This video is an excerpt from a much
longer Italy Travel Talk. To view other
topics, or to watch my Italy Talk in its
entirety, visit ricksteves.com, or
check out my Rick Steves YouTube channel.
Enjoy.
"Buongiorno," I'm Rick Steves, thank you for tuning in,
thank you for joining us, I'm tellin' ya'
Italy is my favorite country. It's about
two-thirds the size of California,
sixty million people, and we can think of
it in terms of regions. And, often
overlooked, are the charms of Northern
Italy. In the north of Italy, we've got
beautiful Riviera ports, we've got
romantic lakes, we've got the most
important big city to see, in the
sense of today's energy of Italy, that
would be Milano, and we've got the
mountains, the Alps of Italy, the Dolomites. We'll start with the Cinque
Terre, because a lot of people are
dreaming of the Italian Riviera when
dream about Italy. I love the Cinque Terre. I think, if there's any place that I
had an impact on, more than other places
in my travel writing, is the Cinque Terre.
I discovered that back when I was a
college kid, and I just have done my very
best to ruin it. I mean, there are so many
tourists there now, and when I discovered
it, there was no economy there, it was very
poor, it was probably one of the poorest
parts of Italy, and since then, it has
developed, it has welcomed the tourists,
and I was joking about me, I think
everybody is getting on board, and people
are recognizing the charm of these
little villages. And today, you've got
five incredible little towns, all
within easy walking distance of each
other. Just an hour or two away from big
places like Genoa, the Leaning Tower of Pisa,
and Florence. When you go to the Cinque Terre, there's five towns. that's what it
means, Cinque Terre, the five lands, and Monterosso Al Mare is the town that is
the best resort town of the region. That's
where you'll find the most hotels, the nicest
beaches, and so on, and when we go to
Monterosso Al Mare, you've got that rent-
an-umbrella kind of ambiance on the beach,
and the only really good beach on the
Cinque Terre. And I'll remind, you in the
evening, that's when the crowds go home,
and that's where the charm comes out.
The Cinque Terre used to be the
classic "back door." There's nothing really
back door about it now, it is mobbed
with visitors in the middle of the day.
They're not only the tourists like you
and me, there the cruisers that come in,
and there are the people side dripping
in from the big city, Genoa. Genoa's
huge city, and there's a lot of people
there, they just want to scoot over to
the beaches for a little fun.
Consequently, during the day, the towns are
just inundated, but at night,
everybody's away. There's not enough
comfortable hotels in these areas to
keep mass tourism happy, so people do not
spend the night. It's all yours at night,
that's the good news. My favorite town is
Vernazza, and Vernazza is the most exotic
town, it's the most romantic town, it's
the most kind of dramatic town, Vernazza,
and you get beautiful views coming in
from either direction, is what I would
try to stay at, but it's hard to get a
room there, you need to book in advance,
and you pay a little extra money I think,
to stay in Vernazza. But look at Vernazza,
it's perfectly preserved, nobody has any
modern buildings there, it hasn't changed
a bit,
it's a national park, the whole area is a
national park. This is frustrating if
you're a local landowner, 'cause you can't meet
the demand by upgrading your funky
little "pensione" into a fancy hotel, and
charge more money. There are no
comfortable hotels in this town, because
nobody can build a comfortable hotel, and
that's really good news because it keeps
away the most obnoxious slice of the
traveling public; people who insist on
good hotels. They're all in Portofino,
nearby, or Porto Venere, complaining about
the prices and the traffic jams. What I
like about the Cinque Terre part is, it
is Fiat-free Italy. There's sixty million
people in Italy, and just as many Fiat, and I find my favorite places are
places that are, essentially, traffic-free.
It's hard to get a car to these little
chunks of the Riviera Coast. I've seen a
lot of the riviera, this is my favorite
little bit of
the Mediterranean coast, anywhere. Vernazza. At night, all the restaurants are
busy, and anybody who's spending the
night in the region is enjoying some
beautiful fresh seafood. That people are
proud of their cooking, there's a lot of
local traditions there, pesto and trofie.
