I’m now back from a couple of weeks tour­ing in Italy. Shattered, and sur­prised at my lack of inter­net access. It simply wasn’t an easy thing to sort out in some places, and I didn’t have my usual phone as it’s broken, so I was rely­ing on an old mobile for access.

I’m strug­gling, actu­ally, to give words to this coun­try. Usu­ally beau­ti­ful, some­times ugly, almost always friendly…

The Stat­ist­ics:

3200 miles driven; 3 new dents on the car; about 100 gal­lons (378 litres) of pet­rol used; highest speed trav­elled — daren’t say but speed lim­iters may have been touched; speed cam­eras triggered: 1; chats with police officers: 1

The Places — In (very) Brief

Milan

Nicer than expec­ted. Friendly folk. Food ok. Lovely but pricey hotel in the centre appears to be some­thing of a secret. Shall I keep it that way? Ask and I might add the name… heheh!

Park­ing in places could be chal­len­ging, like many Italian cit­ies, and expens­ive, but at least the city itself proved easy to nav­ig­ate and we found the hotel quickly.

Ver­ona

We stayed in an aston­ish­ingly pretty camp­site in the fort­ress over­look­ing the city. Food excel­lent where avail­able but watch out — it would seem late eat­ing isn’t a big thing here.

Tak­ing a walk through the nar­row streets at night is enchant­ing, and in the day you can visit the bal­cony where Juliet reputedly greeted Romeo. A lot of people rub the breast of Juliet’s statue, in par­tic­u­lar her left breast which shines golden com­pared to the rest of her body. I’m still not sure why but I guess it brings luck, love, or just horn­i­ness to those who touch it.

Venice

So pretty, and (mostly) doesn’t smell as bad as some had sug­ges­ted after all. Food good in one place, dis­tinctly mediocre in another — so pays to search out a place that’s obvi­ously pop­u­lar with loc­als. Camp­site turned out to be next to the run­way at the air­port — as are many of the other camp­sites. Watch out. Pricey too, at £20 per night includ­ing a car.

Bolo­gona

There was some­thing strange about this town. It was almost deser­ted, car hos­tile, and dif­fi­cult to nav­ig­ate. We couldn’t find a hotel in the centre that looked even vaguely approach­able late at night and ended up resort­ing to the Hol­i­day Inn near the air­port — expens­ive rack rates so use Amex or a sim­ilar travel ser­vice to phone ahead and get a decent price on your room.

We dis­covered that it’s a stu­dent city, which may have explained the sum­mer­time deser­tion. Per­haps it’s vibrant in term time?

Tuscany in general

I can see why people fall in love with this area. It can be cheap, but the com­bin­a­tion of good weather, good food, friendly people and var­ied land­scape make it irres­ist­able. Throw in pretty vil­lages and girls and you have a region that begs to be explored. Sedately.

Watch out for trav­el­ling packs of Amer­ic­ans and middle-class Eng­lish retir­ees who may sniff at you get­ting nois­ily drunk in their unspoilt bit of the country.

Lucca

I’d never even heard of this town before com­ing to Italy, but a bar­man recom­men­ded it to us… so why not? And it’s great! Best bet is to park in one of the reas­on­ably priced car parks out­side the old town then take a cycle to travel around the town — either hired or, as with some car parks, take a cour­tesy bike. You can also cycle around the city walls. Great little place, though packed with tour­ists so it can end up a little expens­ive and tire­some — but it’s not as packed or over­priced as other cit­ies. And any­way, if there are tour­ists, there are facilities.…

Pisa

If you approach the fam­ous tower from the right angle it looks per­fectly straight. Which could be a dis­ap­point­ment if that’s all you came to see. It was Brit­ish engin­eers who stopped it fall­ing over, appar­ently, and for a moment you might think they did too good a job. The plaza the tower is in (it’s the cam­pan­ile for the Duomo) is very beau­ti­ful and although the tower is the reason people come, it’s a little bit more than just that. How­ever, it’s also true that few people explore the rest of this city. We didn’t either. I feel a little guilty.

San Gimig­nano

This little gem of a town has a lot going for it and must have been some­thing of a medi­eval Man­hat­tan. It’s very pretty, full of towers, and has an awful lot of tour­ists. Lacked the charm of Lucca, but well worth a visit.

San Mini­ato

We stumbled upon this very pretty and friendly little town and we asked in an osteria for a room. It was at this point we learned that an osteria is just a type of res­taur­ant. But this is Italy so phone calls were made by the pro­pri­et­ors and before we knew it we were check­ing in at a charm­ing little B&B in the town centre. Anna makes a won­der­ful host — but she doesn’t speak a word of Eng­lish, so take your time with bookings.

Siena

We acci­dent­ally turned up on the day of the Palio tri­als. The Palio is a crazy bare back horse race in the main square of the town — quite pos­sibly the most ancient and yet least pro­fes­sional horse race in the world. Shame we missed any­thing excit­ing, but the main square is beau­ti­ful and ancient.

Florence (Firenza)

Florence is beau­ti­ful but, for me at least, not some­thing that I found as beau­ti­ful as expec­ted. What it is good for is art gal­ler­ies. You can see some incred­ibly fam­ous art­works in the city’s art galleries.

Genoa (Gen­ova)

Don’t bother! Never seen quite such an ugly mass of con­crete build­ing. There are beau­ti­ful parts, of course, like most Italian cit­ies, but they’re not neces­sar­ily easy to find. The guides say the city has a ‘gritty real­ism’ which I always think is travel guide speak for “you’ll be lucky not to get mugged.”

But on the whole — what a great country!

Driv­ing in Italy

Driv­ing in this coun­try is actu­ally a great exper­i­ence. The road sur­faces are smooth, the drivers skilled, and the weather gen­er­ally good.

But there are things to beware of.

Speed bumps appear to have been ran­domly placed on the auto­strada. Some people claim it’s down to sub­sid­ence or lorry dam­age, but I think it’s just to keep you awake.

The dis­tance and dir­ec­tion mark­ers towards towns and cit­ies were the inspir­a­tion for some of Heisenberg’s greatest work. You might see that your town is 25km away. The next sign, 1km down the road, will say 20km. Then it’ll revert to 25km and you may well con­clude that you’re going round in circles. Or get­ting closer, because as you con­tinue the next sign will say you’re 18km away. The actual dis­tance may be less. Or more.

If you park in the wrong place you’ll get a ticket, but work­ing out how to pay isn’t simple so I’m ignor­ing my ticket and wait­ing to see what hap­pens. Any­way, park­ing places are col­our coded — white means you can park there freely, except when the signs say you can’t, yel­low means you can park there freely except when the signs say you can’t and blue means.… well you get the idea. I think blue is pay, white is free, and yel­low is res­id­ents but the real­ity is that you need to check as dif­fer­ent towns have dif­fer­ent rules.

Italian Food, In Italy

I’m a veget­able, as many of you know, so obvi­ously can’t eat meat. Italy at least has a good range of veget­arian food avail­able so there’s no need to spend too much time scru­tin­eer­ing the menus.

The food itself range from great to mediocre but there was noth­ing so amaz­ing that I’m going to make a spe­cial men­tion. I did enjoy the white truffle and artichoke tagliateli I had in Ver­ona — some­thing I’ve never had before and which was delicious.

Next Time

It’ll be Rome and the south. And more slowly — the furi­ous pace we set meant we covered a lot of ground, but it was tir­ing some­times. Still… we had a great time.

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