Naples does not ease you in. You step off the train or out of the airport and the city is simply there, loud and fast and entirely itself, scooters everywhere, laundry overhead, the smell of coffee and fried dough in…
Supporting Guide
Where to Stay in Naples
Where you sleep in Naples matters more than in most cities, because the character changes so completely from one quarter to the next. A few streets can be the difference between waking to a sea view and church bells or…
Hiking the Path of the Gods Above Positano
If you do one walk on the entire Amalfi Coast, make it the Path of the Gods, the Sentiero degli Dei, a high mountain trail that runs along the cliffs between the village of Bomerano and the hamlet of Nocelle…
Where to Stay in Positano: The Best Areas and Hotels
Positano is a village that pours down a cliff to the sea, which means the only real question about where to stay is a simple one: how many steps are you willing to climb, and how close do you want…
Getting Around Tuscany
I will tell you the single most important thing about a Tuscany trip before anything else, because it changes everything: you need a car. Not for Florence, and not for Siena, but for the Tuscany of your imagination, the one…
The Best Towns in Tuscany
Tuscany keeps its treasure in its small towns. Florence gets the fame, and it deserves it, but the deeper magic of this region is in the hilltop villages, each one a little walled world of golden stone and Renaissance squares…
A Guide to Tuscan Wine
You cannot really separate Tuscany from its wine. The vineyards are the landscape, the harvest is the calendar, and every hilltop town seems to have grown up around a cellar. You do not need to be an expert to love…
The Best Photo Spots in Tuscany
Some landscapes are beautiful. Tuscany is composed. The rolling hills, the lone cypresses, the farmhouses set just so on a distant ridge, it all looks arranged, as if a painter got there first and the land grew to match. Most…
Where to Stay in Tuscany
Where you sleep in Tuscany shapes the whole trip, more than almost anywhere I know. Base yourself well and the region unfolds around you in easy day trips, with long golden evenings on a terrace; base yourself badly and you…
The Best Time to Visit Tuscany
Tuscany changes its whole character with the seasons, more than most places, because the landscape itself is the attraction and the landscape is never the same twice. The green, poppy-scattered hills of May are a different world from the gold,…
The Perfect Tuscany Itinerary
Tuscany does not want to be rushed. The temptation, with so many famous towns so close together, is to tick them off one after another until they blur into a single golden smear of stone and vines. Do not do…
The Best Things to Do in Florence
There is a version of Florence you can see in a rushed day, ticking off the David and the dome and calling it done, and there is the Florence I love, which reveals itself slowly across churches and gardens and…
