Balconies and Pizza in Italy - a Great Combination

“Balconies and Pizza…? What do these things have to do with each other?”

One of our goals for our recent itinerary research trip to Italy’s Alpine lakes was to find some places with rooms with great balconies, close to places where you could get an excellent pizza.

It is not hard to find pizza in Italy, but we’re always looking for places where it is extraordinary. We find that our traveler clients usually start calling us after Day 3 or 4, asking to cancel lunch or dinner reservations – they just can't eat two full sit-down meals per day. But a place with a great pizza? They can do that… and people often want to eat pizza several times on a trip here anyway. So why not find the best pizza available? We search out special places: wood-fired ovens, mother yeast dough, particular techniques or settings. (A grilled pizza at a balcony table, looking out from high above the lake shore? Yes please.)

The balcony idea is one that is often important to our travelers who visit the lakes. It is also easy to find a place with a balcony here, but we have several other considerations:

- Proximity to safe, affordable, realistic parking
- Easy walking distance to excellent places to eat
- A reasonably affordable place to stay (no resorts that are several hundred € per night)
- A great view with private balcony access (not just communal space)
- Proximity to great pizza!

Balconies are easy to find too, but not necessarily with all our caveats; this is why people pay us to send them to lodgings like this. We added several places to our roster on this trip, which was important because a few of our long-time favorite lodgings we’ve been sending clients to have recently shuttered. We used our extensive knowledge of the areas to sort out some new locations that fit our criteria.

We encountered one hiccup, though: In the place in the penultimate picture, we booked a room with a private balcony. When we got there we discovered that they put us in a room with those three windows instead. Now, the view from those windows is stunning and nothing to complain about; but if one of our clients was really looking forward to sitting for hours on a balcony (and enjoying a pizza or picnic dinner on it), they might not love it. When we inquired, they said that no rooms with balconies are guaranteed, or bookable in advance - it is basically just a free-for-all in which they determine when you arrive if you are getting one. We were the first people to check in that day, in part because we wanted to spend all day on the balcony working, so it was not an availability issue. This is the first time we have experienced any system like that. A careful review of the fine print of the booking did reveal some pretty squirrelly language about the Balcony Distribution System™... so, live and learn.

Not a balcony - but not too bad after all…

This is a great example of why we only send people to places we have been ourselves, where we pay full rate – we do not take kickbacks or discounts from places we send our clients to, and we don't tell places in advance that we are travel planners – so they treat us like any regular client.

These are the kinds of considerations that we give to our travelers – better eating, better sightseeing, better sleeping!