Back to Italy for my 10th time to see Umbria plus Dalmatian coast

This week, I plan to return to Italy, this time to lead a 15-day tour to Umbria and on to Croatia, Montenegro and Slovenia. 

It will be my 10th time in Italy and seventh time in Rome. Two other times I flew into Milan and once to Venice.

Italy is easily my most favourite country to visit after England. I would have gone to Italy many more times if it weren’t for how far it is from here in Vancouver. 

But, hey, we do what we can and, for me, there is no more enjoyable place to visit than Italy: great food, wonderful wine, divine art, spectacular scenery and an effervescent zest for life that never fails to lift the spirit. 

Since 2004, I have seen most of Italy from top to tail, from the northern Milanese lakes and Dolomites to Calabria and Sicily at the bottom of the boot.

On my first visit in 2004, Loraine and I started out in Rome, staying in the Vatican area at a quirky hotel with a marvellous roof garden and amazing view of St. Peter’s.

When we arrived at this hotel, we climbed the narrow stairs to the rooftop, just in time to be greeted by a lavish fireworks display that lit up the night sky over the neighbouring Trastevere. What a splendid welcome.

From Rome, we went to Pitigliano, Montalcino, Florence, Siena and drove around Tuscany visiting Volterra, San Gimignano and Pisa before moving on to Venice and later to Milan and Lake Maggiore. We returned home via Switzerland.

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We saw as much of Rome as we could – the Vatican museum, Trastevere, St. Peter’s, Piazza Navona, Spanish Steps, Trevi Fountain, Colosseum – on this first visit, but (hard to believe) we actually missed seeing the Pantheon. 

This embarrassment hit us so acutely that we felt compelled to return the next year to see the Pantheon and more. 

In October 2005, we were back in Rome. We flew from East Midlands airport to the Italian capital for just 5 pounds (plus taxes) return on Ryanair, arriving around midnight and deciding to walk from the train station through Piazza della Repubblica and past Santa Maria della Vittoria to our hotel on Via 20 Settembre.

I thought it would be scary with all kinds of potential menace, yet it turned out to be beautiful, if not even a little magical, to walk in the mooncast shadows of such a historic landscape in the serene silence of night.

This time we got to the Pantheon as well as the Villa Borghese and much more before going back to Florence to see more of its treasures, including magnificent gardens in the town centre and on the hillside outside in Settignano. We also took the train to Lucca. 

This was the time I first met Princess Giorgiana Corsini at her garden at Palazzo Corsini al Prato in the centre of Florence. I remember asking her if she lived in an apartment in the palazzo. She said, “I have the top floor, my daughter has the lower floor and the bank occupies the ground floor.” I also was made to think twice when I asked her about the statues lining the main avenue in the garden. “Are they very old,” I asked. “No, not really, just 1st century.”

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During our time in Rome in 2005, we also fell in love with Baroque architecture and especially key sculptural works by Bernini such as David, Ecstasy of Saint Teresa,  Apollo and Daphne and Caravaggio’s Crucifixion of Saint Peter and Conversion of Saint Paul in the Cerasi Chapel in Santa Maria del Popolo. Slowly, slowly we were getting to love Rome more and more.

I remember the joy of sitting on a rainy day for hours in Piazza Navona, drinking wine and ordering pasta dishes, as we looked at the Fountain of Four Rivers right in front of us and then, when the thunder storm reached it most intense, stepping inside Borromini’s exquisite Sant’ Agnese in Agone where the most moving community singsong was under way. I’m never bored in Rome and I always seem to leave feeling there was never enough time to see all that I want to see.

In 2007, we again returned, this time with our daughter, Aimee and her husband, Jeremy, and our first grandchild, Maya. 

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This time we stayed in a wonderful hotel right next to the Pantheon in Piazza della Rotunda. This gave us the opportunity to step inside the Pantheon the moment it opened, first thing in the morning, long before the tourist throng arrived. It was spectacular. It is always a thrill to walk through the massive front doors into the divine space of the inner sanctum.

From Rome, we travelled with Aimee and family to Florence and on to Pisa and Cinque Terre before crossing into France to Nice and then up to Provence and Arles and on to Burgundy and Paris before taking the train to London.