Trofie is a special kind of pasta made
for the pesto, this beautiful basil sauce,
and is it is harvested right there,
and it is famous for that region. It's
called Liguria. And of course, the
seafood is a big deal in the Cinque Terre. You get some beautiful seafood, some beautiful
pasta, and some delightful memories when
you're eating in the romantic evening
hours, with a good perch with a view of
the sea. When you are in Cinque Terre,
Vernazza is a beautiful place to
call home. Now you can walk from town, to
town, to town, here you can see the kind
of coastline, and you can imagine what
the trails are like. The only town of the
five that's not on the water is Cornelia,
and to get to Cornelia, you gotta walk up
from the water, and there's switchbacks
from the train station, it's part of the Cinque Terre Trail, and after Cornelia,
you'll come to a town called Manarola. And Manarola is a secondary town, it's got a lot
of charm, but it doesn't have the exotic
beauty of Vernazza. Still, it's a great
stop. This is a view of Manarola
from the boat out at sea. And the big
town of the Cinque Terra is
Riomaggiore. And, Riomaggiore is a nice
place that would be a little less
touristy than Vernazza, and still have
the magic of the Cinque Terre. Here we have
another view of Riomaggiore. Now the
trains lace together each of these
towns, and the trains didn't come in until
about a century ago after the
unification of Italy. So that's one
reason they're so remote, and so exotic,
and distant feeling, is the
modern world was not able to get there
until the last century. In fact, the
towns originated as groups of people
kind of hiding out from marauding
pirates. People chose the most rugged
part of the Italian coast line, and each
of these towns has castle where they would
have a look out, and they would holler if
the pirates were coming. Today, of course,
the trains are tunneling through, and the
trains are in the tunnels, and then they
just blink open for each of the dazzling,
colorful parts,
and then you're back in the darkness, and it's
the way you connect the towns. Every
hour there is a train, and about every
hour in the summer, when the weather is
good and it's not too windy, there's a boat.
And the boats go from town to town, and
they always feel like they're injecting economy
into the town's when they take their
little bows there, and all the people
empty into the town, and they scurry
around, do their shopping, and then get
back onto the boat and go to the next
stop. It's easy to get from town to town,
but in the Cinque Terre, a departure in
the hand is worth two around the corner.
So if you've got a train leaving right
now, if you've got a boat leaving right
now, and you gotta get somewhere, it's
best to get on that because you never
know when the trains are gonna just stop
running, or the boats are gonna incur too
much wind to be able to stop the in
little ports. The cruise industry is
really causing a problem in the Cinque
Terre. In the last few years,
Livorno, which is the cruise port for
Florence, has realized-the cruise ships
have realized-that a real attraction for
their cruisers, for people who've already
been to Florence, is to send them over to the Cinque Terre. Consequently, busloads of
people, and I'm talking thousands, are
coming in at the same time, making the
trails at the Cinque Terre almost
impassable. If you are on a cruise ship, I
think it's-I don't think it's right to
add to this scary problem of physically
too many human beings in the Cinque Terre. But that, coupled with normal
weekend crowds, and normal summer crowds,
and all of this, it's making midday,
on certain times when you get a perfect
storm of cruise ships, almost unlivable
for the Cinque Terre. Remember, in the
early morning, in the evening, it's
relatively empty. In the middle of the
day it can be absolutely ridiculous, so
take advantage of those beautiful
quieter hours when you're on the Cinque
Terre, and enjoy the trails. The trails
are a beautiful way to just get a dose
of that kind of riviera wonder. A lot of
times, when using the trail, you'll come
around the corner and see just the view
of a lifetime, and photographers just
gobble it up. It's easy to hike from town
to town, it just feels good, and when you
get into town, the food, which is already
delicious, tastes even better.
Now, when you're planning a trip to
the Cinque Terre, for a lot of travelers,
there's a lot of stress relating to
trail closures. And you'll hear people
say, no, the trails are closed, there is a
flood, there was a landslide, there's no more
trails, well I've been going to the Cinque Terre for 30 years and I've never been
there when the trails aren't closed, you
know, there's always a trail here and
there that's closed. Basically, most of the
trail closures are to cover their legal
exposure. They have to say, "it's closed,
proceed at your own risk," and then people
step over the little barrier and make the
walk. If one trail is absolutely closed,
and that does happen, and probably right
now there's one or two trails that just
are impassable physically, there's still
a handful of other trails that are wide
open. So don't worry about trail closures
in advance,
go there regardless, you will have trails.
And ask locally, not to the tourist board
because they're going to tell you the
party line, ask somebody who's not in the
tourist board, "really, what trails are
open and where can I hike?" And then make
your plans from there. You'll find the
main kind of accommodations in the Cinque
Terre is private accommodations. The
older people have moved to the big city,
and they've hired east Europeans to live
there, in a little corner of their
apartment, and rent out the rest of the
apartment to travelers. And it's quite
handy, it's quite reasonably priced, and
you're right there in that little town
wonder. There are pebbly beaches in most
of the Cinque Terre towns, if you want a
serious beach, you gotta go to resort to
nearby, but frankly I wouldn't go to
Italy for great beaches. I would go to
Italy for great coastal culture and
so on, but leave the great beaches to the
Italians. They thrive on crowds, and
traffic jam, and noise, they actually like
that, and for us it's just stressful, we
don't speak the language, we don't really
know the ropes. I would stay away from
the famous beach resorts in Italy, and I
would focus on the rustic charm of the
Italian Riviera and the Cinque Terre.
