited the city. On the way to a restaurant, they become lost.
'The canal was narrow, the houses on either side seemed to close in upon it, and in the daytime, with the sun's reflection on the water and the windows of the houses open, bedding upon the balconies, a canary singing in a cage, there had been an impression of warmth, of secluded shelter.
'Now, ill-lit, almost in darkness, the windows of the houses shuttered, the water dank, the scene appeared altogether different, neglected, poor, and the long narrow boats moored in the slippery steps of cellar entrances looked like coffins.'
Du Maurier leaves clues so that you can follow the Baxters through this 'sinister' place, which can be found as described at the back of the San Martino church near the Arsenale.
The real charm of Venice lies in its quiet backwaters. By day, as du Maurier notes, they are perfectly lovely.
Follow John and Laura to the Greeks' church, San Giorgio dei Greci (easily located by its drunkenly leaning bell tower), and you will find yourself walking along Fondamenta San Lorenzo.
With a copy of the wonderful Venice For Pleasure by J G Links in your grasp, you will learn that it was here that Bellini set his easel to paint Miracle Of The Cross at the Bridge of San Lorenzo almost 500 years ago.
Study this view carefully: when you look for the painting later at the Accademia you will see how little Venice has changed.
Outsize pizzas and seafood
Neither of us had ever ridden in a gondola, both considering it far too naff. But doing it for our daughter's sake provided the perfect excuse.
Our gondolier, Laszlo, was a young man of mixed Italian-Dutch parentage. For 65 euros (£44), he gave us a 20-minute flip in his gondola, Donatella, around the side canals that have red lights and one-way signs, just like roads.
Food in Venice tends to get an indifferent press, but I've never eaten other than well there. Thanks to the Gritti's concierge, Enzo Zoccarato, we discovered Acqua Pazza in Campo S. Angelo, a buzzing place serving outsize pizzas and seafood where Jessica, as usual, was treated like a reincarnation of Audrey Hepburn.
For a real treat, try Harry's Bar in Calle Vallaresso, the place where the Bellini (champagne mixed with fresh peach juice) was invented.
On our last evening, St Mark's Square swam in mist. With snow expected, the locals were sprinkling salt in the alleys like extra helpings of Parmesan.
In the Gritti bar, we drank to our return, we hope, well before our Venice baby is 25. I added a private vote of thanks to that unknown squatting dalmatian.
TRAVEL DETAILS:
Elegant Resorts has packages at the Gritti Palace details on 01244 897777, or visit http://www.elegantresorts.co.uk
City of silks and spice
And so to Venice's wealth. And what wealth it was! Silks and spices, gold and ivory, porphyry and malachite, furs and precious stones, from Constantinople, the Black Sea, the Indies, even Cathay. (It's no coincidence that Marco Polo was a Venetian; he couldn't possibly have been anything else.)
The argosies of Venice's great merchant princes would glide gently across the lagoon and right up the Grand Canal - the predecessor of the present Rialto Bridge opening up (in the manner of Tower Bridge in London) to let the masts through - and would moor in front of their master's palace, the ground floor of which was always given over to business, in contrast to the sumptuous state rooms upstairs.
But Venice was a republic, and determined to remain one. As she grew steadily richer, she saw how, in all the great cities of the mainland, single families -the Sforza and the Visconti, the Medici and the Gonzaga, the Este and Scaligeri - were taking over governments and seizing power.
And she took endless pains to see that she would never be overtaken by a similar disaster. Any rich nobleman who seemed to be getting too big for his boots was firmly stamped on; all their excess wealth was consequently spent on the city itself.
That is why, over the entire length of the Grand Canal, virtually every building is a palace not just in name but in fact; and why not only the palaces but the churches and the scuole - those characteristically Venetian institutions that fall somewhere between guildhalls and charitable foundations - are of a sheer opulence unrivalled in any other city, in Europe or anywhere else.
The trouble was, it was all too good to last. On May 29, 1453 the Turkish army of Sultan Mehmet II captured Constantinople, and thenceforth the Turks steadily mopped up, one after another, all the Venetian trading bases in the Mediterranean; they included most of the islands in the Aegean, Euboea (Negropont), Cyprus and Crete.
The very end of the 15th century brought another disaster for the Venetians: the discovery of the Cape Route to the Indies, which meant it was no longer necessary for oriental traffic to unload in the Eastern Mediterranean and transfer its cargoes to shambling camel caravans; in future a ship could leave Bristol or Lisbon and tie up at its final destination. Gradually, the Mediterranean became a backwater.
The great seducer
It was also the street where he was born, next to a convent, and where our guide lived: Calle delle Muneghe. No plaque commemorates the spot.
But Casanova was, Maria insisted, as much seduced as seducing. This was a society of instant gratification, in which women didn't bother with underwear and nuns took rich lovers.
But what made him such an object of desire?
Maria showed us a portrait of a 'not great-looking man' - full lips, hook nose, wig. As a contemporary of Casanova's wrote: 'He would have been handsome if he were not ugly.'
If the Venetians can take or leave the great seducer, tourists are more impressionable, and our walk ended with a Casanova moment.
'Could I take you out to dinner?' the sandal-wearing academic asked our guide. 'Tomorrow night?'
There was a tiny pause. 'Why not?' said Maria.
TRAVEL DETAILS:
Casanova And The Age Of Decadence tour: twice weekly until the end of October, £12.20. Book on http://www.venicewalksandtours.com tel: 00 39 041 520 8616.
The Doge's Palace Secret Itinerary tour: daily, 10am and 11.30am, £7.60.
Rent the 'Casanova Apartment' - a love nest with canal view, five minutes from St Mark's Square. Call Stefania Trucolo (tel: 0039 041 522 6546); minimum three nights.
Magic of Italy has breaks (http://www.magictravelgroup.co.uk tel: 08700 270500). Go (http://www.go-fly.com tel: 0870 607 6543) has flights.
Winston Churchill's favourite spot
Stroll back to the Cappanone vaporetto stop, and across the water you'll see the tiny island of Lazzaretto Nuovo.
This has been a warehouse for gunpowder, a military prison, and a quarantine island during the plague but today it is the headquarters of an archaeological society. With a bit of luck they'll respond to a loud yell and row over to pick up visitors interested in a tour around their excavations.
The islands of Burano and Mazzorbo are the furthest from Venice and were the first to be settled. A larger ferry takes about an hour to cross the lagoon, where you pass the rather surreal sight of fishermen climbing out of their boats on to sand flats. They seem to walk on the water as they dig for prized clams and crabs.
The first stop, Mazzorbo, used to be heavily populated, but around the 10th Century, when it became clear that Venice would be the capital of the lagoon, most inhabitants simply dismantled their houses, transported them to Venice and rebuilt there.
This was one of Winston Churchill's favourite spots for painting, and you could well imagine him sitting out on the sunny terrace of Osteria Alla Maddalena enjoying a hearty meal of their famed 'germano reale', wild duck that hunters from the lagoon deliver straight to the kitchen.
Take the pretty walk across the long bridge to Burano to discover the most picturesque spot in the lagoon, a fishing community with a tradition of brightly painting their houses in different colours so the fishermen can spot them from the water.
There's a lacemaking tradition too, but despite the little old ladies sitting outside their cottages busily sewing away, check carefully that your souvenir is actually made on the island.
Just behind the San Martino church - a serious challenger to the leaning tower of Pisa - you will see sailors offering to ferry tourists across to the nearby island of San Francesco del Deserto for a fee - between £5 and £10 return --and its idyllic medieval monastery founded after St Francis stopped here on his way back from the Holy Land. The monks are very friendly and only ask for a small voluntary donation after a tour.
Visiting the ghetto
The second thing to be said about this kind of holiday is that organisation is the key. I had the advantage of knowing the city, so decided what they all should see, knowing they would go along with it to please me.
One piece of advice I would give to people in a small group is to fit in a proper, planned walk through Venice. Although you can wander quite happily, a structured journey through the tiny city will show you things you might otherwise miss during haphazard dotting around the 'sights'. There are lots of walks laid out in guide books, but it so happened that Mandy had photocopied one she had found in a newspaper travel page.
It took us a whole day (with time for coffee stops, a good lunch and a little shopping as well) and covered more than five miles. But the gang saw back streets, the fish market, and plenty of 'real' Venice - besides which we had a hilarious time finding and following the route and teasing each other as well.
The walk took us to a part of Venice even I hadn't visited - the ghetto. The feelings inspired by the ghetto are just as profound as those you have when contemplating Tintoretto's vast, sublime Crucifixion in the Scuola di San Rocco. It's futile to gawk at the bricks of tourist sights while refusing to acknowledge the suffering that is the mortar of history.
As a parent you can't help wanting your children to feel things as you do, and so it pleased me to see Daniel and Kitty shocked and angry to learn that the Jews were confined to this islet in the middle of the canal system in 1516, kept in by Christian guards whom they had to pay, and were forced to wear identifying badges and caps.
The Nazis were, after all, following a long tradition. Because Mandy is Jewish it had an additional significance and was one of the most moving and memorable aspects of the week.
Rich yacht owners
The Santa Cruz sleeps six to eight people and is put out to charter during the summer.
Normally, it is to be seen at San Remo or cruising the pleasure spots of the central Mediterranean. Cannes, Portofino, Positano...
Docking at Venice, as we were to discover, is much trickier. If the city welcomes rich yacht owners with open arms, it has an odd way of showing it.
We moored overnight on the Riva Schiavoni, which could hardly have been more convenient. A short after-dinner stroll and we were in St Mark's Square, knocking back a nightcap at Quadri's.
But by 6am the next day, we had been forced to surrender our berth to an obscenely large cruise ship.