In 2009, Loraine and I were back in Rome, for the fourth time, with plans to visit Villa d’Este, the superb water garden in Tivoli, before driving south to the Amafi coast and on into Matera in Basilicata and into Puglia, the heel of Italy, where we stayed in a whitewashed cone-shaped trullo in Alberobello and then went to Lecce farther south. 

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From Puglia, we next headed south through Calabria, stopping in Cosenza and Tropea, before reaching Sicily where we stayed in Taormina. From Catania, we jumped to Milan and then made our way home after a few days in London. 

In 2009, we were back in Rome to lead a tour, mostly from a cruise ship out of Civitavecchia, around Italy going to Portofino, Florence, back down the coast to Sicily and up to Venice, stopping on the way back at Dubrovnik in Croatia. 

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This was a brilliant adventure including a memorable time in Taormina where I persuaded a hotel owner I knew to allow my group to occupy his fabulous terrace for lunch with spectacular ocean scenery and views of Mount Etna. 

The wine flowed so freely at this lunch and our guests were so divinely happy, we had a hard time getting them back to the ship. A nice problem to have. We also made the decision to visit the botanical garden in Padua. It was a tough decision to take people out of Venice to Padua, but I was convinced it was worthwhile. It was. We returned to Padua again some years later.

However, I decided after this trip that cruise-based tours were not my thing and from this point on we decided to concentrate on land-centred tours, involving bus travel. The advantages were obvious: no driving, no reason to not enjoy wine at lunch, better views of the countryside and great companions to share special moments.

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Italy called us back again in 2011, this time starting to Milan for a tour of the Milanese lakes, including Como, Maggiore plus Lake Lugano and Lake Garda, and then north into the Dolomites and Bolzano before coming swooping back down through Trento to Verona.

In 2013, we were back in Rome for one of the most memorable spring garden tour that included exciting visits to Villa d’Este and Ninfa, the so-called “most romantic garden in the world”, and Villa Landriana and then down to the Amalfi coast to Pompei, Positano, Sorento and Capri and up into the hills to Villa Cimbrone and Villa Rufolo in Ravello after which we made our way to Sicily to Palermo, Cefalu, Taormina and Catania.

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On this trip, we visited some fantastic hillside vineyard/ fruit gardens where grapefruits were so sweet and juicy it was impossible to peel them let alone eat them without being drenched in juice.

Italy called us back in 2015, this time to conduct two back-to-back tours, each starting in Venice and moving via Padua and Bologna to Florence from where we went around Tuscany before flying to Puglia and Bari and skipping down to Lecce and other wonderful towns, including Otranto and Ostuni.

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On this trip, we got caught in a thunder storm in Gallipoli. As heavy rain began to fall on the stone streets, we miraculously managed to turn what could have been a debacle into a triumph by persuading a kindly resident to allow us to occupy his magnificent Renaissance villa and turn an empty dinning room into a superb party room for the duration of the storm. The wine flowed freely and we ended up being served a wonderful pasta lunch . . .  and we partied and laughed while the rain hammered down from crackling skies.

Our last visit to Italy was in 2018 when we gathered in Milan for an Islands and Lakes tour. From Milan, we headed up to Lake Lugano and then over to Lake Como and Lake Maggiore (with time on the divine Brissago island) before jumping over to Sardinia to tour the island with fabulous moments in La Maddalena, Olbia, Sassari, Alghero and Cagliari. 

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Our final days on this trip were spent in Naples and on the beautiful islands Ischia and Procida.

Next week, we will be back in Rome, this time to see more of the spectacular works of Bernini and Borromini as well as a return visit to the magnificent Villa Borghese to pay homage again to Caravaggio and Titian and to tour the lovely gardens with romantic temples, fountains and statuary.

On this trip, we are heading north of Rome to Umbria, the region next to Tuscany, to visit some gardens and towns we have yet to explore – Orvieto, Perugia and Assisi.

Later, we will return to Rome and jump over to Croatia where we also plan to visit Montenegro and Slovenia. 

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Frankly, I already know I want to go back to Italy again in the future – to see the Amalfi coast once more and more of Puglia and Sicily.

The problem for me is that I would so like to take the rest of my family with me to show them some of these amazing places. I think my grandchildren would love to see the Italy we have come to know and love over the years.

Perhaps one day soon we will do a family tour from top to bottom.  It would be magical. Something to dream about.

swhysall@hotmail.com