Amalfi Coast T shirt says, “Save water, drink limoncello.” Good advice!

You’ve decided to explore Italy for your 2012 vacation. Where to go? You face endless, tantalizing possibilities and feel like shouting, “Help!” Help is on its way…right here. 

1. “What kind of travelers are we?” Choose the best regions for you. 

Are you big wine lovers and want to experience your favourite wines right where they’re made with the producers? If you love Amarone, choose the Veneto. For Barolo—Piedmont. For Chianti or Brunello—Tuscany. For Nero D’Avola—Sicily. 

If food is your number one priority in life, ask yourself, “What kind of Italian food?” For silk-like pasta,Emilia-Romagna. For healthy vegetable dishes and seafood, the Riviera or Puglia among others. 

If you love adventures in nature, what season to go? In winter, you can ski in the Dolomites north of Venice, in the mountains near Turin in Piedmont or on Mount Etna in Sicily. 

In summer, you can hike on paths on the Amalfi Coast or in hills in many parts of Tuscany and Umbria. Italy’s two coasts of beaches may beckon you like in Sardinia, the Riviera and Calabria. 

If you adore art, what period of art and architecture? Florence focuses mostly on the Renaissance. For me, Rome shines for the antiquities and Baroque. Puglia offers imposing castles, Greek temples, quaint trulli houses, white Greek-like hill towns. 

Find regions that match at least one of your passions. How? Stay tuned for your next newsletter! 

David and his shadow at Palazzo Vecchio in Florence

 2. “What kind of travelers are we?” Slow or fast?  

Do you like to settle in one place, hang out for a few days and get a good feel for life, food, wine and culture there? If you have a week, pick one region as a base, or two regions a short trip apart. If you have two weeks, choose two or three regions. You’ll avoid spending too much time traveling and getting settled in too many hotels. 

Some flights cost less money and time than longer train rides. For example, flying from Rome to Catania in Sicily takes one hour and costs from 98 Euros return so you could do Rome and eastern Sicily in a week. 

Do you want to see as much as you can in the short time you have? Plan to stay at least two, or better three nights in each place. 

Travel time between places can eat up half a day door to door.Venice to Florence is about two hours by train. But add time to get to the train in Venice from your hotel, find your train in Venice (assuming you bought tickets in advance), get from the Florence train station to your hotel and get settled, and time for the unexpected. You’ve lost a morning. 

If you stay night #1 in Florence, tour Florence day #2, stay in Florence night #2 and leave day #3, you’ve spent about 1.5 days there.  Hardly doing this magnificent city justice.

Planning Your Trip In Italy: Where Should We Go?

This month instead of keeping their topic a secret, they’re asking other bloggers to take the topic and run with them on it.

December’s topic is gifts—regali as it relates to Italy. Has traveling in Italy given you a gift you’d never find elsewhere? Did someone give you an Italy-related gift that inspired you to travel to Italy? What’s your perfect gift for an Italophile friend?

And now for my tale, “A Dad’s Gift To His Nine Year Old Daughter Sows Italophile Seeds”. When I was nine, my parents drove around Europe for two months with a couple who were stationed with the Canadian army in Germany. When they got to Positano on the Amalfi Coast, they felt totally overwhelmed with the beauty and the colours. They stayed at Le Sirenuse, a lovely four star hotel with a view of the beach, the brilliantly coloured tiled church dome and hillside of multi-coloured houses set on terraces spilling down to the azure sea.

At age nine, I collected stamps and knew where all the countries they came from were on the globe. I wrote to pen pals in five countries. In school I loved Social Studies. An international traveler in the making!

One day my dad saw a big colourful poster of Positano in a travel agency window, the same view that had enchanted them at Le Sirenuse. He asked the agent to hold the poster for him when they were finished with it. He brought it home and gave it to me to put up on my bedroom wall, where it lived for years. So beautiful…but I didn’t know where in Italy Positano was. I only knew one day I’d go there.

