The Italians have their own Michelin guide. It's called the Gambaro Rosso, the red shrimp. Um, and Gambaro Rosso is like the Bible for food and wine in Italy. If you get, uh, they have a fork rating. So if you get forks, it's a legit place, right? You should go up to three, I believe, or maybe it's four.

I have to double check. But anyway, the more forks, the merrier, obviously. Um, so check out Gambaro Rosso. It oftentimes isn't only an Italian, so you might have to use Google translate to figure out what's going on. Um, but that's a great place to find off the beaten path restaurants.

Look in, in a big city like Rome or Milan, um, you know, any international, um, you know, whether it's the New York times or the guy at the Michelin guide, or, uh, even, you know, uh, food blogs you've read, they're all going to have the same general information, but when you're going off the beaten path, uh, Gambaro Rosso is incredible.

And actually I find the most joy in smaller Italian towns. And I find that if you just go a little outside of the tourist envelope, right. You can have these incredible culinary experiences that are half the price sometimes of the tourist bubbles. Um, but there's so much richer and more meaningful and more connected to the area.

Lee, thank you for being here. Round three, uh, you get to take the title as most, most visited guests. You already had it, but now you get it again. I feel incredibly honored. Thank you for having me here. Thank you for having me here in this new, uh, setup you have.

I'm looking around. It's really quite impressive. Beautiful job you've done. Yeah. I took this course, dreamstudiocourse.com that this guy, Kevin Chen created. And you'll get a better view if you're watching this on YouTube than listening. Can't really see it. Uh, you'll get an even better view when I start to actually record in a couple of days with virtual thing, because that was what I optimized for, but there is now an in-studio option for all the hacks, which we have here.

It's very cool. Very cool. Thank you for inviting me in here to chat about one of my favorite places in the entire, entire world. Yeah. So I am excited because we started with London because I was going on a trip and I wanted to figure it out. And then we dove into Japan and now we're talking to Italy, which I'm really excited about because I was about to go to London.

I had been to Japan a lot and Italy is kind of like the, I went on the few days after our college whirlwind trip, but you know, it's a trip that we want to take and it's not going to happen this year, uh, but it's going to happen in the future and I'm really excited to dive in.

I don't know a lot. I'm glad we have the expert here. Yeah. Well, I appreciate you inviting me, of course, and giving me this chance to chat about something that is truly one of my favorite places for people, for food, for culture, for beauty, for sites, for, I mean, we could chat for much longer than this podcast will go about everything that's great in Italy.

So I'm excited to dive into your questions and center some of my own passion. Yeah. So why do you keep going back? What is it? I mean, you just listed a bunch of things, but what makes Italy such a unique travel place? Yeah. Well, I've been to 70 countries.

I've been very fortunate to go all seven continents around the world. And the thing that makes me feel most at home in Italy is just that the Italians know how to live. They know how to live life. Great food, great food and drink, um, great food, great wine, great coffee.

But more than all of that, it's just this continual enjoyment of life. There's the evening passeggiata where people walk, walking, by the way, walking, like everywhere, everywhere you can go, you walk, which is incredible. Big cities, small cities, everyone walks. But, but they're out and about and they're walking from cafe to cafe.

They're seeing friends, they're being social. No, one's in a hurry. No, one's in a rush. No, one's off to catch the next thing. They're just there living in the moment being. And if you look at that as sort of like a, a narrative, uh, example of how you can live, right.

These people have been doing this for thousands of years, 3000 years of civilization in Italy where they're just being, there's no greater thing to do or to do list or all these things that keep us busy here at home. It's just being, and that for me is so refreshing.

So I feel like I have to go back and back and back to get another taste of that every, every, every chance I get. And of course the food when I'm there, I'm tasting that too. And it's just, it's, it's incredible. The diversity and the ability of the Italian cuisine to take these wonderful things from, uh, you know, throughout their natural, abundant resources, the sea, the mountains, their fields, and turn them into these masterpieces on the table.

Wow. Okay. So I think one of the things I'm just going to preface everyone to consider, which is, you know, a lot of times people travel and they say, I got to go do this, this, this, this, this. Sounds like a big attraction in Italy is learning to kind of relax and enjoy what you're doing.

So maybe that's a theme that we'll just kind of keep here, which is as much as we might talk about lots of cool things to see and do, don't feel like you need to spend every single moment of every single day. That is a hundred percent. The biggest takeaway I think people can take from this podcast is the discussion of, um, be here now in the moment, the place that you are in Italy, knowing that you're, yeah, you're not going to see all the rest of it.

Like I've been to Italy over 40 or 50 times. I forgot the count. And, um, what's crazy is that out of all of the 12, 20 Italian regions that there are, uh, I'm still missing a few of them. Okay. After been there, after having been there 40 times, so, you know, I, an Italophile, somebody who loves going to Italy, speaking Italian, eating Italian food, seeing Italian culture.

I still haven't seen it all. And I will never see it all because there's such a diversity in that country. 60 plus million people. You know, it's the fifth most visited country in the world. Um, but there is still so much to see that people don't scratch, uh, be on the surface and see when they do their Rome, Florence, Venice trip.

And they think they've seen Italy. You've seen three cities in Italy, come back and see everything. Come see a lot more. Well, I think most people listening probably won't in their lifetime, make 40 trips to Italy. I hope you will. Yeah. I mean, it sounds wonderful, but let's, let's just talk high level.

Someone wants to go to it and it's impossible to see it all. But nobody, or most people don't have 10 weeks, you know, a year to go spend in Italy, which I'm sure if they did, you would highly recommend. But maybe they've got a week or two and they're like, I want to go see Italy.

