Category Archives: Italy

12 photos to inspire you to visit Italy

Ever since I’ve returned from my road trip this summer, I’ve been telling people how great Italy is. The weather, the food, the scenery; all of it was perfect. The only downsides are the crazy Italian way of driving, and the fact that there’s just too much to see. Even though my grand tour of the country took three weeks. I feel like I could’ve just as easily spent three months exploring every part of this fantastic country. And still it would’ve been be too short.
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Travel Journal: Two days in Rome

As it turns out, big cities aren’t exactly ideal road trip destinations. During my tour of Italy, this became particularly clear in the capital city. Despite that, I only needed two days in Rome to fall in love with this city. I can’t wait to return for a more extensive visit of Rome and the smallest country in the world: Vatican City.
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Travel Journal: The worst day of my Italian road trip

Travelling is hardly ever a continuous series of perfect, carefree days. Every trip is bound to have a bad day. The worst day – technically it was the worst night – of my recent trip to Italy started when my friend and I arrived in a coastal village in the vicinity of Rome.
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The truth about Cinque Terre: What you need to know before you go

During my recent road trip through Italy, I visited the famous coastal towns of Cinque Terre. I instantly fell in love with them. There is an abundance of information out there on visiting this area, but I feel like a lot of what I’ve read is incorrect or outdated. The trip was quite a bit different than I’d imagined it to be. Despite the multitude of blogs that have already been written on this topic, I felt like the internet could do with an honest and updated post about visiting Cinque Terre.

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Travel journal: Life on the road

‘Turn left here.’
I take a look at the road Dom’s pointing at.
‘Are you sure?’ I ask him. The road doesn’t look very inviting, but he’s sure it’s the correct one, so I turn left. We’ve been on the road for nearly 16 hours and all I want is to find a place to sleep as soon as possible. My car is protesting quite heavily and threatens to stall a few times as it fights to climb the incredibly steep and narrow road, at the end of which is the most picturesque agriturismo I have ever seen.

Earlier in the day we’ve taken a detour over the St Gotthard pass to avoid the long traffic jam at the tunnel. At the top of the pass we discussed our plans for the day and decided that if we wanted to make it to the Italian coast on the first day of our trip, we’d have to find a hotel instead of a campsite. So here we are. Unfortunately the challenging trip up the mountain road has been in vain. The agriturismo is fully booked.

After an equally challenging trip back down, we try another hotel, which turns out to be so busy I can’t even park the car. Dom attempts to ring another hotel, but after repeating “Pronto?” four or five times without understanding our replies, they hang up on us. A quick check online doesn’t leave us with many options, so we decide to revert to our initial plan. Let’s just find a campsite before the sun sets. Thankfully, the first one we try has plenty of free spots. It’s a small campsite right next to the motorway, but it’s 9 o’clock and we’re losing the light, so it’ll do for now.

The Greatest Driving Road In The World

The last remnants of fog clung to the mountainside as I exited the forest. The sudden change in landscape was a breath-taking sight to behold in the morning light. After a dozen more hairpin turns, I found a safe spot to park the car. I took my time to admire the view. A local, on his way to the valley, passed me in an old Fiat Panda, as I got out of my car. The first thing I noticed was the temperature. Patches of slowly melting snow lay comically on the side of the road, in between countless yellow and purple wildflowers.

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