How We Travel

When as an American I travel in Italy I crave experiences that are unlike anything that I will find at home.  Rather than seeking out familiarity I look for diversity, and want to resist the ease of shallow, easy, fast-paced travels.

With Insider’s Italy, we echo this in our travel philosophy :

1.  We do not book large US style hotels, ever.

Chianti Classico inn

Nearly every one of our hotels is a historic and small structure that is owner managed.   Every single one has taken special interest in sourcing local and national materials in tiles, fabrics, furniture, stone.  Many of them are eco-conscious.  Many are associated with agricultural estates.

Southern Tuscan inn

2. It is usually hard to plan an American city vacation without a car.  In Italy, conversely, we book city hotel locations such that you can do nearly everything on foot.

Without exception, Italian cities are fascinating in their urban planning, architecture, colors and life.  Walking is a delight.

3.  Even in the countryside, we encourage limited or minimal use of a car. When inns or hotels are not accessible by public transport, and we do book cars for our clients, we also suggest maximum use of public transport and walking trails.  We suggest use of smaller cars with highest fuel efficiency.

We have guides for many countryside locations, including on these historic Campania region walking paths.

Their expertise lies as much in geology and local history as it does in flora and fauna.

On horseback in the Abruzzi with Francesco and his horse Dollaro

4. We Americans are obsessed with change and speed.  Insider’s Italy travels instead generally focus on exploring a small area in depth — and moving as little as possible.

Our clients travel slowly, stay a while, and enjoy every experience without accelerating on to the next destination over the hill.

Walking in the Abruzzi

5. We recommend local artisans, small scale food producers and others whose work is socially enriching and whose professions need support if they are to survive.

Florence Paper Store

If you wish, we will tell you where the Gucci outlet is, but we would rather lead you to a magician with local leathers who produces timeless products of great elegance and style, and who is following in the footsteps of his father and grandfather.  Please encourage pig farmers who refuse the American model of factory farming, and raise their animals in the forest, fatten them on apples and refuse to feed them hormones and antibiotics.  Instead of directing your spending power towards touristy chains that have a negative effect on a city, let us help you to invest in the health of small enterprises and the living fabric of the place.

A typical example of the sort of discovery we love to share is Casolet, which is one of the most exciting cheeses we have ever eaten.

Casolet

This raw milk cheese, which has been made since Roman times, is produced in very small batches only in the Val di Sole, in Trentino Alto Adige, 90 minutes northwest of Venice, and is rich, vibrant and pungent, with a remarkable buttery finish.  Nowhere in America will you find a cheese like this — it is not exported –- and sampling it with a local apple (indigenous varieties unknown in the US) is a Slow Food paradise pairing.

Learn an Italian artisan technique yourself.   Let us help you learn to make Cristina’s magnificent, tiny gnocchi (cooking in her own kitchen)…

Or mosaics, with Arianna in Ravenna.

6. We do not like big name or fusion restaurants.  We do not include them on our Insider’s Italy restaurant lists.

This boat belongs to two fishermen, who are both brothers and cooks. They will come and collect you and take you to their superb "trattoria", accessible by sea and footpath only.

Pasta alle scoglie

Italian cooking is at its most successful when direct, uncomplicated, free of artifice in taste or appearance. This is why we celebrate Slow Food — fine, seasonal, local, traditional ingredients, simple procedures and not too many flavors competing on the plate at one time.

Salvatore. The wine he's drinking and the vegetables you see are all his own.

Our ideal restaurant is probably family-run, and directed with passion and humility. The best restaurateurs in Italy today come from a strong regional or local tradition but are far from stuck in a centuries-old rut. They may or may not have high-tech kitchens and important wine cellars. They will likely travel within Italy and study what others are doing. And they experiment — but all within reason.

7. Our Regional Eating guides, and market guides for most locations, help you to understand what is local and in season in each location so that you do not miss superb, strictly regional delicacies that you will not find at home.

“Agretti”, a superb Roman spring green, are in season now in Rome. An Insider’s Italy client e-mailed us last night in amazement after having tried them at one of our restaurant recommendations : “Without you I would not have know what they were, or how to ask for them, or known that they were in peak high season since they looked just like chives, which I don’t like it all.  What a discovery ! I have never seen these anywhere in US, not even in California.”

Agretti

8. We encourage off-the-beaten-track regional travel.  Please let us guide you to the Trentino, to Basilicata, to the Abruzzo… to regions where traditional life continues.

Castel del Monte

Our hotels and inns here, as throughout Italy, are all selected to offer a very high level of comfort and four- and five-star standards.

Two hours east of Rome, we recently saw an elderly local lady balancing on her head — with great grace —  a copper urn that she was carrying from a fountain to her home.  As a child, I would see this in Rome. Traditional sights like this are gone from every major Italian city, and you will not find them either in Tuscany.  Let us guide you to regions that are more off the beaten path.

9. In June, for the second time, we are joining the centuries-old transumanza, or transhumance, for three days of walking with the sheep. For perhaps 3000 years nomadic herders and shepherds have been moving their sheep from winter to summer quarters on paths that are so well beaten as to be visible from the air.

Transumanza

This three-day experience is not for everyone (camping and homemade traditional country meals, including just-made sheep’s milk ricotta and fresh pasta) but for others an experience like this is a celebration of Italy’s “differentness” and rich agrarian history and will be the highlight of a trip.

The point we make is : throughout your travels, please consider partaking in situations that are unlike anything you will find at home and that are unique to the fabric of Italy.

10.  Please consider traveling as we do, with Slow ideals. You will be part of a small but significant revolution.