I want to experience what you're talking about. How would you suggest they start to approach it? Or, or what are a few different approaches? Yeah. Great question. So I think the first thing to realize and understand is that no approach is the right approach. There are so many different ways of seeing Italy and so many different.

You look at it as like a matrix, right? All the different cities, all the different sites, all the different reasons for visiting. Right. And you could go just see museums and be busy for 10 days in Rome alone. Right. Or you could do the Rome, Venice, Florence, you know, tour, Milan tour of all the museums or all the churches and historical sites, and still not see all of the highlights that you can see in 10 days.

So I think knowing that you're going into it, leaving a lot on the table, leaving things to come back and visit in the future is great. The second idea is knowing that it's really easy to burn out on too much eating, too much museuming, too much churching as you go to Italy.

Right. And so building a nice mix in an itinerary is a really important thing to do. Um, so where do I find inspiration? You know, there's a lot of really great media right now, um, that focuses on an aspect of Italian culture or life. You know, Stanley Tucci has been doing for the past two years, his sort of Tor d'Italia, and he's going to all 20 regions and he's eating his way through.

And if you look at the way that he's approached his episodes, these hour-long sort of opus, you know, these hour-long bits of love to Lazio where Rome is or Campania where they grow the tomatoes that become your, your, um, pizza tomatoes here in the States. You look at him really getting to know a people and a culture and a place, something that he's very familiar with already, but through the lens of food and people or food and culture.

And that's a wonderful approach for people to take is they find some angle that they love, whether it's in a book or TV series and they say, Hey, I want to go recreate an element of that on my trip. So I want to go to the place where. You know, Stanley Tucci finds the tomato in the field of San Marzano and says, okay, I found the real tomato.

Now I know what it's supposed to taste like. Um, and that's a, that's a centerpiece for their trip. Right. But there are so many blogs that are out there. There's so many travel advisors willing to help. There's so many books you can read about everything to eat, see, and do in Italy.

Um, my biggest takeaway for people again, is take your time and know that you're not going to see it all. You're not going to do it all. And, uh, you're going to have an amazing time in the process of whatever you do, see, and do. So I feel like I'm both more excited to go to Italy and I have no idea what I should do with a week in a trip.

So maybe give some options. I'm thinking one to two weeks, maybe let's throw out two or three things that you might send someone to. Yeah. Is Rome a must include on any first trip to Italy? In my opinion, yes. All roads lead to Rome for good reason, right? Look, it's the third most visited city in all of Europe.

To me, it is a place that is happy and fun and lively and young and still so very old, full of incredible cuisine, full of some of the best historical sites in the world. Look, to me, the fact that they could build the Pantheon, this concrete domed roof with an open hole in the Oculus in the center 2000 years ago, and it's still standing.

It's still standing. It's like mind blowing. Like we can build things here. We can build a road here. They can build a 2000 years ago, a dome that is in the center of town. That, um, is remarkable. And so when you see that you have this sense of awe that returns to you, whether you've been there 40 times or this is the first, right?

So I think Rome is absolutely an incredible place to go and go, go see the sites, go see the touristy sites that are overcrowded, the Colosseum, Vatican, because they really are monuments to humanity and to an incredible society that has built and upkept these buildings for 2000 years. But also get lost, go off the beaten path in Rome and don't just go to the fancy gelateria across from the Trevi Fountain.

It's beautiful. It's great for Instagram, but go wind through the streets of Trastevere across the river where the Romans live and the Romans go eat and explore that little village and see what it's like to be in a little borgo, a little village inside of a big metropolitan city, have a meal on a piazza where maybe you're the only person who doesn't speak fluent Italian.

That's okay. You're going to be welcomed in. You're going to eat an incredible meal, and you're going to see the way that the dolce farniente, the sweetness of doing nothing passes by in front of you on passeggiata as people are walking from the cafe to their restaurant, to their home and beyond.

Okay. That's Rome. That's Rome. Okay. So let's say I want to do Rome and something else. What are a few options? Well, you know, from Rome within, if you draw like a big circle, you say, I want to take a two-hour train ride from Rome. You've got a ton of options, North and South.

Traditionally, people would go South to the Amalfi Coast. It's incredible. It's iconic. It's beautiful. It's been made famous since movies in the fifties, right? Where you're driving along these mountainside roads and there's a sheer cliff, 200, 500 feet down and beautiful beaches and incredible food and wine. That's amazing.

It really is. But Amalfi, the downside to it is that everyone wants to be there. So that coast between let's say June and early September is a zoo. What is normally a 20 minute ride in a car or a bus could be an hour and a half stuck in traffic on a one lane road.

That's a bummer when you're on a limited vacation time. So what I would recommend is go to Amalfi, but maybe go in May or go in late September or October. Weather's still amazing. You can experience it and that's wonderful. So another piece to take away from the conversation is seasonality.

You can always go to Rome. Rome is happening year round. It's harder to go to a beach in November, but the Amalfi Coast in October is still really lovely. And you'll have a third of the crowds that are there throughout the year. Nearby Amalfi, you've got Naples. You've got Pompeii or Ercanuleo, which is the nearby town that's like a mini Pompeii that has incredible ruins that are really not visited.

You can go walk amongst 2000 year old homes that were damaged in the ash from Vesuvius in 79 AD and you can just walk around and there's no one around you. Whereas in Pompeii, it can be pretty busy. So there's little alternatives to each place along the way that you should try to explore.

But if you don't want to go South, you can always go North. Florence is only an hour and 20 minute train ride from Rome. There's trains that leave every 15 minutes. It's an incredible town. It's like a medieval village that still comes alive today. And I actually studied abroad there and did culinary school there in 2003.

