Ultimate Italy Travel Guide: Tips, Destinations, & Using Points | All The Hacks #107 ft. Leigh Rowan
00:00:00.000 | The Italians have their own Michelin guide.
00:00:02.160 | It's called the Gambaro Rosso, the red shrimp.
00:00:04.960 | Um, and Gambaro Rosso is like the Bible for food and wine in Italy.
00:00:09.540 | If you get, uh, they have a fork rating.
00:00:12.040 | So if you get forks, it's a legit place, right?
00:00:15.460 | You should go up to three, I believe, or maybe it's four.
00:00:18.520 | I have to double check.
00:00:19.340 | But anyway, the more forks, the merrier, obviously.
00:00:21.980 | Um, so check out Gambaro Rosso.
00:00:25.000 | It oftentimes isn't only an Italian, so you might have to use Google
00:00:28.380 | translate to figure out what's going on.
00:00:30.060 | Um, but that's a great place to find off the beaten path restaurants.
00:00:34.440 | Look in, in a big city like Rome or Milan, um, you know, any international,
00:00:39.720 | um, you know, whether it's the New York times or the guy at the Michelin
00:00:42.380 | guide, or, uh, even, you know, uh, food blogs you've read, they're all
00:00:46.520 | going to have the same general information, but when you're going
00:00:48.840 | off the beaten path, uh, Gambaro Rosso is incredible.
00:00:51.440 | And actually I find the most joy in smaller Italian towns.
00:00:56.020 | And I find that if you just go a little outside of the tourist envelope, right.
00:01:00.200 | You can have these incredible culinary experiences that are half the price
00:01:04.520 | sometimes of the tourist bubbles.
00:01:06.000 | Um, but there's so much richer and more meaningful and
00:01:09.720 | more connected to the area.
00:01:10.860 | Lee, thank you for being here.
00:01:18.400 | Round three, uh, you get to take the title as most, most visited guests.
00:01:23.080 | You already had it, but now you get it again.
00:01:24.720 | I feel incredibly honored.
00:01:25.640 | Thank you for having me here.
00:01:26.720 | Thank you for having me here in this new, uh, setup you have.
00:01:29.540 | I'm looking around.
00:01:30.100 | It's really quite impressive.
00:01:31.700 | Beautiful job you've done.
00:01:32.540 | Yeah.
00:01:32.960 | I took this course, dreamstudiocourse.com that this guy, Kevin Chen created.
00:01:37.240 | And you'll get a better view if you're watching this on
00:01:40.000 | YouTube than listening.
00:01:40.880 | Can't really see it.
00:01:41.720 | Uh, you'll get an even better view when I start to actually record in a couple
00:01:44.640 | of days with virtual thing, because that was what I optimized for, but there is
00:01:47.960 | now an in-studio option for all the hacks, which we have here.
00:01:51.720 | It's very cool.
00:01:52.500 | Very cool.
00:01:52.920 | Thank you for inviting me in here to chat about one of my favorite
00:01:55.360 | places in the entire, entire world.
00:01:57.200 | Yeah.
00:01:57.680 | So I am excited because we started with London because I was going on a trip
00:02:01.800 | and I wanted to figure it out.
00:02:02.800 | And then we dove into Japan and now we're talking to Italy, which I'm really
00:02:07.760 | excited about because I was about to go to London.
00:02:10.640 | I had been to Japan a lot and Italy is kind of like the, I went on the few
00:02:15.520 | days after our college whirlwind trip, but you know, it's a trip that we want
00:02:19.640 | to take and it's not going to happen this year, uh, but it's going to happen
00:02:23.160 | in the future and I'm really excited to dive in.
00:02:25.040 | I don't know a lot.
00:02:26.040 | I'm glad we have the expert here.
00:02:27.600 | Yeah.
00:02:28.120 | Well, I appreciate you inviting me, of course, and giving me this chance to chat
00:02:31.680 | about something that is truly one of my favorite places for people, for food,
00:02:35.760 | for culture, for beauty, for sites, for, I mean, we could chat for much longer
00:02:40.400 | than this podcast will go about everything that's great in Italy.
00:02:43.120 | So I'm excited to dive into your questions and center some of my own passion.
00:02:47.000 | Yeah.
00:02:47.480 | So why do you keep going back?
00:02:49.400 | What is it?
00:02:49.840 | I mean, you just listed a bunch of things, but what makes
00:02:51.920 | Italy such a unique travel place?
00:02:53.720 | Yeah.
00:02:54.360 | Well, I've been to 70 countries.
00:02:55.960 | I've been very fortunate to go all seven continents around the world.
00:02:58.560 | And the thing that makes me feel most at home in Italy is just that
00:03:02.040 | the Italians know how to live.
00:03:03.320 | They know how to live life.
00:03:04.520 | Great food, great food and drink, um, great food, great wine, great coffee.
00:03:13.000 | But more than all of that, it's just this continual enjoyment of life.
00:03:18.240 | There's the evening passeggiata where people walk, walking, by the way,
00:03:22.800 | walking, like everywhere, everywhere you can go, you walk, which is incredible.
00:03:26.120 | Big cities, small cities, everyone walks.
00:03:27.840 | But, but they're out and about and they're walking from cafe to cafe.
00:03:31.440 | They're seeing friends, they're being social.
00:03:33.360 | No, one's in a hurry.
00:03:34.360 | No, one's in a rush.
00:03:35.200 | No, one's off to catch the next thing.
00:03:36.880 | They're just there living in the moment being.
00:03:39.640 | And if you look at that as sort of like a, a narrative, uh, example
00:03:45.520 | of how you can live, right.
00:03:47.560 | These people have been doing this for thousands of years, 3000 years
00:03:49.880 | of civilization in Italy where they're just being, there's no greater thing
00:03:54.920 | to do or to do list or all these things that keep us busy here at home.
00:03:58.560 | It's just being, and that for me is so refreshing.
00:04:02.080 | So I feel like I have to go back and back and back to get another taste
00:04:05.520 | of that every, every, every chance I get.
00:04:07.440 | And of course the food when I'm there, I'm tasting that too.
00:04:10.000 | And it's just, it's, it's incredible.
00:04:12.320 | The diversity and the ability of the Italian cuisine to take
00:04:16.320 | these wonderful things from, uh, you know, throughout their natural,
00:04:20.440 | abundant resources, the sea, the mountains, their fields, and turn them
00:04:24.400 | into these masterpieces on the table.
00:04:25.920 | Wow.
00:04:26.960 | Okay.
00:04:27.600 | So I think one of the things I'm just going to preface everyone to consider,
00:04:30.760 | which is, you know, a lot of times people travel and they say, I got
00:04:33.600 | to go do this, this, this, this, this.
00:04:34.840 | Sounds like a big attraction in Italy is learning to kind of
00:04:39.200 | relax and enjoy what you're doing.
00:04:40.760 | So maybe that's a theme that we'll just kind of keep here, which is as
00:04:43.880 | much as we might talk about lots of cool things to see and do, don't
00:04:47.960 | feel like you need to spend every single moment of every single day.
00:04:51.120 | That is a hundred percent.
00:04:53.080 | The biggest takeaway I think people can take from this podcast is the
00:04:56.040 | discussion of, um, be here now in the moment, the place that you are in
00:05:01.280 | Italy, knowing that you're, yeah, you're not going to see all the rest of it.
00:05:04.360 | Like I've been to Italy over 40 or 50 times.
00:05:07.560 | I forgot the count.
00:05:08.280 | And, um, what's crazy is that out of all of the 12, 20 Italian
00:05:12.960 | regions that there are, uh, I'm still missing a few of them.
00:05:16.000 | Okay.
00:05:16.680 | After been there, after having been there 40 times, so, you know, I, an
00:05:22.720 | Italophile, somebody who loves going to Italy, speaking Italian, eating
00:05:26.120 | Italian food, seeing Italian culture.
00:05:27.720 | I still haven't seen it all.
00:05:29.560 | And I will never see it all because there's such a
00:05:31.640 | diversity in that country.
00:05:32.880 | 60 plus million people.
00:05:34.720 | You know, it's the fifth most visited country in the world.
00:05:36.960 | Um, but there is still so much to see that people don't scratch, uh,
00:05:42.160 | be on the surface and see when they do their Rome, Florence, Venice trip.
00:05:45.960 | And they think they've seen Italy.
00:05:47.040 | You've seen three cities in Italy, come back and see everything.
00:05:50.720 | Come see a lot more.
00:05:51.560 | Well, I think most people listening probably won't in their
00:05:54.760 | lifetime, make 40 trips to Italy.
00:05:56.720 | I hope you will.
00:05:58.320 | Yeah.
00:05:58.640 | I mean, it sounds wonderful, but let's, let's just talk high level.
00:06:02.320 | Someone wants to go to it and it's impossible to see it all.
00:06:06.720 | But nobody, or most people don't have 10 weeks, you know, a year
00:06:11.360 | to go spend in Italy, which I'm sure if they did, you would highly recommend.