It blocked out half the horizon and, before debouching 1,000-odd day-trippers on to the streets of Venice, belched plumes of black smoke over the city.
All the luxury yachts, meanwhile, were moved to the industrial backside of Venice, where we had a superb breakfast overlooking a car park.
It is only on a Friday, we were told, that cruise ships are given priority over yachts in this way; but the experience underlined just what a tough nut Venice is to crack, however much money you have.
The city has its own way of doing things, its own traditions and, for better or worse, a hearty suspicion of fat-cat foreigners. Its outward face may be aristocratic, but its soul is grubbily plebeian.
When we were fed up with looking at the car park, we cruised out into the lagoon, swam, water-skied, drank more champagne and admired the city from a distance.
But even there, our Venetian idyll was not entirely hassle-free.
A police launch roared up to remind us of local shipping regulations. From the expressions on the faces of the carabinieri, we could have been smugglers, not bona fide tourists.
Venice, in the end, had given us only half a welcome, not the red carpet treatment. But then if the city grovelled to everyone with money, would we still love it so much?
Tourist-free zone
OK, I've seen too many films but, similarly, as I wandered along the lovely Lido beach with the magnificent Grand Hotel des Bains in the background I heard Mahler's Fifth Symphony in my mind's ear and pictured Dirk Bogarde expiring in his deckchair, the hair dye trickling from beneath his straw hat.
The Lido, incidentally, is an almost tourist-free zone with charming villas and Venetian families strolling along the main boulevard.
Highlight of the trip was our Scratch Concert, open to the public and truly sensational.
Two young soloists from the UK, Morag Atchison and Victoria Simmonds who, in my view, are destined for world fame, brought tears to everyone's eyes.
A Venetian orchestra, the Accademia Vivaldiana, played Vivaldi's Four Seasons to perfection.
And it was such a privilege to sing in the very spot where Vivaldi once taught, played and revolutionised European music by putting a dance beat into sacred songs.
Concerts From Scratch organises trips, with Sir David conducting, to Vienna, Paris, Salzburg, Leipzig, and there's a cruise to the Baltic planned.
TRAVEL DETAILS:
For details of Concerts From Scratch, PO Box 1667, Frome BA11 6YE. Choice of packages from three to five days.
Take a tour or hire a villa
SPOLETO: One of my favourite Italian towns. It has just the right mix of bustle, history and hidden surprises to keep you interested for at least a couple of days. The historical highlight is the main piazza - its backdrop, the restrained stonework of the Romanesque cathedral. But the rest of the town is an enticing mix of cobbled alleys, arched passages, Roman ruins and small market squares. It's worth strolling up to the Ponte delle Torre for the views from a remarkable 14th-century bridge spanning a vertiginous gorge above the town. Spoleto is far off the tourist track, so is unusually quiet for such an attractive place.
NORCIA: In the foothills of the Umbrian mountains, Norcia doesn't have as spectacular a setting as many towns, but it is famous for truffles and St Benedict. The saint was born here and his church attracts many pilgrims, but Norcia's shops do a brisker trade in truffles.
PIANO GRANDE: No, this is not a back-to-front keyboard instrument but a great plain high in the Sibillini Mountains. It's an extraordinary place carpeted with flowers in spring, overshadowed by spectacular green peaks on all sides, and flat as a pancake. If you are touring and want to stay overnight, head for the village of Castelluccio, on one edge of the plain. It's famous for its lentils and for being one of the highest villages in Italy. But beware, it can get very chilly - I once nearly froze in my bed in June.
FINDING A VILLA Tour operators offer accommodation around Lake Trasimeno in the north, but I think this part is rather flat and dull - and quite a way from the prettiest hill towns. Consider instead the hillier areas further south and east - especially to the east of Assisi and around Orvieto. You don't have to come for a villa holiday. It's perfectly feasible to visit on a weekend break by flying into Rome, Pisa or Florence and hiring a car.
The swimming pool or Siena?
But you do get used to the life remarkably quickly and, yes, the sites can be great bases for touring the area. And Tuscany is beautiful. Leaving aside the fact that some of the world's most famous towns were within easy distance of our campsite - Florence, Siena, Pisa - the countryside alone is spectacular, with medieval towns balanced on hilltops, bustling markets and peaceful villages.
We caught the train from Figline Valdarno for the 40-minute journey into Florence, where we wandered among the streets and gazed in awe at the simply stunning number of tourists the place attracts. Undoubtedly, there are real people who live real lives in and around Florence, probably Italians - but we didn't see them. What we saw were large crowds shuffling around clutching guide books.
Clutching ours, we headed for the Ponte Vecchio and then for the Uffizi Gallery. The queue was vast. The children's faces fell. It was a straight choice: culture or campsite. The train whipped us back to Figline in no time and soon the children were submerged in the pool, which is where they had wanted to be all along.
Undaunted, the next day we drove to the medieval town of Siena (which although only about 50 miles distant is a two-vomit journey for young children, so twisting and undulating are the roads). In this part of Tuscany where the towns have names like Greve in Chianti, Strada in Chianti and Castellina in Chianti, there are no prizes for guessing the local wine. The beauty of Siena impressed the adults and left our children remarkably unmoved.
By the end of our first week I was almost sad that we would have to leave the site. We were moving on. Our second site on the Tuscan coast at Cecina was much smaller, quieter and closer to the beach. There was more privacy and more room between the mobile homes, but the children rather missed the excitement of the larger camp.
It was here that I discovered the other great delight of a campsite compared with the gîtes: if we had a problem of any kind we just asked our reps to sort it out. I didn't lift a finger. When a disturbing number of wasps started collecting above one of the windows of our mobile home, I happily sat back sipping beer while our three female reps hopped around exterminating them. (I would have helped, you understand, but they seemed to know what they were doing.) After a fortnight you can see why so many families think only of camping for their summer holidays.
But some things almost never change - you must go equipped with good humour, tolerance towards your neighbours and, above all, there's the unrelenting sunshine. So it's always going to be a challenge-
Taking solace in the scenery
By the end of the week my wife's nerves were in tatters and she insisted on moving out. I rang the locally based managing agent. Fortunately, there had been a cancellation and an apartment near Radda was vacant.
The second week was spent recovering in Casa Losi. This was a huge improvement - an historic house in a hamlet on a metalled road overlooking, but not overwhelmed by, Tuscan nature red in tooth and claw. We took refuge from the heat either in the partly subterranean apartment or under canopies and trees in the garden.
We had already paid £560 rent for the first week and £510 for the second in the Borgo Navico apartment. We then paid £350 towards the cost of renting the apartment in Casa Losi. But the holiday was not an entire write off. The food was wonderful, the ice cream incomparable and the scenery breathtaking.
Could the first hellish week have been avoided? I had found the property through a small ad and the faxed particulars of the Navico apartment described 'that road' as being unsuitable for low vehicles. I had asked the agent what this meant. He said it was unsuitable for sports cars. Would a Fiat Punto be suitable? I asked. Yes, he said. The next time I book a holiday, alarm bells will ring at any sight of the weasly words 'not suitable for low vehicles'.
You cannot, however, protect yourself from all eventualities. We booked our flights over the phone with Ryanair. Unfortunately, the company's computers went down and, instead of debiting our bank account by £1,081.20, the company took two additional payments of £1,117.20. Several faxes, phone calls and six days later £2,234.40 was returned to our account. Ryanair also gave us a £249 refund.
Ah well, on the return flight the co-pilot invited me into the cockpit and the cabin crew were charming. We were also several hundred miles away from the dreaded unmade track. Lyme Regis, I think, next year.
Navigating the Mediterranean
So that was it, after all the evenings learning nautical terms in both English and Italian, watching Scianti coiling the ropes and putting out the fenders - and sometimes helping him - we were en route with no mechanical help, navigating the beautiful Mediterranean as others have done for thousands of years.
We sailed until the waning light turned into a spectacular pink sunset reflected on the waves, and then moored in the huge natural bay of Il Fornaio. It was by a nature reserve on the mainland, about 40 miles from our destination.
On our final day we spotted fashion designer Valentino sunbathing on his huge streamlined air-conditioned yacht, TM Blue. He keeps it in a local harbour with a crew of 25 sailors, who, rumour has it, are required to change uniform five times a day.
Compared to the Blue Stream it was like the QEII. We vowed to be back - guess which boat we're saving for.
Travel facts: Blue Stream can be rented from Sail-Italy, phone number 01223 700801, or at website http://www.sail-italy.com.
Craving for late-night shopping
On to La Capannina, a Eurochic beach bar where the Negroni cocktail was invented. There are plenty of Italian footballers but no fashionistas; perhaps I'll have more luck at Twiga, one of the few new bars.
Decorated like an Arabian fantasy and signposted (for some reason) by a giraffe's head, it was masterminded by Naomi Campbell's playboy ex, Flavio Briatore - word is he's planning to open a hip, Ian Schrager-style hotel at the town's northern end.
In the end, though, having decided that Armani was more likely to hang out somewhere classic and understated, I spend the evening at Bar Principe in the centre of town.
Of course, it looks exactly the same as it did when I was a child, down to the elegantly tattered chairs and starched tablecloths.
Sipping a black coffee, I settle back to watch the evening passeggiata, a ritual stroll every Italian enjoys after a day at the beach.
But after several hours' fruitless sipping, I succumb to my craving for late-night shopping at the boutiques close by.
The number of designer outlets here has mushroomed: Gucci opened a gleaming megastore recently, and a few streets away you'll find Versace, Boss and Prada among others.
Locals grumble that the en masse arrival of such names is pushing out artisans who once produced shoes and bags by hand, although you can still find a few streetside cobblers.
I settle for the next best thing to a sighting of Miuccia Prada - a pair of shoes she designed (despite a twinge of conscience about local artisans).