In the north of Italy are a bunch of
lakes. It's almost like the peninsula of
Italy is welded to the Alps right around
these lakes, there's Lago Di Garda, Lake
Maggiore, and also Lake Como. My
favorite of the lakes, without any doubt,
is Lake Como, and that's what I stress.
Lago Di Como.
This is called "honeymoon country" in
Italy, "luna di miele," honeymoon
country. And my favorite stop in Lago Di Como is Varenna. And Varenna, not
to be confused with Vernazza in the Cinque Terre, Varenna is like the
Vernazza of the lakes in the north of Italy.
The neat thing about Varenna is it's a one
hour train ride from Milano. You can fly into Milano, catch the train one hour north,
and not deal with the big city, and get
over jet lag in Varenna. If I'm ever just
fried, and that happens to me when I'm
working sometimes, I need a place to
convalesce, this is it, Varenna. It is so
beautiful.
Get a little hotel right on the
waterfront. You get a pass and you can
use the ferries all over the lake. You'll
find all sorts of people just having
anniversaries, or having honeymoons, or
having romantic getaways. There's
something really romantic about Varenna
on Lago Di Como. The lake is full of
traditional steamers, and these steamers
will connect the towns. Bellagio, you may
have heard of Bellagio. This is the
actual Bellagio, right here, and it is the
resort of the region. It's bigger than
Varenna, this is where well-dressed people
with their little poodles go for
vacation, and it's fun to drop by,
although I would hang out in Varenna.
An hour to the south is Milano, and if
you're going to see one big city, one no
nonsense powerful city in Italy, I'd make
it Milano. They say for every church in
Rome, there's a bank in Milano, and Milano
is where you feel the energy of Italy.
Recently, Italy surpassed England in per
capita income, and Italy is making more
money per capita than in England, not
because of San Gimignano, Siena, and the
Cinque Terre, I can promise you that. It's
because of the no nonsense, powerful,
industrial cities of the north. Torino,
Genoa, Milano, and so on.
Milano is the city for me. To feel the
reality of Italy, you owe it to yourself
to have one day, or a couple of days in a
great, no nonsense city. It's a great
place to fly into, it's a great
place for sightseeing, you've got this
incredible "duomo."
When you hear the word "duomo" in Italy, that
means cathedral, the "duomo." And this would be the
Duomo of Milano. Milano, is like so many
Italian cities, going traffic-free. Look at
this beautiful bike street here, and
pedestrian street. Just a few years ago
it was full of cars, and now it is all for
the people. This is the main square, the
Piazza Del Duomo, looking at the
cathedral, and when I'm here I'm always
thinking about the Risorgimento. Remember,
in 1850, there was no Italy, and there was
no Germany. There was just a bunch of
little countries that spoke those
languages, that dreamed of one day being
united. The established countries
in Europe wanted nothing to do with that,
and it took some pretty impressive
political finagling for the great
George Washingtons and Thomas Jeffersons
of modern Italy to get that country
together. I would highly recommend
learning about the Risorgimento before
you go to Italy, because when you go to
Italy everywhere you look it's, Cavour that, Mazzini this, and Garibaldi that.
Those are all the heroes of the 1860s when Italy was defying the big
powers of Europe, and becoming united. And
the hotbed of that Risorgimento spirit was
Milano, and when you go to Milano it's
everywhere. I mean, this is the Victor Emmanuel
Gallery, a big gallery named after the
first king of Italy. And there
there was energy in Italy after 1870
when Italy united, they're building trains, and
lacing together the country, they're building a
wonderful, state-of-the-art, futuristic,
you know, industrial age malls, and they
just were
embracing this whole idea of Italy.
The fathers of Italy famously said, "we've
created Italy, now we need to create
Italians," alright, because there was that,
what they call "campanilismo." In Italy,
"campanilismo" is loyalty to your
own bell tower, the "campanile." Right here in
my town in Edmonds, right outside my
office, there's a cute little bell tower and
it rings a bell, and I've got a
little bit of that "campanilismo" right here. Can
you imagine, a hundred loyalties like that
all around Italy, and suddenly you've got
a unified political entity with sixty
million people, or whatever, and now that
challenge is to teach these people,
"you're Italian."
