These are a Few of Our Favorite Things

Not long ago, a client, trying to select whom to use among the agents listed in the Travel and Leisure “A” List for Travel Agents for Italy, asked me bluntly : “What is it you love about Italy ?”

This question is one I ask myself often, and I kept my client on the telephone for some time, as I explained why our travelers keep returning to Italy — and why I have chosen to make my life here.

The list that follows is far from complete and is yours’ and mine — because on your return, we always send you a survey that asks among other things what you enjoyed most.

MARKETS. Italy’s markets are endlessly varied and endlessly fascinating. There is no better opportunity to understand Italians in their day-to-day lives than to watch them in unguarded moments as they go about their daily food shopping ritual at the mercato.  Situated in an indoor building or in a piazza or a street, the mercato is a celebration of fresh, seasonal raw ingredients.  Though produce is at the heart of the mercato, surrounding stalls and stores often sell fresh fish, poultry, meats, local wines, housewares, clothes, fresh pasta… 

WILD FLOWERS IN WINTER.  Nearly all low-lying, uncultivated areas of central and southern Italy now display a blanket of wild flowers. These are daisies and dandelions, flowering wild mint and spring cyclamen, flowering arugola, malva, chamomile and many others indigenous to the place. The picture of Isabel, below, was taken in mid-winter in the Vatican Gardens.

TRAINS.  The efficiency and speed of Italy’s trains is amazing. Florence to Rome is 90 minutes. Rome to Naples is 55 minutes.  You can have breakfast in Rome and lunch in Venice. Nearly every Eurostar train will have a smart little café which will make you an excellent cappuccino with Illy coffee, sucked down in a china cup as you whizz through landscape at up to 300 kilometers per hour. First class offers complimentary drinks, good snacks and newspapers at your seat, plus a Caffarel chocolate or two. And the views — of ancient architecture, agriculture, mountains, sea, rounded hills, olive groves, hill towns — are remarkable, a trip in themselves.

ARTISANS. From paper makers to ceramicists to cheese makers to presepio (Christmas creche) makers to toy makers to jewelers to sculptors to mask makers to wine makers to buffalo leather makers…

Up and down the peninsula, and across its several islands, the list goes on and on and on !

We introduce you to as many artisans as you would like. Some hold private workshops just for children. Many of the artisans are our friends. Every single one of them we admire. With his or her hands and passion, each of them ensures the continuity of a traditional Italian art that — with some variations — is still produced in an ancient way.

THE BAR. Every Travel Plan we write includes copious information on the Italian Café Bar — the ins-and-outs of ordering, the regional specialties, and why the café is so consequential in the fabric of day-to-day Italian life.

I start every morning in one (“un veneziano e un cappuccino, per piacere.“) So do most people I know. When I am away from Italy I miss intensely the smells, the delicious and invigorating flavors, the sweet conviviality of the Bar. If the Bar is combined with a good pastry store, all the better. We note favorites — and what to sample there — in all the locations you will be visiting.

EXPERIENCES ONLY ITALY CAN PROVIDE. Walking with sheep following a trail and a tradition that are over one thousand years old.

Running through a plateau of flowering lentils and poppies, at the foothills of an ancient hilltown.

Meandering under the boughs of a grape-vine that has produced wines for more than a century.

Vulci.

GARDENS. Italy has continental Europe’s most beautiful gardens. We will guide you to as many as you wish and know them all personally.  These range from city gardens (like Rome’s Municipal rose garden below)…

to formal Renaissance parks like Villa Lante…

to the gardens of Villa Melzi on Como…

To the botanically extraordinary and extensive Sigurta’ Gardens…

and my desert island garden, Ninfa…

There are also spontaneous gardens, like the natural rock garden you will see if you join us on the Transumanza…

STYLE. Italians care how they look, are interested in how you look, and put effort into dressing. Some of the best dressed women I know are over 80, and gather in the sun in our local park every morning, drink cappuccino and chat. Their shoes are polished, their hair in order, their skirts and coats becoming and elegant. They care.

And apparently always have.

CHILDREN COME IN IMMEDIATE AND DIRECT CONTACT WITH HISTORY. Not in a museum but deeply and yet informally within history.  They run on it and under it and skip rope on it.  They touch it with their hands.

ICE CREAM. We’ve written so much about this in the Plans we develop for you.  We will write about it again. The world’s best artisanal gelato (and granita and semifreddi) is made and sold here. We will tell you where to find it.

PAESTUM.  To me the single most magical archeological site in Italy. It makes my heart sing each time I visit.

And when I have soaked up the spirit and beauty of the place and feel that I can store it within me until the next visit, I find another sort of magic at Tenuta Vannullo, Campania’s only organic dairy, with mozzarella that will make you vow never to eat buffalo mozzarella anywhere else. Below is one of the lovely bufale whose milk makes the splendid cheese.

SWALLOWS AND SWIFTS. One of the distinct, evocative sounds of Italy, heard in every region and nearly every place, is the morning and evening call of the swallows. These graceful birds dart in and out of bell towers, swoop over tiled roofs, and fill the skies twice a day with their magical call. No other sound — except the clink of spoons against espresso cups as you walk past a cafe’ bar in the morning — is more evocative of Italy.

COOL. The cool air that greets you on hot summer days, most of all in Rome, as you walk past an ancient palazzo whose great portal is open. The damp shadowed cool of the marble interior oozes out onto the street providing an intense shot of refreshment.

REGIONAL DIFFERENCE.  When Italy was unified in 1861, it was likely that two Italians living 200 miles apart would be unable to understand much of what the other said.

To take the train from Bolzano to Sicily (an absolutely extraordinary 14-18 hour train trip through ten regions) means hearing a dizzying number of Italian dialects as passengers get on and off — but more amazing still (and without leaving your train window) experiencing an ever changing tableau of architecture, station styles, trees, agriculture, vineyard trellising techniques, colors of shutters, ways of hanging laundry…

Imagine a country that is slightly smaller than the New Mexico.  And that can bring you the diversity represented by these three pictures.

Please mix your regions, and bring as much diversity into your trips as you can.  This is one of the great joys of traveling in Italy.

EXPRESSIVENESS.  We tried out not long ago a hotel in Paestum.  My Italophilic mother-in-law remarked : “This is the first hotel in Italy I have ever been where the staff at the desk did not smile.” Italians do smile. Luigi Barzini and so many others discuss this much better than can I, without falling into cliche or over-generalization, but some of the national qualities of Italians that you have noted are their enthusiasm for expression through word, smile, song, gesture…

WATER.  We’ve written about Italian water before.  With very few exceptions (Florence), it is simply delicious, and the waters that run through Venetians’ and some Romans’ taps are the same ones that, bottled, retail for $6 and up in American gourmet stores.

OLIVE OIL.  Our clients pick olives, make olive oil, bring it home. They learn how to cook with it, how to differentiate between oils, and how to store it. This autumn in Tuscany we are offering seminars (two to three days) for olive oil enthusiasts (we hope to join in ourselves.)

Insider’s Italy is a company run by a family that loves Italy. I’ve lived here for more than 30 years, but my family has been here since the 1920s. To share my love for this, my birthplace, is the whole reason I run Insider’s Italy.