I wear them on my last morning's final attempt to spot the famous: lunch at the Bambaissa Beach Club.
There's a decadent buffet spread out in the sun that you can enjoy before ambling back to your umbrella for a snooze in the shade.
Unfortunately, the sun's as elusive as the stars so I take a walk along the front and down the slender pier.
Looking back at the town, with its manicured beach huts, rows of expensive cars and elegant locals, I relax: even if I didn't see Prada, Paul Smith or Armani, it's clearly fabulous at Forte again.
TRAVEL DETAILS:
Citalia (http://www.citalia.com tel: 020 8686 5533) features holidays to the Hotel Augustus in Forte dei Marmi. There are cheaper packages to other hotels in the area.
Ryanair (http://www.ryanair.com) flies to Pisa from Stansted.
Colourful ice-creams
However, by Day Three, Joe had had enough of picturesque towns. ('That's all there is to do round here,' he moaned.) So we resorted to an unsubtle form of bribery: 'In San Gimignano you can buy the best ice cream in Italy - shall we go?'
San Gimignano is known as 'the Manhattan of Italy' on account of its 14 high-rise towers (medieval, of course.)
However, Joe was not there for the architecture. He fairly skipped through those cobbled streets, speeding past ancient churches and pretty courtyards on his way to the promised freezer cabinet.
It was market day in 'San Gim' (reputedly the most visited village in Tuscany), and crowds swarmed like fat flies around the main squares. Old men sat in the shade on plastic chairs, watching the world go by.
Outside the Gelateria di Piazza, we lingered at a selection of ice creams as colourful as an artist's palette. Should we have dark or milk chocolate, champagne-and-grapefruit or panna cotta?
A queue started to form in our wake. We could see why this tiny shop had garnered five 'Best Ice Cream In Italy' awards.
Pam Massey, the Tuscan-based Crystal agent, had warned me that the Italians weren't very 'set up' for children as regards playgrounds, changing facilities or theme parks.
She pointed me to a distant water park and the inevitable Pinocchio Park at Collodi, but, in the event, we did not need these distractions.
As she said: 'The thing Italians are very good at is welcoming children into their restaurants - children stay up late at night here. And they do love children in Tuscany.'
Strangely enough, I think the children loved Tuscany right back.
TRAVEL DETAILS:
Crystal Italy. Tel 0870 888 0233 or http://www.crystalitaly.co.uk
Supermarket saviour
And so the week went on, fortified - it must be said - by sumptuous restaurant meals on our lunchtime visits to towns, and cleansed by repeated dips in our splendid hilltop swimming pool.
We headed east into the wooded slopes of Umbria, to elegant Spoleto with its remarkable old viaduct, to vertiginous Cortona and to Assisi, with its fountains and the spellbinding frescoed vault which contains the bones of St Francis.
A thunderstorm chased us west to the Monastery of Monte Oliveto Maggiore, where the monks make their own honey, grappa and herbal remedies for every ailment under the sun (sadly, they don't do their own sausages, too).
And then, travelling along a B-road, we saw our Holy Grail. At first just a glimpse of stained concrete then, around the corner, there it was, in its full box-shaped majesty: strip lighting, aluminium window frames, asphalt car park and cheap plastic sign. A super-market. We rushed in and piled the trolley high, Persil, Andrex, Lux, Aquafresh, Domestos.
There were vegetables: potatoes, tomatoes, onions, aubergines. And best of all, meat -chicken, beef, lamb, veal, bacon, sausages, hamburgers. Our eyes swam with visions of barbecues, pot roasts, grills and fry-ups. No more polenta with pickled garlic and preserved artichokes! We filled our car boot, rushed home and stuffed our fridge.
It must have been about midnight that the lights went out. The electricity supply in rural Italy is erratic at the best of times. Having bought a few polenta-flavoured candles, we managed to find our way to bed. But next day, as the temperature again climbed into the 80s, the depths of our dilemma struck us.
No electricity plus a fridge full of food plus extreme heat equals disaster. We had lost the lot. I'm sure life isn't as complicated in rural Bolivia, or in the remote vastness of Easter Island.
Still, having said that, I'd definitely go to Tuscany again, to such a lovely house, in such a gorgeous landscape. Only next time, there'll be a detour to Tesco on the way out to Heathrow.
Travel facts: Vacanze in Italia has a range of self-catering properties in Tuscany and Umbria. Tel. 08700 772772
London by plane
London by plane: I stayed in the centre of Turin so it took just over 15 minutes to get to the airport by taxi.
Ryanair is now the only non-charter airline with direct flights between London and Turin and seats are not assigned, so I sat down close to the gate in order to make a run for the exit row seats with added legroom.
Instead of the plane taking off as scheduled, I had to wait an extra hour and a half. I don't recollect what the reason for the delay was, or if indeed we were even told.
After finally boarding and settling into my exit row seat, I sat back and read. There was no meal or complimentary drink, but nevertheless time certainly did seem to fly.
Around two hours later, I landed at Stansted and played the waiting game for my luggage, which tumbled on to the conveyor belt 20 minutes after I got there.
I then caught the Stansted Express into Liverpool Street, and from there transferred onto the Underground.
What it cost: Taxi to and from the airport in Turin: about £30. Flight: from about £35 - but can be more like £300 return. Stansted Express: £23.
Total cost: £88-£353. Total time from hotel to home: approx 8 hours.
The verdict:
If you are planning to go any further than northern France or Belgium simply for a long weekend, do jump on a low-cost flight - it may not sound as adventurous as taking the train but it will give you a bit more time in your destination.
However, if you are taking a longer break, consider the train. In terms of price, if you book at least 14 days in advance and don't mind travelling standard class, the European rail network can offer some competitive fares.
TRAVEL DETAILS:
Rail Europe: http://www.raileurope.com tel: 0870 584 8848. Ryanair: http://www.ryanair.com tel: 0871 246 0000.
Indefinable X-factor
When I ask Ettore, the barman at Baratti e Milano, to explain the secret behind the excellence of an Italian cappuccino, he replies with the disarming frankness of a master craftsman that there is no secret.
And, certainly, the coffee used in all the bars is conventional (Lavazza, Illy or one of the other large brands) and so is the milk - though it must be full-cream and pasteurised.
A fellow customer at the bar, however, says he is being too modest.
And Ettore admits that the milk has to be frothed in the correct way, so that it becomes 'cremoso' - like cream.
To achieve this, he explains, not too much milk should be put into the jug prior to infusing it with steam. Also, the frothed-up milk must be poured smoothly and quickly over the coffee. The cup, he confirms, should certainly be porcelain, and must not be too large.
Nevertheless, this list of minor technical points seems wholly insufficient to explain the gulf in quality between an Italian cappuccino and the export version.
There is clearly an indefinable X-factor.
Perhaps it is just that, for the Italians, the cappuccino has not become a symbol. It is still a drink.
TRAVEL DETAILS:
Crystal Cities (tel: 0870 160 9030)
A dish of wild boar
The gardens of the castle should have been full of cicadas, the pine trees exuding their scent and their boughs should have filtered out the worst heat of the midday sun.
We froze in the eerie silence, but for my father it must have been a wonderful convalescence after the deprivations of the war and the sense of humour of his German captors, who once pretended to have him executed.
My serendipitous meal that night was wild boar - I was determined to have a 'happy and unexpected' culinary discovery and, since the other choices were 'young horse, rabbit, pigeon, hare, Argentine beef and thrush', I was unlikely to be disappointed.
Judy sensibly had the pork, which was delicious, as indeed was the wild boar.
I felt like Obelix as I tucked in but I'm not sure if boar is meant to be high and served rare, and my tummy felt like a cement mixer the following day.
Our Croatian adventure was a tour of the Istrian peninsular.
The whole area has changed hands many times over the years, Celts, Romans, Huns, Goths, Slavs, Avars, Lombards, Venetians, Romanians, Magyars, Austrians, Italians, Yugoslavs and even Napoleon's army have variously occupied it.
Many Istrians' first language is Italian. Young Croatians now learn English at school, while their parents' first foreign language is often German - presumably because of their historical affinity with the Wehrmacht.
Architecturally it's a strange mixture. The medieval and Renaissance beauty of seaside towns like Rovinj (Rovigno) and Pula (Pola) is stunning, while the surrounding areas suffer from the grey concrete utilitarianism common to so many old Communist countries.
Our hired car had no radio, which - after initial feelings of cold turkey - turned out to be a wonderful stimulus for relaxed conversation.
Land of the lakes
Clearly, to work off the calories here, you have to do more than just look at the territory. While winter offers skiing, summer provides rocks to climb, mountain bikes to hire, white water to raft and blue water to windsurf.
There are hundreds of lakes. Some are merely small tarns in high, wild places. Some are secret sanctuaries for bird life and flora, like little Cei which is covered in water lilies. Others, like Toblino, are wide and glassy, mirroring the rugged and the smooth.
Over five days, I saw them in sun and in shadow and in any light they were good enough to paint. Indeed, it was at Lago Santo di Cembra that Durer stopped to knock out a few water-colours on his first trip to Italy in 1494. There are also the ubiquitous Hotels du Lac, as at Lago di Lavarone, where the likes of Sigmund Freud and the Hapsburgs came for mudpacks and other spa treats. Thermal hotels are still a lure.
Once ruled by Prince Bishops, Trentino was part of the Austro-Hungarian empire for more than a century - the Italians got it back in 1918. The architecture, both urban and rustic, is the giveaway: onion-domed churches, chalet-shaped village houses with geranium filled balconies, frescoed facades on the civic splendours of Trento, the provincial capital, where I stayed.
