Finding that perfect Agriturismo!
 

I will be traveling through Italy for about four days during the November season and I was wondering if anybody had any recommendations on any Agriturismos in either Naples, Florence, Rome, Venice, or Verona. I want it to be a great "back-woodsy" Farm-style, lets-go-milk-the-cow- for breakfast experience....I just really want to submerge myself in culture.
Any suggestions?

Are you looking for a place to stay for 4 nights or is four nights all you have for the whole country?

4 nights is all I can really give to the whole country...I will be on the move a lot and jumping cities, but I really want a cool place to stay during the nights

Probably best not to mention milk for breakfast to most Italians, or even breakfast, but here are some thoughts to help you narrow your search:

1) Try looking around Paestum for an agriturismo if you want the southern Italy.

2) This place might be what you are looking for

http://www.parlafood.com/forgotten-f...lto-casertano/

3) There is more industrial farming in the north than there is in the south, so while you can find interesting agriturismi in the Veneto if you look very hard, regions like Lazio and Campania have more. You don't have to go very far outside of Rome, to the south and west, to find a robust agriturismo scene with fairly favorable November weather.

4) The nearer you are to Florence, the more touristy the agriturismo will be. If you want to be near Florence, look around the Mugello area north of Florence, not around Chianti or points south.

5) If you want to spend time in Venice, then the most interesting agricultural zones near there are in Friuli-Venezia-Giulia, especially around Cormons and Gorizia.

Agriturismi rarely get reviewed, although you can dig up some feedback by looking up places on this website link below, and then seeing if you can find reviews on TripAdvisor or Booking.com. You will get closer to the kind of experience you want if you narrow your search to agriturismi that advertise they are organic and have great food and wine

http://www.agriturismo.it/en/farmhouse/search

I just read your second post. Someplace like this might work for you

http://www.agriturismo.it/en/farmhou...311/index.html

If you have only four nights and will be "jumping around" from city to city all over Italy, you wouldn't have time to commute to agriturismi out of town.

Exactly which of those five cities do you want to visit in the three full days you'll be in Italy?

I just read your other posts and see that you're hoping to do similar fly-by visits in Switzerland (two nights) and the Czech Republic (a few days). I think you need to come down to earth. Make a list of the places you want to visit, calculate how long it takes to travel from one place to the other, and then either add days or subtract destinations.

Please read the original posting.

The OP said - either Naples, Florence, Rome, Venice, or Verona

NOT

Naples, Florence, Rome, Venice, and Verona

Yes, but which does the poster mean? The OP says "traveling through Italy" not staying in one place for 3 days.

Agree that this seems like way too much territory in too few days. And trekking into a city each day from an agriturismo means getting one right on a bus route - or willing to provide rides to a train station.

Think the OP really needs to look into the logistics, distances and times between places - and also layout a day by day itinerary - which may cause some surprises.

It's not perfectly clear, but I understand CMF to be planning to travel to five cities during a four-night stay in Italy ("jumping around" are the exact words), with one of those nights spent in an agriturismo.

I am generally not critical of trip plans that include multiple brief stopovers, but if I've understood it correctly, this is in the realm of the impossible. The trip also seems to include two nights in Switzerland (in a quaint village, but near the ski slopes), and two nights in the Czech Republic "touring breweries ..... and soaking up the culture".

CMF
Hi, seems to me you don't understand how, big Europe is, or indeed how much the Alps gets in the way for North South travel. If you are using Google maps to time stuff you need to add 30% to its travel times. Hope this helps

Yes, haha I've recently since come down to earth. My brother and I just have plans in the beginning stages so honestly its all up in the air about where we are going to go. We are thinking of dedicating a week each to two countries and that's it....we are just trying to decide which ones :) ....however I've been using RailEurope to look up train times and durations....is this a good sight or are the durations longer than what they say on there?

Never used RailEurope as it is a marketing function especially designed to take money off North Americans. You might have benefits using their various "deals" but take care.

If they offer you timing details then they should be about right. Within Europe we tend to use the companies themselves or bahn.de who try to offer a mainland Europe overall timing service. Do check out seat61.com to get an overview of the various functions that really do vary by country and company (just like airlines)

Also, is a rail pass a thing to buy or is that just another rip off?

A rail pass is almost never cost effectivs unless you'll be spending an awful lot of time on the train, which would be a shame. I wouldn't go so far as to call them a ripoff; let's just say not usually good value for the money. They might pay off if you're under 26 and can use the youth pass, but even then you may do better buying separate tickets. I can tell you that no pass would be likely to save you money in Italy.

The bahn.de site has most (but not all) European schedules, but they can only sell tickets for trips that begin or end in Germany. For trips that are at least partly in Switzerland, you can use the Swiss rail site, http://www.sbb.ch/en/home.html . For trips at least partly in Italy, you can use http://www.trenitalia.com/cms/v/inde...005817f90aRCRD .

I don't know anything about the Czech railway.

You can get excellent discounts if you buy your tickets on line months in advance, but the discounted tickets usually can't be changed or used on a different train. You won't find prices for next November until sometime in the spring.

By the way,on one of your other posts, you mention skiing (in Switzerland). In November, good skiing conditions are not guaranteed.

So far, the OP's threads indicate the OP has 2 days for Czech Republic, 4 days for Italy and a couple of days for Switzerland (didn't post the exact #). When you factor in getting between all these places, the OP really won't have time for "real" or "perfect" places.

http://www.fodors.com/community/euro...ss-village.cfm

http://www.fodors.com/community/euro...h-republic.cfm

Whilst you may not find an agriturismo where you can milk the cows you can find many dispensers of latte crudo or unpasteurised milk in Northern Italy especially in the Brescia - Mantova - Verona triangle. Here is a photo of one - http://www.iltabloid.it/cms/file/BLOG/7474/1.JPG

The milk is delicious and the device does go moo when you fill up your bottle.

There was one of those dispensers in our town (in central Italy, Le Marche to be exact.) It went out of business, though. People here do use quite a lot of milk, but the dispenser was in an area where you'd have to make a special trip to get your milk. Maybe the grocers and supermarkets didn't want it anywhere near their stores.

The two days here, two days there plan has now been abandoned. It seems it was just a trial balloon.