We love Bergamo in Northern Italy. It's often overlooked as a gateway to its more showy neighbour, Milan, as lots of flights land here with easy transport links to the bigger city. But, you are really missing a trick if you just land in Bergamo and hop on a transfer,...
Having driven around much of Italy, I think we can safely say that this guy – Padre Pio – is very definitely a superstar saint. You can hardly escape him – statues, images, grafitti, even a whole TV channel dedicated to him. I had heard of him before & had been...
Tropea is an absolute jewel on the Calabrian coast and we couldn’t recommend highly enough, a stay in this beautiful town. However, if you are looking for accommodation, we couldn’t recommend highly enough that you steer completely clear of Hotel Residence Valemare....
Villa Mercede is a bit different to many of the hotels we choose to stay in on our travels. Personal choice, but we prefer quirky, boutique style (although not those with silly prices), old, traditional etc to modern and quite functional. Which is what Villa Mercede,...
When we were in Italy, last year, we had an awful experience with a hotel in the beautiful Calabrian town of Tropea. We’d booked into Hotel Valemare for four nights, but it was so terrible, we left the next morning, not knowing if we’d get a refund*. We’d heard of...
On our travels through Italy last year, we made the decision to explore the eastern coast of Sicily and having done some online research, decided that Ortigia (in the region of Syracuse), sounded like our kind of place. We took the car ferry from Reggio Calabria to...
Trapani (or Birgi Airport, located about 19 km south of the city) is accessible by Ryanair from the UK. Once in Trapani, the Egadi Islands – Favignana, Marettimo and Levanzo – to the west, are as easily accessible by ferry. We chose to spend six days on Favignana –...
On our travels in Italy last year, we were so lucky to find some real off-the-beaten-track places. We’d hired a car and had no real plan, apart from having a couple of weeks to get from Rome to Ortigia in Sicily on the first part of the trip. So, with trusty road map...
In my book, a “cool” place to stay doesn’t need to be hip and trendy and cutting edge. It just needs to be somewhere that isn’t bog-standard. And this place we stumbled upon – quite literally – in Castellabate, Campania is very cool, if like us, you like things that...
Of all of the places we visited recently, Venice has to be one of the most memorable. We arrived on a cold, misty afternoon and were prepared for the weather to stay this way as we’d been under thick cloud all the way from Rimini. The lagoon, on either side of the...