Trento is charming, with a crumbly-walled medieval centre full of beautiful patrician houses, uncrowded piazzas, stylish shops and cafes. On my fourth day, I wandered in to explore it as the last wash of sunlight warmed the rooftops and the passeggiata was beginning in the enchanting Piazza Duomo. I just sat there at my cafe table, listening to the spatter of fountains and the chatter of animated young Italians until the mellow stonework of the lovely Romanesque cathedral and the frescoes on the Cazuffi houses began to glow in soft floodlight.
It was time to dine again. But I simply couldn't. Instead, I ordered a glass of delicious white Nosiola wine, and determined to return to Trentino some October when the grape harvest is in full swing - and give in to gastronomy without guilt.
The forge of the eternals
Our ragged, unfit, middle-aged, jumble-sale-dressed troop heaved up and stomped off up the main track, following our guide up the ben and into the spreading gloom. This was it. The path gave out at 1,300ft. So did the Murray Mints. So did the jokes about lunch packs, the Joe Simpson recollections of dead sherpas and litter on Everest, and the goat-like jumping. They gave way to a regular panting, groaning rattle.
On Stromboli there are no fears of paths being worn away Peak District-style by tourists. The mountain has a self-renewing audit. It is always spewing up a bit more shale, but the tracks are crumbly, nonetheless. At the next stop we switched on our torches and cursed our plastic hats.
'Ooooh, ahhhh,' went everybody suddenly. I turned. Had our guide taken off his parka? But they were looking up. The cloud that hung around the peak was closer now and was clearly a billow of smoky fumes. It was suddenly illuminated from within, as if by a subterranean special effects unit.
'No wonder the ancients thought these places were the forges of the eternal gods,' I mused inwardly. Outwardly I said 'ahhh', chiming in with the rest, a bonfire night crowd on Highgate Hill. With some justification. A spectacular display had just erupted, shooting a flurry of sparks into the air.
'Those must be the bombs, then,' Bob chipped in out of the darkness. 'It says in the guide book that they weigh tens of kilos and have a temperature of thousands of degrees.' I pondered this. 'These hats can't be much use.'
'No, it says that. "No amount of protective clothing will save the human body.' But we went on, clambering across little chasms of red rock. The temperature began to fall, the sweat congealed and at the next stop we needed to fuss about in our packs for wind-proof polypropylene heavy-weather gear, or the old T-shirt that we had actually brought.
The dark and the wind, the black ash at our feet and the little cairns of stones made us feel we were approaching a truly primal place - and without the proper boots.
'Er, we will stop here for half an hour,' said the interpreter. 'The volcano is doing, er, strange things and there are too many people ahead.' There were chains of torches dancing above us in the darkness. 'It's like the witches in an experimental production of Macbeth,' observed Matthew, another of our party. The weak artificial bulbs contrasted oddly with the huge, illuminated spume of smoke.
I became aware that there were parties all over the mountain. Far below another necklace of lights was threading back home. We watched it jog down. We were beginning to think we sort of wanted to follow. The sweat had got cold. The chatter had died away. It was dark and we wanted something to happen. So we had our picnic.
Sense of speed and danger
In the crowd there was most frantic gesticulating and shouting. There were false starts and nearly-starts and the excitement reached fever pitch until, at last, all the horses are lined up ready for the off.
And they went like the wind, three laps of the Campo bareback at breakneck speed. It was an astonishing spectacle.
The sense of speed and danger and the sheer glamour of it all shivered through the crowd. I got the briefest inkling of what all this glorious craziness was about - and then it was all over.
Marina was sure she'd seen Civetta first past the post - but then we ran into Doug who was rather overcome and still rooted to the spot he'd guarded so jealously for the past 15 hours.
History had been made, he said, babbling with excitement, because Leocorno's horse, the one which had parted from his jockey on the first bend, had actually pipped Civetta to the post and in the anomalous Palio it's the horse that wins, not the jockey.
Forty thousand people left the Campo in eery silence; no pushing or jostling, just the odd bit of noiseless weeping.
Reluctant to bump into a lachrymose Stefano, Marina and I headed off for a pizza and home.
Unless you're lucky enough to have hitched your colours to the winning contrade's mast, Siena's a pretty strange place to be on Palio night.
TRAVEL DETAILS:
The Palio will be run on July 2 and August 16 in 2002. Italian Journeys can arrange packages to Siena to see it. Call 020 7370 6002.
Rolling back the years
In the morning, like most travellers who have come to this sleepy place in the past 2,000 years, I move on. The next train is a regionale - the slowest of the slow, with grimy plastic seats and black-and-white photographs of the Italian riviera on the walls. The ticket collector studies my ticket as if it is written in code.
Now we are moving through the green heart of Sicily, with fields of corn rippling in the breeze, and peasants raising their hands in greeting as the train passes.
At Modica there is time for a stupendous lunch of baked aubergines, pasta, and ham and cheese wrapped in breaded veal. Strong local wine is served by the carafe, and the formidable lady owner refuses to take no for an answer when it comes to seconds. 'Manga! Eat!' she barks, dumping yet another helping on my plate.
I toil up the hill to the station feeling like a wine cask on legs, catch the next passing diretto, and promptly fall asleep. There are times in Sicily when you feel as if you've slipped back hundreds of years. This is one of them.
When I awake, the train is running through a valley below the town of Ragusa. The medieval quarter, hewn out of rock and clinging to the sides of a ravine, rises up in a jumble of pale stone houses, mysterious winding streets and Gothic churches.
Best of all are the public gardens, cool and shady with breathtaking views. On a bench someone has contributed some lyrical graffiti: 'In questo giardino pieno di misteri, sono morto e rinato' - 'In this garden full of mystery, I am dead and reborn.' My feelings exactly.
From Ragusa the train drops down to the coast, rattling across tiny level crossings, on towards Agrigento. Here are three magnificent Doric temples on a bluff overlooking the sea. Unfenced and devoid of tourists, they stand noble, dramatic and serene, the finest ruins of their kind outside Greece.
Sumptuous and elegant
It was with some relief that we reached our hotel, the Grand Hotel et Des Palmes in Via Roma.
Sumptuous and elegant, the Grand turned out to be a haven of peace.
Despite the traffic, I found Palermo a fabulous city, full of energy, imposing architecture and palm tree-lined avenues, of theatrical brightness and shadows, of fountains and squares.
The highlight was a visit to the Teatro Massimo opera house, which was the setting for the penultimate scene in the Godfather trilogy.
We were lucky to have seats in the box where Michael Corleone and his family sat.
The Teatro must be one of the most magnificent arenas in Italy, with its marble-floored corridors and gilded auditorium. It is worth a visit even without watching a show.
Afterwards, we walked, as the Corleone family had done, down the grand stairway outside, stopping at the very spot where, at the end of the third movie, Michael fell as an assassin's bullet hit him and killed his beloved daughter, Mary.
In the Godfather scenes in the Teatro Massimo, one character choked on a poisoned connoli (an Italian pastry).
Our experience of Sicilian food, however, was nothing like as negative. Whether in little trattoria or more expensive restaurants, we enjoyed superb meals.
I have never tasted better squid or clams. The drink was almost as good, and I adored the Sicilian lemon liqueur, limoncello.
Ideal for people-watching
Our most memorable meal was in San Vito lo Capo, as guests of our villa's owner (they also owned a fabulous beach resort hotel and restaurant).
We dined on the sand overlooking the gorgeous cape, said to be one of the most exquisite vistas on the island, and each course was more sumptuous than the last.
Castelvetrano was peaceful and idyllic, but I began to crave some nightlife. So I convinced Timothy we should spend our last night in Palermo, Sicily's capital.
There we dined alfresco in a courtyard off the main square. Not only was the food divine, but it was ideal for people-watching.
The 'passeggiata' had begun and up and down the square strolled starry-eyed couples, families - from grandparents to young children - and groups of friends.
People shared food, drink and lively conversation under the stars.
There is something wonderful about a culture that still takes the time to enjoy life's simple pleasures. Back in London, in February, I will do my best to recall this moment.
TRAVEL DETAILS:
Torre Castelvetrano is available year round and sleeps up to 14. Contact Tuscany Now on: http://www.tuscanynow.com tel: 020 7684 8884.
A precarious cable-car
It's entirely surrounded by Italy, yet has its own foreign policy. And it has two joint heads of state - called Captains Regent - who spend quite a lot of their time dressing up in fancy clothes.
Imagine two Queen Elizabeth IIs, both decked in feathers and florals, and you'll get the general picture.
San Marino's eastern border with Italy is marked by a river. Well, more of a ditch, really. It's about two feet wide and only slightly deeper.
I'd hoped for some frontier formalities or, at the very least, a ceremonial salute. I was disappointed.
No entry requirements and no stamp in the passport. Just a small concrete bridge to mark the international border that separates Italy and the Most Serene Republic of San Marino.
There are two ways to the summit of Mount Titano. Either you place your life in the hands of a local taxi driver and prepare for 10 minutes of high anxiety as you're flung around the tortuous bends of San Marino's only dual carriageway.
Or, you put your trust in Italian engineering and allow a precarious cable-car to glide you gracefully up a terrifying rock-face. I chose the taxi and clung on for dear life as a dizzying patchwork of fields and vines spun around before my eyes.
I was met at the top by the impeccably dressed Mauro Maiani, adviser to the Minister of Tourism.
Mauro was hoping to persuade me that tourists should come here for slightly longer than the customary day trip, arguing that his (tax-free) country makes the perfect base for exploring central Italy.
He told me, with considerable pride, of his hopes that the country's new bingo hall will prove a real draw. Bingo? 'Yes, yes,' he said with enthusiasm.
'Bingo is very popular and up-market in San Marino. Not at all like in England.'
