And I was wondering where you would be off to next! I so enjoyed your musings on Barcelona.

We are fortunate to have a local on the forum and I'm sure she will have great tips, but for now, this is the report I wrote after my own trip, a combination of coastal Liguria and Lake Como, at the exact same time of year:

http://www.fodors.com/community/europe/ligurian-coast-lake-como-moscardini-missoltini-and-much-else.cfm


Also, one about a Piedmont trip that was hampered, or should I say dampened, by horrid weather (in late April)

http://www.fodors.com/community/europe/le-langhe-and-turin-a-week-in-the-land-of-barolo-bagna-cauda-and-bicerin.cfm


How can I reaquaint myself with your travel blog?

Never mind the first and last comments, as I think I confused you with another Elizabeth! Sorry!

Liguria is several hundred kilometers long.

I suggest that you buy a copy of the Cadogan guide to Piemonte & the Italian Riviera, and a copy of David Downie's Food and Wine of Genoa and the Italian Riviera, which contains plentiful descriptions and photographs of most towns worth visiting in Liguria.

Cookery courses are hard to track down in Liguria, and if that is important to you, then if might end up dictating your trip in Liguria. Bear in mind that if you learn to cook Ligurian food, you will have an extremely difficult time finding the ingredients to duplicate the recipes in northern Europe. You might want to focus on learning to cook in Piemonte instead, and i think you will find a lot more courses there.

By the way, if you are interested in advice about Piemonte you will need to put up another thread with a different title. Be aware that some people who respond will have very limited experience of the region and its food and wine, and tend to stick very much to a narrow tourist track. There is a lot of information online about markets and food festivals in Piemonte.

Sorry to disappoint you Ekscrunchy I am not the person you had in mind but thank you very much for your advice and of course you too, Zeppole. I have a lot of reading to do, which is half the fun of international travel!

Forgot to mention that we are actually looking for a self catering appt. or small house, ideally on a working farm. I'm sure we will be able to find a nice Agriturismo somewhere. When is the olive harvest in that part of Italy do any of you know?

Yes, I realize that the Ligurian coastline is quite long and since we are totally unfamiliar with the area I hoped to be able to get some tips of towns and villages to stay (or avoid) rather than just pick a place on the map. We would definitely like to avoid tourist traps, which is one of the reasons why we intend to travel later in the season. I do realize though that October can already be a bit rainy. Please advise if you think we should choose a different time, you are the experts.
We are definitely foodies and love to sample and experiment with new ingredients. The sheer thought of visiting a local market and not being able to do some cooking ourselves is out of the question, hence the interest in a self catering place rather than a hotel. We'll save those for when we visit Rome or Florence.

Not disappointed! Happy to "chat" with you and share my limited knowledge of those regions.

See if you can get your hands on a used copy of Fred Plotkin's sadly out-of-print book, RECIPES FROM PARADISE. There is a tremendous amount of food discussion along with the recipes:

http://www.amazon.com/Recipes-Paradise-Life-Italian-Riviera/dp/0316710717

Elisabeth,

The tourist traps along the Ligurian coast south of Genova are Portofino and le CInque Terre (and their immediate neighbors). Portovenere and Santa Margherita Ligure get a lot of cruise ship daytrippers. The coast between between the French border and Genoa gets almost no international tourism, except for the very few cruise ships that pull into Savona. However, because of its sandier beaches, flatter terrain and slightly sunnier climate, that side of the Riviera has a lot modern (and mostly ugly) tourist infrastructure to accommodate the millions of Italians who come in summer to the coast. The now somewhat shabby San Remo gets some coach package tourism, but it has an excellent market.

In general, if you avoid the very small number of tourist trap areas I mentioned above, most of the Riviera gets very little impact from foreign tourism, yet at the same time, almost all the coastal towns are primarily holiday beach towns looking for day trade. If you have a car, in can be incredibly rewarding to get up into the near hills. Only the area above San Remo (Dolceacqua, Perinaldo, Apricale, Triora) has anything resembling foreign tourism, mostly from Belgium and Germany.

