Do you have tips and preferences on what to do when you want to go someplace that Rick doesn't cover?
I'm working with Eyewitness Travel's Backroads Northern & Central Italy, Fodor's Italy and Plotkin's Italy for the Gourmet Traveler. While I find Plotkin very useful, I like to do a bit more than eat (or at least my wife does).
Try Lonely Planet Guides.
National Geographic puts out some excellent guidebooks - I have one for Florence and the rest of Tuscany, which I like a lot. I like the DK Eyewitness books too, although I haven't yet seen the one you're using.
And there's always Google and other travelers like us. Do you have a destination in mind?
I go on the TripAdvisor forums , they seem to cover everywhere ! And I like they have forums divided by country , then city or towns and regions .
I like the Michelin Green Guides. They help me prioritize places to visit withing a given country.
I like the regional guides published by Cadogan and Bradt; I have a couple of each for different regions within various countries in Europe. Also, because I'm big into history and historical buildings, I have several of the "Blue Guides;" there are several for different regions in Italy. And also Michelin's green guides (sites and sights).
+1 for Lonely Planet.
+1 for Lonely Planet. But I prefer their Print to their eBooks.
Specifically Piedmont and Emilglia Romagna. But just in general.
TripAdvisor has been reasonable in terms of depth, but for some reason, a book that's been edited and fact checked works better for me than a site of collective ratings. I have no idea why.
There are books that are top 10 and they usually do regional books ie Tuscany,they are available at Barnes and Noble.
Mike
Without subjecting myself to a hail of rotten tomatoes, I don't own an RS guidebook although I've occasionally checked them out of the library, along with a variety of others. Info compiled from a variety of guides + forums like this one (!!!!) + internet tourism sites seems to be working best for us. Even some personal blogs which have come up on random searches have been useful.
DK Eyewitness guides are what I tend to purchase most often as I'm a visual animal and like having pictures. :O)
Blue Guides are supposed to be really good for the deeper dive - their website is one of my resources - but my bookstore never seems to have them on hand. For the dive, I'll most often buy a book at the museums and attractions we're particularly interested in.
The more I visit Italy, the more I want to get off the beaten path...
For now when I do, it'll be by train, which I know is somewhat limiting. And...the further south, I don't want to generalize but they can get a little unreliable schedule-wise. You have to go with the flow, I guess. Haven't driven in Italy yet, don't know if I will because I would get a little distracted to say the least--we'll see.
The best of both worlds is to have a guide, which for us was two years ago when we had a driver take us from Salerno up into the hills to my ancestral village of Sant' Arsenio, about 55 km southeast. Looking out the window at all the little towns on the way--fairly nondescript but I was fascinated nonetheless. Frankly, in March they didn't look idyllic at all, somewhat low-income and drab, but to me I kept hearing the phrase 'this is the real Italy' in my own mind.
Sant' Arsenio was like that. It rarely receives tourists, and my wife & I were greeted guardedly at first, then quite warmly when I explained in broken Italian the reason for our visit, which was geneological. An older woman who we talked to asked us if we were related to another man that had come through town a few years ago asking about the same exact surname!
By the end of our 4-hour stay, I wished I had made the flexibility to stay there at least overnight, to absorb a little more and experience the unexpected cultural gems that naturally come up in an unknown place. Not only is Sant' Arsenio not mentioned in Rick's books, but Salerno only gets a passing mention, and that's a small city of 110,000 denizens.
That was two years ago. I should have built something like that into our most recent trip to Rome & Sorrento a couple months ago, but really, really want to go off-grid on the next journey.
Thanks, Jay.
Looking at my second trip to Italy which is coming up, I dunno that I want to get that far off the grid, but I'm very interested in what's in gastronomic Italy beyond the food. I have to keep the wife interested, as I could just munch all day, every day, for a week, walk from munch to munch and be thrilled. Wife's interests are better for me, mentally and physically, so I have to keep her "fed" as well as myself. So, E-R, which Rick covers barely if at all, and Piemonte, which Rick used to have as a side trip from Milan, IIRC 10 years ago, but hasn't covered at all in recent vintages.