00:06:14.200 | But maybe they've got a week or two and they're like, I want to go see Italy.
00:06:16.880 | I want to experience what you're talking about.
00:06:18.840 | How would you suggest they start to approach it?
00:06:21.320 | Or, or what are a few different approaches?
00:06:22.960 | Yeah.
00:06:23.360 | Great question.
00:06:24.000 | So I think the first thing to realize and understand is that
00:06:27.440 | no approach is the right approach.
00:06:29.040 | There are so many different ways of seeing Italy and so many different.
00:06:31.960 | You look at it as like a matrix, right?
00:06:33.640 | All the different cities, all the different sites, all the
00:06:36.680 | different reasons for visiting.
00:06:38.560 | Right.
00:06:39.120 | And you could go just see museums and be busy for 10 days in Rome alone.
00:06:43.320 | Right.
00:06:43.800 | Or you could do the Rome, Venice, Florence, you know, tour, Milan tour
00:06:49.240 | of all the museums or all the churches and historical sites, and still not
00:06:52.080 | see all of the highlights that you can see in 10 days.
00:06:55.160 | So I think knowing that you're going into it, leaving a lot on the table,
00:06:58.960 | leaving things to come back and visit in the future is great.
00:07:01.600 | The second idea is knowing that it's really easy to burn out on too much
00:07:06.560 | eating, too much museuming, too much churching as you go to Italy.
00:07:09.680 | Right.
00:07:10.000 | And so building a nice mix in an itinerary is a really important thing to do.
00:07:14.640 | Um, so where do I find inspiration?
00:07:17.400 | You know, there's a lot of really great media right now, um, that focuses on
00:07:22.200 | an aspect of Italian culture or life.
00:07:24.240 | You know, Stanley Tucci has been doing for the past two years, his sort of
00:07:28.040 | Tor d'Italia, and he's going to all 20 regions and he's eating his way through.
00:07:31.800 | And if you look at the way that he's approached his episodes, these
00:07:34.640 | hour-long sort of opus, you know, these hour-long bits of love to Lazio where
00:07:39.440 | Rome is or Campania where they grow the tomatoes that become your, your, um,
00:07:44.760 | pizza tomatoes here in the States.
00:07:46.760 | You look at him really getting to know a people and a culture and a place,
00:07:50.880 | something that he's very familiar with already, but through the lens of food
00:07:55.160 | and people or food and culture.
00:07:57.000 | And that's a wonderful approach for people to take is they find some
00:08:01.400 | angle that they love, whether it's in a book or TV series and they say, Hey, I
00:08:05.280 | want to go recreate an element of that on my trip.
00:08:07.520 | So I want to go to the place where.
00:08:09.840 | You know, Stanley Tucci finds the tomato in the field of San Marzano and says,
00:08:14.440 | okay, I found the real tomato.
00:08:16.160 | Now I know what it's supposed to taste like.
00:08:17.560 | Um, and that's a, that's a centerpiece for their trip.
00:08:19.920 | Right.
00:08:20.560 | But there are so many blogs that are out there.
00:08:22.520 | There's so many travel advisors willing to help.
00:08:24.280 | There's so many books you can read about everything to eat, see, and do in Italy.
00:08:30.000 | Um, my biggest takeaway for people again, is take your time and know that
00:08:35.520 | you're not going to see it all.
00:08:36.560 | You're not going to do it all.
00:08:37.600 | And, uh, you're going to have an amazing time in the process
00:08:40.400 | of whatever you do, see, and do.
00:08:41.520 | So I feel like I'm both more excited to go to Italy and I have no idea what
00:08:46.680 | I should do with a week in a trip.
00:08:48.040 | So maybe give some options.
00:08:50.200 | I'm thinking one to two weeks, maybe let's throw out two or three things
00:08:55.400 | that you might send someone to.
00:08:56.800 | Yeah.
00:08:57.280 | Is Rome a must include on any first trip to Italy?
00:09:00.400 | In my opinion, yes.
00:09:01.600 | All roads lead to Rome for good reason, right?
00:09:04.000 | Look, it's the third most visited city in all of Europe.
00:09:06.600 | To me, it is a place that is happy and fun and lively and young and still so very
00:09:13.000 | old, full of incredible cuisine, full of some of the best historical sites in the
00:09:17.280 | world.
00:09:17.600 | Look, to me, the fact that they could build the Pantheon, this concrete domed
00:09:23.160 | roof with an open hole in the Oculus in the center 2000 years ago, and it's still
00:09:28.160 | standing.
00:09:28.720 | It's still standing.
00:09:30.000 | It's like mind blowing.
00:09:31.040 | Like we can build things here.
00:09:32.320 | We can build a road here.
00:09:33.280 | They can build a 2000 years ago, a dome that is in the center of town.
00:09:37.680 | That, um, is remarkable.
00:09:39.840 | And so when you see that you have this sense of awe that returns to you, whether
00:09:43.680 | you've been there 40 times or this is the first, right?
00:09:46.760 | So I think Rome is absolutely an incredible place to go and go, go see the
00:09:51.640 | sites, go see the touristy sites that are overcrowded, the Colosseum, Vatican,
00:09:55.760 | because they really are monuments to humanity and to an incredible society that
00:10:00.680 | has built and upkept these buildings for 2000 years.
00:10:04.280 | But also get lost, go off the beaten path in Rome and don't just go to the fancy
00:10:09.760 | gelateria across from the Trevi Fountain.
00:10:11.800 | It's beautiful.
00:10:12.520 | It's great for Instagram, but go wind through the streets of Trastevere across
00:10:17.080 | the river where the Romans live and the Romans go eat and explore that little
00:10:21.520 | village and see what it's like to be in a little borgo, a little village inside
00:10:25.480 | of a big metropolitan city, have a meal on a piazza where maybe you're the only
00:10:31.960 | person who doesn't speak fluent Italian.
00:10:33.360 | That's okay.
00:10:33.960 | You're going to be welcomed in.
00:10:35.680 | You're going to eat an incredible meal, and you're going to see the way that
00:10:38.880 | the dolce farniente, the sweetness of doing nothing passes by in front of you
00:10:44.200 | on passeggiata as people are walking from the cafe to their restaurant,
00:10:47.920 | to their home and beyond.
00:10:49.040 | Okay.
00:10:50.200 | That's Rome.
00:10:51.040 | That's Rome.
00:10:51.560 | Okay.
00:10:52.160 | So let's say I want to do Rome and something else.
00:10:53.840 | What are a few options?
00:10:54.600 | Well, you know, from Rome within, if you draw like a big circle, you say, I want
00:10:58.760 | to take a two-hour train ride from Rome.
00:11:00.320 | You've got a ton of options, North and South.
00:11:02.640 | Traditionally, people would go South to the Amalfi Coast.
00:11:05.600 | It's incredible.
00:11:06.600 | It's iconic.
00:11:07.440 | It's beautiful.
00:11:08.040 | It's been made famous since movies in the fifties, right?
00:11:10.840 | Where you're driving along these mountainside roads and there's a sheer
00:11:13.960 | cliff, 200, 500 feet down and beautiful beaches and incredible food and wine.
00:11:19.520 | That's amazing.
00:11:20.240 | It really is.
00:11:21.400 | But Amalfi, the downside to it is that everyone wants to be there.
00:11:23.720 | So that coast between let's say June and early September is a zoo.
00:11:29.600 | What is normally a 20 minute ride in a car or a bus could be an hour and a half
00:11:34.640 | stuck in traffic on a one lane road.
00:11:36.160 | That's a bummer when you're on a limited vacation time.
00:11:39.720 | So what I would recommend is go to Amalfi, but maybe go in May or
00:11:43.160 | go in late September or October.
00:11:44.760 | Weather's still amazing.
00:11:46.040 | You can experience it and that's wonderful.
00:11:48.360 | So another piece to take away from the conversation is seasonality.
00:11:52.200 | You can always go to Rome.
00:11:53.560 | Rome is happening year round.
00:11:54.840 | It's harder to go to a beach in November, but the Amalfi Coast in
00:11:59.480 | October is still really lovely.
00:12:01.040 | And you'll have a third of the crowds that are there throughout the year.
00:12:04.440 | Nearby Amalfi, you've got Naples.
00:12:07.520 | You've got Pompeii or Ercanuleo, which is the nearby town that's like a mini
00:12:13.200 | Pompeii that has incredible ruins that are really not visited.
00:12:17.120 | You can go walk amongst 2000 year old homes that were damaged in the ash from
00:12:22.240 | Vesuvius in 79 AD and you can just walk around and there's no one around you.
00:12:26.320 | Whereas in Pompeii, it can be pretty busy.
00:12:28.400 | So there's little alternatives to each place along the way that
00:12:33.600 | you should try to explore.
00:12:34.760 | But if you don't want to go South, you can always go North.