September 22 marks the end of summer not only on the calendar but in reality on the Riviera, and even as the days remain warm enough to comfortably swim when the sun is shining, you get more chances of passing rain. Last year, the final week of October saw catastrophic rain along the entire Riviera, and in my experience, the first half of October is really the limit for generally dry weather, so I recommend being out of the Riviera before then.

Olive types vary along the coast and so do their harvest times, but I think the earliest you can find an olive oil harvest is late October. Where olives are harvested with nets, not hand picked, you'll see the nets up sooner. Although it is fantastic to taste the fresh-pressed oil, touring the olive growing areas during harvest time usually means finding the mills and groves shut to visitors. You might want to take a look at the agriturismo Terre Bianche near Dolceacqua (although there are cheaper ones nearby) or look for an agriturimso above Chiavari/Lavagna/Leivi if you would like to be in what is considered some of the best olive oil producing country in Italy. Rapallo has a nice market and nice access to Chiavari and olive groves above it. Above Sestri Levante, which still has a true fisherman's port, the area around Varese Ligure is the center of organic farming in Liguria.

You will have no trouble finding self-catering apartments all along the coast. There are many working farms in the near hill that have accommodations. It is sometimes easier to find them if you do Google searches for the word "agriturismo Liguria + (province)." The provinces of Liguria are Imperia, Savona, Genova, La Spezia. (Imperia has superior olive oil).

David Downie's guide is really essential for information that matches traditional farming and viniculture in the region. In September and October, the Ligurian hills have many food festivals for chestnuts, mushrooms, pumpkins, etc.

By the way, in warning you that a broadly worded post asking for itineraries for yays and nays around Piemonte would attract responses of varying quality, you should hope ekscrunchy spots your post and responds, because she's gathered a great deal of superior information about that region. Also, the Chowhound website's message board for Italy has a great archive and recent restaurant recommendations.

I highly recommend also reading ekscrunchy's trip reports about Piedmonte. There are lots of valuable hints in there!

We had a great time staying just outside of Asti in 2010. We really enjoyed the city of Torino, I think it is very underrated. Just a lovely town to spend time in.

My experience is quite limited, but happy to help wherever I can! If you do a search for Bikerscott here you will find out trip report for the Cinque Terre and Piedmonte from 2010.

Only on Fodor's can one find people who are willing to spend time to give such incredibly detailed and completely free of charge advice to complete strangers! Amazing and mille grazie to you, Zeppole for taking the time to give me all this much valued advice.

I've been to the Dolceacqua area years ago and found it very charming until....... a huge tourist bus came along the corner and I'm afraid that was it for me then.

I do have a "problem" now, thanks to you. I didn't know about Chowhound (maybe I'm not a real foodie after all) and now I've got yet another internet toy to play with. Oh well, it's all for the good cause.

Via VRBO (originally I was introduced to this organization via Fodors) I found a self catering apartment that looks very promising. http://www.vrbo.com/368964#features
I'm now communicating with its owner. Thanks again for your info.

Actually, you can find them on TripAdvisor and in particular you can find over there residents of Liguria who have very detailed information, especially about the area between the French border and Genova, which I know less about.

Castagnola is very, very deep up a winding road into the Liguria hills, above Sori. There are one or two restaurants open up there, but I don't know if they stay open past the summer season. Unless you want to stay up in the hills like a hermit, you will find yourself driving a hairpin road road every day to get to markets or do anything. You certainly won't be surprised by a tour bus, but there is fast moving truck and motorcycle traffic on that road.

Sorry, my mistake.

I see now that the apartment is named "Castagnola" but is actually in Framura.

It's a sweet hidden away town with a train station.

There are other self-catering apartments in town if that one is booked. Ask on Frommer's, where there is a regular poster who has a family home in Framura and visits every year. She can give you great tips about the town no matter which place you rent.