Wow, a little while ago. And it was just an incredible place to be young, to be alive and to be living in a medieval city of today. So great sights and sounds, amazing food. If you like pork, that is your city. If you like red wine, that is your region.

And there's a ton to do. But let's say you've done Rome and you've done Florence before. Um, what do you do on your second or third trip back to Italy? Um, most of your flights are going to fly either into Rome or into Milan in the North. That's where most of the flights from North America tend to land.

So what I like to do is get off the beaten path and explore other areas that, um, are maybe less popular with North American tourists, but still to me, pack authenticity, incredible food and great experiences into a small area. So something to consider might be Umbria, the green heart of Italy.

That's right next to Tuscany. Um, you have 2000 year old villages there. In fact, sometimes even older to the Etruscan age. You've got incredible food and wine. Uh, and you've got a third of the tourists that are in Tuscany and you're probably paying half to three quarters of the price as well.

So that's a wonderful place. If you feel confident and you're okay to get off the beaten path by yourself, even if you don't speak Italian, you can get by in Umbria, eat, drink, and see well, and go see some incredible sites and sounds that are, uh, unlike anywhere else in the world.

The last plug I'll make for Umbria, by the way, in May, May 15th, every year, my favorite festival in the whole world takes place. It's called the Corsa di Ceri. What that means is the running of the candles. You think running of the candles? How does that candle blows out when you run?

None of that does that work. These crazy people in this town of Gubbio, they take these huge wooden slats. They're like 30 feet long and a bunch of husky men hold onto them. And on top of the slats are these big, tall columns with a Saint on top. And they run these columns of these candles through the town, through the medieval town and the, you know, the walls of the buildings next to you are like encroaching upon these candles as you run through the streets and they sing songs and they play trumpets and music.

And it's insane. It's a, it's a party and no one outside of Italy goes there. It's like, not like it's a running of the bulls or the Tomatera in Spain. It's like this true Italian festival in the heart of Umbria. And, um, I've only been twice. I would love to go back again because it's, to me, it's the most exciting element of seeing people in their thing, doing their thing, living their lives, uh, celebrating their history and culture and having a blast doing it.

Wow. Uh, you, you said a couple of times, even if you don't speak Italian, should anyone be nervous going to Italy if they speak no Italian? No, because the Italians are the kindest, nicest people. And I say that as a overarching stereotype. You're going to have your bad apples for sure.

But the people who work in trades that tourists are going to be engaging with restaurateurs, cafe owners, cafe workers, uh, transportation people, et cetera, are really excited that a big lifeblood of Italian economy tourism is back right during COVID. Italy was one of the places that locked down the hardest in Europe.

And it was tough for Italians to even leave their homes. Now that you can leave your home, the Italians are so excited to have work again, to have an influx of tourists again, and to see people. You know, like in 2019, there were 65 million tourists that came to Italy.

Okay. 2022, that number was down by about a third and 2022 was the busiest year for tourism since COVID obviously. So that's, that's quite a difference going from 65 million to about 40 million in terms of tourists. So tourism is huge for a country of 60 million that really relies on.

Um, you know, tourist dollars and tourist euros, I guess. So getting by without Italian is totally fine. You may end up in these off the beaten path, Phil towns, where they get fewer tourists. You may end up doing the whole pointing thing, the, you know, shrugging your shoulders thing when you don't know a word and that's totally okay.

The Italians roll with the punches and they love that. So I would not feel worried at all about not speaking the language. Instead, I would maybe if you have a few hours before you go study up on Duolingo or brush up on, you know, learning some Italian phrases online, a little bit of Italian will go a long way and you'll never have to worry about, um, you know, feeling like you have no idea what you're saying.

Any other kind of cultural norms worth calling out? So people kind of fit in and don't, don't stand out like American tourists sometimes can. Yeah. Don't try to make a 6 PM dinner reservation. You know, the Italians, uh, they're not the Spaniards where they're eating at 11 o'clock at night, but, but they're not far off.

Uh, they do eat on a different schedule than North Americans typically do. So breakfast is lighter. It's a cappuccino coffee of some sort and a croissant or a piece of bread. Uh, lunch is a big affair and it can go on sometimes for two or even three hours. Um, but dinner, uh, will take place usually very late.

Seven o'clock is the absolute earliest people eat in the winter. And the summer it's even pushed to eight or sometimes nine. So if you're walking around and you see the restaurant and it says they open up at 2100, don't think that it's like a nightclub. It's actually just their standard business hours for dinner.

And when we were there with even young kids, um, you know, this summer we, we would eat at like eight 39 o'clock and we'd be finishing our meal at 10 30 or 11, and there'd be families with kids, our kids' ages sitting down for dinner at 11 o'clock, which is really, really crazy.

Do people sleep in or, or like, how do they make this work? They do. They sleep in and they take a pause up rounds though. They take a big gap for lunch. So if you're working in an office, let's say from about 1230 or one to about three o'clock, maybe a little later, you're kind of out of the office.

People are either eating a long lunch. They're napping. They're just not working. They're going for that pasta Jata, whatever they're doing. But, um, people do tend to take a gap in the middle of the day. Okay. And so you went with young kids. Did you just kind of change the time schedule so that they were just up later and sleep in later?

You have to. Yeah. And we mandated a family nap, not just kidnap, but a family nap every afternoon, because in the summer in particular, depending on where you are, it can be very hot. So having a midday nap was a nice thing, but you know, it would be amazing.

We'd see kids out at 11 o'clock, 12 o'clock at night. And then those same kids would be up at like, you know, nine 30 in the morning and I'm like, how do you do it? Is it easy to meet local Italians? What's the vibe like between tourists and locals when it comes to meeting each other, trying to make friends with locals and kind of get a true, authentic local experience.