I usually supplement Rick with something about the wine in a local place, a novel or a history, wife's Gardner's art book, and some research on the food of a place, and usually another guidebook. But without that trusted core, I'm not completely at sea, but, to brutalize that metaphor, I'm in the bay, I know the harbor is somewhere, but I dunno how to get there.
I can't provide any information about the Piedmont, but spend time in Emilia-Romagna and have found the Tourist Information offices in Bologna, Parma, and Rimini to be especially helpful. (Ferrara's TI is okay, but the others are better) The following is the thoroughness rating for Emilia-Romagna in descending order of guides I have downloaded: Blue Guide (5), Lonely Planet (5), Rough Guide (4), Frommer's (3). Train transportation among the Emilia-Romagna cities is very convenient and each can be reached within an hour from Bologna.
I prefer to stay in either Parma or Ferrara because of the size of those cities, but home base is just a matter of personal preference and travel via public transportation among the cities is easy regardless of where you stay.
I have found great info from the forums at Fodors.com. Not the guides, which are outdated in my opinion, but do a search in their Europe forum for the specific region, and see what comes up. Some very knowledgeable and helpful (if sometimes a bit snobby) folks over there!
P.S. You mentioned the "rankings" at Trip Advisor. Check the forums, not the rankings/reviews. Very helpful also.
I get the Cadogan guide for any place they cover. They've put us onto sights that no other guides mention. They are rarely in bookstores, but you can find them on Amazon. Even if there isn't a recent edition, they are still helpful. We don't use guides for lodgings or restaurants ( that's where the Web is handy), but places to go don't change much. I always check websites for information on hours, etc., which you should do, even with new guide books.
"Nobody goes there anymore. It's too crowded" wise words from Yogi Berra.
In reading your post, that's the first thing that came to mind. Everyone goes where Rick recommends going...so it's actually refreshing that you are opting to go into the unknown in a place that Rick doesn't cover.. You might want to be even more adventurous....in a place that Rick does go...and deviate a little. That's part of the fun of travel.
Luckily you're going soon, because it won't be too long before Rick does cover it. So, it's good to be a few steps ahead.
Rick can't be everywhere ...but we can. Thus the focus of this group ...sharing experiences and places
Travelguymiami: We're doing a mix. It's Open with 3 days in Venice, where we're doing a lot of the big stuff, because last time we wandered around and saw a lot of the stuff that gets minimal coverage and you're told to find your own magic there (Cannaregio and Castello), and missed the big stuff. A quick stop in Padua for St. Anthony and Scrovegni, then on to Bergamo (not sure if Rick has it in the Milan/Lakes book or not, but seems like where it would be) and then to Lake Como or Maggiore. Then into Piedmont and Valle D'Aosta before coming home. So, some with Rick, some with Plotkin and other books... I'm not sure there's anywhere I want to go where no one has published about it on the Internet. But I'm down for smaller places and relaxed paces.
If you're interested in itinerary ideas for tiny Italian villages (smaller than what Rick's guides cover), I highly recommend www.littleroadseurope.com/italy. They have 2 great books (including destination restaurants) on Tuscany and Emilia-Romagna with a next book out out on Ireland soon. Some of our best meals came from restaurants they listed....where we were the only tourists in the place!
Chris, thank you for the link. Just spend a glorious half hour reading their excerpts. I bet this is just what the OP is looking for (I know I am!).
I will say re: the 'deep Italy' we're describing here, it helps to have friends that travel to Italy, specifically Rome, each winter to escape the Chicago deep freeze.
