jstein925

Hi There, My wife and I are planning our first trip to Italy next year. We were originally planning for Sept of 2016, but are thinking of moving it up to May!!! I am looking for a good book on Italy that will help to inspire our trip. Interested in learning more about the history and culture, but also in getting some guidance on travel and places to stay. Any suggestions?

Thank you,
Josh

Bonus question: For a first time traveler to Italy, any suggestions on factors we should plan our trip around? (like place to travel into, out of) Will probably be no longer than 12 days.

Googs

May is a superb time to travel to Italy! It's not too hot and most everything is blooming.

You will probably want to hit the big/popular cities for your first trip....Rome, Venice, Milan. Some of our best trips were staying in small towns. Give them a try if you have time. We loved Vernazza, Castellina In Chianti and Monticiano. Enjoy your trip!

Calabria62

May will be wonderful, lovely weather, crowds not too oppressive.

Need a book? Visit your library or bookstore, there are many travel books on Italy. Pick one that looks good, and start planning taking into consideration exactly what you want to accomplish on this trip. Just a sampling? A more in depth experience? Love art, history, music, foodie, mountains, or sea, city or small town. Narrow it down a little, and go from there.

You may also consider flying into one city and out another, depending on where you end up going.

Twelve days is not a lot of time, so I'd limit your visit to 2-3 places.

Also, to really get your excitement flowing, you might rent some movies about/in Italy, watch some YouTube videos, and read a book or two about Italy.

And don't worry about seeing it all....you'll return.

nanabee

Calabria has good advice. I've given up buying guide books. You can get good ones on loan from the library, take them home and piece together info from a variety of sources.

suze

(like place to travel into, out of)

I would fly "open jaw", for example into Venice and out of Rome, to avoid backtracking on the ground at the end of your trip.

suze

I didn't think Josh was asking about a guidebook specifically, rather novels to inspire the trip(?) like these lists recommend:

http://www.ridgefieldlibrary.org/rea...DolceVita2.pdf

https://www.goodreads.com/places/12-italy

http://www.barnesandnoble.com/blog/1...tion-in-italy/

HappyTrvlr

Irving Stone's " The Agony and the Ecstacy" features Michelangelo, Florence, Rome, history, art. A great introduction to Italy.

sandralist

I'll recommend Fred Plotkin's "Italy for the Gourmet Traveler." Although it has a lot of restaurant recommendations, and focuses on the food culture of Italy, it also has beautiful descriptions of every region of Italy, and highlights for each region some of the most revealing towns and cities to visit. You can learn a great deal about Italy as a place just by repeatedly dipping into this book -- it's the kind of fat book you can have at your bedside and just pick a page or 3 to read at random, and the end result is to be quite inspired about what to look for and how to regard a visit to Italy, and the culture that the people of Italy have made. It is very much a people-focused book, because in Italy, food is such a social activity: the growing of it, the selling of it, the preparation of it, the eating of it. It really shaped so much of the history of Italy.

Also, it is just delightfully written and has a great respect for all areas of Italy. Most of the guides try to entertaining by being insulting, thinking you'll be less bored by learning about the history and the country if they snark about it. Or else they are so over-the-top with breathless "must sees" and "must dos" you begin to dread a 2-week visit because it begins to look like you'll never fit everything in.

But this book is very human-scale. It's lovely. Plus, there are enough maps and restaaurant recommendations that you can actually begin to plot out an itinerary, with the idea of picking someplace fun to enjoy lunch every day (which is a nice way to connect with the Italian life style and feel like you are sharing it rather than just staring at it).

bilboburgler

I'd go the other way and get the Rough Guide for Italy. The section at the back covers history, politics pretty well and gives you a good idea of the reality of the country you are visiting.

Southam

The Pursuit of Italy covers Italian history from the classical era to the modern, concentrating on the social and political aspects that help explain Italy today. The English historian David Gilmour argues, in clear and readable style, that modern Italy has become one of the least unified nationalistic western European countries, still maintaining strong identification with its regions (except, I suppose, when it comes to soccer.)
You might be able to find the BBC TV series Italy Unwrapped and its predecessor Sicily Unwrapped. Art historian Andrew Graham-Dixon and chef Giorgio Locatelli combine their obsessions in mouth-watering explorations.

sandralist

"Modern Italy has become one of the least unified nationalistic western European countries, still maintaining strong identification with its regions (except, I suppose, when it comes to soccer.)"

Actually, soccer rivalry between local teams is intense in Italy, although obviously if Italy is fielding a team for international events, all Italians root for Italy. I don't know when the Pursuit of Italy was written, and while I don't dispute the overall premise, I would also point out that Spain, the UK, Belgium are also more deeply fragmented than most people (until recently) recognized, to the brink of impending splits, and despite German re-unification, there is strong regional identification within Germany. I have never been to Poland, but I have the impression (maybe mistake) that Poles have strong regional identification too.

bvlenci

In light of the situation in the UK and Belgium, Italy is a paragon of national unity.

