Hiking between the five villages is the reason most people visit Cinque Terre, and it remains the best way to experience this extraordinary coastline. The famous coastal path — the Sentiero Azzurro (Blue Trail, #2) — connects all five villages along the cliffs, but it’s just one of dozens of marked trails crisscrossing the Cinque […]
The Portofino peninsula is the glamorous heart of the Italian Riviera, and its hotels range from some of the most expensive in Italy to surprisingly affordable family-run guesthouses — if you know where to look. The key is understanding the geography: Portofino itself has only a handful of hotels (all expensive), while neighbouring Santa Margherita […]
Choosing where to stay in Cinque Terre is the single most important decision you’ll make when planning your trip. Each of the five villages has a completely different personality, and picking the wrong one can mean a holiday of stair-climbing when you wanted a beach, or deafening silence when you wanted a lively evening scene. […]
Let’s address the elephant in the harbour: La Spezia is the city everyone passes through to get to Cinque Terre. The train station is the gateway — you change here for the Cinque Terre Express, you grab a coffee, you leave. Most travellers spend precisely zero minutes exploring La Spezia itself, and they’re missing out […]
Liguria looks beautiful from the land. It looks spectacular from the water. The villages that seem lovely from a train window become jaw-dropping when seen from the deck of a boat — pastel towers rising straight from the sea, terraced vineyards climbing impossibly steep slopes, and coves you’d never know existed from the coastal road. […]
If Liguria had a national dish, it wouldn’t be pesto — it would be focaccia. Walk through Genoa at 7am and you’ll see people emerging from bakeries with squares of focaccia wrapped in paper, eating them on the street, dipping them in cappuccino (it works — trust me), or tucking them into bags for later. […]
Liguria’s cuisine is one of Italy’s great under-told food stories. This is the region that gave the world pesto — arguably the most famous sauce on the planet — along with focaccia in its highest form, and a cooking tradition shaped by the mountains meeting the sea. Ligurian food is defined by what the land […]
Let’s be honest: Liguria is not the Maldives. The coastline here is mostly rocky, the beaches are often pebbles rather than sand, and in August you’ll be sharing your towel space with half of northern Italy. But — and this is a big but — when you know where to go, Liguria has some of […]
Liguria is a hiker’s paradise hiding in plain sight. While most visitors stick to the famous Cinque Terre coastal trail, the region is crisscrossed by thousands of kilometres of marked paths — from ancient salt routes over the Maritime Alps to cliffside sentiero that plunge straight down to turquoise coves. The mountains drop directly into […]
Everyone knows Cinque Terre and Portofino. But Liguria has dozens of villages that are just as beautiful — and they come without the crowds, the queues, and the €15 Aperol spritzes. These are the places where Ligurians actually go on their days off: medieval stone hamlets clinging to mountainsides, fishing villages with boats pulled up […]
If you know one thing about Sanremo, it’s probably the music festival — Italy’s answer to Eurovision, broadcast every February since 1951, launching the careers of everyone from Andrea Bocelli to Måneskin. But reducing Sanremo to a five-day song contest is like calling Milan just a fashion week. This is the Città dei Fiori (City […]
Genoa is the perfect base for exploring the Italian Riviera. Its central position on the Ligurian coast puts you within an hour of Portofino, Cinque Terre, medieval villages, mountain trails, and beaches that rival anything on the Amalfi Coast — without the Amalfi prices or crowds. These are the 10 best day trips from Genoa, […]