A typical day on your Little Roads Itinerary in Italy might look something like this:
You wake up at your lodging well-rested - Buongiorno!
You have a relaxing cappuccino and maybe a cornetto around the corner at a bar - you’re not hungry for much, since you had a fantastic meal the night before. (And on our trips, you definitely will have!)
You get in your car for a leisurely little drive - maybe 30-45 minutes, tops, depending on how many times you want to stop to take an award-winning photo of the landscape. You arrive at a nearby point of interest: a medieval castle, a lakeside walk, an ancient monastery, another quaint small town. (You might make two such stops; your schedule allows time to linger, or room to skip ahead.)
You work your way to your lunch stop - the place is unique; your table is waiting; and your meal is epic.
After lunch, assuming you can still move, you meander towards another site (or sites) we suggest. Only if you feel like it - there’s no hurry!
You work your way back to your town and your lodging. You take a little rest, then you head out to the incredibly picturesque streets of the town, for a people-watching stroll, a gelato, another coffee, an aperitivo, or just to find the perfect place to watch the sunset.
Dinnertime rolls around; somehow you find yourself hungry again, craving your next sampling of local traditional cuisine. Afterwards, take one last little walk before heading to bed… Buona notte!
Note: Typically we endeavor to place our clients in each lodging for 2-4 nights, so they aren’t in a constant state of packing/checking in/unpacking. Some days will look different because they will include wine tastings, cheese tours, cooking classes, visits to thermal baths, or other scheduled activities. Every itinerary we plan is sent in a Google Doc format, so you always have the most recent version; and it includes loads of pictures – ones we took with a smartphone, so you know what it actually looks like, and it’s not some magazine fantasy. We also include links to every lodging/restaurant/site, so you can read more about each place as you wish.
To illustrate just a bit of what we do for our clients, here are a couple of overviews of trips that we’ve designed recently:
Ken and Mary: Traveled to TUSCANY, June 2023: 9 days - total lodging cost: under €1200
This one was a honeymoon trip for a young couple. For a 9-day honeymoon, their lodging came in at just under €1200, even though it was in June, the beginning of “high season”. They stayed in a small Tuscan hill-town whose owner studied pastry in Paris and makes the best croissants; a boutique hotel attached to a Michelin starred restaurant; a small family-run B&B in Chianti; a Slow Food restaurant with rooms in a small hill town near Modena; a B&B in the Val d’Orcia (with four-poster beds and a grand piano) where they light candles on their stairway when you arrive; and a hotel with a private rooftop hot tub with views of a lake, in a small town just 90 minutes from Rome’s airport.
Pat and Lou: Traveled from ROME to MILAN, October 2023: 30 days, total lodging cost: €3200
A recent client couple basically just said “Do whatever you want, just send us to your favorite places” - this is our preferred kind of trip to design, of course!
These two were in Italy for 28 days. We agreed to sort out all their lodgings, then organize 14 days of activities, private tours, wine tastings, and more. We left the rest of the days up to them to sort out - with a few tips from us of course! Since we chose all the lodgings for them, they were in beautiful places, and exploring the area on their own was easy and fun.
They traveled Rome to Milan (the airports, not the cities). They stayed in not one but two different castles; a large apartment with a terrace overlooking the Duomo in Florence; a little house with private lakefront on Lago Maggiore; a boutique hotel/restaurant in a vineyard in Chianti; a B&B in a 16th-century building in a medieval hill-town with a private garden; a spa hotel with an underground pool you can book for a free private session; and a hotel in a castle town with incredible views from a private garden.
Total cost of their lodging was $3470, or about $115/day. Most of our clients travel 7-9 days, but we adjust our fee and our level of service to accommodate those who want our help over long stays like this.