00:12:37.720 | Florence is only an hour and 20 minute train ride from Rome.
00:12:41.360 | There's trains that leave every 15 minutes.
00:12:43.680 | It's an incredible town.
00:12:45.120 | It's like a medieval village that still comes alive today.
00:12:48.760 | And I actually studied abroad there and did culinary school there in 2003.
00:12:53.640 | Wow, a little while ago.
00:12:55.880 | And it was just an incredible place to be young, to be alive and to be
00:13:00.320 | living in a medieval city of today.
00:13:02.560 | So great sights and sounds, amazing food.
00:13:05.200 | If you like pork, that is your city.
00:13:07.280 | If you like red wine, that is your region.
00:13:09.120 | And there's a ton to do.
00:13:10.880 | But let's say you've done Rome and you've done Florence before.
00:13:14.800 | Um, what do you do on your second or third trip back to Italy?
00:13:18.160 | Um, most of your flights are going to fly either into Rome or
00:13:21.240 | into Milan in the North.
00:13:22.360 | That's where most of the flights from North America tend to land.
00:13:25.040 | So what I like to do is get off the beaten path and explore other areas that, um, are
00:13:31.120 | maybe less popular with North American tourists, but still to me, pack
00:13:35.040 | authenticity, incredible food and great experiences into a small area.
00:13:39.320 | So something to consider might be Umbria, the green heart of Italy.
00:13:43.400 | That's right next to Tuscany.
00:13:45.400 | Um, you have 2000 year old villages there.
00:13:48.160 | In fact, sometimes even older to the Etruscan age.
00:13:50.680 | You've got incredible food and wine.
00:13:52.920 | Uh, and you've got a third of the tourists that are in Tuscany and you're probably
00:13:57.400 | paying half to three quarters of the price as well.
00:13:59.280 | So that's a wonderful place.
00:14:00.920 | If you feel confident and you're okay to get off the beaten path by yourself,
00:14:04.200 | even if you don't speak Italian, you can get by in Umbria, eat, drink, and see
00:14:08.520 | well, and go see some incredible sites and sounds that are, uh, unlike
00:14:13.720 | anywhere else in the world.
00:14:15.080 | The last plug I'll make for Umbria, by the way, in May, May 15th, every year,
00:14:21.160 | my favorite festival in the whole world takes place.
00:14:23.880 | It's called the Corsa di Ceri.
00:14:26.400 | What that means is the running of the candles.
00:14:28.560 | You think running of the candles?
00:14:30.640 | How does that candle blows out when you run?
00:14:32.520 | None of that does that work.
00:14:33.440 | These crazy people in this town of Gubbio, they take these huge wooden slats.
00:14:39.040 | They're like 30 feet long and a bunch of husky men hold onto them.
00:14:44.080 | And on top of the slats are these big, tall columns with a Saint on top.
00:14:48.080 | And they run these columns of these candles through the town, through the
00:14:53.520 | medieval town and the, you know, the walls of the buildings next to you are
00:14:57.480 | like encroaching upon these candles as you run through the streets and they
00:15:02.240 | sing songs and they play trumpets and music.
00:15:05.040 | And it's insane.
00:15:06.400 | It's a, it's a party and no one outside of Italy goes there.
00:15:09.920 | It's like, not like it's a running of the bulls or the Tomatera in Spain.
00:15:13.920 | It's like this true Italian festival in the heart of Umbria.
00:15:17.960 | And, um, I've only been twice.
00:15:20.520 | I would love to go back again because it's, to me, it's the most exciting
00:15:25.280 | element of seeing people in their thing, doing their thing, living their lives,
00:15:28.920 | uh, celebrating their history and culture and having a blast doing it.
00:15:32.600 | Wow.
00:15:33.480 | Uh, you, you said a couple of times, even if you don't speak Italian, should anyone
00:15:38.600 | be nervous going to Italy if they speak no Italian?
00:15:41.360 | No, because the Italians are the kindest, nicest people.
00:15:45.720 | And I say that as a overarching stereotype.
00:15:48.280 | You're going to have your bad apples for sure.
00:15:49.840 | But the people who work in trades that tourists are going to be engaging
00:15:56.000 | with restaurateurs, cafe owners, cafe workers, uh, transportation people,
00:16:00.960 | et cetera, are really excited that a big lifeblood of Italian economy
00:16:05.560 | tourism is back right during COVID.
00:16:08.040 | Italy was one of the places that locked down the hardest in Europe.
00:16:10.640 | And it was tough for Italians to even leave their homes.
00:16:13.520 | Now that you can leave your home, the Italians are so excited to have
00:16:17.520 | work again, to have an influx of tourists again, and to see people.
00:16:21.680 | You know, like in 2019, there were 65 million tourists that came to Italy.
00:16:26.200 | Okay.
00:16:26.880 | 2022, that number was down by about a third and 2022 was the busiest year
00:16:32.480 | for tourism since COVID obviously.
00:16:34.360 | So that's, that's quite a difference going from 65 million to about
00:16:37.840 | 40 million in terms of tourists.
00:16:39.920 | So tourism is huge for a country of 60 million that really relies on.
00:16:44.000 | Um, you know, tourist dollars and tourist euros, I guess.
00:16:47.480 | So getting by without Italian is totally fine.
00:16:50.800 | You may end up in these off the beaten path, Phil towns,
00:16:54.360 | where they get fewer tourists.
00:16:55.680 | You may end up doing the whole pointing thing, the, you know, shrugging your
00:17:00.040 | shoulders thing when you don't know a word and that's totally okay.
00:17:02.520 | The Italians roll with the punches and they love that.
00:17:04.640 | So I would not feel worried at all about not speaking the language.
00:17:09.160 | Instead, I would maybe if you have a few hours before you go study up on
00:17:13.440 | Duolingo or brush up on, you know, learning some Italian phrases online,
00:17:17.800 | a little bit of Italian will go a long way and you'll never have to worry about,
00:17:21.320 | um, you know, feeling like you have no idea what you're saying.
00:17:24.320 | Any other kind of cultural norms worth calling out?
00:17:28.440 | So people kind of fit in and don't, don't stand out like
00:17:32.160 | American tourists sometimes can.
00:17:33.680 | Yeah.
00:17:34.240 | Don't try to make a 6 PM dinner reservation.
00:17:37.560 | You know, the Italians, uh, they're not the Spaniards where they're eating at
00:17:40.600 | 11 o'clock at night, but, but they're not far off.
00:17:42.720 | Uh, they do eat on a different schedule than North Americans typically do.
00:17:47.360 | So breakfast is lighter.
00:17:49.200 | It's a cappuccino coffee of some sort and a croissant or a piece of bread.
00:17:55.600 | Uh, lunch is a big affair and it can go on sometimes for two or even three hours.
00:18:00.480 | Um, but dinner, uh, will take place usually very late.
00:18:04.720 | Seven o'clock is the absolute earliest people eat in the winter.
00:18:07.720 | And the summer it's even pushed to eight or sometimes nine.
00:18:10.360 | So if you're walking around and you see the restaurant and it says
00:18:13.800 | they open up at 2100, don't think that it's like a nightclub.
00:18:16.200 | It's actually just their standard business hours for dinner.
00:18:18.680 | And when we were there with even young kids, um, you know, this summer we, we
00:18:24.120 | would eat at like eight 39 o'clock and we'd be finishing our meal at 10 30 or
00:18:28.480 | 11, and there'd be families with kids, our kids' ages sitting down for dinner
00:18:33.320 | at 11 o'clock, which is really, really crazy.
00:18:36.120 | Do people sleep in or, or like, how do they make this work?
00:18:39.640 | They do.
00:18:40.160 | They sleep in and they take a pause up rounds though.
00:18:42.880 | They take a big gap for lunch.
00:18:44.600 | So if you're working in an office, let's say from about 1230 or one to about
00:18:50.240 | three o'clock, maybe a little later, you're kind of out of the office.
00:18:53.480 | People are either eating a long lunch.
00:18:55.960 | They're napping.
00:18:56.880 | They're just not working.
00:18:58.080 | They're going for that pasta Jata, whatever they're doing.
00:19:00.560 | But, um, people do tend to take a gap in the middle of the day.
00:19:03.400 | Okay.
00:19:04.160 | And so you went with young kids.
00:19:06.080 | Did you just kind of change the time schedule so that they were just
00:19:10.000 | up later and sleep in later?
00:19:11.520 | You have to.
00:19:12.080 | Yeah.
00:19:12.520 | And we mandated a family nap, not just kidnap, but a family nap every
00:19:17.960 | afternoon, because in the summer in particular, depending on where
00:19:20.760 | you are, it can be very hot.
00:19:21.760 | So having a midday nap was a nice thing, but you know, it would be amazing.
00:19:26.440 | We'd see kids out at 11 o'clock, 12 o'clock at night.
00:19:28.800 | And then those same kids would be up at like, you know, nine 30 in the
00:19:31.680 | morning and I'm like, how do you do it?