Walking down the paths of youth
Mostly, we enjoyed the spectacle of Rome going about its business. We woke each morning to the sounds of shutters banging open, of church bells, wedding klaxons and archaic plumbing. We sat in the Piazza Navona, watching the world go by: school trippers, jugglers and Rasta footballers, trendy lay sisters in mini-habits and black leather jackets.
We climbed the Spanish Steps and looked down on a skyline alternating splendid domes with tiny rooftop gardens, where families lunched among potted lemon trees in a crazy forest of television aerials.
In the Campo de' Fiori, housewives pinched the breasts of plump chickens, stocking up on aubergines, rocket and the fat brown porcini mushrooms that perfume October pasta. Old men in black gossiped on the steps of the Portico d'Ottavia synagogue, by a church tucked into the remains of a Roman gateway. At Trattoria da Giggetto next door, we ate the specialities of the ghetto: flattened artichokes fried in batter, aubergine flowers stuffed with mozzarella and anchovies.
Crossing the last remaining Roman bridge over the Tiber, we found ourselves in Trastevere. Rome's hip and happening quarter buzzed with music, crowded restaurants and, on this Sunday morning, a lively flea market. We dipped into Santa Maria in Trastevere for a final fix of mosaics and found it, like other churches there, much more packed with Romans burning candles and banging chairs about than with rubbernecking tourists such as ourselves.
Much too soon, time ran out. Our younger selves had got it entirely right. Rome has always been it.
La Dolce Vita has soured
Even my modern, ironic eye enjoyed the wonderful 13th century mosaics on the facade of Santa Maria in Trastevere, one of the oldest churches in the city.
We ended up on the food market at the Piazza di San Cosimato and unwisely chose at random a roadside tavola, where we had one of the most inedible meals I have ever attempted. The kitchens of the slums could do better.
My pasta came steaming in its microwavable container with the Cellophane still on.
I doubted that Madonna ever queued at this joint.
We pressed on, undernourished and faintly nauseous, across the river to Trastevere's rival for the title of 'real Rome', Testaccio.
Peaceful is one thing, but this place is post mortem.
We found only one joint open around the Piazza Santa Maria Liberatrice: Il Pizzetiere. Fortunately, it served up one of the best pizza al zucchine I'd ever tasted.
Before heading back to the airport, I took a stroll up the Via Veneto, where much of La Dolce Vita was shot.
Now tourists sat in goldfish-bowl-style gazebos being serenaded by crouching balladeers, and the Cafe de Paris, once heart of the 'scene', is now a bog-standard caff.
La Dolce Vita has soured - but its spirit still survives - at night, in high places, in back alleys, in hidden restaurants, in charming backwaters.
For all its distractions, Rome is still the perfect place for a quick getaway.
If only so many people didn't know it.
Stand in awe
On the Clivus Scauri, a road near the Colosseum, is the church of John and Paul. The two soldier martyrs-were supposedly beheaded with a friend in their house over which the early church was built.
For centuries this seemed as hazy a tale as most of those surrounding the martyrs. Then in the 19th Century the foundations were excavated, and in the lower levels - open with permission today - was found a dwelling that had once been a place of Christian worship.
There were three graves that had been the subject of some reverence. John and Paul, it seems, were no mere myths. Some historians, however, argue that there is no hard evidence to suggest that St Peter - whose prison 'chains' can be seen in the church of San Pietro in Vincoli - was crucified in Rome or was the first Pope. Even ardent Christians would find it hard to understand why anyone would engineer their own excruciating end.
Look at the walls of Rome for an answer. Try the church of Santa Maria del Popolo, in the piazza of the same name which lies at the head of the Via Corso and houses one of the finest Caravaggios.
In this depiction of Peter's martyrdom, as he watches his executioners struggle to erect the cross on which he will die, he shows no fear - he knows that the raising of the cross is the raising of the foundations of Christianity. As theologian Tertullian put it a century later, 'the blood of the martyrs is the seed of the Church'.
It was a prophetic message. A century after he died Constantine set the seal on Christianity as the official Roman religion, and that of the Western world to come.
Whatever your religious persuasions, it is hard not to stand in awe at the mark these sacrifices make almost two millennia after they were made.
TRAVEL FACTS:
Italiatour (01883 621900) offers short breaks to Rome.
David Hewson's new novel, Lucifer's Shadow, is published by Harper Collins, price £9.99.
A jewellery box of surprises
But Rachel is finding all this - and the heat and the high culture quotient - hard work. And children have a way of making what's hard work for them even harder work for you. Which is how I come to be lying on the floor in the Villa Borghese, doubled-up behind a marble plinth, surrounded by colossal heads of Roman emperors, playing at sweet shops. It's the only way my wife can get the chance to look at the place.
The villa is like a great jewel box: every ceiling a tumbling riot of nymphs and angels, the walls lined in multicoloured marble, everything opulently gilded and the whole place packed with priceless works of art.
It was built by Cardinal Scipione Borghese, son of one of the great families who fought over the Papacy in the 16th and 17th Centuries. The Borghese, the Barberini, the Farnese and the Pamphili - these are the people who created the Rome we come to see today, who built the churches and palaces and amassed the great art collections that still fill them. They were rich beyond belief and they were utterly ruthless.
To catch the atmosphere of that strange world, you should go to the Palazzo Doria Pamphili, a huge, pollution-blackened building on Via del Corso, Rome's main shopping street. Entering through an anonymous side door, you step from noise and grime into a world of hushed, deep-velvet magnificence that positively vibrates with a sense of the dodgy dealings of the past.
On the audio commentary, the present prince describes how his ancestor, Pope Innocent X, was propelled to power by his sister-in-law and mistress, who raised a fortune running protection rackets on the city's brothels.
Yet these people were amazingly cultured - fully conversant with theology, literature and philosophy. Composers such as Handel and Scarlatti lived and worked in this house. The Spanish painter Velasquez immortalised Innocent's imperious sneer in the magnificent portrait that still hangs here.
The promise of lost grandeur
In Positano there is a tiny track down through the holiday villas that have engulfed the ancient village and encrusted the cliffside. In a panic of trepidation at being sucked in and spat out the other end, I turned into what was almost the first available temporary parking lot and went the next half a mile by stone stair, to discover what?
What is the experience that these crowds, even this early in the year, seek so avidly? The tiny beach? The endless shops, where, so my guide book informed me, the cognoscenti of Rome come for the latest fashions before they hit Rome? If Rome this year is wearing international seaside tourist tat, I'll eat my wispy straw hat.
Is it the church, marooned in the throng of vacantly gawping coach parties? Or what appeared to be the world's oldest multi-storey car park cunningly inserted into a cleft in the rock? (Damn! And I'm parked halfway up the cliff.)
What is the joy of proximity to your fellow tourist? Is there some special day or season (we were there early enough in the year) when Claustrophobia sulla Mare suddenly returns to its lowly origin? When a local child bounces a ball down its flights of steps and old fishermen put aside their parking duties to crochet net shawls and mend linen hot pants?
So back to the bliss, bliss and treble bliss of the hotel. Let me tell you about our supper. A slice of carpaccio and a smattering of salad, puck-sized pizza, a single herby gnoccho and a mollet egg with ham (as amuse-gueule) each. This was followed by a bowl of fish soup, which was extra to the menu as well. Then the meal started.
Cosseted, we drew Ravello close around ourselves to protect us from the pirates on the shore below, much like the original medieval settlers before us must have done.
Ravello is a town of steps. Take the flights, walk the walks. If, at first, the place seems small, huddled up around its central square, where the dogs lounge hopefully outside the butchers and the locals gather in the early evening - like an Escher puzzle, it gets bigger as you dive down staircases, between high walls and peer through gaps in faded doors at half-glimpsed secret gardens and faded palaces. Or suddenly spot, way below, a cat creeping across a rickety pergola hung with weeds.
It manages, against the odds, to preserve its promise of lost grandeur, as if it once was richer and more fashionable than now. The modern tourists must be as anti-mountain climbing as the pirates, but so much the better for us.
There are two famous gardens to visit. 'I have found the magic garden of Klingor,' announced Richard Wagner. He must have had the same trouble as the rest of us.
Octopus and squid
He's at the door when we come in but seconds later he's also downstairs behind the mirror-glinty bar. How? Secret hidden passages in the palazzo walls, guesses Jake.
He serves our dinner in the vast, cool dining room with its views of moonlit sea and beguiles us with his way of arriving a touch too late with everything we might need.
But it seems to be a problem for poor, attentive Lurk that we don't want to eat every single meal at the hotel - 'We have eggs!' he mutters - but we need to get out and explore the Campania region.
One of our most memorable meals is at Il Cantuccio in the piazza, where the friendly owner produces dish after dish of octopus and squid, plus grilled porcini mushrooms, topped off with Sambuca on the house.
When Raph asks for lemon soda, he sends someone off to the shop to get it immediately.
Back in Ravello, we make excursions to Amalfi (proper town, good shopping) and Positano (superchic, expensive shopping) because we feel we should.
But we agree that Ravello itself, with its slow pace and slightly sedate feel, is more our sort of place.
And if you really long for something a touch more cosmopolitan, you can scoot quickly along the coast to Cetara which has a couple of swish restaurants nestled in a perfect sloping piazza of olive trees and mongrel dogs.
As you drive there, you will pass no end of shops selling ceramic ware - you can pick up some wonderful, almost naive, rustic pottery (pink, orange and lilac bunnies, birds, pigs and ducks) which you'll pay three times more for in a chic little shop in the UK.
But the best trip of all is a mere few hundred metres up from our hotel - to the even higher up Villa Cimbrone, where Greta Garbo hid herself away and where, to Raph's delight, lizards now scatter themselves equally reclusively under every stone.