So I would say the more of an authentic and local place you're in, the more likely you are to meet Italians. What I mean by that is Piazza Navona in Rome. One of the most incredible piazzas that there is, it's, you know, got beautiful fountains in the middle and benches all around that and restaurants circling the entire piazza.

And it's an incredible place, but it's not built for Romans. It's built for tourists, right? Romans go there, but if you wanted to meet Romans, you're going to meet them in the piazza around Santa Maria in Trastevere, the place I mentioned earlier, Trastevere, you're going to meet tourists in tourist places.

You're going to meet Europeans or Italians in particular in their neighborhoods and where they are. So what I would recommend is, you know, choose the opportunities to meet with people and seek them out and go find them because you will find them and people will want to meet you.

They'll want to hear your story. Where are you from? Why are you here? They're so proud to show off their neighborhood or their city or their country. And so when they hear, oh, wow, you're Californian amazing. I've always dreamed of going to California is the thing that they'll say.

And then they'll be so proud to show you their piazza. They'll be so happy that you're there. So find the Romans in their neighborhoods. Find the Italians in their cities, not necessarily at the tourist trap. And how are you getting around Italy? You know, are you buying into one city and renting a car?

You mentioned the train. I know you could probably even fly between cities. What's the, what's the logistics there? The trains run pretty well. I mean, Mussolini did that whole thing, I guess, and electrified and brought trains everywhere. And there was some dilapidation after that. And, uh, the trains nowadays don't run perfectly, but they're fairly reliable.

Um, so I would say to take a train as much as you can. You definitely don't need to drive a car if you're going from city to city to city. When you get into the country, the trains don't run. Um, and so buses run or private car transfers are very simple and easy to set up.

If you're going to be staying in Tuscany or Umbria, and you're going to want to explore from your hotel or your villa, absolutely rent a car. Driving in Italy is interesting. It's easy, but it's, um, I would take caution as you drive because Italian drivers can be a little aggressive.

Um, nothing to be scared about or worried about. There's no road rage. They're just going to pass you by because you're going too slow. That's fine. Um, Italian towns tend to be very small and, uh, roadways even smaller. So when you drive from town to town, uh, it may be hard for you to find parking inside town walls, just park outside and walk in it's easy.

Better than trying to navigate your rental car through medieval streets that were really meant for cows and sheep, not for humans, not for cars. Um, you don't want to have that on your car insurance bill, but, um, as a general rule, it's easy to get around in Italy, uh, when you plan ahead and you know, the train schedules from city to city, uh, and then from there, if you need to take a taxi or a car rental beyond, so you said, plan ahead.

What do you think people need to be doing before their trip? And maybe you and I both like saving money. Like, let's say you're planning a trip. You've kind of figured out your itinerary. What are you thinking you should do in ahead of time in any deal, any way to get a deal, whether it's transportation, flights, lodging, what are you thinking about?

Yeah. So it definitely goes to say that the places, you know, you want to go book in advance. So that goes for hotels. It's obviously a lot cheaper to book in advance for, um, most of these hotels. You can book a nonrefundable rate with a lot of them, and then you'll save 10 to 20%.

Um, you can also call a hotel at a time and say, Hey, listen, I see you've got a nonrefundable thing online. What if I went even further and said, I don't need breakfast, right? Uh, they might even do a bigger deal with you for that. And if you're interested, um, but booking ahead is very important for hotels.

Um, trains in particular, your trains will be allowable to book between 30 and 60 days out in Italy, depending on the train line you're on. And typically the cheapest rates are 30 to 60 days out. So I'd highly recommend that. Um, also recommend, uh, restaurant reservations, um, at places you must go book them in advance, but don't book every night.

Give yourself some flexibility on what spontaneously might happen, what you want to pop into, where you want to go, et cetera. The places that you have to go, like the Pierluigi in Rome or Osteria Francescana, if you can get in and Modena book, those build your trip around them if you need to, but, um, when you're in a place, don't have every single meal booked because you may want to have that spontaneity to just, you know, eat a bunch of prosciutto on the side of the road.

Cause it's really good. And it's there. You never know. So we talked a little bit about restaurants, broadly speaking, when someone's doing research, is there a reliable site for Italy to kind of figure out where to go? What's good. Or what do you recommend? Yeah. So. I use a couple of sites as a travel advisor myself when I'm trying to figure out new and upcoming places to check out or to send people.

The first is that the Italians have their own Michelin guide. Uh, it's called the Gambaro Rosso, the red shrimp. Um, and Gambaro Rosso is like the Bible for food and wine in Italy. If you get, uh, they have a fork rating. So if you get forks, it's a legit place, right?

You should go up to three, I believe, or maybe it's four. I have to double check. But anyway, the more forks, the merrier obviously. Um, so check out Gambaro Rosso. It oftentimes isn't only in Italian. So you might have to use Google translate to figure out what's going on.

Um, but that's a great place to find off the beaten path. Restaurants look in, in a big city like Rome or Milan. Um, you know, any international, um, you know, whether it's the New York times or the guide, the Michelin guide, or, uh, even, you know, uh, food blogs you've read, they're all going to have the same general information, but when you're going off the beaten path, uh, Gambaro Rosso is incredible.

And actually I find the most joy in smaller Italian towns. And I find that if you just go a little outside of the tourist envelope, right, you can have these incredible culinary experiences that are half the price sometimes of the tourist bubbles. Um, but there's so much richer and more meaningful and more connected to the area.

An example. Um, I love the Cinque Terre. It's one of the top spots to see in the North of Italy and the Italian Riviera in the Liguria state state that borders basically goes from almost Pisa all the way over to the French border. And it's this little horseshoe on the Italian coast.