00:19:33.200 | Is it easy to meet local Italians?
00:19:37.240 | What's the vibe like between tourists and locals when it comes to meeting
00:19:42.240 | each other, trying to make friends with locals and kind of get a true,
00:19:45.760 | authentic local experience.
00:19:47.000 | So I would say the more of an authentic and local place you're in, the more
00:19:51.000 | likely you are to meet Italians.
00:19:52.520 | What I mean by that is Piazza Navona in Rome.
00:19:55.800 | One of the most incredible piazzas that there is, it's, you know, got
00:20:00.120 | beautiful fountains in the middle and benches all around that and
00:20:02.920 | restaurants circling the entire piazza.
00:20:05.000 | And it's an incredible place, but it's not built for Romans.
00:20:07.960 | It's built for tourists, right?
00:20:09.400 | Romans go there, but if you wanted to meet Romans, you're going to meet them
00:20:13.320 | in the piazza around Santa Maria in Trastevere, the place I mentioned
00:20:17.280 | earlier, Trastevere, you're going to meet tourists in tourist places.
00:20:22.120 | You're going to meet Europeans or Italians in particular in their
00:20:26.000 | neighborhoods and where they are.
00:20:27.880 | So what I would recommend is, you know, choose the opportunities to meet with
00:20:32.760 | people and seek them out and go find them because you will find them and
00:20:37.200 | people will want to meet you.
00:20:38.240 | They'll want to hear your story.
00:20:39.320 | Where are you from?
00:20:39.800 | Why are you here?
00:20:40.480 | They're so proud to show off their neighborhood or their
00:20:42.880 | city or their country.
00:20:44.160 | And so when they hear, oh, wow, you're Californian amazing.
00:20:47.480 | I've always dreamed of going to California is the thing that they'll say.
00:20:51.800 | And then they'll be so proud to show you their piazza.
00:20:53.720 | They'll be so happy that you're there.
00:20:54.920 | So find the Romans in their neighborhoods.
00:20:58.800 | Find the Italians in their cities, not necessarily at the tourist trap.
00:21:02.720 | And how are you getting around Italy?
00:21:05.160 | You know, are you buying into one city and renting a car?
00:21:08.080 | You mentioned the train.
00:21:09.240 | I know you could probably even fly between cities.
00:21:11.280 | What's the, what's the logistics there?
00:21:13.320 | The trains run pretty well.
00:21:14.840 | I mean, Mussolini did that whole thing, I guess, and electrified
00:21:19.000 | and brought trains everywhere.
00:21:20.480 | And there was some dilapidation after that.
00:21:23.280 | And, uh, the trains nowadays don't run perfectly, but they're fairly reliable.
00:21:28.280 | Um, so I would say to take a train as much as you can.
00:21:31.720 | You definitely don't need to drive a car if you're going
00:21:33.520 | from city to city to city.
00:21:34.640 | When you get into the country, the trains don't run.
00:21:37.240 | Um, and so buses run or private car transfers are very
00:21:41.360 | simple and easy to set up.
00:21:42.440 | If you're going to be staying in Tuscany or Umbria, and you're
00:21:45.920 | going to want to explore from your hotel or your villa, absolutely rent a car.
00:21:50.520 | Driving in Italy is interesting.
00:21:52.800 | It's easy, but it's, um, I would take caution as you drive because Italian
00:22:00.160 | drivers can be a little aggressive.
00:22:01.520 | Um, nothing to be scared about or worried about.
00:22:03.800 | There's no road rage.
00:22:04.720 | They're just going to pass you by because you're going too slow.
00:22:07.000 | That's fine.
00:22:08.280 | Um, Italian towns tend to be very small and, uh, roadways even smaller.
00:22:13.360 | So when you drive from town to town, uh, it may be hard for you to find
00:22:17.840 | parking inside town walls, just park outside and walk in it's easy.
00:22:21.240 | Better than trying to navigate your rental car through medieval streets
00:22:25.160 | that were really meant for cows and sheep, not for humans, not for cars.
00:22:28.400 | Um, you don't want to have that on your car insurance bill, but, um, as a
00:22:33.600 | general rule, it's easy to get around in Italy, uh, when you plan ahead and
00:22:38.160 | you know, the train schedules from city to city, uh, and then from there, if
00:22:42.240 | you need to take a taxi or a car rental beyond, so you said, plan ahead.
00:22:46.040 | What do you think people need to be doing before their trip?
00:22:48.800 | And maybe you and I both like saving money.
00:22:51.880 | Like, let's say you're planning a trip.
00:22:53.240 | You've kind of figured out your itinerary.
00:22:54.440 | What are you thinking you should do in ahead of time in any deal, any way to
00:22:58.720 | get a deal, whether it's transportation, flights, lodging, what are you thinking
00:23:02.600 | about?
00:23:02.920 | Yeah.
00:23:03.400 | So it definitely goes to say that the places, you know, you want to go book in
00:23:09.000 | advance.
00:23:09.560 | So that goes for hotels.
00:23:11.520 | It's obviously a lot cheaper to book in advance for, um, most of these hotels.
00:23:15.760 | You can book a nonrefundable rate with a lot of them, and then you'll save 10 to
00:23:18.680 | 20%.
00:23:19.320 | Um, you can also call a hotel at a time and say, Hey, listen, I see you've got a
00:23:23.000 | nonrefundable thing online.
00:23:24.160 | What if I went even further and said, I don't need breakfast, right?
00:23:27.200 | Uh, they might even do a bigger deal with you for that.
00:23:29.560 | And if you're interested, um, but booking ahead is very important for hotels.
00:23:33.040 | Um, trains in particular, your trains will be allowable to book between 30 and 60
00:23:39.040 | days out in Italy, depending on the train line you're on.
00:23:42.040 | And typically the cheapest rates are 30 to 60 days out.
00:23:45.160 | So I'd highly recommend that.
00:23:46.640 | Um, also recommend, uh, restaurant reservations, um, at places you must go
00:23:52.600 | book them in advance, but don't book every night.
00:23:57.600 | Give yourself some flexibility on what spontaneously might happen, what you want
00:24:02.200 | to pop into, where you want to go, et cetera.
00:24:04.520 | The places that you have to go, like the Pierluigi in Rome or Osteria Francescana,
00:24:09.640 | if you can get in and Modena book, those build your trip around them if you need
00:24:13.800 | to, but, um, when you're in a place, don't have every single meal booked because
00:24:18.880 | you may want to have that spontaneity to just, you know, eat a bunch of prosciutto
00:24:24.440 | on the side of the road.
00:24:25.240 | Cause it's really good.
00:24:26.600 | And it's there.
00:24:27.160 | You never know.
00:24:28.120 | So we talked a little bit about restaurants, broadly speaking, when
00:24:31.840 | someone's doing research, is there a reliable site for Italy to kind of figure
00:24:37.000 | out where to go?
00:24:37.760 | What's good.
00:24:38.480 | Or what do you recommend?
00:24:39.440 | Yeah.
00:24:39.960 | So.
00:24:40.520 | I use a couple of sites as a travel advisor myself when I'm trying to figure
00:24:44.600 | out new and upcoming places to check out or to send people.
00:24:47.480 | The first is that the Italians have their own Michelin guide.
00:24:51.000 | Uh, it's called the Gambaro Rosso, the red shrimp.
00:24:53.760 | Um, and Gambaro Rosso is like the Bible for food and wine in Italy.
00:24:58.320 | If you get, uh, they have a fork rating.
00:25:00.800 | So if you get forks, it's a legit place, right?
00:25:04.240 | You should go up to three, I believe, or maybe it's four.
00:25:07.280 | I have to double check.
00:25:08.120 | But anyway, the more forks, the merrier obviously.
00:25:10.760 | Um, so check out Gambaro Rosso.
00:25:13.800 | It oftentimes isn't only in Italian.
00:25:16.160 | So you might have to use Google translate to figure out what's going on.
00:25:18.840 | Um, but that's a great place to find off the beaten path.
00:25:22.040 | Restaurants look in, in a big city like Rome or Milan.
00:25:25.360 | Um, you know, any international, um, you know, whether it's the New York
00:25:30.080 | times or the guide, the Michelin guide, or, uh, even, you know, uh, food blogs
00:25:34.600 | you've read, they're all going to have the same general information, but when
00:25:37.360 | you're going off the beaten path, uh, Gambaro Rosso is incredible.
00:25:40.240 | And actually I find the most joy in smaller Italian towns.
00:25:43.760 | And I find that if you just go a little outside of the tourist envelope, right,
00:25:49.000 | you can have these incredible culinary experiences that are half the price
00:25:53.320 | sometimes of the tourist bubbles.
00:25:54.840 | Um, but there's so much richer and more meaningful and
00:25:58.520 | more connected to the area.
00:25:59.760 | An example.
00:26:01.000 | Um, I love the Cinque Terre.