On our last day we decide to go back down to Atrani. The children are desperate to know if their dam is still there. It is - the water's still having to divert itself around the boulders. 'We did it!' shouts Raph, punching the air. 'We had an effect on the Italian coastline!'
As for Jonathan and I, after a litre of Vina di Casa, we're feeling so relaxed that we don't really mind if we never have an effect on anything ever again.
There's just the sticky question of that walk back up the hill. 'There's a bus,' growls Chloe.
But the promise of a mozzarella-flavoured ice- cream soon shuts her up.
TRAVEL DETAILS: Long Travel, tel: 01694 722367 or 722193, www.longtravel.co.uk offers a range of holidays in southern Italy.
Terraces to the sea
As The Miramar became one of the most popular hotels in Positano, Carlo, or Zio Carlino (Uncle Carlo) as he was known, took to rowing his small fishing boat in the late afternoon to a headland just a mile from the port that everybody knew as La Punta (The Point), where he dropped his lobster pots. It had a little beach, lush vegetation and the cliff here seemed to fall vertically from sky to sea. At the top was a small, white walled fisherman's chapel called San Pietro, with icons that gazed out over the infinity of the ocean. It was not just beautiful here, not just peaceful, but religious, and Zio Carlino fell in love with it. He would come every day, until he resolved to buy the land and build a new hotel here.
First he cleared rocks and bushes for a terrace and built a small shaky house to live in. Eventually, after several years, there were 30 rooms and Zio Carlino was ready to open the San Pietro.
Now it has more than 60, all with their own sea view terrace and individual design, richly furnished with elegant marble-topped commodes, gilt mirrors and oriental rugs. Ours had a Georgian green door with the most delicate 18th Century-style painting on its panelling of a court lady in red damask gown being carried by her bewigged servants in a sedan chair. The private balcony was a crow's-nest, nearer to the sky than the sea, where I sipped chilled presecco at dusk and watched the fishermen collecting their octopus catch from wicker cages.
Fittingly, today, there are handsome black and white photographs in silver frames of a beaming Zio Carlino that take pride of place in the richly-furnished, antique-filled lounge of the San Pietro. He wears a big straw hat and is smiling hugely. He could have doubled for Vittorio De Sica in one of those naturalistic Fifties Italian movies that used to play in all the art houses.
The photographs introduce a charming sense of family to the San Pietro, an element of intimacy, so rare in most hotels which increasingly all look as if they have been designed by the same anonymous corporate hand.
Uncle Carlo deserves his posthumous celebrity. When he told his family that he planned to build a hotel here they said he was mad. When he told them he was going to dynamite the rock all the way down from the cliff head to the soft grey beach below to put in a lift, and that he and his two workmen would fashion a tunnel out of the rock and would themselves hang from small baskets in the half-light while they hammered and chiselled away, they begged him not to go ahead.
It was too dangerous. But he did, and today it takes just 40 seconds from top to bottom and saves a leg-sapping 400-step hike. There is a lawn at the sea's edge that would grace Wimbledon, a tennis court, and a sun deck beside which a 30ft gleaming chrome, teak and midnight blue monster of a motor launch bobs and gurgles at bay waiting to take the hotel's guests across the white-capped waves to Capri.
Wild, natural landscapes
It is difficult to imagine a more idyllic spot on the whole of the island.
The one big surprise is that there are no beaches here - the wild, natural landscapes are dominated by sheer cliffs dropping straight into the sea.
But don't be put off. Just walk down to where all the fishing smacks are moored in the port and you'll have a dozen sea captains offering to take you off in their boat.
The perfect introduction is to take a day trip round the island.
You'll have enough time to stock up at a nearby delicatessen for a picnic - comprising the most wonderful locally produced mozzarella, ripe tomatoes and thinly sliced Parma ham - and then be off in a traditional flat-bottomed boat with a dozen other tourists, who will probably be Italians, already stripped off to micro-bikinis, working on their tans.
You'll soon discover that what Ponza lacks in beaches it makes up for with hundreds of peaceful creeks where the boat drops anchor and everyone dives off to swim, undisturbed by a soul - unless you count the shoals of multi-coloured fish that swarm round when anyone drops a few crumbs of bread into the water.
This trip will give you a proper feel for the geography of the island and from then on most people hire a boat for themselves for the fun of exploring without a guide and making their own discoveries.
There is another organised tour worth doing, over to the nearby uninhabited island of Palmarola, which is even more spectacular than Ponza.
But you have to go in a group as the boat owners don't let tourists sail that far on their own.
It is easy just to want to spend all your visit on the water, but reserve at least a day to drive around the island, too.
There's not much traffic apart from the local bus. Every so often park the car where you see a sign for one of the footpaths that weave their way right down to the water's edge, where you can swim from a narrow strip of sand or in a 'piscina naturale', a deep, hollowed-out rock pool.
Sun, scenery, shopping
We based ourselves in Vicenza for five days. Inigo spent several weeks there, and as long again in Padua and Venice, before heading south through Mantua, with its two superb palaces, to Parma, famous for its ham and Parmesan cheese.
Down the coast at the old port of Livorno (Leghorn), the arcades of the main square provided Inigo with the inspiration for London's Covent Garden, which he laid out in 1639.
And he would certainly have called in at Pisa, to see not just the Leaning Tower but the magnificent medieval baptistry and cathedral.
From there, he went further south to Rome and Naples. I did not have time for that, so I picked up his return route along the coast to Genoa.
He returned home via Turin. Known today chiefly as the headquarters of Fiat cars, the city centre is a combination of the old and the new, with an extravagant royal palace and an art gallery packed with Renaissance treasures.
You can buy wine and leather goods - exceptional value here - in some of the world's oldest shopping arcades, and afterwards catch your breath with an aperitif outside an historic Art Nouveau cafe.
Preparing to leave, Inigo Jones would have been excited by the wonders he had seen and the architectural books he bought - his enthusiasm tempered only by the prospect of another stiff climb across the Alps.
Today's visitor is more fortunate. Sated by sun, scenery, shopping and romantic vistas, all you have to worry about, as you sip your last Campari at a pavement table, is getting to the airport on time.
*Michael Leapman is currently writing a biography of Inigo Jones for Headline Books.
Falling for Ravello
We had absolutely no intention of falling for Ravello.
No doubt the town, on its high green balcony overlooking the sea, was very wonderful in the 1880s when Richard Wagner was inspired by the romantic Moorish ruins of the Villa Rufolo to make it the setting of the magic garden of Klingsor in his opera Parsifal.
But today, with the road widened just enough for the intrepid tourist coaches, it was surely going to prove as flashy and crowded as the coast?
Not at all. Tourists there were, mostly English, but they tended to be the sort who read books in the shade or went off for quiet walks in the hills.
The heart of Ravello, around its wide square with one side dropping into space, is car-free. Visitors' luggage is trundled up cobbled alleyways in handcarts. The oldest part has two of the town's best hotels. We stayed three nights.
The first two evenings, we were serenaded - first with a concert in our hotel lobby, which had been the 16th-century courtyard of the Palazzo Confalone; and the second night with a concert under the stars in the cypress-shadowed gardens of the Villa Rufolo.
The third night we stood on the hotel balcony and watched a dazzling fireworks display as a village several hundred feet below celebrated a saint's day.
Ravello has an attractive cathedral, whose patron saint, St Pantaleone, left a phial of his blood, which obligingly liquefies during the tourist season.
Further afield, the Villa Cimbrone, where Greta Garbo stayed, has English gardens and the most breathtaking view in Europe - a sheer 1,000ft drop overlooking mountains, gorges, hilltop villages and a vast curve of sea to the horizon.
We could have stayed the whole week in Ravello and used it as a base to walk in the hills, swim in the sea (40 minutes away by car) and visit Amalfi - but we'd probably just have hung around, soaking up the peacefulness.
As it was, we had done all we wanted to do in our week - and we'd even summoned up the nerve to leave our hire car at the airport.
TRAVEL FACTS:
Top Sorrento hotels include the Excelsior Vittoria and the Bellevue Syrene. In Ravello, Christopher Hudson stayed at the Hotel Palumbo ('an extravagance but worth it'); the Hotel Rufolo and the Hotel Villa Maria are cheaper options, both with swimming pools. For package deals to Sorrento and Ravello from Crystal Holidays, tel: 0870 166 4953 or visit http://www.crystalholidays.co.uk.
Steaming-hot relay
Massimo Errico, chief pizzaiolo, started work at Brandi aged 12, as did his father and grandfather.
On a Saturday night he produces more than 1,000 pizzas.
But he is not a fan. 'I'd rather have spaghetti,' he confessed nervously.
This made me suspicious. 'Don't go to Brandi!' tutted Murro Mario, a dapper barber I met whose wife cooked him pizza nightly. 'Brandi is for tourists. You should go to Via Tribunale.'
This long, cobbled artery in the historic quarter is noisy with Vespas and vegetable stalls.
Its pizzerias do not look alluring: a street counter for takeaway and a white-tiled room at the back for eat-in.
Customers stay an average 15 minutes - but they come back again and again.
The menu at Pizzeria Presidente listed 25 varieties, from cream to fresh anchovies, but most clients (businessmen, mothers, street cleaners) were eating plain margheritas, which came in a steaming-hot relay from a chain-gang of pizzaioli.
Flirting is romance enough
Our evening plans took us to Gimmi's, a restaurant-nightclub on Via Cellini. It was just 60 euros (about £40) for both of us, which included three courses, wine and fantastic service.
It seemed that we had six waiters just for us. Actually, we did have six waiters just for us. The place was empty. Early-dining British fools!
And then, at 11.30pm, Milan's entire male population seemed to flood in. Every corner was suddenly filled with luscious, inky-haired Italian men.