It's stunningly gorgeous. You've got the five towns of the Cinque Terre. You've got Genoa, you've got Portofino, these really iconic and incredible places. But they're very, very, very touristy. And so for me, instead of eating in Portofino and spending 15 Euro for a panino that I could get three Euro elsewhere, right, I'd rather go elsewhere and explore and see what else I could find and eat.

So a great example is a town right next to Portofino called Rapallo. I actually have lived in Rapallo on and off a couple of times during the summers, because every time we have a child, we decide that we're going to go to Rapallo and spend our parental leave there.

It's just an incredibly magnetic place. But Rapallo is a town with kind of nothing to do, but everywhere to go easily from. And the eating there is exceptional. There's a little prosciutto place right on the harbor called Parla Come Mangi. Speak like you eat, that's the name of it.

And they highlight local prosciutto and salami and cheese makers from around the region and from actually around Northern Italy, and that's all they sell is prosciutto, cheese, salumi, and some sauces. It's like this amazing delicatessen experience. Again, you don't need to speak English going in there. You don't need to know what you want.

You just kind of go in and say, "Hey, I like this." And they'll guide you through the whole experience. So you could go spend 15 Euro for a panino made in Portofino. That's just fine. Or you can go spend 15 Euro and get three different tastes of things from Parla Come Mangi, and life is good.

You'll see it in Gambarorosso. You'll see it on maybe some food blogs because it's now gained popularity. But that's an incredible spot. And the same idea, by the way, when I lived in Rapallo, we'd go down to the Cinque Terre for the day. We'd go see the five towns, but we didn't have to be there, immersed in them and all of the tourist sort of onslaught that was there.

And that, to me, was a great way of seeing and experiencing the culture, but not having to be enveloped in it. We could choose we wanted to see the tourist experience, but we could also live like Italian locals. So my recommendation is if you're going to some places like Como, Cinque Terre, really popular tourist sites, maybe even Venice, right?

Take a look at the nearby areas and say, does it make better sense for me to stay in those nearby areas and then maybe pop in to the tourist spot for a day or two, as opposed to basing myself in the tourist bubble and kind of only experiencing that.

And where are you staying when you're kind of leaving a city center? I know in a lot of countries, like there's not a hotel there. Are you booking Airbnbs? Is there a different site in Italy that it's for finding houses or apartments? So Italy has all ranges of accommodation.

The most expensive hotel in Northern Italy outside of Venice is actually in Portofino, it's the Belmond there. And it's an incredible property. But right outside of Portofino, you have Santa Margherita, you have got Rapallo, you've got other towns. And in those towns, there are four and five star hotels that are not the Belmond, but they're lovely and they're a third or a quarter of the price.

For an interestingly similar level of luxury, not the same, but close. You of course can go much down market from there and you can find lots of wonderful things. The Italians are huge on camping. They love camping in the summer. So there's actually campsites within towns that have like motorhome or camper van style campers that you can rent sometimes.

And that's a really fun way of getting local and immersed. Airbnb is huge there, VRBO more in the outskirts when you're getting into villas and homes outside of town. So you can definitely do that. But honestly, what I like to do is look around on booking.com, hotels.com, get a feel for some of the hotels that are selling through those channels that I may not recognize internationally.

And then I go right to their website and I find what are their specials, what are their deals. I reach out to them through their contact form or through their booking form and say, "Hey, this is when we're coming. We don't need this. We don't need a breakfast. We don't need a suite.

Barely going to be in the room. Like, what do you got?" And they'll absolutely do a deal with you. The best part about some of these Italian hotels too, is that they won't take a deposit. They'll just take your credit card. And when you get there, you pay. So some of them have very flexible cancellation policies as well, if you go that route.

Or if you prepay and you make it non-refundable, you can even get a better deal sometimes. And what about the kind of typical chain hotels? Are they worth considering? Are there Hyatt's, Marriott's, Hilton's kind of thing? All over the place. All over the map. Yeah. Actually, the funniest thing I think is that the best Western brand here in North America, not exactly the nicest hotels.

If you go to Italy, they're actually not that bad in some places. And surprisingly, the best Westerns in off the beaten path cities are actually okay. Now, granted, not my preference always, but it's a good economical way of staying when maybe the competition nearby is another hundred euro more, but yes, if you've got Hyatt points or Marriott points and you want to use them in the big cities, there's definitely opportunities to do so.

In Italy, in particular, you should look out for small luxury hotels that are often part of the Hyatt sort of world of Hyatt program. Those often times will allow for outsized value where you can use your Hyatt points to save on these boutique hotels that would otherwise be very, very expensive.

Personally, for me, when I'm in big cities, Italy has some of the most incredible hotels that are not parts of big brands, so it's really fun to experience some of those hotels, you know, there's one in particular, it is part of the Relais Chateau Marketing Partnership, but in Rome, it's called Palazzo Manfredi and it is at the Colosseum.

And when I say at the Colosseum, I mean, there are suites that if you open up your sliding door, the Colosseum is in front of you. There is an unobstructed view, nothing between you and the Colosseum. That's incredible, right? Where else in the world do you get that? And so sure, you could stay at the St.

Regis, which is an incredible property in Rome, beautiful, but you can also stay at the Colosseum, right? So to me, it's like when you're in Rome, when in Rome, when you're in Italy, you should, you know, Il San Pietro on the Amalfi coast. That family that's been running that hotel for 40 years now, they've built, by hand, every single room into a rock on the side of a cliff overlooking Positano.

There's nothing like that in the world. Which hotel is this? Il San Pietro. And they are incredible hoteliers. They've mastered the art of luxury hotel experience. Food is remarkable. It's got a Michelin star and it's in Gambarodo. So it's just an incredible experience, but you know, you could choose to stay at like a whatever hotel nearby, or you could stay in this icon, this place that is truly incredible.