00:26:03.760 | It's one of the top spots to see in the North of Italy and the Italian
00:26:06.960 | Riviera in the Liguria state state that borders basically goes from almost
00:26:12.560 | Pisa all the way over to the French border.
00:26:14.320 | And it's this little horseshoe on the Italian coast.
00:26:17.120 | It's stunningly gorgeous.
00:26:18.320 | You've got the five towns of the Cinque Terre.
00:26:20.800 | You've got Genoa, you've got Portofino, these really
00:26:24.680 | iconic and incredible places.
00:26:26.040 | But they're very, very, very touristy.
00:26:27.960 | And so for me, instead of eating in Portofino and spending 15 Euro for a
00:26:34.000 | panino that I could get three Euro elsewhere, right, I'd rather go elsewhere
00:26:38.920 | and explore and see what else I could find and eat.
00:26:41.000 | So a great example is a town right next to Portofino called Rapallo.
00:26:46.120 | I actually have lived in Rapallo on and off a couple of times during the
00:26:49.360 | summers, because every time we have a child, we decide that we're going to go
00:26:53.880 | to Rapallo and spend our parental leave there.
00:26:56.240 | It's just an incredibly magnetic place.
00:26:58.680 | But Rapallo is a town with kind of nothing to do, but everywhere to go easily from.
00:27:04.440 | And the eating there is exceptional.
00:27:07.680 | There's a little prosciutto place right on the harbor called Parla Come Mangi.
00:27:12.880 | Speak like you eat, that's the name of it.
00:27:14.920 | And they highlight local prosciutto and salami and cheese makers from around the
00:27:19.800 | region and from actually around Northern Italy, and that's all they sell is
00:27:23.760 | prosciutto, cheese, salumi, and some sauces.
00:27:27.600 | It's like this amazing delicatessen experience.
00:27:29.800 | Again, you don't need to speak English going in there.
00:27:32.040 | You don't need to know what you want.
00:27:33.160 | You just kind of go in and say, "Hey, I like this."
00:27:35.800 | And they'll guide you through the whole experience.
00:27:37.240 | So you could go spend 15 Euro for a panino made in Portofino.
00:27:42.840 | That's just fine.
00:27:43.960 | Or you can go spend 15 Euro and get three different tastes of
00:27:48.080 | things from Parla Come Mangi, and life is good.
00:27:51.000 | You'll see it in Gambarorosso.
00:27:52.920 | You'll see it on maybe some food blogs because it's now gained popularity.
00:27:55.840 | But that's an incredible spot.
00:27:58.040 | And the same idea, by the way, when I lived in Rapallo, we'd go down to the
00:28:01.800 | Cinque Terre for the day.
00:28:03.040 | We'd go see the five towns, but we didn't have to be there, immersed in them and
00:28:07.000 | all of the tourist sort of onslaught that was there.
00:28:09.640 | And that, to me, was a great way of seeing and experiencing the culture, but not
00:28:13.600 | having to be enveloped in it.
00:28:16.000 | We could choose we wanted to see the tourist experience, but we could also
00:28:23.200 | live like Italian locals.
00:28:25.120 | So my recommendation is if you're going to some places like Como, Cinque
00:28:30.080 | Terre, really popular tourist sites, maybe even Venice, right?
00:28:33.760 | Take a look at the nearby areas and say, does it make better sense for me to stay
00:28:38.840 | in those nearby areas and then maybe pop in to the tourist spot for a day or two,
00:28:44.120 | as opposed to basing myself in the tourist bubble and kind of only experiencing that.
00:28:49.720 | And where are you staying when you're kind of leaving a city center?
00:28:53.240 | I know in a lot of countries, like there's not a hotel there.
00:28:55.800 | Are you booking Airbnbs?
00:28:57.800 | Is there a different site in Italy that it's for finding houses or apartments?
00:29:01.880 | So Italy has all ranges of accommodation.
00:29:04.480 | The most expensive hotel in Northern Italy outside of Venice is actually in
00:29:09.240 | Portofino, it's the Belmond there.
00:29:11.040 | And it's an incredible property.
00:29:12.840 | But right outside of Portofino, you have Santa Margherita, you have got
00:29:17.080 | Rapallo, you've got other towns.
00:29:18.560 | And in those towns, there are four and five star hotels that are not the
00:29:22.200 | Belmond, but they're lovely and they're a third or a quarter of the price.
00:29:26.360 | For an interestingly similar level of luxury, not the same, but close.
00:29:31.480 | You of course can go much down market from there and you can
00:29:34.440 | find lots of wonderful things.
00:29:35.880 | The Italians are huge on camping.
00:29:37.520 | They love camping in the summer.
00:29:38.960 | So there's actually campsites within towns that have like motorhome or camper
00:29:44.640 | van style campers that you can rent sometimes.
00:29:47.400 | And that's a really fun way of getting local and immersed.
00:29:51.080 | Airbnb is huge there, VRBO more in the outskirts when you're getting into
00:29:55.400 | villas and homes outside of town.
00:29:56.880 | So you can definitely do that.
00:29:58.320 | But honestly, what I like to do is look around on booking.com, hotels.com, get
00:30:03.520 | a feel for some of the hotels that are selling through those channels that I
00:30:07.360 | may not recognize internationally.
00:30:09.120 | And then I go right to their website and I find what are their
00:30:11.600 | specials, what are their deals.
00:30:13.040 | I reach out to them through their contact form or through their booking
00:30:16.280 | form and say, "Hey, this is when we're coming.
00:30:18.360 | We don't need this.
00:30:19.280 | We don't need a breakfast.
00:30:20.160 | We don't need a suite.
00:30:20.960 | Barely going to be in the room.
00:30:22.080 | Like, what do you got?"
00:30:23.600 | And they'll absolutely do a deal with you.
00:30:25.160 | The best part about some of these Italian hotels too, is that
00:30:28.240 | they won't take a deposit.
00:30:30.080 | They'll just take your credit card.
00:30:31.080 | And when you get there, you pay.
00:30:32.520 | So some of them have very flexible cancellation policies as
00:30:35.720 | well, if you go that route.
00:30:37.200 | Or if you prepay and you make it non-refundable, you can even
00:30:39.480 | get a better deal sometimes.
00:30:40.400 | And what about the kind of typical chain hotels?
00:30:43.640 | Are they worth considering?
00:30:45.720 | Are there Hyatt's, Marriott's, Hilton's kind of thing?
00:30:48.720 | All over the place.
00:30:49.440 | All over the map.
00:30:49.960 | Yeah.
00:30:50.240 | Actually, the funniest thing I think is that the best Western
00:30:53.400 | brand here in North America, not exactly the nicest hotels.
00:30:56.720 | If you go to Italy, they're actually not that bad in some places.
00:31:00.080 | And surprisingly, the best Westerns in off the beaten path
00:31:04.000 | cities are actually okay.
00:31:05.520 | Now, granted, not my preference always, but it's a good economical
00:31:10.720 | way of staying when maybe the competition nearby is another
00:31:14.600 | hundred euro more, but yes, if you've got Hyatt points or Marriott
00:31:17.600 | points and you want to use them in the big cities, there's
00:31:19.920 | definitely opportunities to do so.
00:31:21.960 | In Italy, in particular, you should look out for small luxury
00:31:25.400 | hotels that are often part of the Hyatt sort of world of Hyatt program.
00:31:29.800 | Those often times will allow for outsized value where you can use
00:31:34.320 | your Hyatt points to save on these boutique hotels that would
00:31:39.000 | otherwise be very, very expensive.
00:31:40.440 | Personally, for me, when I'm in big cities, Italy has some of the
00:31:45.440 | most incredible hotels that are not parts of big brands, so it's
00:31:49.040 | really fun to experience some of those hotels, you know, there's
00:31:53.880 | one in particular, it is part of the Relais Chateau Marketing
00:31:56.760 | Partnership, but in Rome, it's called Palazzo Manfredi and it
00:32:02.760 | is at the Colosseum.
00:32:04.600 | And when I say at the Colosseum, I mean, there are suites that if
00:32:07.560 | you open up your sliding door, the Colosseum is in front of you.
00:32:10.920 | There is an unobstructed view, nothing between you and the Colosseum.
00:32:14.840 | That's incredible, right?
00:32:15.880 | Where else in the world do you get that?
00:32:17.200 | And so sure, you could stay at the St.
00:32:19.400 | Regis, which is an incredible property in Rome, beautiful, but
00:32:23.400 | you can also stay at the Colosseum, right?
00:32:25.760 | So to me, it's like when you're in Rome, when in Rome, when you're
00:32:29.200 | in Italy, you should, you know, Il San Pietro on the Amalfi coast.
00:32:33.400 | That family that's been running that hotel for 40 years now, they've
00:32:39.400 | built, by hand, every single room into a rock on the side of a
00:32:44.520 | cliff overlooking Positano.
00:32:46.120 | There's nothing like that in the world.
00:32:48.040 | Which hotel is this?