So, it's a wonderful story, and it's just
150 years old, and it's
worth checking out. Across the street
from that Victor Emmanuel Gallery, you've
got the La Scala Opera House, the greatest
opera house in a lot of ways in Europe,
and when you go there, and you step
inside you, go to the museum, you get a
look at the Opera Hall, you learn about
Verdi. Verdi, the great opera composer,
what's his name, V-E-R-D-I. It was a
political slogan. Victor Emmanuel, "re
d'Italia," Victor Emmanuel, the first king of
Italy. People would stand on their chairs
in the opera, and they'd sing the arias,
knowing they were waving the Italian
flag, which was forbidden, because Austria and France wouldn't allow it, but
they all work together in these
wonderful, wonderful, trouble-causing,
patriotic ways, to somehow bring Italy to
unity. To learn about that is really
exciting, and you can do that when you go
to Milano. We got-a lot of
people are interested in Leonardo da Vinci's
Last Supper. I'll warn you, you need a
reservation. Ever sent the appearance of
the Da Vinci Code, there have been long
lines to get in to see Leonardo's Last
Supper, and you need to book it a month
in advance. So get your guidebook out,
get online, and make a reservation, and
it's very straightforward. But if
you go to Milano, and you don't have a
reservation for the Last Supper, it's
going to be very complicated, and very
expensive for you to actually get a
chance to see it. It's one of the great
masterpieces of European art. It's
interesting to note that Leonardo chose
to finish his career, the meat of his
career, in Milano. It was a very important
city that rivaled Florence, and
oftentimes, under-appreciated. Beautiful
districts to go out to eat in Milano,
there's a place in the canal, kind of
port district, called the Naviglio Grande, which
is where I like to go for a
characteristic meal, and that would all
be discussed in the Rick Steves Italy
guidebook. Now when you go to Italy, if
you want the complete story of Italy,
part of that is the Alps. We think of
Alps being France, and Switzerland, and
Austria, but the Dolomites, or the
Dolomites, are the Italian Alps, and they
really are quite impressive. Now I want
to remind you, this part of Italy
was Austrian, until WWI. Austria started
and lost WWI, they lost their
international holdings, becomes
a relatively insignificant little
landlocked country,
and its port on the Mediterranean,
Trieste, and all that area around there,
became part of Italy. When you go to Dolomite area now, you'll find signs in both
languages, because it's just been 100 years that people have been part
of Italy, and they still speak German.
Here we see the two names of the
regions, "Südtirol," if you happen to be
from Vienna, and "Alto Adige," if you're
from Rome, okay. The South Tyrol or the upper
Adige River Valley. And below that, you
see "hello, welcome" in three different
languages. "Welcome" in German, "welcome" in
Italian, and "welcome" in the ancient Latin
language that this little demographic
enclave still has as a part of their
language heritage. There's a tiny little group
of people that still speak this
language that was related directly to
the ancient Latin. When we look around
the Dolomites, I explored this whole
area when I was writing the first
edition of my Rick Steves Italy
guidebook, looking for a good town to
call home in the Dolomites, and most
of the town's just felt like a ski
resort in the summer, just drained out, and
empty, and "what am I doing here at the
wrong season." But there's one place that
is-- well there's a major town called Bolzano, and that would be in the valley floor, and
Bolzano feels a lot like Salzburg but
in Italy, it's got beautiful arcades and a
wonderful Alpine kind of heritage, and a
quirky museum with the iceman,
Ötzi, who thawed out of a glacier. And it
gives us like a quirky, miraculous look
at somebody who lived in prehistoric
times. Quite amazing to see Ötzi the
Iceman when you're in Bolzano. And my
favorite hometown is just up on top of
the ridge above Bolzano, and this town is
called Kastelruth. Now you'll see here it's
got two names, Kastelruth and Castelrotto. I happened to say the German word
first, but if you're Italian, you'd say Castelrotto. What's confusing, is if you
have a map, it might say either/or. Bolzano would be Bozen, Kastelruth, Castelrotto,
There's a town nearby, Vipiteno or Sterzing, you don't know,
depending on German or Italian. Kastelruth is a charming town
with a beautiful old district, chair
lifts going right out from there into
the mountains for lovely hikes, and
always some cultural activities
happening. From there, you take a shuttle
bus into a national park called the Alpe
Di Siusi. The Alpe Di Siusi is the biggest
high meadow in the Alps, anywhere in the
Alps. And you've got this lovely high
meadow on a sunny day, on a warm day, it's such
delightful hike. You can do it in a
wheelchair, I mean, it's just perfectly
flat, it's like pasture land. Or you can
hike up and get onto the Schlern, the
mountain there. It's just like going to
the beach except up in the mountains.
There's petting zoos, there's lounge
chairs, it is just a delightful chance
for anybody to enjoy the Alps of Italy.
So when you're thinking about Italy,
remember, there are a lot of great
attractions high up in the north. Thank you.
If you've enjoyed this video.
you'll find lots more at ricksteves.com,
and on my Rick Steves YouTube channel.
Happy travels, and thanks for joining us.
