Cinque Terre means “the five lands,” and that is exactly what it is: five small villages strung along a stretch of the Ligurian coast so steep and so folded that for most of their history the easiest way between them…
italy
Somewhere Smaller
Florence let me go the way the great cities always do, without ceremony, as though it had never really been holding on. One morning I was beneath all that marble and the next I was on a train heading toward…
The Long Way Round – Tuscany Day 3
I woke before the alarm, although I suspect I would have even if I had forgotten to set one. There are some mornings when the light seems to wake you before the world has the chance. I dressed quietly in…
Fields of Gold
I woke early, which almost never happens to me, and I think it was the hills that did it. They had spent all of yesterday resting on their ridges in the distance, patient as cats, and sometime during the night…
Where the Hills Begin
I left the city in the morning, and for the first hour the road still seemed to have somewhere important to be. Then, without my quite noticing when, it forgot its hurry. The lanes narrowed and began to climb, the…
The House Above Florence
I came to Florence the slow way, as I always seem to, and I came to a house rather than a hotel. My aunt takes a villa in the hills above the city most summers, an old place with faded…
Naples – The City That Lets You Stay
I woke in Naples before I meant to. The shutters were still open from the night before. I had left them that way on purpose, too greedy for the city to close it out, and so the morning came in…
The Pink Beach Club
The beach clubs in Maiori are not all the same color. This was the first thing I noticed, arriving the evening before, watching the coastline settle into dusk from the window of a taxi that had taken longer than it…
Victoria’s Complete Guide to Amalfi
What to book before you come Amalfi is the flattest town on this coast and the easiest to walk, so very little needs buying. The exception is the water, and the valley behind the town that almost nobody walks up….
Victoria’s Complete Guide to Maiori and Minori
The Eastern Shore: Where the Amalfi Coast Stops Performing The road east from Amalfi tells you immediately that something is about to change. The cliff face loosens its grip on the sea. The terraced lemon groves flatten into something more…
Positively, Positano
The boats were already out when I got down to the water. Not fishing, not yet, just sitting there in the pink light with their ropes slack, Carpielene and Coilaboha and the others, names painted on hulls that had clearly…
Victoria’s Complete Guide To Positano, Italy
What to book before you come Positano is vertical, expensive and worth it, and the two things I would spend money on both start at the jetty. Everything else here is a staircase and staircases are free. A shared boat…