00:32:49.120 | Il San Pietro.
00:32:50.360 | And they are incredible hoteliers.
00:32:53.160 | They've mastered the art of luxury hotel experience.
00:32:56.200 | Food is remarkable.
00:32:57.880 | It's got a Michelin star and it's in Gambarodo.
00:32:59.920 | So it's just an incredible experience, but you know, you could choose to
00:33:03.880 | stay at like a whatever hotel nearby, or you could stay in this icon, this
00:33:10.160 | place that is truly incredible.
00:33:11.600 | There's nothing like it in the world.
00:33:12.840 | So when I look at the big bucket list trip to Italy, I look at
00:33:18.120 | staying in some places like that.
00:33:19.200 | If they're available, if they're affordable, if not, absolutely use
00:33:23.360 | your points at the St.
00:33:24.120 | Regis, it's an incredible place.
00:33:25.400 | But it sounds like if you're going to take three or four trips and you've
00:33:28.240 | got points for not all of them, maybe Italy's one where you're not going
00:33:31.760 | to use your points for hotels or lodging.
00:33:34.400 | That's correct.
00:33:35.120 | And I would prepare to find then the boutiques, the other cool places,
00:33:39.320 | the three, four, five-star hotels, the B&Bs, honestly, that are a good
00:33:44.160 | fit for what you want in that city.
00:33:46.000 | And don't be afraid to look around and comparison shop all over the place and
00:33:49.760 | then reach out directly to the hotelier and say, "Hey, these are my dates.
00:33:53.000 | What can we do?"
00:33:53.640 | Yeah.
00:33:54.200 | And what about when you're in the city and you want to do things?
00:33:58.880 | Do you need to set up tours?
00:34:00.360 | Do you need to set up guides?
00:34:01.280 | Do you get lost on your own?
00:34:02.440 | How do you find them?
00:34:03.560 | What about booking activities, booking things?
00:34:05.600 | Yeah.
00:34:05.880 | All of the above, right?
00:34:07.480 | So look, there are some bucket list things that you're going
00:34:10.040 | to want to see in Rome, right?
00:34:11.920 | You're going to want to go to the Vatican.
00:34:13.320 | You're going to want to maybe go to the Coliseum if you're into that.
00:34:15.680 | And so you're going to want to pre-book those as much as you can.
00:34:18.680 | Vatican in particular, the thing I like to do is the Vatican Museum
00:34:23.200 | sells this on their website.
00:34:24.480 | So you don't need to buy a special tour for it, but Breakfast at the Vatican.
00:34:27.960 | It's called.
00:34:28.680 | You actually go to the Sistine Chapel pre-opening and you're part of a very
00:34:33.200 | small group of people that can do that.
00:34:34.640 | And then you will have breakfast after the fact at the
00:34:38.000 | Vatican in their cafeteria.
00:34:39.440 | That's an incredible way of seeing one of the most amazing
00:34:42.680 | sites in all of the world.
00:34:44.040 | It's usually very crowded throughout the day.
00:34:46.760 | So getting in a little early is worth the extra dollars for Europe.
00:34:49.920 | Now, if you wanted to completely privatize that experience too, find
00:34:54.240 | other people, we can do that, right?
00:34:55.520 | But that's a lot more money, of course, then, and a lot more consideration
00:34:59.640 | than just buying a ticket online.
00:35:01.640 | But the dates, you know, you're going to be in Rome, especially those dates
00:35:05.240 | that may be like you just arrived the day before, and you know, you're going
00:35:07.840 | to be all jet lag the day later, like buy the early morning tickets, make
00:35:10.880 | sure that you get in to have that experience as privately as you can.
00:35:14.840 | But do leave space for spontaneity and what you might find.
00:35:19.760 | And do feel free to sort of throw your afternoon plans away because you're
00:35:24.600 | just into the vibe of this cafe or this piazza and you just want to sit there
00:35:28.120 | and watch for a little bit, right?
00:35:29.560 | So I like to have structured and very unstructured or semi-unstructured
00:35:34.040 | time in all the itineraries I put together.
00:35:35.920 | Now, on a city by city basis, there's so much to do.
00:35:39.520 | I definitely recommend looking around on various guide websites to see who
00:35:45.520 | can do what according to what style of tour or experience you want.
00:35:49.080 | You know, there's a Jewish ghetto in Rome and there's a great historical
00:35:52.640 | food tour that we often combo.
00:35:54.600 | And that, again, leads into then sitting at a cafe or at someone's restaurant
00:35:58.440 | and parlando un po', chatting a little bit for the next three hours after that tour.
00:36:03.200 | Or we do a sidecar tour of a couple of these different cities where you
00:36:07.120 | actually hop in a motorcycle sidecar and drive around and get to see the
00:36:10.360 | historical sites and you never know where you might end up or where
00:36:13.480 | you might stop on that tour.
00:36:14.560 | So some of those kinds of fun experiences pre-planned with flexibility
00:36:20.640 | in the end works really, really well.
00:36:22.840 | And if you don't have plans, I always like taking free walking tours.
00:36:26.640 | I feel like they're always led by young, excited people who
00:36:30.520 | want to show off their town.
00:36:31.880 | They're working for tips.
00:36:33.560 | So that's something you can do in any city, I imagine.
00:36:36.880 | I've found them almost everywhere.
00:36:38.960 | So I've said that a lot, but I think it's a great thing to do.
00:36:41.840 | If you don't have anything planned, you decide you want to do something
00:36:44.360 | and you haven't booked it.
00:36:45.160 | Absolutely.
00:36:46.280 | And I would say, like, take inspiration from websites that actually have
00:36:50.800 | lists of tours that they offer, whether you use those tours or not
00:36:54.160 | yourself, take inspiration, right?
00:36:55.960 | Understand what they're showing you, because that's clearly a good guide
00:36:58.800 | for what you should see in that town.
00:37:00.440 | And so what I like to do is go look at Context Travel.
00:37:03.720 | They're, they're great tours.
00:37:05.000 | We do a lot of them, a lot of work with them, or even like Airbnb
00:37:08.080 | Experiences, and just see what people are offering in that area.
00:37:11.840 | So you know what you should focus on or not focus on while you're there.
00:37:16.040 | But don't feel like you need to buy the expensive private
00:37:19.440 | tour, all of the places.
00:37:20.760 | You know, in the height of summer in Rome, in Florence, in Venice, in Milan,
00:37:24.960 | it's going to be busy and there's going to be a lot of people there.
00:37:27.400 | So maybe you do want to take a private tour somewhere, but outside of those
00:37:32.200 | times or those places, maybe you can be okay dealing with some crowds.
00:37:36.400 | Um, the exceptions to those rules are places that have timed entry tickets.
00:37:41.880 | The Academia in Florence, where you see, uh, the David or the Uffizi, where you
00:37:46.320 | see a lot of Botticelli's work and a lot of the Renaissance paintings or, um, in,
00:37:51.160 | in Milan, when you want to go see the Last Supper, right?
00:37:53.680 | Those things are very time controlled.
00:37:55.240 | You need to have a ticket.
00:37:56.080 | And you'll see, as you research your tours, it'll say, Hey, this
00:37:59.800 | includes a timed entry to blah, right?
00:38:02.120 | But what I would say is some of the best parts of Italy are just getting
00:38:06.960 | lost and wandering on your own.
00:38:08.200 | And maybe you don't know what's in front of you, but that's okay.
00:38:11.200 | It's beautiful nonetheless.
00:38:12.600 | And you're there.
00:38:13.560 | And so just be there and enjoy it.
00:38:16.000 | I know we hit a lot of places, but I'm curious if there are any that we left
00:38:19.880 | off that you want to talk about.
00:38:21.720 | So I think it's important as we record this, it's 2023 and the white Lotus is
00:38:27.040 | like the thing in the media right now.
00:38:29.760 | And it's their season two, which was filmed in Sicily and it was filmed at
00:38:33.400 | the four seasons in Taormina, the San Domenico palace, it's beautiful, stunning
00:38:38.000 | property that they put a bunch of money into redeveloped and it's gorgeous.
00:38:42.000 | Um, and it's amazing to see the impact of that show and what has happened
00:38:45.680 | to, um, travel desire around Sicily.
00:38:49.080 | Sicily is always a constant for North Americans.
00:38:51.440 | We want to go there.
00:38:52.520 | We, a lot of.
00:38:53.160 | Um, people with Italian roots came from Sicily or had family of your in Sicily.
00:38:59.720 | And so, um, people want to go see their genealogy and they want to go
00:39:03.320 | see the sights and sounds of Sicily.
00:39:04.800 | Um, so it's always busy, but this year it's exceptionally busy.
00:39:08.120 | So I would say a book now, right?
00:39:11.920 | Um, there's a lot of interest, but B, um, know that Sicily is a place where you
00:39:15.680 | could easily spend two weeks and not see a fraction of it, right?
00:39:20.200 | The area around.