A lot of people mistake the xenophobia of a minority in Italy for regional identity. Given that the Lega Nord is making plays for votes all over the country with its Anti-EU and anti-immigrant line, its appeal shouldn't be confounded with regionalism or sectionalism. Most Italians belt out the Inno di Mameli (at least the words they remember) with enthusiasm and the Italian flag is in evidence on national holidays.

sandralist

Which people are those who are confused? Between Mario Batali and a whole lot of other sources, it seems to me most non-Italians who have any information about Italian regionalism know very well that Italian regionaliasm has nothing to do with being anti-minority and are not in any way confused about it. I doubt most people outside Italy know what the Lega Nord is, and probably most people know that Italy is acting heroically every day to save the lives of refugees.

That said, a good deal of Italian regionalism is hand-in-hand with anti-EU sentiment -- increasingly so (and justifiably so). It's fundamentally anti-euro and anti-neoliberalism directed from Germany in ignorance of Italian culture (and it isn't anti-Germans, either. Just anti-Merkelism, a passing phenomenon we can only hope). But the same resistance to centralized government as the expense of local control doesn't see much reason to support Renzi in Rome if he is simply going to pass along instructions from Berlin.

NewbE

<In light of the situation in the UK and Belgium, Italy is a paragon of national unity. >

Well, Italy is not attempting to break into pieces, but the marks of its transformation into a nation state, which may as well have occurred yesterday, are clearly visible.

Anyway, The Pursuit of Italy is a good recommendation. On a MUCH lighter note, I find Under the Tuscan Sun rather inspirational because the author, Frances Mayes, falls so in love with the country. (Ignore the film, it is barely based on the book at all.)

The film adaptation of A Room With a View is charming. La Dolce Vita is a classic

sandralist

Actually, there are people in Italy who seriously would like to break it into pieces, plus reunite with lost lands to the east, and it's not just the Lega Nord. And there are some areas of formally designated Italy that are functionally and politically autonomous, or so de-linked culturally from the rest of Italy just as an everyday reality.

But while a sour dislike of the euro simply cuts across all party lines and regions in Italy, and while support of the European Union is higher than support for the operations of the eurozone, even Renzi felt obliged to tell his collective European partners that if they had no better idea as to how to deal with refugee issues than to leave it to Italy and Greece to pull drowning people out of the sea, that if this was the European Union's idea of Europe, "well, then you can keep it," he snapped.

So this is a moment of flux, shall we say, and what the map of Europe and the eurozone will look like in the near future, hard to know.

tuscanlifeedit

Dear Josh

You've gotten good advice about flying open jaws. I would check schedules from your home city to see which Italy destinations have the most convenient times for you.

May is a great time to be in Italy.

Of course, you need to know why you are going there in the first place. Is it art, or history, Roman or Renaissance? Food or wine or both? Outdoor activity or great churches and museums?

That ought to help narrow your choices.

bvlenci

The people who write books and newspaper articles about Italy often confuse support for the Lega Nord with Italian regionalism.

I think it's likely that Angela Merkel will be around for a long time. She has solid support in Germany and no term limits. A lot of the opposition to her is because she's too soft, not too tough, on aid to struggling economies elsewhere in Europe.

jstein925

Thanks everyone! Went to the library yesterday and picked out a few books and movies. Watched Roman Holiday yesterday! Ha ha. The book recommendations sound great. I will definitely be checking some of those out.

I like the idea of the open jaw flying. But it seems to be affecting prices not doing roundtrip, but maybe I am doing it wrong? We will be leaving from the NYC PHI DC region. We would probably fly into venice and out of rome or vise versa.

As far as why we are going there...we love a lot of those things! but I think one of the reasons I was asking for book recommendations was to figure out what we are most interested in.

We love food and always make that a big part of our travels. I'm more into history. Wife is more into art. Both love wine. We want to be outside to embrace the culture and see the sites, but also want to check out museums.

We're glad May is a good time to go! Waiting until September would have been tough

jstein925

I think I figured out the multi city flight thing actually. I'm trying to use CC rewards to save money, so I was a little confused at first.

maxima

If you are flying from NYC, Delta flies nonstop to Venice and nonstop to Rome. If you fly Delta there is generally a flight around 1pm from Venice to NY. Most other flights with connecting cities will leave fairly early in the morning from Venice. If the NYC Delta flights do not work for you, depending on your choice of departure city and airline, you may want to fly into Venice first in order to avoid the early morning departures and out of Rome where there are more flights at different times of day,

The open jaw tickets are sometimes slightly higher in price, but it saves time and transportation costs involved in flying in and out of the same place.

You may want to see if your library has or can interloan the Michelin green guide for Italy.. the guide book is pretty comprehensive as far as sights are concerned and will give you some history as well.