What's the most beautiful Alps ski resort in Italy? Canazei vs Brunico

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The ski season on the Alps is going to start in few weeks and it's time to plan snow weeks and ski weekends.

For a non expert mountains can appear all the same: white, cold, only good for skiing. But to decide where to go for skiing is a task more complicated than what it can look like! Above all if in the group there are also snowboarders, hikers, and... beginners!

Then you must add the non-sports side: when you are not on the slopes you'd like to stay in a pleasant resort where to enjoy beautiful landscapes, taste delicious mountain food and, why not, do some sightseeing!

2 medieval cities you shouldn't miss in central Italy

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You are on travel in Italy. You love wondering in the medieval centers of its art cities. You have been to Rome, Florence, Bologna etc.

Where to go?

In the middle age Italy wasn't a unified country but fragmented in many little reigns, called city-states because they were limited to the surroundings of each city ruled by the most powerful noble family in town.

The heritage of that era are a lot of little cities, located above all in central Italy, where you can spend a nice day-trip "within the walls", between a castle and a cathedral, in winter as in summer.

Even in Venice you can go off the beaten path

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Are you going to travel to Italy, precisely to Venice, soon? Will it be your first time in the biggest tourist trap of Italy?

There's no magic solution to this huge problem in the most unique city of the Bel Paese,  you will always be surrounded by crowds of tourists, but yes, you can travel different! And today we have the pleasure to share with you the tips of an authoritative Italy's blogger and expat! Pamela Haack on her blog "Where Tuscany meets Umbria" says she moved ten years ago to Umbria, with her husband, fell in love with this beautiful land and started traveling all around Italy, always off the beaten track. And thanks to her own experience, she can now give some good suggestions for a trip to Venice.

Where are the best beaches in Italy Vol. II

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Not long time ago we said in this post that there's a rule to find the best beaches in Italy. Do you remember? It's quite easy:

The best beach is the hardest to reach

And which one is it then? Our answer was the tiny islands that surround the Italian coast, from Tuscany to the south of Italy, to the Adriatic side. Maybe not as many and renowned as those of the Greek sea, but this is why Italian islands are more attractive than Greek ones: there are no airports and even few ferries to reach them.

Ready to travel to Tuscany? Read this before

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Are you going to travel to Italy, precisely to Tuscany, for your first time? If you are not well prepared in Italian geography...maybe you'd better read this post first!

Today we have the pleasure to share with you the (hilarious) reflection of an authoritative Italy's blogger and expat! Krista Ricchi on her blog "Alla Fiorentina" says she moved from Southern California to Florence, in Tuscany, after falling in love with an italian. And thanks to her own experience, she can now teach you what's the most important thing you need to know before visiting Tuscany...

A Halloween night in the cave: the big event at Castellana Grotte

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Halloween 2014 is coming and the big party is almost ready. But what if you join  a different kind of event this year? In a small village of Apulia, in south Italy, called Castellana Grotte, goes on stage a unique show in an incredibly realistic scenery: inside a natural cave.

But not any cave. 3,348 meters long, 122 meters deep, 330 meters above sea level. These are the numbers of the Grottoes of Castellana, one of the most amazing complexes of karst caves in Italy. And if these numbers were not enough to awaken the spirit of adventure that is necessary to delve into this impressive underground world, the 15 million visitors who have explored it since the opening to the public could be enough to whet the curiosity to discover a place that, over the decades, has managed to win travelers from all over the world.

Exchange travel experience: museums, gondola and...Venice hospital!

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What happened to today's post protagonist? Don't worry, she didn't end her trip in the hospital!

"She" is Nanna Lára, a curious and energetic food lover from Reykjavík, Iceland. She's a student of economics in the University of Iceland and she's taking an exchange semester at Bocconi University in Milan, during which, like any international student in Italy, she's traveling as crazy!
And she's telling us today about her experience to the charming, touristy but unique Venice!

I haven´t stayed in Italy for long time before the exchange program. I have been here for one month now and traveled to several places.