When we met this slightly-older-than-us couple, in their late 60's and also from Chicago, at a Salerno B&B two years ago, I couldn't believe they do this annually. But the husband grew up in Rome, came to the U.S. nearly 50 years ago and met an Italian girl from the suburbs. And at a time in their lives when they could be snowbirds to Arizona or Florida, they choose the temperate winter climate in Roma. A wonderful choice, I might add.
So we decided to meet up again this year, and we spent the better part of a week seeing parts of Rome that RS doesn't even see--St. Agnese, St. Constantia, Villa Torlonia, the Baths of Diocletian (maybe that he's familiar with since it's right next to Termini station!)
And what really got to me was after we had left Rome for Sorrento and then finally returned home, they took trips to places like Polignano a Mare, south of Bari on the eastern coast, with fabulous sights that would rival anything in Rome or Florence. The pictures were absolutely spectacular, and it's on my bucket list for sure.
So...even though RS does a great job in steering Italy newbies to the places to see--and more to come judging by his 100 day tour I'm currently viewing on Facebook--there are tons of Italian treasures out there to see, sometimes in the most unlikely of places. And that's why we keep coming back.
Jay, on trips do you meet a lot of fellow Chicagoans? We met folks in Bruges who recognized me from the Blue line at the same B&B.
You have it very right.
If the wife hadn't chosen the Piedmont option instead of the E-R option, I could deep dive into that E-R book hard. That'd be perfect with Plotkin as the food guide. Sadly, no Piedmont... sigh
No, Max, this was a total freak that it happened we met them.
And it occurs to me that, at least at some point on a longer trip--if it's just you and your wife--I recommend staying at a B&B, because it kind of forces you to interact with others that are staying there. My wife is somewhat shy but I'll talk to most anybody. And by the time we got to Salerno on that trip, it had been 13 days of just us--no outside conversation except with hotel clerks or waitstaff. Now, I'm not complaining about that, and be advised as well that sometimes at a B&B you like the other people staying there, and frankly sometimes it's the opposite. But you never have to go past the 'hi-how-ya-doing' type conversation unless you want to.
Even at that Salerno B&B, the first couple we met weren't our 'cup of tea'. But then within a day a new group had come in--there are only 3 rooms--and it was this couple from Chicago and another couple from Sydney. And for two days we got on famously, touring around Salerno and the AC together. I think the fact that we all spoke English as our native language helped somewhat too. Which is why, on possibly a future trip, it would be fun to meet up with some ex-pats to get a completely different, non-tourist perspective. But I can't remember meeting any other Chicagoans on our trips, now that you mention it!
No matter where you go, Max--Piemonte or ER, it's going to be great!
I spend countless hours researching the less-traveled, whether in a larger city I know or in a region or province I've not visited before. We hit a lot of little places in Italy thanks to friends' advice, and not always with more than a recommendation to go without knowing what we'd find. We had the luxury of living there, so less risky than using precious foreign travel time and vacation days.
For Piemonte, you might find inspiration from the folks at A Path to Lunch. I have followed their advice in Liguria more than once and been happy. My friend, Michael Horne, has done a lot of travel in the Piemonte and recently wrote a nice piece on his blog, the Dall'Uva Journal.
As to Emilia-Romagna, we spent one divine trip there hiking. It is truly off-the-beaten, so if hiking is on your list, PM me and I'll send you some resources.
That Little Roads book, the excerpts, is making me rethink the trip a bit.
Venice - (HSV)-Padua - Bologna (rental car) pickup & maybe one night (my folks did a "Giro di Pasta" in Bologna back in 1985, IIRC, where they were brought one pasta dish after another, each amazing, until they quit... they quit at 5, but had to eat the 6th as it was already made... it's a fond memory of a trip I didn't even go on), then rental car, and drive around E-R for 3 days, then Piedmont for 4, then Aosta for 2 and home. So, we'd replace Bergamo and one of the Lombard lakes with backroads ER and merge my two trip ideas...
WOW! that's how awesome that book looks.
