|
|
 |
|
Travel Guides: All Countries / Europe / Italy
|  | Travel Reviews : Italy |
|
| | | | 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 lon |
|
|
|
| |
