Italy

Disclosure: This article contains affiliate links. If you make a booking through these links, we may earn a commission at no extra cost to you. The Amalfi Coast, Without the Traffic Jam Our first afternoon on the Amalfi Coast, we sat on a SITA bus for ninety minutes to cover what the map swore was twenty minutes, inching past oncoming coaches on a cliff road with no shoulder. The next morning a local at our hotel laughed and said one word: “Ferry.” We spent the rest of the week hopping between Positano, Amalfi and Sorrento by boat, watching the cliffs slide past from the water, and never sat in traffic again. ...

Disclosure: This article contains affiliate links. If you make a booking through these links, we may earn a commission at no extra cost to you. Why Naples Is the Best-Value City Break in Southern Italy I nearly booked Sorrento. It looked cleaner in the photos, the prices seemed similar and the Amalfi Coast was right there. Then a friend who had spent a week in Naples told me I was about to make a very expensive mistake — not because Sorrento was bad, but because the best budget hotels in Naples put you ten minutes from Pompeii’s train, twenty minutes from Capri’s ferry dock, and thirty seconds from the street where pizza was invented. I listened. ...

Disclosure: This article contains affiliate links. If you make a booking through these links, we may earn a commission at no extra cost to you. Why car rental in Sicily is the best decision you’ll make on this trip The woman at the Catania airport counter smiled and said she was doing us a favour. A full tank of fuel, pre-purchased, at a fixed rate — no need to worry about finding a station before returning the car. My partner looked at me. We’d read the warnings. We smiled back and said no thank you. ...

Disclosure: This article contains affiliate links. If you make a booking through these links, we may earn a commission at no extra cost to you. Cheap Flights from London to Naples: Your Gateway to Pompeii, Capri, and the Amalfi Coast I almost booked Barcelona. It was the safer choice — a city I knew, a route I’d flown five times, fares that wouldn’t surprise me. Then I found a Tuesday Ryanair fare from Stansted to Naples for £31, and everything changed. I was eating the city’s most famous pizza — a puffy, charred-crusted margherita at a packed counter on the edge of Spaccanapoli — by 11am the following Thursday, having paid less for the flight than I’d spent at Heathrow’s catering the time before. ...

Disclosure: This article contains affiliate links. If you make a booking through these links, we may earn a commission at no extra cost to you. Florence, Without the Rookie Mistakes We rolled into Florence on a sweltering August afternoon, dragging suitcases over the stone, and joined a queue for the Accademia that wrapped halfway down the block. Three hours of sun later, we finally stood in front of David — sweaty, footsore, and quietly furious that we hadn’t booked a ticket online for the price of a coffee. The man next to us, a local guide killing time, just shrugged: “Nobody who lives here waits in that line.” ...

Disclosure: This article contains affiliate links. If you make a booking through these links, we may earn a commission at no extra cost to you. Milan, Beyond the Duomo Selfie The first time I went to Milan I gave it a single day, treated it as a stopover on the way to Lake Como, and almost wrote it off. Big grey station, business suits, a cathedral mobbed with selfie sticks — where was the Italy everyone raved about? Then a friend who’d studied there texted me one line: “You’re standing in the wrong square. Walk fifteen minutes into Brera and try again.” She was right. By dusk I was lost in cobbled lanes, eating a panzerotto from a counter queue, watching the Navigli canals go gold — and I rebooked the next morning’s train. ...

Disclosure: This article contains affiliate links. If you make a booking through these links, we may earn a commission at no extra cost to you. Rome, Without the Rookie Mistakes The first time we did Rome we landed at Fiumicino in late July, sweated through a 40-minute queue at the Colosseum we hadn’t booked, and paid €19 for two sad plates of pasta on a square near the Pantheon. A Roman friend later put it bluntly: “You came in the worst month, queued for the one thing you should pre-book, and ate where the menu has photos.” She wasn’t wrong. We came back in early October, did it properly, and the city went from exhausting to easy. ...

Disclosure: This article contains affiliate links. If you make a booking through these links, we may earn a commission at no extra cost to you. Sardinia Travel Guide on a Budget: The Island That Rewards Patience I nearly went to Sardinia in August. I had the tab open, a decent-looking apartment in the Costa Smeralda, and my finger hovering over the checkout button — and then I saw the price for a hire car. More than my flight. I closed the tab, went back in September instead, and spent ten days driving empty roads to empty beaches for less than I’d have paid in August for three nights in a resort hotel. Sardinia in the shoulder season is not a compromise. It is the correct answer. ...

Disclosure: This article contains affiliate links. If you make a booking through these links, we may earn a commission at no extra cost to you. Sicily, Without the Rookie Mistakes We landed in Catania in early August, convinced two weeks was wildly generous for one island. By day three we’d sat in beach traffic, paid peak rates for a so-so room, and watched the thermometer hit 38°C while we queued for a granita. A guy at the next café table just laughed: “You came in August? Come back in May and you’ll think it’s a different country.” He was right. The Sicily we went back for in late spring — warm sea, half-empty temples, easy parking — is the one this guide is built around. ...

Disclosure: This article contains affiliate links. If you make a booking through these links, we may earn a commission at no extra cost to you. Venice, Without the Tourist-Trap Day We did Venice wrong the first time, and I can pinpoint the exact mistake: we booked a cheap hotel out in Mestre, on the mainland, to save money. It worked, sort of — until we realised we were riding the bus in every morning and leaving every evening, so we only ever saw Venice at peak-crowd noon, shoulder to shoulder with the day-trippers off the cruise ships. We never saw the city the locals talk about: empty alleys at dawn, lamplight on the canals after dark. ...

Disclosure: This article contains affiliate links. If you make a booking through these links, we may earn a commission at no extra cost to you. The Best Time to Visit Italy, in One Sentence The Amalfi hotel wanted 320 euros a night for the second week of August, and my friend just slid his phone across the table so I could see it. “Or,” he said, scrolling, “the same room, last week of September, is 190.” We nearly booked August anyway, because everyone tells you the Italian coast in late September is “rolling the dice.” It isn’t. We swam in a sea warmer than it had been all summer, ate at a Positano terrace we’d have queued an hour for in August, and I’ll tell you below the exact dates mistake we almost made. ...

Disclosure: This article contains affiliate links. If you make a booking through these links, we may earn a commission at no extra cost to you. Where to Base Yourself for a First Trip to Rome It was a warm Friday night last April, our first in Rome, and my wife and I were standing at the mouth of a Trastevere lane at 10pm with one suitcase wheel jammed sideways in the cobbles. A trattoria roared two doors down. She’d picked the place off a dozen saved photos months earlier, and it was every bit as pretty as promised — except the Vatican, our first stop the next morning, was a 35-minute haul away, there was no metro within reach, and four flights of stairs stood between us and the room. Nobody had mentioned any of that. By breakfast we’d quietly rebooked, and that one bad call is exactly why I can now tell you the best area to stay in Rome for first-timers without the guesswork. ...