There's nothing like it in the world. So when I look at the big bucket list trip to Italy, I look at staying in some places like that. If they're available, if they're affordable, if not, absolutely use your points at the St. Regis, it's an incredible place. But it sounds like if you're going to take three or four trips and you've got points for not all of them, maybe Italy's one where you're not going to use your points for hotels or lodging.

That's correct. And I would prepare to find then the boutiques, the other cool places, the three, four, five-star hotels, the B&Bs, honestly, that are a good fit for what you want in that city. And don't be afraid to look around and comparison shop all over the place and then reach out directly to the hotelier and say, "Hey, these are my dates.

What can we do?" Yeah. And what about when you're in the city and you want to do things? Do you need to set up tours? Do you need to set up guides? Do you get lost on your own? How do you find them? What about booking activities, booking things?

Yeah. All of the above, right? So look, there are some bucket list things that you're going to want to see in Rome, right? You're going to want to go to the Vatican. You're going to want to maybe go to the Coliseum if you're into that. And so you're going to want to pre-book those as much as you can.

Vatican in particular, the thing I like to do is the Vatican Museum sells this on their website. So you don't need to buy a special tour for it, but Breakfast at the Vatican. It's called. You actually go to the Sistine Chapel pre-opening and you're part of a very small group of people that can do that.

And then you will have breakfast after the fact at the Vatican in their cafeteria. That's an incredible way of seeing one of the most amazing sites in all of the world. It's usually very crowded throughout the day. So getting in a little early is worth the extra dollars for Europe.

Now, if you wanted to completely privatize that experience too, find other people, we can do that, right? But that's a lot more money, of course, then, and a lot more consideration than just buying a ticket online. But the dates, you know, you're going to be in Rome, especially those dates that may be like you just arrived the day before, and you know, you're going to be all jet lag the day later, like buy the early morning tickets, make sure that you get in to have that experience as privately as you can.

But do leave space for spontaneity and what you might find. And do feel free to sort of throw your afternoon plans away because you're just into the vibe of this cafe or this piazza and you just want to sit there and watch for a little bit, right? So I like to have structured and very unstructured or semi-unstructured time in all the itineraries I put together.

Now, on a city by city basis, there's so much to do. I definitely recommend looking around on various guide websites to see who can do what according to what style of tour or experience you want. You know, there's a Jewish ghetto in Rome and there's a great historical food tour that we often combo.

And that, again, leads into then sitting at a cafe or at someone's restaurant and parlando un po', chatting a little bit for the next three hours after that tour. Or we do a sidecar tour of a couple of these different cities where you actually hop in a motorcycle sidecar and drive around and get to see the historical sites and you never know where you might end up or where you might stop on that tour.

So some of those kinds of fun experiences pre-planned with flexibility in the end works really, really well. And if you don't have plans, I always like taking free walking tours. I feel like they're always led by young, excited people who want to show off their town. They're working for tips.

So that's something you can do in any city, I imagine. I've found them almost everywhere. So I've said that a lot, but I think it's a great thing to do. If you don't have anything planned, you decide you want to do something and you haven't booked it. Absolutely. And I would say, like, take inspiration from websites that actually have lists of tours that they offer, whether you use those tours or not yourself, take inspiration, right?

Understand what they're showing you, because that's clearly a good guide for what you should see in that town. And so what I like to do is go look at Context Travel. They're, they're great tours. We do a lot of them, a lot of work with them, or even like Airbnb Experiences, and just see what people are offering in that area.

So you know what you should focus on or not focus on while you're there. But don't feel like you need to buy the expensive private tour, all of the places. You know, in the height of summer in Rome, in Florence, in Venice, in Milan, it's going to be busy and there's going to be a lot of people there.

So maybe you do want to take a private tour somewhere, but outside of those times or those places, maybe you can be okay dealing with some crowds. Um, the exceptions to those rules are places that have timed entry tickets. The Academia in Florence, where you see, uh, the David or the Uffizi, where you see a lot of Botticelli's work and a lot of the Renaissance paintings or, um, in, in Milan, when you want to go see the Last Supper, right?

Those things are very time controlled. You need to have a ticket. And you'll see, as you research your tours, it'll say, Hey, this includes a timed entry to blah, right? But what I would say is some of the best parts of Italy are just getting lost and wandering on your own.

And maybe you don't know what's in front of you, but that's okay. It's beautiful nonetheless. And you're there. And so just be there and enjoy it. I know we hit a lot of places, but I'm curious if there are any that we left off that you want to talk about.

So I think it's important as we record this, it's 2023 and the white Lotus is like the thing in the media right now. And it's their season two, which was filmed in Sicily and it was filmed at the four seasons in Taormina, the San Domenico palace, it's beautiful, stunning property that they put a bunch of money into redeveloped and it's gorgeous.

Um, and it's amazing to see the impact of that show and what has happened to, um, travel desire around Sicily. Sicily is always a constant for North Americans. We want to go there. We, a lot of. Um, people with Italian roots came from Sicily or had family of your in Sicily.

And so, um, people want to go see their genealogy and they want to go see the sights and sounds of Sicily. Um, so it's always busy, but this year it's exceptionally busy. So I would say a book now, right? Um, there's a lot of interest, but B, um, know that Sicily is a place where you could easily spend two weeks and not see a fraction of it, right?

The area around. Uh, Taormina, which is where they filmed white Lotus is incredible. You've got the Etna volcano. You've got, um, Catania, Ragusa, um, Siracusa, all these amazing towns that are on the East side of Sicily, full of history and culture and art and food and food and food and food.

