I am meeting friends in Florence for six days in June and then heading up to Venice for the remainder of the trip. I would like to add about 4 days on to the trip and am thinking about starting on one coast or the other. I have read good things about both places and it appeals to me that neither are the typical tourist trail.
Anyone been and have advice on either?
Thanks!
Good luck finding a nice spot on the Italian coast with no tourists.
Maybe you won't find North Americans (unless you go to the Cinque Terre where there are thousands of Americans), but you can always count on European tourists (including Italians) being everywhere along the nice places at the seaside.
Some advice on both, since I know both well.
MARCHE: The best portion of the Marche coast, IMO, is the Riviera del Conero, near the Mount Conero Park, just south of Ancona. Numana and Portonovo are both nice little towns and the sea spectacular.
MAREMMA: This is the best section of Tuscany's coast, if you exclude the islands (Elba, Giglio etc.). The top of the top, IMO, is the Monte Argentario Peninsula around Porto Santo Stefano and Porto Ercole. From Porto Santo Stefano, you can also easily take a ferry boat across to the Giglio Island, which is a beautiful island. Just make sure Capt. Schettino of the Costa Concordia is not at the helm of your ferry :-)
Also nice, more to the north is Castiglion Della Pescaia and also and Punta Ala, which is another top area that was developed a few decades ago (lots of upscale timeshares in Punta Ala). I spent some vacations there in youth where I friend had a house (Roger Moore, the former James Bond in the 1970's was her neighbor, he also had a beach house at Castiglione).
Between Argentario and Castiglione you also have another area, the Maremma Park (used to be called Uccellina National Park in my days) with the town Talamone. If you are interested in nature walks and bird watching, you'll like that park.
I'm not giving you advice on which one to choose, since all are nice choices. I can only suggest that you do a Google Image search and see which of the above you might like better.
Roberto, this is great.
We'll be going from Lucca to Chieti (for the Good Friday procession) and have 4 nights between. We had planned to stay in Pienza and/or Orvieto. Now thinking we'll drive down the coast, and split the time between the Maremma region and Orvieto.
Do you have any good lodging suggestions there-- B&B or Agriturismo? Ideally close to the park, since we like to hike. Also-- is it worth stopping in Grosseto for an hour or two on the way down?
Thanks again!
I haven't stayed in Maremma recently so I don't remember the names of the accommodations where I stayed when I went several years ago. If you like the coast Porto Santo Stefano is really nice, at the Argentario. If you prefer the Maremma park, Talamone is a nice town. Talamone is actually famous for arms manufacturing and trade. General Garibaldi stopped at the Talamone harbor to load weapons on the way to Sicily when he liberated and unified Italy. More recently, in 1986 or 1987 I was in Talamone at the harbor and noticed some military vehicles all covered up on the dock, apparently waiting to be loaded on some ship. What seemed strange to me was that they didn't look like from the Italian armed forces. So I lifted the tarp covering them a bit and discovered they had license plates in an alphabet that looked like Arabic to me. I found that puzzling. Months later it was reported in the news that military vehicles and arms destined to Iran as part of the secret Iran-Contras arms deal during the Reagan administration, were shipped to Iran from Talamone in a secret arrangement between Oliver North and the Italian Government. So the mystery was solved. Those strangely looking military vehicles on the dock covered by the tarp were for the Ayatollah regime and the license plates were actually in Farsi.
Roberto thanks again. I'll jump online and start looking at places. If I see a tarp covered boat, however, I'll probably stay away ;)