Our encouragement theory held: they wouldn't approach us cold, but as soon as we made eye contact they hurried over to tell us we were beautiful.
At this point, we realised we did not need to have full-scale holiday romances. Who needs the complications of keeping in touch by e-mail, expensive phone calls and the awkward weekend when he comes to visit Britain in the rain? Flirting is romance enough.
It is excellent therapy to spend a weekend in Italy and be told regularly that you're beautiful. To know that if all else fails, you can emigrate and marry Giuseppe.
Nevertheless, we still had our Sunday afternoon date with Tomasino the waiter. He was a perfect escort, admiring our new shoes and commenting that the weather was lovely 'just like you'.
He insisted that: 'England women are the best, the top. Then Deutschland; Spanish; French women are fourth; then Italians; and Swedish.'
'You've given this some thought, haven't you?' I said.
But not to be churlish, Italian men are good for the soul. As teacakes were served, Tomasino serenaded us, gazing at Nicola and I in turn, crooning the lyrics as smooth as hot chocolate.
'What a lovely song,' I said when he finished.
'Yes,' nodded Tomasino. 'It's about a football stadium.'
For that, we didn't need to travel.
TRAVEL DETAILS:
Getting there: Train, London to Milan return through Rail Europe (http://www.raileurope.co.uk tel: 08705 848 848).
Where to stay: The Hotel Excelsior Gallia through The Leading Hotels of the World (http://www.lhw.com tel: 00800 2888 8882).
For more information try http://www.ciaomilano.com (click for English option) or http://www.timeout.com/milan (look under Cafes And Bars for good spots to flirt).
Price-conscious shopping
'Golden' because here you find the big names such as Gucci, Armani, Versace, Prada, Dolce & Gabbana, Kenzo and Moschino. You'll want to look but, unless you've just inherited a fortune, you'll probably not buy.
More price-conscious shopping can be discovered out of the centre.
At 10 Corso Como, reckoned to be Milan's hippest shopping place, you'll find an eclectic mix of fashion (Prada clothes, for example, at two-thirds off) and household goods (such as Comme des Garcons candles). The shop also has a stylish coffee bar and a smart restaurant.
But if you want to shop in style, head for the Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II, next to the Duomo. The magnificent glass-covered gallery houses an enticing mixture of high fashion and good food.
The next step in Milan's renaissance will be the reopening of La Scala opera house, which has been closed for more than a year for extensive rebuilding - a project that has infuriated preservationists.
Until La Scala reopens (it is scheduled to relaunch on December 4, 2004), the theatre's opera programme is being performed at the Teatro degli Arcimboldi in the north of the city.
This, interestingly, was a gift to the city from the Pirelli family - who also were the original benefactors of the San Siro stadium.
Football and grand opera - the twin passions of an extraordinary city. I wouldn't be surprised to learn that Giacinto Facchetti is a mean baritone.
TRAVEL DETAILS:
British Airways Holidays (0870 443 4439) offers stays at the five-star Westin Palace, Milan with scheduled flights from Heathrow.
For information about obtaining tickets to La Scala's programme, to see The Last Supper or to football matches at the San Siro, visit the 24-hour Milan website at http://www.milano24ore.net
Slender, pale and perfect
The mannequins in the windows had a look interchangeable with that of the assistants - each as slender, pale and perfect as the other.
An English voice, walking past me, said 'I've never seen so many shops', and nor had I. There was nothing between them either, no cafes or bars to lessen the intensity.
Not all the shops sold clothes. My wife also found a shop selling second-hand 'Modern' movement furniture.
The elegant owner said she specialised in '20th-century antiques and Tibetan furniture of the sixth century'.
I was too intimidated to follow my wife into Dolce & Gabbana, square-toed shoes notwithstanding.
There is little in Milan except shops - the architecture is stately and unobjectionable, but it's generally not a beautiful city, apart from the trams, the cathedral and the women.
That evening we dined at the Stalingrado (Via Biondi 4), a mellow combination of trattoria, bierkeller and, downstairs, an Irish pub - the Irish Tavern Con Aria Climatizzata.
It served Newcastle Brown, did a very good carafe of house red, and the veal was the best I've tasted.
Our dinner, with plenty of booze, came to £25 for two.
The following morning we walked in the narrow streets near the Brera art gallery, where the little subsidiary art galleries are almost indistinguishable from the shops selling designer knick-knacks.
Milan reminded me of boyhood trips with my mother to Leeds - the same seductively lit shops out of our financial league.
The Brera, however, is not as good as Leeds City Art Gallery. 'Badly lit and badly hung,' said my wife.
We had lunch at the very central Peck (Via Victor Hugo 4), which is decorated along minimalist lines. The service was good and my delicious salmon risotto was a little less than £10.
Milan was not as expensive as I'd feared, but just as posey.
The perfect antidote was the strange restaurant-cum-bar - Stalingrado - to which we returned on our second night.
My wife suggested that in time I might 'tune in to' fashion. She got her answer to that suggestion when we arrived back in London.
The square-shaped shoes went straight to Oxfam.
Celebrating Santa Zita
Another early industry was papermaking: both these products benefited from the comparatively wet climate here. Local silk production died long ago, but the city is still a centre for clothes manufacture and has a disproportionate number of shops selling intima moda, or fancy underwear.
Nowadays, you are told, Lucca has just two specialities: lingerie and olive oil. I believe the correct reply to this observation is: 'What more do you need?' Like most Italian cities, Lucca has some home-grown festivals to add to the already crowded calendar of Roman Catholic high days and holidays.
On April 27 the city is adorned with flowers in celebration of Santa Zita's day. She is Lucca's favourite saint: her body can be seen in a glass case in the church of San Frediano, somewhat shrunken and leathery, but looking pretty good considering she is more than 700 years old.
Zita was a country girl, born in the hills above Monsagrati. She worked in Lucca as a maid for the rich Fatinelli family, and fed the beggars with bread from the kitchen, against the will of her miserly master. The key part of her story concerns a miraculous transformation of bread crusts into flowers and Santa Zita's day is essentially a spring flower festival.
At the other end of the summer, on September 13, comes the night of the Luminaria when the centre of the city is entirely candlelit. Thousands of little nightlights are ranged along every available surface. The procession, with its floral crosses and its swaying statues, winds from San Frediano to the cathedral. It takes hours to pass: it is like a river that cannot be crossed.
Later there are fireworks, viewed from the walls, and then the crowd disperses - Lucca is not a late-night city - and you walk back through quiet streets faintly luminous with fallen candlewax.
The English have a long connection with Lucca. Pilgrims were visiting the mysterious wooden statue called the Volto Santo (Holy Face) in the 11th century. There is a Signor Lucchese in Shakespeare's Othello. Both Byron and Shelley passed through, and stayed at the nearby spa town of Bagni di Lucca, where there is a small and atmospheric English cemetery still extant.
Mary Shelley's historical romance Valperga, published in 1823, is largely set in Lucca. It is generally said that the Lucchesi are more reserved and introspective than most Italians - that they are chiusi, or closed, like the city itself - and this is why the English like it here.
A 17th century merchant, Francis Mortoft, noted that the Lucchesi 'in their customs are nearest to the English of any'. Others praised the city for its political independence, its clean streets and its excellent music. Today there is a sizeable scattering of English residents in the area, though this is decidedly not 'Chiantishire', which is a different landscape in a different part of Tuscany.
There is a thriving English language magazine, Grapevine, (or Gravepine, as it was recently spelt in a local daily paper). It has been running for nearly five years and sells around 5,000 copies a month. Its editor Susan Jarman came to Lucca in 1979 on a nine-month contract to teach English and never left. The English community was extremely close-knit then. 'You could invite all the English over and you'd have a party of about 20 people,' she says.
A night at the opera
After a slap-up lunch of pork and gnocchi, washed down by a couple of bottles of Chianti, we staggered back onto our bicycles and made our pilgrimage to Puccini's birthplace. It was not a big place: just a suite of rooms on the second floor of a small townhouse.
But it did not need La Boheme throbbing in the background to pluck at the heart-strings. Among a wealth of interesting exhibits were the handwritten notes the composer had scrawled as an old man, when he was dying of throat cancer and unable to speak.
The effects of Lloyd Webber which had marred our arrival in Lucca were beginning to wear off. It only needed one final antidote - a night at the opera. We returned our bicycles and, for just £25 a head, got seats in the front row of the stalls for Lucia Di Lammermoor. What would we have had to pay at Covent Garden? Five or even ten times as much?
Italian provincial opera houses not only offer unrivalled value for money, but unrivalled theatricality. The sopranos sing their hearts out. The tenors could not act if you paid them, but do look gorgeous in tights. The baritones crash about the stage like indignant mafiosi.
We laughed, cried, and emerged dizzy with music to find Lucca was waiting for us. At ten to midnight, in sub-zero temperatures, every man, woman and child in the town seemed to be out on the streets, laughing, chatting, window-shopping. It was like a party nobody wanted to leave.
In a few short hours, a town I had once thought stuffy, even twee, had shot to the top of my list of venues for enjoying la dolce vita.
Travel facts: Short breaks in Lucca can be arranged through The Italian Connection (020 7520 0470). Opera tickets, cycle hire, guided tours and excursions can also be pre-booked.
Cool, narrow streets
The owner spoke little English but sat us down outside under his vines. Half an hour later nothing had arrived, bar a bottle of local white wine and two glasses.
But over the next two hours we enjoyed a delicious seven-course feast, all carefully prepared by the owner and his family.
Whitebait came roasted with garlic and thyme for starters, squid with prawns marinated in lemon and coriander for the second course, a Pecorino cheese and artichoke risotto for the third, roasted chicken with a rocket salad for the fourth and lamb in a truffle sauce for the fifth.
