Travel Advice: Italy off the beaten path

[Barnes]

Cinque Terre is off the beaten path once the day trippers and cruise passengers leave for the day.

I stayed in Vernaza for 3 nights and on our first evening while drinking beers with my wife in the square listening to some guitar player, around aperitivo time an old man came down and was dancing with everyone he could grab.

Two nights later my wife, brother and sister in law, were going out with a local fisherman to see how they catch all the delicious seafood I was going through in town. We spent some time at the dock waiting for someone before getting underway. Turned out it was the old guy from the piazza. The captain gave him some fish from earlier in the day and we asked who he was.

He was born in Vernaza and was captured by the Nazis and taken to a concentration camp where he escaped and basically walked from Germany back to Vernaza and has been there ever since.

It was too rough to pull in the nets so the captain showed some of the artifacts he had dragged up over the years. Etruscan, Roman, Syrian pottery and artifacts. We ate anchovies and local cheese, drank wine and watched the sun set over the Med while the captain told us his father's stories of the war and all about what the it was like living and growing up in Vernaza.

If that is the beaten path, $#%& the unbeaten path.

We were in Italy a little under a year ago for a wedding.

We did:

Rome: Meh. I studied a lot of history and specifically art history. It felt like I had already been there. We did a night tour of the Roman ruins and Colosseum which is THE WAY to see anything. We were two of only about 50 people in the Colosseum at around midnight.

Viareggio: We went off the beaten path and regretted it. This is the Italian Myrtle Beach without the mini putt and go carts. My Italian is flimsy and it was clear we were outsiders and treated as such by locals who were obviously tired at the end of the summer holiday season. Almost got into a fistfight on the street here.

Lucca: Mentioned by Furnaceface and I agree. I could have sat and watched the end of days sitting in the Piazza dell'Anfiteatro and been fine with it. The Piazza is elliptical as it is built over the old Roman Amphitheater.

Vernaza (Cinque Terre): Awesome, see above. Stay in one of the towns for sure if you can. We only saw two of them as many of the trails are still closed from the floods and there was a train strike the day we had set aside to see them. You can buy a Cinque Terre day pass that allows you to hike or take the train for the day. It's a National Park so you need to pay to hike but you walk through terraced vineyards and olive groves. The terrace walls are hand placed without mortar and the say there are more stones in the terraces of Cinque Terre then in the Great Wall of China. The home made monorail trains the local vineyards have to get up and down the valleys are fascinating.

Pisa: Get off train, check your luggage at the station, take picture of tower, go back to station, get your bags and move on.

Florence: Best city in the world.

Tuscany: Stayed at a villa for the wedding. Did Tuscan things. Villa was built by the uncle of Niccolo Machiavelli and was were he wrote The Prince. Facade was designed by Michelangelo.
I liked doing Tuscan things. They've got it figured out.

[Nufy]

Originally Posted by Tinordi

Laugh. Guy asks for Italy off the beaten path and people respond saying Cinque Terre. WTF?

Puglia. Go to Puglia.

Big bold wines. Where mozzarella is actually from. Incredible hill top towns. Great weather and beaches. Beautiful people.

Thanks for the condescending tone...
Though I'm not surprised coming from you...

I was passing on a recommendation from the locals when I was in Massa a few weeks back.

That and Portovenere were highly recommended for a weekend getaway...

[Charsiu]

Beautiful advice from all.
I appreciate the difficulty of getting off the beaten track of the 5th most visited country in the world but like most of us, I just want to avoid the spots inundated with droves of tourists being ushered from site to site. Any place where you can have interactions with people who aren't hardened or made cynical by your presence.

As for all of the in forum controversy about whether Cinque Terre is "off the beaten track" enough, I've heard that Portovenere is basically like the sixth village in terms of similarity of appearance and location but with more ambience and less crowds.

That said, I know its all about what you open yourself to in terms of interaction and experience, Barnes' anecdote being a great example of that.

