(upbeat music) - Someone wants to go to Italy 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 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, 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. So where do I find inspiration? You know, there's a lot of really great media right now 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 Tour 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, you know, Campania, where they grow the tomatoes that become your 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 a 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." And 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.

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 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 and 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 2,000 years ago, and it's still standing.

It's still standing, it's like mind-blowing. Like we can't build things here. We can't build a road here. They can build a, 2,000 years ago, a dome that is in the center of town that 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 2,000 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 gonna be welcomed in. You're gonna eat an incredible meal, and you're gonna 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 wanna do Rome and something else. What are a few options? - Well, from Rome, if you draw a big circle, you say, "I wanna 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 '50s, 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 is 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 2,000-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, that's 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. What do you do on your second or third trip back to Italy? 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 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.

You have 2,000-year-old villages there, in fact, sometimes even older, to the Etruscan age. You've got incredible food and wine, 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 sights and sounds that are 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? No, that doesn't 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 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 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, celebrating their history and culture and having a blast doing it.