Good Food and Views are Worth the Journey
Palermo was our first port of call in a wine visit to Sicily and our first night in the city yielded one of my favorite dinners at a casual neighborhood restaurant not far from the airport. Vitina Cucina & Pizza in the Cinisi area of Palermo specializes in seafood and pizza. Standouts for me included the grilled squid and shrimp and pistachio pasta while dessert, a ricotta cassatella was fantastic.
After a flight from Rome, dinner at Vitina was a great way to start our trip in...
We had an evening flight to Palermo from Rome so faced with the quandary of what to do for a few hours after leaving central Tuscany, we decided to drop in on Orvieto for lunch and its amazing cathedral. Orvieto is a well preserved hill town in southwestern Umbria located almost midway between Siena and Rome. Fiumicino (Leonardo da Vinci International Airport) is around a 90 minute drive from Orvieto.
Orvieto is perched on top of a "tufo" (huge lump of volcanic rock) and commands a...
There is a lot of good wine in Tuscany and I had a memorable visit to Carpineto winery this past April. The Montalcino and Montepulciano areas are home to the Brunello di Montalcino and Vino Nobile Montepulciano, red wines that have gained prominence over the past decade. While a prior trip last year included visits to Brunello specialists Casanova di Neri and Poggio di Sotto, a visit to a large producer like Carpineto gave us a chance to try the winery's broader region products including a...
Southwestern Tuscany, namely the province of Grosseto in the Maremma area, is not as well visited as the rest of the region but I was out here in April to pay a visit to a winery and found some great food and views along the way. This was our fist stop in a wine tour of Italy, and the highlights here include a visit to the Mantellassi winery, the walled cities of Pitigliano and Magliano and the best tortello of our trip.
We stayed at the Borgo Magliano which I imagine would be filled...
The Cote d'Azur is much more than just the resort beach towns of Cannes, Nice or St Tropez. So, if you need to escape the hordes, the hills above the shoreline contain scenic medieval hill towns which can be easily visited in a day trip. Must sees here include the towns of St Paul de Vence and Gourdon and Matisse's Chapelle du Rosaire in Vence. The winding roads may also be familiar to 007 movie fans.
We were lucky enough to be staying in St Paul de Vence so it was a handy base for us...