Exchange travel experience: from Italy to Germany, destination Oktoberfest!

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Hello Gadders readers! You are used to read about italian destinations and travel experiences by expats in Italy, exchange students and foreign travelers who go exploring overlooked, often hidden, corners of the country.

But today's article is an amazing guest post by Gil, an Israeli student from Tel Aviv who just moved to Milan to spend a semester abroad and is going to tell us a slightly different story...

Who: Gil Eckstein, Ran Ben-artzi

Where: Italy, Germany, some Swiss place lost in the mountains too.

When: 2 weeks ago

What: "So it all started in middle school...

Exchange travel experience: hiking the Cinque Terre

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Okay, this is my new favorite place, topping my bed on a Monday morning and bath at Christmas time.

It's how Laura defines Cinque Terre, the awesome natural reserve on the coast of Liguria, in north-west Italy, that hides five small resorts (Monterosso al Mare, Vernazza, Corniglia, Manarola, and Riomaggiore) for many years been kept free of massive tourism. But since foreign travelers have discovered the amazing landscape of these little towns and the hikeingpaths along the coast, bad transport services hasn't stopped anymore the crowd of tourists coming and going every weekend.

Oh, sorry, I forgot to say who's Laura, but I loved this Intro and couldn't begin other way! 

Top 2 tourist attractions in south Italy when summer's over: Pompeii and Vesuvius

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Campania, in south Italy, is the region of the Bel Paese with the most diverse offer for travel lovers. It's the region of the warm, chaotic metropolis of Naples, it's the region of the sunny and stunning Amalfi coast and the region of the elite islands of Capri and Ischia. A paradise for a summer vacation.
But when summer is over what?
There are other incredible destinations, more comfortable being explored in a warm autumn day, rather than under the hot sun of august.
The 2 top attractions for this period of the year are one next to the other: the Mount Vesuvius, the impressive volcano visible from everywhere in the bay of Naples, and, just at the feet of the mount, the fascinating excavations of the old town of Pompeii, destroyed almost 2000 years ago by the eruption of the same volcano.

3 interesting places to visit in a trip to central Italy

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Italy, in the imaginary of a tourist, can be divided in three parts: the north, the south and... Rome!

It seems trivial, yes, and it actually is! The north is Venice, Milan, Verona the art cities. The south is the Amalfi coast, Sicily, the sunny and lively beaches. And then there is Rome, that hides all and everything around for miles. Rome is in the region of Lazio: do you know or do you ever heard of any other travel destination in this region? And what about Abruzzo, the region at the opposite side of Rome's one, on the Adriatic coast? Very few tourists pass through this area, mostly mountainous, not well connected to the main highways, but, above all, far from the "foreign tourist path" that goes from venice to the italian capital, passing through Florence.

The truth about Italy's caves town, Matera

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Universally known as the city of Rocks ('sassi' in Italian), Matera, a small town in Basilicata, south Italy, has an appealing charm that over the years has inspired artists and writers, from poet Giovanni Pascoli and Carlo Levi, who described the rough and wild nature of these places in his famous work "Christ Stopped at Eboli", up to directors such as Pier Paolo Pasolini and Mel Gibson, who shot here his film The Passion of the Christ.
Why did all them came to this place? It is a unique city in the world, with a modern side and an old one whose architecture gives the traveler an incredible sensation of jumping in a very ancient past.

What to see in Florence? The mysterious holes on old town palaces

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It's no surprise that all foreigners coming to Italy have Florence on top of their to-see-list. But it's a shame when they tell they have no more time than 1 or 2 days to visit the city. This is a post of some time ago about Florence and its main attractions, perfect for a short travel. But Florence is an open air museum, whose 'rooms' would need days and days to be discovered and admired in each of its masterpieces.

And along the old town streets, the glorious past of Florence has left us a lot of curious and intriguing secrets. In fact, the key to these mysterious surprises is always in the intimate history of the city. The history made ​​by the people, their habits, their passions, their beliefs, etc.