00:39:21.720 | Uh, Taormina, which is where they filmed white Lotus is incredible.
00:39:25.640 | You've got the Etna volcano.
00:39:27.320 | You've got, um, Catania, Ragusa, um, Siracusa, all these amazing towns that
00:39:32.920 | are on the East side of Sicily, full of history and culture and art and
00:39:37.360 | food and food and food and food.
00:39:39.240 | So you could just spend two weeks there bouncing around from town to
00:39:41.640 | town with your own car and you'd be happier than you know what to do with.
00:39:47.120 | But I would also recommend heading a little further West in Sicily.
00:39:51.080 | Uh, the town of Agrigento has some of the best.
00:39:53.560 | Greek, um, temples better preserved.
00:39:56.920 | In fact, in some of the boys, some of those you'd find in Greece.
00:39:59.280 | Uh, and then there's Palermo, which is incredible.
00:40:01.800 | Um, right North of Sicily, you've got the, um, Aeolian islands.
00:40:06.160 | Um, and you've got these incredible, the word volcano comes from an island.
00:40:10.000 | In the, uh, in that little island chain, because there's a giant volcano on it.
00:40:14.080 | It's called Volcano.
00:40:15.440 | So I'd go there or Stromboli or some of these amazing places in the summer that
00:40:19.680 | have lava and mud baths and beautiful beaches, and it's just you and the, the
00:40:24.520 | volcano, so Sicily is incredibly in demand.
00:40:27.920 | Puglia on the heel of Italy, another place, incredibly in demand hotels,
00:40:33.600 | especially luxury hotels, popping up left and right down there.
00:40:36.880 | And if you like the orechiette pasta, the kind of ear shaped pasta, that's its home.
00:40:42.240 | If you like sausage and peppers, that's their home.
00:40:44.720 | If you like, um, beautiful white sand beaches with no one on them for a
00:40:51.240 | kilometer, that's your home.
00:40:52.920 | And it's an incredible place where you can go and explore, spend a week, 10 days,
00:40:57.680 | not see the same thing twice and, um, eat the best meals of your life.
00:41:02.800 | And it's not as expensive as Tuscany or Umbria or elsewhere in the north.
00:41:07.920 | So in the south, those are my winners, right?
00:41:11.040 | Sicily, Puglia, uh, and they make for great vacations.
00:41:15.160 | Do keep in mind, if you go in the very heart of summer in July and August, it's
00:41:18.760 | hot, talking could be easily over a hundred degrees Fahrenheit each day.
00:41:24.200 | That's, uh, it's pretty toasty down there, but it's beautiful.
00:41:27.360 | You know, another area that I would also recommend as a side trip from
00:41:32.360 | the Amalfi coast, everyone always goes to Capri.
00:41:35.640 | The island of Capri is incredible and beautiful and it's stunning.
00:41:39.720 | So it's a sight to see, but it's also very expensive.
00:41:42.680 | It's very crowded.
00:41:43.760 | And you get the sense when you're there that there aren't really any Caprese.
00:41:50.120 | That's people who live in Capri.
00:41:51.800 | You don't find the locals, you find people serving tourists.
00:41:55.560 | So my recommendation would be go to a neighboring island right across the
00:41:59.840 | Gulf called Ischia, I-S-C-H-I-A.
00:42:02.960 | There you'll find true Italian.
00:42:05.840 | It's a place that is volcanic in origin.
00:42:09.240 | So you have mud baths and hot springs and crazy stuff all over the place.
00:42:14.080 | You have, uh, people who are so happy and so proud to show you their
00:42:20.480 | island because it's less touristed.
00:42:22.480 | And you have the ability to get around in whether it's a rental car or a Vespa or
00:42:28.040 | actually they drive these little things called Apes, little, um, called bees.
00:42:31.640 | They're a little like farm equipment, um, like a lawnmower with a couple of seats,
00:42:36.560 | but they, they're stylish and, um, they drive your own, the island in those.
00:42:41.800 | And you can really get to know the culture and the people and
00:42:44.480 | the restaurants, uh, that way.
00:42:46.280 | And at a third of the price of Capri.
00:42:48.320 | So I think we hit everything, anything in the North.
00:42:50.880 | I mean, we hit, we've moved up the coast.
00:42:52.360 | Let's talk about the North.
00:42:53.640 | I mean, look, I could talk, as I said earlier for hours, but in the North you
00:42:57.520 | have Venice and the Venice is an incredible place to go for a night or two.
00:43:01.840 | If you're going to stay in Venice and you've never been before, I absolutely
00:43:05.520 | recommend you stay overnight, at least one night, probably no more than two.
00:43:08.800 | The reason is that there's a lot of day trippers that come in and out of Venice.
00:43:12.520 | And you'll want to see the city at night when most of the tourists leave.
00:43:16.080 | It's a magical place, but if you've been to Venice before and you haven't been to
00:43:20.520 | the area around Venice, and that could be anywhere from Trieste, which is all the
00:43:24.600 | way to the East, close to Slovenia, or even the Dolomites about an hour or two
00:43:29.320 | North of Venice, then you need to go back to that region and go see those places.
00:43:33.560 | The true heart for me of the Veneto, which is the area around Venice is not
00:43:39.080 | necessarily in Venice proper, but it's the area around it.
00:43:42.640 | It's the rich farmland, the Palladian villas, the beautiful mountains and the
00:43:47.440 | other cities, especially canal cities that make that area so rich.
00:43:51.480 | So I would say, make sure you see Venice.
00:43:54.000 | It's incredible, St.
00:43:55.160 | Mark's Square, nothing like it in the world.
00:43:57.280 | And then get out of town, go see something nearby.
00:44:00.280 | OK, I feel like we hit a lot.
00:44:03.040 | I think someone listening to this maybe has some inspiration for their next trip
00:44:06.560 | or they're totally overwhelmed or they're totally overwhelmed.
00:44:08.840 | Maybe listen to it twice.
00:44:10.480 | But one thing we didn't do a lot of, you mentioned a few places that you love.
00:44:14.720 | Are there any other things that when you think of if you were going on a tour
00:44:18.760 | through a lot of these places that are like you got to eat here, you got to have
00:44:21.960 | a drink here, you got to drink, have a coffee here, are there anything like
00:44:25.000 | standouts that maybe aren't the obvious ones that someone, you know, searching
00:44:29.000 | blogs are going to find?
00:44:30.240 | Yeah, for sure.
00:44:31.320 | So as a general rule, as I said earlier, I love looking at Gambaroro.
00:44:35.840 | So I love looking at the Michelin Guide.
00:44:38.120 | I love to understand what doesn't need to be three or even two starred.
00:44:41.440 | What's Bib Gourmand?
00:44:43.320 | What is a good place to go check out that's local and legit?
00:44:46.800 | And I start there.
00:44:48.000 | And then I look at actually Trip Advisor in Italian reviews.
00:44:51.120 | Again, if you don't speak Italian, take the Trip Advisor reviews in Italy from
00:44:55.680 | Italian people and Google translate them into English, right?
00:44:58.720 | You'll get a real sense of what something is from an Italian's perspective.
00:45:02.280 | That's different from a non-Italian.
00:45:05.160 | Let's put it that way.
00:45:05.880 | So I like to read some of those to really understand what's great.
00:45:09.640 | And then I go back in time.
00:45:12.840 | I go back 20, 30 years and see what's been still standing in a spot for
00:45:17.200 | so long that I need to go to.
00:45:19.240 | You know, I mentioned earlier that I used to live in Rapallo.
00:45:22.000 | There's a coffee shop in Rapallo that's been around since the '70s that they
00:45:27.200 | sell a particular style of biscuit in the morning.
00:45:30.720 | I'm not a biscuit eater, but this biscuit with their coffee is like amazing.
00:45:37.440 | It's called Canepa, C-A-N-E-P-A.
00:45:40.040 | And so it's not like I need to go to Italy to have that.
00:45:44.040 | But when I'm there or nearby, that's the only thing I eat for the week or
00:45:47.560 | whatever it is of time that I'm in Italy.
00:45:50.000 | In Rome, there's a place called Panella, P-A-N-E-L-L-A.
00:45:54.200 | They make out of an old school coffee machine, kind of looks like a
00:45:58.080 | samovar almost, they pull espresso and then they whip it with a zabaglione,
00:46:03.440 | egg whites, excuse me, egg yolks and sugar.
00:46:06.440 | And they make this cream.
00:46:08.280 | And so you can go get an espresso with espresso zabaglione cream on top.
00:46:13.640 | That is to die for, right?
00:46:16.320 | And I could literally, Chris, tell you 150 of these things, okay?
00:46:19.480 | But the point is, is that none of these are like undiscovered
00:46:22.720 | gems that no one's ever heard of.
00:46:23.920 | They've been around for 30 years doing their 50 years, 100 years, doing
00:46:27.080 | their thing, selling their one item that makes them spectacular.
00:46:30.760 | And so every town you go to will have this, from big or small.
