this is how our itinerary is shaping up, for those who are interested. first i confess my discomfort at the fact that there are 4 regions in the title to this thread. it's a lot, i know. 3 weeks.
1. fly into milan and then to our hotel near Barolo. 5 days in the area. 2. move just a little bit further south into lunigiana, where we will stay in corlaga at Villa Mimosa. 4 nights. 3. this is the controversial part-- part of me wants my fiancee, who has never seen the tuscan countryside (i've been through only briefly), to experience chianti, since it is sort of the 'meat and potatoes' of tuscany... but i'm also put off by the tourism and the over-beautification of it a little bit. so i've decided to allocate a mere 2 nights near radda, where i am looking forward to our stay at Cashmere in Chianti. very un-slowtrav, i know... but i feel it's a compromise. 4. on our way up to bologna, i thought we'd stop 2 nights in Anghiari or Brisighella (preferences anyone? hotel ideas?). 5. 4 nights in bologna at the paradise hotel, which comes very highly recommended and seems a good value. day trips to parma and dozza, if there's time. 6. 3 nights in varrena at the Hotel Eremo Gaudio, on lake como.
looking forward to feedback! what should be trimmed or added? thanks so much to everyone for their help. i am of course searching through slowtrav thoroughly for restaurant and art ideas along our trail, but any specifics, particularly about Anghiari and/or Brisighella, would be highly appreciated.
i just wanted to add that a part of me really wants to spend time in the Maremmana area, but i feel its a weird detour that will have to be part of a different trip, maybe a trip in which i also spend time in umbria. do people have any thoughts on this? i could nix on chianti and the arezzo areas and spend 5 nights in Pitigliano instead.
Anghiari has little relation to Bologna. Infact it's in Tuscany, in the Arezzo province. It's a great area, but still very much Tuscany. Anyhow, you have only three weeks and i would rather try to concentrate on seeing a maximum of three destinations.
I mention Anghiari only because it is on the way from chianti to bologna... didnt mean to imply that it had anything to do with E-R or bologna (is this what you meant?)
Yes. I still believe you are planning too many stops. For instance, getting from the Chianti area to Bologna is about a 2.5 hours trip. Add to it the packing up, checking out geting starte routine and the arrive, check in, get settled routine and you lose a total of about 4.5-5 hours: half a day of your honeymoon. Getting from Chianti to somewhere on the way to Bologna (i.e. Anghiari), considering all the stuff as above, would cost you probably about 30 minutes less. Do you want to spend so much time in transit? It's a matter of strategy: personally I have always found much more satisfacory a longer stay in a single place than two shorter stay in two different places.
3 nights in varrena at the Hotel Eremo Gaudio, on lake como
We stayed at the Eremo Gaudio a few years ago and loved it. The funicular to get to the hotel is a trip! But much as I agree with Alice's tips to slow down and spend more time in fewer places, 3 nights in Varrena might be all you need. It's fairly small, though convenient for taking the ferry to other towns on the Lake, like Bellagio.
-Krista
Posts: 1684 | Location: Santa Barbara, California | Registered: 21 May 2004
I think you should reorganize to include Pitigliano and drop Lunigiana and cashmere. Pitigliano will have a rural feel with wineries etc but will be less visited than chianti.Then you could fly back from Rome.If you put the lakes first you could fly to Milan and out of Rome. P.S. sounds like a great honeymoon,can I go? Ha Ha RR
RR, its a nice idea but unfortunately the tickest are booked from milan and they were done with mileage, so they're hard to change. i see the pluses for scrapping lunigiana/chianti for Maremmana, but lunigiana fits so much better into my geographical requirements... plus people speak so well of it here! sounds as out-of-the-way as maremmana. another option would be (a)stay in lunigiana longer or (b) scrap chianti for 4-5 days in Anghiari area.
What about dropping Chianti all the way and doing something different? Your itinerary seems to be brushing an interesting area: the "four provinces". These are four provinces, each in a different region, that nontheless share many cultural traits (dialect, food, floklore, traditional music, etc.). The provinces are Genova (Liguria), Alessandria (Piedmont), Pavia (Lombardy) and Piacenza (Emilia-Romagna). I would consider organizing a trip around these four provinces. You would hit more or less everything: you would have a little sea, a little mountain, a little rolling hills, a little great cities, plus you your enjoy great food and a relatively undiscovered (at least by international turism) area. You may spend then days in this area, add a few days in Florence and a few days in Venice to add a couple more traditional destinations.
Anghiari and its envirions.....Sansepolcro, Monterchi....is a lovely area for scenery and for art, it is a treasure trove. Piero della Francesca is from Sansepolcro and there are important frescoes in the city museum and in Monterchi. Caprese Michelangelo can be visited to see the birthplace of Michelangelo and the mountains that form the border with Le Marche are quite spectacular.
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