So you could just spend two weeks there bouncing around from town to town with your own car and you'd be happier than you know what to do with. But I would also recommend heading a little further West in Sicily. Uh, the town of Agrigento has some of the best.

Greek, um, temples better preserved. In fact, in some of the boys, some of those you'd find in Greece. Uh, and then there's Palermo, which is incredible. Um, right North of Sicily, you've got the, um, Aeolian islands. Um, and you've got these incredible, the word volcano comes from an island.

In the, uh, in that little island chain, because there's a giant volcano on it. It's called Volcano. So I'd go there or Stromboli or some of these amazing places in the summer that have lava and mud baths and beautiful beaches, and it's just you and the, the volcano, so Sicily is incredibly in demand.

Puglia on the heel of Italy, another place, incredibly in demand hotels, especially luxury hotels, popping up left and right down there. And if you like the orechiette pasta, the kind of ear shaped pasta, that's its home. If you like sausage and peppers, that's their home. If you like, um, beautiful white sand beaches with no one on them for a kilometer, that's your home.

And it's an incredible place where you can go and explore, spend a week, 10 days, not see the same thing twice and, um, eat the best meals of your life. And it's not as expensive as Tuscany or Umbria or elsewhere in the north. So in the south, those are my winners, right?

Sicily, Puglia, uh, and they make for great vacations. Do keep in mind, if you go in the very heart of summer in July and August, it's hot, talking could be easily over a hundred degrees Fahrenheit each day. That's, uh, it's pretty toasty down there, but it's beautiful. You know, another area that I would also recommend as a side trip from the Amalfi coast, everyone always goes to Capri.

The island of Capri is incredible and beautiful and it's stunning. So it's a sight to see, but it's also very expensive. It's very crowded. And you get the sense when you're there that there aren't really any Caprese. That's people who live in Capri. You don't find the locals, you find people serving tourists.

So my recommendation would be go to a neighboring island right across the Gulf called Ischia, I-S-C-H-I-A. There you'll find true Italian. It's a place that is volcanic in origin. So you have mud baths and hot springs and crazy stuff all over the place. You have, uh, people who are so happy and so proud to show you their island because it's less touristed.

And you have the ability to get around in whether it's a rental car or a Vespa or actually they drive these little things called Apes, little, um, called bees. They're a little like farm equipment, um, like a lawnmower with a couple of seats, but they, they're stylish and, um, they drive your own, the island in those.

And you can really get to know the culture and the people and the restaurants, uh, that way. And at a third of the price of Capri. So I think we hit everything, anything in the North. I mean, we hit, we've moved up the coast. Let's talk about the North.

I mean, look, I could talk, as I said earlier for hours, but in the North you have Venice and the Venice is an incredible place to go for a night or two. If you're going to stay in Venice and you've never been before, I absolutely recommend you stay overnight, at least one night, probably no more than two.

The reason is that there's a lot of day trippers that come in and out of Venice. And you'll want to see the city at night when most of the tourists leave. It's a magical place, but if you've been to Venice before and you haven't been to the area around Venice, and that could be anywhere from Trieste, which is all the way to the East, close to Slovenia, or even the Dolomites about an hour or two North of Venice, then you need to go back to that region and go see those places.

The true heart for me of the Veneto, which is the area around Venice is not necessarily in Venice proper, but it's the area around it. It's the rich farmland, the Palladian villas, the beautiful mountains and the other cities, especially canal cities that make that area so rich. So I would say, make sure you see Venice.

It's incredible, St. Mark's Square, nothing like it in the world. And then get out of town, go see something nearby. OK, I feel like we hit a lot. I think someone listening to this maybe has some inspiration for their next trip or they're totally overwhelmed or they're totally overwhelmed.

Maybe listen to it twice. But one thing we didn't do a lot of, you mentioned a few places that you love. Are there any other things that when you think of if you were going on a tour through a lot of these places that are like you got to eat here, you got to have a drink here, you got to drink, have a coffee here, are there anything like standouts that maybe aren't the obvious ones that someone, you know, searching blogs are going to find?

Yeah, for sure. So as a general rule, as I said earlier, I love looking at Gambaroro. So I love looking at the Michelin Guide. I love to understand what doesn't need to be three or even two starred. What's Bib Gourmand? What is a good place to go check out that's local and legit?

And I start there. And then I look at actually Trip Advisor in Italian reviews. Again, if you don't speak Italian, take the Trip Advisor reviews in Italy from Italian people and Google translate them into English, right? You'll get a real sense of what something is from an Italian's perspective.

That's different from a non-Italian. Let's put it that way. So I like to read some of those to really understand what's great. And then I go back in time. I go back 20, 30 years and see what's been still standing in a spot for so long that I need to go to.

You know, I mentioned earlier that I used to live in Rapallo. There's a coffee shop in Rapallo that's been around since the '70s that they sell a particular style of biscuit in the morning. I'm not a biscuit eater, but this biscuit with their coffee is like amazing. It's called Canepa, C-A-N-E-P-A.

And so it's not like I need to go to Italy to have that. But when I'm there or nearby, that's the only thing I eat for the week or whatever it is of time that I'm in Italy. In Rome, there's a place called Panella, P-A-N-E-L-L-A. They make out of an old school coffee machine, kind of looks like a samovar almost, they pull espresso and then they whip it with a zabaglione, egg whites, excuse me, egg yolks and sugar.

And they make this cream. And so you can go get an espresso with espresso zabaglione cream on top. That is to die for, right? And I could literally, Chris, tell you 150 of these things, okay? But the point is, is that none of these are like undiscovered gems that no one's ever heard of.

They've been around for 30 years doing their 50 years, 100 years, doing their thing, selling their one item that makes them spectacular. And so every town you go to will have this, from big or small. And it's just a question of you seeking them out and finding your own that's exciting to you.

