Candida Martinelli's Italophile Site (Italian Travel)

Candida Martinelli's Italophile Site

Main Page This family-friendly site celebrates Italian culture for the enjoyment of children and adults. Site-Overview

Italian Travel, Stories, Advice, Sites, Books...

Yes Italia - RAI Tourism Channel Streaming On-Line, Link Below.

Fiat - Fabbrica italian di Automobili Torino

The Fiat 500 has inspired people to obsession, as have many FIAT cars. Just type into any Search Engine 'Fiat clubs country name' and you'll see what I mean!

Moto Guzzi, California EV Touring 2003

MV Agusta 1957 175 CSTL

The Designer Mark and Logos on the Lamborghini Miura

The Lamborghini Miura

Newly Restored MV Agusta Discovoltante

Moto Guzzi Logo

Ducati 750 Sport from 1972/73

1962 Motobi 125 Classic Racer

And if you are planning to live in Italy...

Visit my Living and Working in Italy page

And check out my main page or site contents listing for more information on Italy and Italian culture.

Travel Books

If you'd like to know what's available in terms of travel books, what people say about them, and the prices, you can use this search tool for Amazon.com.

Just enter 'Books' in the 'Search' field, and 'Italy travel' in the 'Keywords' field. Then click on the 'Go' button to see the list. You can even get more specific to your needs by adding extra 'Keywords' like motorcycling, backpacking, camping...

Here are a few of my picks.

Check my Non-Fiction Books page for more interesting books on traveling in Italy.

For 'literary travelers', here are a few selections that combine travel in Italy with some writings about Italy by very famous authors.

And if while traveling in Italy, you get the desire to purchase a property, it's a good idea to read a book like this first (and check out the website linked to the big banner below).

Travel Sites

Reminiscences

Advice

City Information and Guides Online

Travel Books

Some Travel Sites

Italian travel sites are abundant on the web. I will only point out a few.

Budgetplaces.com offers low per night/per person cost accommodation lists and booking online. This is the link to their Italy selections.

Budgetplaces.com Italy

The Home Away sites offer apartments, houses and countryside suites throughout Italy (and the rest of the world!) directly from the owners of those places. The service is reliable and much more personable than you would find at a hotel, and it is often cheaper when you calculate restaurant and parking bills into the mix. I've booked through them without any problems.

The full Italian site:

The UK/English Italy page:

The Italian site's Italy offerings:

The Youth Hostel Association of Italy offers a site with all sorts of options for an inexpensive stay in Italy. How about 18 Euro a night in Florence? And Venice at 19 Euros a night? It is possible! Go directly to the search page.

Escapio.com offers a wide selection of boutique hotels in Italy. You can search the selection by price, popularity, region, city, and even by hotel type (i.e. boutique, historic, gourmet, family, design, luxury, romantic, spa, nature and many, many more) and features (i.e. internet, city, sea, pool, spa and many more). There is even an option to check for those hotels offering the best discounted prices.

eRentals offers a great, free search engine for car hires out of 40 Italian airports. The search results are organized by price, lowest first, so if you are looking for bargains, this is a great place to start. You can pick the car up at one Italian airport, and drop it off at another airport within Italy.

Read about where to go in Italy with informative, colorful and entertaining articles about the sights throughout Italy at the Where to go in Italy site. It offers collected magazine articles on Italian travel, food and culture, and tips on where to stay and eat.

360 Sardinia offers lots of photos, including 360 degree images, and lots of information for visitors to Sardinia (there are links to more 360 sites for Tuscany, Rome...). The site makes fantastic use of embedded Google maps, so you can really plan your trip (or dream about one) in detail.

This is a great way to virtually visit a place, and to prepare for a trip. You really get a feel for Sardinia, an island that is an amazing mix of ruggedness and sophistication. It's Berlusconi's favorite vacation spot!

Virtual Tourist helps you to "Plan a Italy vacation with reviews, tips and photos posted by real travelers and Italy locals". Lots of images and practical information on this site. This link is to their Italy pages.

Many offer to make all the arrangements for you, like the In Italy Online site, the biggest and oldest out there.

The So-Much-World site offers brief travel guides to many Italian cities to help you plan your trip. And be sure to check out their sister site where you can find a wealth of information about Italy handily indexed for you: Travel Bookmarking.

Also for do-it-yourselfers, there are many companies that rent apartments and villas. Meridian Villas is one, and their site gives wonderful descriptions of the areas with a wide price range on the properties. Another company is the Italian Rental site that offers interesting villas and farmhouses throughout Italy.

There are some beautiful villas to rent via the Ville-in-Italia site, too.

Views on Venice offer apartments for rent in Venice, and as a bonus, provide this useful map, via Google Maps, with their apartments marked, along with supermarkets, some shops and many restaurants.

If you are travelling to Venice (and who would go to Italy and not travel to Venice?), try Truly Venice for quality apartments for short and long-term rental. They offer apartments in four categories: Romantic, Contemporary, Comfort, and Classic (my favorite). The company offers not only a beautiful selection of apartments, but other services like yacht rentals, catering, tours...

There is a wonderful community on the web called Slow Travelers. They are not affiliated with any agencies or travel spots. The community members report on their vacations and recommend places they liked. There's lots to read, and lots of practical information for do-it-yourself travelers.

I've come across a site for birdwatchers traveling to Italy: Birding Italy.

Some Reminiscences

I met two retired couples from the U.S. on their first visit to Italy. When their women were busy elsewhere, the men cornered me and asked in a voice usually associated with asking for something illegal, "Is it true Italian drivers never follow the rules of the road?" When I told them that was generally true, they beamed in pleasure, clearly looking forward to, "When in Italy, drive like an Italian."

I considered warning their spouses, but decided they would discover their fates soon enough! When I related this to an Italian friend, he shook his head and said in a pitying voice, "Poverini". Roughly translated, that means, "Those poor men". He pitied the fact that up to that point in their lives, they had always had to follow the rules of the road.

By the way, it's now official: Italians are the worst drivers in Western Europe. They finally beat out the Belgians who have stopped handing out driver's licenses on a person's 18th birthday, and now require the person to know how to drive first.

Some Advice

And now some advice to women traveling in trains or on buses in Italy: try to sit next to women, nuns are particularly protective, and families with small children are always a safe bet.

This was always my plan, but one time it went terribly wrong. Somehow, one evening, leaving Naples in a full train, I ended up in a compartment with a Camorra gangster, a suicidal policeman, and a porn fanatic. The gangster protected me from the other two, believe it or not.