The only pasta on the menu was a fruit tart made of pasta frolla, a type of pastry. That was our sixth and then the seventh came - ice-cream.
This gastronomic experience, we thought, was going to make a pleasant end to our holiday before we flew back the next morning.
But Lucca had one more surprise in store. We returned to find that Paul Simon was playing there that night in the main piazza.
We couldn't get tickets, but we did find a table outside a bar nearby. There, we listened for free to Paul Simon's best-known tunes as we tucked in to several bottles of local wine.
My wife and I agreed that we could have done more - the Pinnochio museum is nearby, the coastal resort of Via Reggio is only half an hour away by train, and we had wanted to go and see nearby Pisa's leaning tower.
But Lucca has enough to do and see during a weekend break, and often we were the only tourists wandering around its cool, narrow streets, visiting its churches or sipping a coffee in one of the dozen piazzas: so why get hot and bothered elsewhere?
Dress elegantly, eat wonderfully
They set the tranquillity bar very high here. Small wonder Frances Shand Kydd, mother of the Princess of Wales retreated here after the death of her daughter to seek the solace she couldn't find on the small Scottish island where she lives.
As we all rush to the Caribbean and the Far East, in the new passion for minimalist hotels, boutique hotels, beach hotels, spa hotels and island hotels, we have forgotten about the Italian lakes and exquisite, classical romantic hotels like the Villa Cortine, which offer brilliant service in glamorous grandeur for adults who want to dress elegantly, eat wonderfully and be served with old-fashioned manners and courtesy.
It's been said that coming here and throwing open the shutters of your hotel bedroom and looking across the Quink-blue waters to the snow-capped Monte Baldo - which hotel manager Roberto Cappelletto says always reminds him of Kilimanjaro - is to feel as if you are in a ravishing Italian opera.
And, by the way, if ravishing Italian opera is what you want, Verona is only an hour away. From the opera nut who checked in my bags at the city's dinky airport I learnt that Verona's 2,000-year-old Roman amphitheatre, where gladiators once put Christians to death and Mussolini once ranted, will this season stage Verdi's five-opera cycle. It holds 17,000 spectators, including 1,000 on the stage itself.
One of my fellow guests at the Villa Cortine, a businessman from Chalfont St Giles, decided to check it out. He wasn't frightfully impressed by the atmosphere. 'Inside it's all very modern,' he reported. 'Tip-up plastic seats and floodlights, a bit like White Hart Lane (for the uninitiated that's the ground where Tottenham Hotspur play football in the unlovely Seven Sisters Road in North London) plonked down in the middle of an Italian city.'
I don't think he was wrong. Jonathan Miller once described the amphitheatre as a place where the frame outshines the picture.
My English friend decided - sadly for me, for I welcomed his acerbic eye - to give Verona's other great sightseeing treat, Juliet's balcony, a miss. Each year millions visit this site in the belief that it is the definitive scene of Shakespeare's great romantic weepie, Romeo And Juliet. Apparently, people keep taking bits of what's left of the balcony for souvenirs. It's a mass of carved initials (you know, Jack loves Jane) but sceptics say it was removed from another building in 1938 and merely plonked in this courtyard. Another myth shattered.
I would like to report that I visited all the historic sights and there are many here - from the ruins of Roman love poet Catullus's extraordinary villa, with its 50ft high ceilings to the Sala dello Zodiaco, a magnificent lakeside villa where Mussolini was installed by the Nazis and where every day at five o'clock, in a room with the constellations painted on the ceiling, he made love to his mistress, Clara Petacci.
Whirlwind romance
But the journey across to Ischia took less than an hour. A waiting taxi took about 10 minutes to get us to La Mortella, and Lady Walton stood ready to greet us high on the balcony of her house.
'Champions,' she shouted down with delight. 'You are champions.' When I'd phoned she thought we were facing a 90-minute wait for the next boat.
The lunch table on the balcony was bathed in sunshine - the vegetable soup was still hot in its tureen. Lady Walton grasped our arms with genuine pleasure. 'Welcome to La Mortella. Welcome.'
Over lunch, she gave us the potted history of her marriage to 'darling William' and her extraordinary life on Ischia.
Her romance with Sir William can be legitimately described as whirlwind. On an official trip to Argentina in 1948, William Walton, then aged 46, met and quickly fell in love with Susana Gil, 24 years younger than him, who worked as social secretary at the British Council in Buenos Aires.
It was a mismatch in more than age. Walton was Britain's pre-eminent composer, a poor boy from Oldham responsible for critically acclaimed works including Facade and Belshazzar's Feast.
He had been commissioned to write the Crown Imperial march for King George VI's 1937 coronation.
Much to the surprise and consternation of friends back in London, however, Walton's mind was made up on marriage. He recalled later: 'We met, went off to lunch and I proposed to her the next day.
'As far as I remember, she said, 'Don't be ridiculous, Dr Walton', but we got engaged three weeks later.'
On their voyage back to England, William informed his wife that they would not be living in London as expected.
His plan was to escape the post-war austerity of England and make a new life in the Bay of Naples, where he could concentrate on composing.
At the end of 1949 the Waltons loaded up his Bentley and drove to a rented house on Ischia.
Cappuccino ice cream
By midweek I was feeling quite American. If it's Wednesday, this must be Bologna.
It's known as 'Red Bologna', partly because of its politics and partly because of the red brick buildings. In this handsome university town, we saw red.
A furious, red-faced, redhaired tour guide had been kept waiting and missed her lunch. British cruisers set off in search of an illustrated guidebook, which wouldn't shout.
If the excursions were frenetic, life on board Casanova was peaceful. It's a 96-passenger luxury river vessel with on-board conference facilities, hairdresser, laundry, library and sun deck, but for us life revolved around superb meals, with an Italian accent. I can still taste the homemade cappuccino ice cream.
Should you tire of eating, there was always the right video in your cabin: The Taming Of The Shrew before Padua.
Everyone agreed Padua was a success. We had time for a coffee in the chic Cafe Pedrocchi.
These fine towns were a curtain raiser for Venice.
The Casanova berthed near St Mark's Square and the excursions were judged 'the best ever'. The Rialto was as mad and busy as when Carpaccio painted it five centuries earlier. A bride leapt into a gondola, pursued by photographers. A businessman, in his speedboat, jabbered into his mobile, while his Labrador stared serenely at passing palazzos.
A flight of illegal street traders bundled their fake designer handbags into sheets and melted away.
An elderly caretaker unlocked the doors of I Miracoli, the prettiest church in Venice, releasing the ambrosial perfume of hundreds of white lilies.
As the grand finale to a well-staged cruise, it couldn't have been better. Just plain sailing? Thankfully, not.
Travel facts:
Italiatour (01883 6219000) has one week cruises on the Casanova. Cremona Tourist Office: tel 00 39 0372 23233. Aldo Brugnini and Eva Beck, violin makers: Via Bissolati 48 26100 Cremona. Tel: (00 39) 0372 463048.
Sixth Margherita pizza
So I try to copy the Italian way. I stop thinking in terms of recipes and look to the ingredients - and the children devour it.
Eating out, Frances is excited by pizza with asparagus; lightweight gnocchi made with spinach; spaghetti al pesto. No one seems to notice she misses out the meat.
By the time we arrive in Rome, Joe is on his sixth Margherita pizza. I overhear Americans on the next table bargaining with their even-more-conservative children. 'No,' explains the mother: 'I said fettucine, not feta cheese. You'll have to wait until we're back in Greece for feta cheese.'
The young diners are not impressed. 'They'll eat a plain pizza, but they're funny about the pasta. They want chips,' their mother confides to me.
I ask the waiter whether Italian children are as finicky as this.
'They like plain pasta and pizza with tomato sauce or ragu (meat),' he says.
I'm relieved. Even Italian children don't eat clams.
TRAVEL DETAILS:
Deborah stayed in Umbria with Summers Leases (tel: 01628 675377; http://www.summersleases.com). Valentina Harris's cookery school (tel: 020 8651 2997; http://www.villavalentina.com).
Nightlife and sport
Best for NIGHTLIFE: Rimini
Although Milan and Rome boast good clubs and interesting venues, it is at the seaside that Italy's nightlife is at its most frenetic.
The young of Europe gather at Rimini on the Adriatic coast. Its beaches are among the most crowded in Italy and so are the clubs.
The town was the birthplace of filmmaker Federico Fellini, and something of his sense of glamour, magic and La Dolce Vita infuses the atmosphere.
Hotel Ambasciatori http://www.hotelambasciatori.it tel: 00 39 0541 55561.
Best for SPORT: Lake Garda
The Italian Lakes became popular as a tourist destination at the end of the 19th century because of their sublime scenery, mild micro-climate, glorious gardens and atmosphere of mellow tranquillity.
Now they are a mecca for water-sports enthusiasts and none more so than Lake Garda.
The largest, cleanest and most dramatic of the lakes, Garda is ideal for waterskiing, sailing and windsurfing.
Thirty-three miles long and 22 miles wide, Garda is ringed with small towns and villages. The most popular with watersports enthusiasts is Torbole, at the northern end.
Thomas Cook features the Hotel Royal, Limone, http://www.thomascook.co.uk.
Simple and unpretentious
They run the Cascina dei Peri, a country villa and working farm with poultry, vineyards and olive groves.
It is 100 metres above the sea, in stunning countryside, and modesty itself - but for £20 you are in a sort of heaven.
Italy has many things that we have lost. Imagine staying in the first hotel you come across in Britain. It is likely to belong to a chain of them.
The staff will have been trained in the ways of the corporation, their 'welcome' as packaged as the butter at breakfast.
Or you may find an old-fashioned British hotel of a certain kind, predictable in its grim dreariness, its nightmarish swirls of worn red carpet leading from one th |
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