Positano on the Amalfi Coast

In 1976 I travelled to the Amalfi Coast and saw first hand how stunningly beautiful Positano was. But Positano straddled a narrow valley and felt too closed in for me. I loved Ravello up on its plateau for its wide, breathtaking views of the Amalfi Coast from the Strada Panoramica or the gardens of its villas. In 1978 I lived for a few months in Ravello, the place someone termed so aptly, “where poets go to die.”

The five Italy Blogging Roundtable writers are:

• Alexandra – ArtTrav
• Gloria – At Home in Tuscany
• Rebecca – Brigolante
• Melanie – Italofile
• Jessica – WhyGo Italy

Check out their Italy Roundtable blogs to see what they think of this intriguing topic! Let me know your answers to their “gift” questions too!

Here’s how to participate:

1. From December 1 to 13 2011, post on your blog about “Gifts” (and Italy).
2. Include in your post a reference to the fact that this is part of the Italy Blogging Roundtable’s invitation to post on this topic.
3. Include, at the end of your post, links to the roundtable blogs: ArtTrav, At Home in Tuscany, Brigolante, Italofile, and WhyGo Italy.
4. Let us know by tweeting it with the hashtag #italyroundtable. If by chance you don’t use Twitter, email it to one of us (email address is italy@whygo.com). We’ll each read them all, and retweet some too!
5. On December 14 2011 we’ll post on the same topic and include links to our favorite posts by the larger community. We’re aiming to link to five posts submitted by others, but that depends on how many people participate!

A Dad’s Gift To His Nine Year Old Daughter Sows Italophile Seeds

Jessica at italylogue.com gives practical tips like how to travel smoothly in this busy season, and useful information on traditions like the Befana (the good witch who brings kids gifts), festive foods to savour, Christmas decorations to admire and Christmas markets to browse in.

Martha Bakerjian at goitaly.about.com shows you how and where to celebrate Christmas in Rome, where the most beautiful Nativity scenes and the lively Christmas markets are and even where you can skate outdoors in Rome.

At goitaly.about.com Martha lists nine cities and towns from Turin to Naples where you can take in Christmas lights, markets, Nativity scenes and celebrations plus 20 Christmas markets in cities throughout Italy.

For New Year’s celebrations in Italy at goitaly.about.com, Martha has a very informative section on how you can bring in 2012 in Venice, Bologna, Florence, Rome, Capri and Naples. Everything from dancing in a piazza before marveling at spectacular fireworks to wearing red underwear on New Year’s Eve for good luck in the coming year!

It’s been interesting Googling for Christmas and New Year’s celebrations in Italy. All my Google searches kept pointing me to Kathy McCabe’s Dream of Italy newsletter, Martha Bakerjian’s goitaly.about.com site and Jessica’s Italylogue.com site.

I decided to strike out on my own search online. To make a long search short, looking for Christmas and New Year’s events on official tourism sites for Tuscany and Florence led me to dead ends. Luckily we have Kathy, Martha and Jessica to do this festive digging for us!

How To Celebrate Christmas & New Year In Italy: Tips From Top Italy Bloggers

The Venice Experiment book

Perhaps you’re dreaming of living in Italy for a few months but can’t get that much time away from your job or business. You want to go now while your health and circumstances still permit. But how? 

Barry Frangipane did it. His book, The Venice Experiment, tells how he and his wife, Debbie lived in Venice for a year. He kept his consulting  job, all done online. With lower living costs than in the U.S.  in Venice, she didn’t have to work outside home. They had time for taking Italian classes, socializing with Venetian friends and cooking. How sweet is that?  

Co-author Ben Robbins says Barry has “an absolute disregard for convention and an uncanny ability to connect with people.” We see how this masterful storyteller uses these talents! The book’s subtitle is only too apt, “A Year of Trial and Error Living Abroad”.

As he takes us through the seasons in Venice, he treats us to a series of entertaining, often heart warming vignettes about their efforts to adapt to living in Venice and get to know its people.  