You may not like coffee. And so those two examples I gave you were terrible, right? That's fine. But you'll find the thing that makes the Italians, the locals super proud and makes everybody write about it and talk about it and eat it and drink it and experience it themselves.

And if you're someone like me and you're a bit of an over-optimizer trying to find the perfect place, is Italy the kind of place that you can fall into a trap of just walking down the street and picking the wrong place? Or is it just like, just go pick any place that looks crowded with people that look like they're speaking Italian and you're going to have a great.

The latter for sure, right? If you find where the Italians are, you're going to have a blast. If you find a menu in seven languages, right? You know, beware, have your hackles up, but know that if you're going to follow the Italians and get lost, be off the beaten path, and it might be a little uncomfortable because you may not speak Italian and you may not know where you're going.

Trust your instincts. Trust your nose. You're going to find something great. Right. And you can get back with Google maps. Like you can tell people, Hey, I don't know where I'm going. Can you help me? And they will help you. They're not going to take advantage of you. They're not brutal people.

They're lovely, wonderful people. And if you, if you start it by saying, Oh, I'm so happy that I got lost here. How do I get back? They'll help you right out. Any parting thoughts? I mean, we kind of hit lots of places. I would say we didn't, we didn't go too deep into specific things, but I feel like you left people with a few ideas of what to try any, any other standouts or.

You know, um, we'll talk a little bit about airlift getting to and from Italy, because there's a couple of gems here you want to know about and a few you can avoid, right? So Alitalia, which is actually an acronym. It's now a dead airline. It's the old, uh, state airline that Italy used to have.

Uh, it died in 2019, 2020, but it was, uh, A L I T A L I A, Alitalia. It literally means to Italy or the wings of Italy, depending on how you translate it, um, but it was the acronym for always late in takeoff and late in arrival. It's just not nice, but they're, they're dead now.

And their, their, um, resurrection is called ITA airlines. Um, it's the same thing. I would sort of avoid them if I could. They're just meh at best. Um, the business class is fine, but economy's pretty terrible. Um, but all of your us carriers, your Delta, um, United American, et cetera, they all fly nonstop from gateway hubs to Rome and some to Milan, but the best experience getting to Milan is going to be on Emirates and Emirates flies from JFK to Milan, and then that same aircraft continues on to Dubai and then it goes back.

So I would recommend if you can get on business class where ideally first on that flight, do so. Emirates just recently made changes to award redemption for that particular route, which is a bummer, but sometimes on Emirates partners like Alaska and others, you can still find it. So take a look at that.

Um, as a general rule of thumb, I would actually prefer to fly through, uh, let's say Paris. If you're going to fly on Air France la premier, you're flying in true luxury, then take a nonstop from North America to Italy, just that extra stop, even though it adds another hour or two, it's such a nicer experience than flying, you know, United Polaris.

Um, but there is going to be a new United Polaris flight from San Francisco to Rome nonstop coming up, starting in May, and that'll definitely help with Lyft on the West coast in terms of getting around inside of Italy. None of the airlines that fly into Italy are great.

So don't splurge for business business class in Italy is literally just an empty economy seat with, uh, it's blocked off. So, uh, it's not necessarily something I would say is worth two or three times the price, which by the way, seems to be this case with almost every European airline.

Um, if you're booking an international flight using points in business and you get the intra Europe flight in business for free, why not? Sure. But it was, but you will be wildly underwhelmed if you've never had that experience because it's literally just a blocked seat in between you. Exactly.

And in fact, if you're traveling with someone, depending on the airline, sometime that that seat is actually blocked. Like you can't actually lift up the armrest. There's a thing there. Yeah. So, so, uh, if you actually want to sit next to whoever you're traveling with, you actually can't in those seats.

So, uh, I totally agree there. Any other, uh, points, miles tricks. Normally I would, I would do a location episode and do it separately because most of the people I talked to about countries aren't as dialed in on points and miles, whereas you might be, um, anything there. Yeah.

So, I mean, definitely on the, on the hotel side, um, take a look at using Hyatt points for properties in big cities, especially through the SLH properties. Take a look at using Hilton points. There's a few higher end Hilton's that are sometimes not that egregious. Usually they're pretty bad.

Um, and then there are a handful of Marriott properties, uh, especially those on Sardinia that are usually exceptionally expensive, but sometimes allow points redemptions. So usually it's shoulder season, like end of May or early September. But if you can get one of those Sardinian properties, it's normally 2000 Euro a night and it's 60,000 Marriott points.

Jump on that twice. And then some right on the airline side. Uh, I do like to fly through, uh, Northern continental Europe, uh, Germany, Switzerland, France, even sometimes the UK, uh, when doing points redemptions, because I find that the, the value of the ticket that I'm usually redeeming for would be greater than, um, the price that I would pay for either a nonstop flight from the States, um, or, uh, I can, I can get a better experience, better bang for my buck.

Cool. All right. Well, Lee, I feel like I'm ready both for lunch, by the way. Now I'm both hungry, but I'm also excited for a trip to Italy. I don't know when it'll happen because two kids traveling, you know, we're still recovering from the trip to London and Paris, but I'm excited whenever it happens, just want to call out Chris.

I have done weekend trips with kids to Italy before. It's not an insane idea. You can do it yourselves, choose one city and go and spend three nights. I, I don't think that sounds as fun as you make it seem. It sounds like your kids are older than ours.

Uh, I don't know if a weekend trip with a seven month old is going to be fun. Not really, not really too exciting when they're that little. Cool. Well, thank you for doing this. Thank you. I appreciate the opportunity and, uh, dai, andiamo in Italia.