Friday, April 25, 2008

Travel To Italy This Year!

One of my dreams for many years has been to travel to Italy and stay in an Italian villa.  I’m not really sure when or why this dream came to be, but it’s been on my mind for at least a couple of decades.  Now that our kids are older and pretty much self sufficient, my husband and I decided that we would finally embark on our Italian travel dream.

Coming up with our itinerary was difficult.  Just open up any Italy travel book and you quickly get overwhelmed with the sheer number of places you want to visit.  Since we weren’t sure if, or when we’d get back, we carefully considered each destination to ensure we hit all the spots we really wanted to see. 

When it came to picking our villa, we used the Conde Nast Traveler June 2007 issue as our guide.  In this issue, they provided a villa rental guide that really helped us pick our choice.  I especially liked a section on ‘is a villa for you’ where they provided some poignant questions about if a villa rental is right for your type of travel style.  Some of the questions were:

  • Am I better off in a hotel?
  • Do I require American style comfort?
  • Do I have to stay a full week?
  • What amenities do I require?
  • How do I envision spending my time?
  • How large a staff should I have?

After reviewing these questions and researching our options, we decided that we still wanted to travel Italy and end off with a two-week stay at a villa.  Based on the magazine’s suggestion, we choose a villa with a cook and housekeeper so that our precious hours could be spend sightseeing and enjoying the local culture instead of searching for supermarkets, cooking food and cleaning house.

We also went with one of the villas recommended in that same issue.  The property owner has a large variety of villas suiting every taste and budget.  Since our budget was somewhat modest, we went with Villas Europe because we were able to get a lovely cottage that had everything we envisioned.  The owner even secured a terrific car rental rate!  One of the greatest perks was her unbelievable restaurant advice.  We went to some amazing local spots and indulged in some of the best food we’ve ever tasted!

For the remainder of our trip to Italy, we booked the Virgin Vacations Italian Adventure that included accommodations in Rome, Florence and Venice along with rail service between the cities.  It was the perfect way to get a taste of these amazing cities and allowed us to maximize our time. 

I hope you get the opportunity to travel Italy in the upcoming year.  I highly recommend finding a villa, as it is a unique opportunity to really get a taste of Italian life.  We met some wonderful people and will look back on our month in this amazing country as one of the best times of our life.  Buon viaggio!

Posted by KyrasGram on 04/25 at 02:10 PM
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