Thanks to Aeneas for the suggestion of that show, I'll be sure to check it out for ideas.
This trip is depressingly far away so I really shouldn't dwell too much on it. My last trip off the continent was a 2 year cycle trip through Asia from which I returned 2.5 years ago. It's impossible to find the time for anything remotely similar to that so all I can do is dream...

[CorsiHockeyLeague]

It may not have been clear, the picture I posted wasn't Cinque Terre, it was Amalfi proper, which is better. Still not exactly a huge secret, but further off the path than Cinque Terre, for certain. Not that many people doing an Italy trip end up south of Naples.

[troutman]

Originally Posted by nickerjones

Don't mean to hijack this thread but also need some advice.

I'm traveling to Salzburg for a hockey tournament at the end of the month. I'm an ancient Roman history geek so I have decided to fly to Rome (getting in 10am) on Tuesday, spend 1.5 days, then fly to Munich Thursday morning, and then take the noon train to Salzburg. I am really curious about luggage. I'll have my hockey stuff, suitcase with clothes, and a carry on with photo/video equipment for the tournament. Are there places I can pay to store luggage at the airport? Are they safe? Any suggestions?

It has been said that Aeneas and I have been to Salzburg, but neither of us remember a thing after teaching Austrians some drinking games.

[Aeneas]

Originally Posted by troutman

It has been said that Aeneas and I have been to Salzburg, but neither of us remember a thing after teaching Austrians some drinking games.

Ah Salzburg. I hear it is a beautiful town. Been there, saw nothing.

[Fozzie_DeBear]

Goto YouTube search Rick Steves Italy

[4X4]

Some good posts in here. If you're avoiding Rome, then my knowitallism kind of ends there. I explored much of Italy, but lived in Rome, so Rome is where all my inside info is limited to.

Lucca, however, is the city that my family is more or less from. More specifically, a little town outside Lucca. Lucca and my dad's home town are the only places I've ever been where I met people with the same last name as me.

Lucca is an absolute gem. You get the history with the wall and the historic center, and it's not a pain to get to. I could spend months in Lucca. I want to retire in Lucca. Just go there, drop your bags at the place you're staying, and then go outside and walk around. That's Italy right there. Restaurants that make all their food from scratch. The wine. The food. The architecture. The ambiance. I can't say enough about Lucca, if you're looking for authentic Italy that's off the beaten path.

[InglewoodFan]

Best Lucca memory - being at an epic DMB show in the Piazza. Just an amazing night. I'd happily go back and spend a bunch of time there.

[Charsiu]

Originally Posted by 4X4

Some good posts in here. If you're avoiding Rome, then my knowitallism kind of ends there. I explored much of Italy, but lived in Rome, so Rome is where all my inside info is limited to.

Lucca, however, is the city that my family is more or less from. More specifically, a little town outside Lucca. Lucca and my dad's home town are the only places I've ever been where I met people with the same last name as me.

Lucca is an absolute gem. You get the history with the wall and the historic center, and it's not a pain to get to. I could spend months in Lucca. I want to retire in Lucca. Just go there, drop your bags at the place you're staying, and then go outside and walk around. That's Italy right there. Restaurants that make all their food from scratch. The wine. The food. The architecture. The ambiance. I can't say enough about Lucca, if you're looking for authentic Italy that's off the beaten path.

I'm not avoiding Rome per se, I'm just wary of recommendations surrounding the sights and sounds of the world's 5th most visited country.

Please, if you have any insight about Rome at all I'd love to hear it!

[snootchiebootchies]

I don't know how off the beaten path it is but when my wife and I visited Hadrian's Villa six years ago, we had the entire place to ourselves. I loved it but my wife found the experience of being alone in those ruins too eerie. To get there, we took the train from Rome to Tivoli and then took a bus to Hadrian's Villa.



Also noticed someone mentioned Viareggio earlier. I've never been there but I remember from my English Lit classes that was where Percy Bysshe Shelley washed ashore after drowning in the Tyrrhenian Sea. He was also cremated right on the beach at Viareggio.