00:46:34.880 | And it's just a question of you seeking them out and finding
00:46:38.240 | your own that's exciting to you.
00:46:39.480 | You may not like coffee.
00:46:40.600 | And so those two examples I gave you were terrible, right?
00:46:43.040 | That's fine.
00:46:44.080 | But you'll find the thing that makes the Italians, the locals super proud
00:46:48.360 | and makes everybody write about it and talk about it and eat it and drink
00:46:51.600 | it and experience it themselves.
00:46:52.640 | And if you're someone like me and you're a bit of an over-optimizer
00:46:56.040 | trying to find the perfect place, is Italy the kind of place that you can
00:46:59.480 | fall into a trap of just walking down the street and picking the wrong place?
00:47:02.680 | Or is it just like, just go pick any place that looks crowded with people
00:47:06.120 | that look like they're speaking Italian and you're going to have a great.
00:47:08.640 | The latter for sure, right?
00:47:10.640 | If you find where the Italians are, you're going to have a blast.
00:47:14.000 | If you find a menu in seven languages, right?
00:47:18.360 | You know, beware, have your hackles up, but know that if you're going to
00:47:22.800 | follow the Italians and get lost, be off the beaten path, and it might be
00:47:27.120 | a little uncomfortable because you may not speak Italian and you may
00:47:29.440 | not know where you're going.
00:47:30.200 | Trust your instincts.
00:47:31.840 | Trust your nose.
00:47:32.560 | You're going to find something great.
00:47:33.600 | Right.
00:47:34.280 | And you can get back with Google maps.
00:47:35.960 | Like you can tell people, Hey, I don't know where I'm going.
00:47:39.360 | Can you help me?
00:47:39.880 | And they will help you.
00:47:40.680 | They're not going to take advantage of you.
00:47:42.000 | They're not brutal people.
00:47:43.280 | They're lovely, wonderful people.
00:47:44.600 | And if you, if you start it by saying, Oh, I'm so happy that I got lost here.
00:47:48.640 | How do I get back?
00:47:49.880 | They'll help you right out.
00:47:51.560 | Any parting thoughts?
00:47:53.760 | I mean, we kind of hit lots of places.
00:47:55.400 | I would say we didn't, we didn't go too deep into specific things, but I feel
00:47:59.720 | like you left people with a few ideas of what to try any, any other standouts or.
00:48:04.160 | You know, um, we'll talk a little bit about airlift getting to and from
00:48:07.680 | Italy, because there's a couple of gems here you want to know about
00:48:10.640 | and a few you can avoid, right?
00:48:12.720 | So Alitalia, which is actually an acronym.
00:48:17.280 | It's now a dead airline.
00:48:18.280 | It's the old, uh, state airline that Italy used to have.
00:48:21.160 | Uh, it died in 2019, 2020, but it was, uh, A L I T A L I A, Alitalia.
00:48:27.600 | It literally means to Italy or the wings of Italy, depending on how you translate
00:48:31.560 | it, um, but it was the acronym for always late in takeoff and late in arrival.
00:48:36.520 | It's just not nice, but they're, they're dead now.
00:48:39.520 | And their, their, um, resurrection is called ITA airlines.
00:48:43.440 | Um, it's the same thing.
00:48:45.000 | I would sort of avoid them if I could.
00:48:48.080 | They're just meh at best.
00:48:50.760 | Um, the business class is fine, but economy's pretty terrible.
00:48:55.040 | Um, but all of your us carriers, your Delta, um, United American, et cetera,
00:49:01.520 | they all fly nonstop from gateway hubs to Rome and some to Milan, but the best
00:49:06.360 | experience getting to Milan is going to be on Emirates and Emirates flies from
00:49:10.400 | JFK to Milan, and then that same aircraft continues on to Dubai and then it goes
00:49:14.280 | back.
00:49:14.560 | So I would recommend if you can get on business class where ideally
00:49:18.320 | first on that flight, do so.
00:49:20.320 | Emirates just recently made changes to award redemption for that particular
00:49:24.720 | route, which is a bummer, but sometimes on Emirates partners like Alaska and
00:49:29.320 | others, you can still find it.
00:49:30.400 | So take a look at that.
00:49:32.680 | Um, as a general rule of thumb, I would actually prefer to fly through, uh,
00:49:37.440 | let's say Paris.
00:49:38.680 | If you're going to fly on Air France la premier, you're flying in true luxury,
00:49:42.000 | then take a nonstop from North America to Italy, just that extra stop, even though
00:49:46.720 | it adds another hour or two, it's such a nicer experience than flying, you know,
00:49:50.560 | United Polaris.
00:49:51.480 | Um, but there is going to be a new United Polaris flight from San Francisco to Rome
00:49:56.680 | nonstop coming up, starting in May, and that'll definitely help with Lyft on the
00:50:00.800 | West coast in terms of getting around inside of Italy.
00:50:04.280 | None of the airlines that fly into Italy are great.
00:50:07.240 | So don't splurge for business business class in Italy is literally just an empty
00:50:12.760 | economy seat with, uh, it's blocked off.
00:50:15.160 | So, uh, it's not necessarily something I would say is worth two or three times the
00:50:19.280 | price, which by the way, seems to be this case with almost every European airline.
00:50:24.080 | Um, if you're booking an international flight using points in business and you
00:50:28.400 | get the intra Europe flight in business for free, why not?
00:50:31.720 | Sure.
00:50:32.080 | But it was, but you will be wildly underwhelmed if you've never had that
00:50:35.360 | experience because it's literally just a blocked seat in between you.
00:50:39.320 | Exactly.
00:50:39.880 | And in fact, if you're traveling with someone, depending on the airline,
00:50:43.400 | sometime that that seat is actually blocked.
00:50:46.120 | Like you can't actually lift up the armrest.
00:50:48.600 | There's a thing there.
00:50:49.240 | Yeah.
00:50:49.600 | So, so, uh, if you actually want to sit next to whoever you're traveling with,
00:50:53.160 | you actually can't in those seats.
00:50:54.920 | So, uh, I totally agree there.
00:50:57.640 | Any other, uh, points, miles tricks.
00:50:59.920 | Normally I would, I would do a location episode and do it separately because most
00:51:04.520 | of the people I talked to about countries aren't as dialed in on points and miles,
00:51:08.400 | whereas you might be, um, anything there.
00:51:11.120 | Yeah.
00:51:11.600 | So, I mean, definitely on the, on the hotel side, um, take a look at using
00:51:15.920 | Hyatt points for properties in big cities, especially through the SLH properties.
00:51:20.920 | Take a look at using Hilton points.
00:51:22.440 | There's a few higher end Hilton's that are sometimes not that egregious.
00:51:26.720 | Usually they're pretty bad.
00:51:27.640 | Um, and then there are a handful of Marriott properties, uh, especially
00:51:32.000 | those on Sardinia that are usually exceptionally expensive, but
00:51:35.960 | sometimes allow points redemptions.
00:51:37.600 | So usually it's shoulder season, like end of May or early September.
00:51:41.720 | But if you can get one of those Sardinian properties, it's normally
00:51:44.800 | 2000 Euro a night and it's 60,000 Marriott points.
00:51:48.200 | Jump on that twice.
00:51:50.320 | And then some right on the airline side.
00:51:53.720 | Uh, I do like to fly through, uh, Northern continental Europe, uh, Germany,
00:51:58.960 | Switzerland, France, even sometimes the UK, uh, when doing points redemptions,
00:52:04.320 | because I find that the, the value of the ticket that I'm usually redeeming
00:52:09.000 | for would be greater than, um, the price that I would pay for either a nonstop
00:52:15.120 | flight from the States, um, or, uh, I can, I can get a better experience,
00:52:19.280 | better bang for my buck.
00:52:20.440 | Cool.
00:52:21.120 | All right.
00:52:22.280 | Well, Lee, I feel like I'm ready both for lunch, by the way.
00:52:25.520 | Now I'm both hungry, but I'm also excited for a trip to Italy.
00:52:30.360 | I don't know when it'll happen because two kids traveling, you know, we're
00:52:34.280 | still recovering from the trip to London and Paris, but I'm excited whenever it
00:52:38.520 | happens, just want to call out Chris.
00:52:40.000 | I have done weekend trips with kids to Italy before.
00:52:43.240 | It's not an insane idea.
00:52:44.560 | You can do it yourselves, choose one city and go and spend three nights.
00:52:48.640 | I, I don't think that sounds as fun as you make it seem.
00:52:52.240 | It sounds like your kids are older than ours.
00:52:54.200 | Uh, I don't know if a weekend trip with a seven month old is going to be fun.
00:52:58.440 | Not really, not really too exciting when they're that little.
00:53:01.280 | Cool.
00:53:01.840 | Well, thank you for doing this.
00:53:03.040 | Thank you.
00:53:03.440 | I appreciate the opportunity and, uh, dai, andiamo in Italia.