Celebrating Thanksgiving with roast turkey, ham with pineapple and cloves, and pumpkin pie becomes a seemingly insurmountable treasure hunt. But Barry and Debbie’s inventiveness and determination win the day. They laugh about this situation now, but at the time they felt exceedingly frustrated, to put it mildly. Many other bewildering and comical experiences fill the book. 

Barry connects from his heart with a wide array of people and weaves lively tales about their lives and his times with them. He tells how he made friends with everyone from his local gelateria owner to ex-Yugoslavia street beggars. His befriending an isolated, elderly widower whom he treats like a family member is particularly touching. Soon, when he’s out walking, lots of people greet him so he drinks four or five espressos along the way. 

I loved the chapter, “My Fellow Venetians”, full of little, every day neighbourhood events. He excels at describing details of people and their conversations verbatim so I could almost see myself there. 

Barry also tells us about trips they took outside Venice. For example, they visited the cooking teacher, Mamma Agata in Ravello on the Amalfi Coast. This tale focuses on a hair raising driving experience, but tells very little about Mamma Agata, her home or Ravello. I would have liked to see these details filled out. 

Travel transforms us. I was dying to know how theirVenice experiment transformed Barry and Debbie. His last chapter reveals how their lives changed after their return home. No spoilers here!  

If you’re looking for inspiration on following a similar dream, want to get a foreign insider’s view of living in Venice or enjoy all too true tales about Italy, I highly recommend The Venice Experiment.

How To Live In Italy For A Year & Keep Your Job

What are your favourite places in Italy? Feel free to add to my list. Let’s have a conversation and widen our horizons for our next Italy trips! 

1. Florence is my favourite city in Italy. I especially love walking along the Arno River at night, sitting in the ancient San Miniato Al Monte church above the panoramic Piazzale Michelangelo, looking at frescoes in Santa Maria Novella church and taking my time at the Ferrgamo shoe museum.
   

   moon over Arno River with San Miniato church lit up top right.

2. Stromboli, an island in Sicily’s Aeolian Islands. Visually stunning, live volcano, black sand beaches, far away from it all.

   

   typical street in Stromboli

3. Sitting on the balcony of my room at Hotel Tramonto D’Oro in Praiano on the Amalfi Coast, in awe of the view of Positano, with a glass of prosecco in hand.

   

   View of Positano from my Praiano hotel balcony

4. walking the paths in Piedmont’s Barolo or Barbaresco wine country hills, especially with fall colours

   

   walking path from Monforte to Barolo

5. walking the paths in Cinque Terre, especially strolling and sitting under the olive trees between Corniglia and Vernazza and then lying on a sun cot right at the sea’s edge on the beach in Monterosso’s new town.

   

   beach in new part of Monterosso

6. Dining at Roberto Rossi’s restaurant, Il Silene in Pescina, a Tuscan hamlet near Mont’Amiata. Amazing food, wine selections by Roberto and hospitality.

   

   Margaret and friends with Chef Roberto

7. standing on the Strada Panoramica in Ravello looking down on the Amalfi Coast. Someone said, “Ravello is where poets go to die.” I can see why. Stunning beauty.

   

   view from Ravello of Amalfi Coast

8. browsing and taking photos in Bologna’s colourful central food market, especially the creative window displays that either amuse or disgust you.

   

   butcher shop window in Bologna’s market with a pig head as the centerpiece

9. Montepulciano in Tuscany is one of my favourite hill towns: spectacular valley views, walking paths, drinking Vino Nobile in Caffe Poliziano or Piazza Grande.

   

   Margaret at one gate into Montepulciano

10. walking in Ballaro and Porta Carini markets in Palermo in Sicily, gazing at food and houseware displays and watching the exotic parade of shoppers

    

    Palermo’s Porta Carini market

My Top 10 Places In Italy (in no particular order—it’s a stiff competition!)