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Italy holidays

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‘We hang on to summer a little longer here’: five of the best places for autumn sun in Europe and Turkey

If you’re looking for a last blast of summer, these sunny resorts offer quiet beaches but enough life to stave off the end-of-season blues A Kalkan sunset is always a beautiful thing – the horseshoe-shaped bay deepening to azure blue against an apricot-rose sky – but, in October, when the light is low and the sun drops early, it’s almost transcendentally lovely. In some Turkish resorts, you’d be sitting watching it surrounded by quiet streets, half-empty bars and that melancholic sense that another season is over. In Kalkan, it still feels like summer; the harbourfront restaurants throng with

Travel

A lakeside idyll: laid-back cycling and autumn hikes on Italy’s Lake Iseo

Smaller and less visited than Como and Garda, Lake Iseo harbours a gorgeous car-free island ideal for easy-going cycling and sightseeing Rust red and burnt sienna speckle the green mountain rising from Lake Iseo. Golden autumn sunlight shimmers on the water. Monte Isola, Italy’s largest lake island, is a peak of sheer cliffs and dense forest, dotted with old fishing hamlets and hillside villages, each as pretty as the terraced villas of Lake Como and Garda, but with far fewer visitors. I arrive at the small port town of Peschiera Maraglio – where striped wooden boats jut from the water like th

Travel

My search for the perfect Italian aperitivo in Verona

The classic pre-dinner drink and snack combo varies depending where you are in Italy. In this fair city, it’s an institution that can even be enjoyed first thing I arrived in Verona, I admit, without a particularly clear idea of what aperitivo meant. In Italy, the ritual – broadly, a drink and something small to eat before a meal – speaks a different dialect in every city. Milan has turned it into a polished after-work institution. In Venice, it is more itinerant: an ombra (a small glass of wine) along with a cicchetto (a bite-size snack) and then on to the next bacaro (one of the city’s tradi

Travel

Bolognina: make tracks for Bologna’s bustling former rail workers’ quarter

This once industrial area has been transformed into a vibrant artistic hub with a thriving food and drink scene Located just north of the Centrale train station, Bolognina neighbourhood is more than just a Little Bologna. It is a completely different world from the medieval maze of palaces, churches and towers that define the city’s “Centro Storico”, which is increasingly filled with crowds of tourists as Bologna joins the big league of Italian getaway destinations. Continue reading...

Travel

Three countries, one hike: an Alpine adventure in Austria, Slovenia and Italy

The Alpe Adria loop is an eight-day walking trail that crisscrosses borders, taking in dramatic peaks, glorious meadows and charming places to stay ‘Achtung! Staatsgrenze!” OK, the signpost marking the “state border” didn’t have exclamation marks but, with its no-nonsense Prussian font, it did feel quite shouty. The only thing was, no one on the Feistritzer Alm – a peaceful sweep of Alpine pasture at the meeting of Austria and Italy – was paying any attention to it at all. Hikers hiked straight past. Mountain bikers used it to prop up their cycles. Cows grazed willy-nilly. And the patrons of t

Travel

The train is ‘my time machine’: a tour of Naples’ hidden ancient wonders

A new film about this corner of southern Italy reveals rarely visited villas, seismic landscapes and a ‘civilisation buried mid-sentence’ – all accessible by train One by one, the visitors descend through a tight tunnel cut through volcanic rock into the damp foundations of the Teatro Romano buried beneath Herculaneum, with the weight of 2,000 years of city above them. “This is a time machine,” the guide says, “and we are going back.” It is pitch black as film-maker Gianfranco Rosi’s camera finds torchlight catching the tourists’ transparent waterproof capes, making them appear like ghosts. Re

Travel

‘Fabulous museums and no queues’: five of the best under-the-radar city breaks in Europe

From the Renaissance treasures of Parma to offbeat creativity in Nantes, these cities offer world-class art, great food and a laid-back alternative to Europe’s hotspots As dilemmas go, it’s an unusual one: saddle up a giant squid or board a submersible for a voyage to the bottom of the ocean. In the end, I find myself drawn to a fierce-looking merhorse and tentatively take the reins. High above, my daughter glides by on a flying fish, metallic fins flapping, while her Dad is battling stormy seas at the helm of a huge conch shell. A ride on the Carrousel des Mondes Marins (marine worlds carouse

Travel

Burrata and beyond: a foodie tour of northern Puglia, Italy

It’s the birthplace of the popular cheese, but the Barletta-Andria-Trani province in southern Italy has an array of local delicacies – from olive oil and yellow tomatoes to goat prosciutto ‘I don’t eat mozzarella outside Puglia,” says our friend Savio. “It’s not the same.” Savio is a very opinionated foodie, so I take his words with a pinch of good Puglian sea salt (see below). He was adamant about the superiority of the stretched-curd cheese from his home turf. Puglia is also the birthplace of ingredient du jour burrata, which originated in Andria, a few miles from Savio’s home town of Barlet

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Travel

‘Like a Bond villain’s lair’: I climbed the Dolomites to the world’s most spectacular mountain hut

Perched above the clouds in northern Italy, Santnerpass refuge doesn’t just look stunning. It’s a marvel of eco-building – and vegetarian cuisine ‘I think my boots are falling apart!” shouts Nigel just as we hit the pinnacles, a whole range of them jutting up and out from the mountainside, all thrillingly tall, spiky and knobbled. Through them we painstakingly step, fingers aching in gloves, heads sweating in helmets – squashing up narrow chimneys, squeezing through mighty boulders and inching along slender ledges on a twisting path that’s only just discernible through swathes of sharp white s

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