Milan experience: September 2014. My first week in Italy Vol. 2

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One week ago we told about how two guys from different parts of the world felt and lived their first week in Italy, after they moved to Milan for their university exchange programme. Read their story here. But what about girls?
So, here we are again with the Hectic, Adventurous, Warm! first week of Denise Vollebergh, from the Netherlands.
Denise comes from Rotterdam, the place where she was born and where she goes to the Erasmus University for the degree in Communication and Media. She landed in Milan, Italy, just few days ago, the 2nd of September.

Travel through time to San Marino, oldest and smallest republic in the world

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The story of San Marino is really surprising. Who is San Marino? Maybe you want to say 'what'...

Perched on Mount Titano, between Marche and Romagna regions, central Italy, San Marino with its 64 km² is the smallest republic in the world. And also the oldest among the republics existing today all around the world. Founded, as tradition says, in the fourth century by Marino, a sculptor of tombstones fleeing religious persecution of Roman emperor Diocletian, in the ninth century the small town already established its independency and was recognized as an autonomous state. Emerged unscathed from the medieval conflicts between the dominions of the other cities and the papacy, the boundaries of the small state have remained unchanged for six centuries, case so rare that becomes, in the eyes of the world, a symbol of freedom and independence.

Italy experience: living Bologna for one year

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This is the story of an Emotional, Life-Changing and Blurry experience as Ben Hayward defined it, 21 years old guy from London, England, who studies German and Italian at Swansea University, in Wales, and spent his last 10 months, from September 2013 to July 2014, living in Bologna, Italy, where he "studied" German, Russian, Finnish and Polish for the Erasmus program (Cit. "If you haven’t already guessed, I like languages!")

My first impact with Italy and Bologna

I had never been to Italy prior to my Erasmus period.

A rule to find the best beaches in Italy

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When it's time to look for the most gorgeous beach for your next travel plans, the rule is one: the best one is the most hard to reach!
You are already imagining it: a place where no trains arrive, where buses are to big to pass through the narrow road, where the closest bar is one mile far. Where lazy tourists don't go and you are the boss. Where can you find such a place in Italy? Are you thinking at the Amalfi coast? Yes, an idyllic place, with incredible coves down the cliffs, like this... But you're wrong! You wouldn't find more than one meter of empty space among all the tiny beaches of the small villages along this coast. That's not a place 'hard to reach'.

What to see in Verona, beyond Juliet's balcony

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Verona is one of the favorite destinations in Italy for tourists that have some extra-time after the classical Rome-Florence-Venice tour, because of its aura of romance that surrounds it! It's considered the city of lovers and its symbol, the house attributed to Juliet, the Shakespeare's character, is like a place of pilgrimage.

But Verona has and is much more than Juliet's house and balcony, the town has something special that existed before the creation of this symbol, something that indeed convinced Shakespeare to choose it as set of his romantic tragedy. Verona is known as the Little Rome because of its importance for the Roman Empire.

A tip for an alternative travel in north Italy

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Set in the north eastern side of Italy, the region of Friuli Venezia Giulia is not one of the most attractive areas of the Bel paese, because of its geographic position, out of the "classic" tour of Italy from Venice to Rome, passing through Florence.

Yet it's an incredibly deep container of culture and history, as boarder region being relevant for the protection of Italy since the roman empire and until world war II, and an important commercial area as closest access to the sea for a large part of Europe.

And above all, what's attractive to us is the gems it preserves from massive tourism: Tarvisio and Lignano are two of the most charming destinations of the area, that perfectly represent the soul of Friuli region as we described it.

3 alps ski resorts worth to visit in summer

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Alps are a varied set of destinations and landscapes, which not only attract tourists during winter for the ski season. There are many reasons to travel to the extreme north of Italy in summer too, above all for hiking and trekking lovers, but also for who just wants to spend a different kind of holidays visiting small villages hiding their history behind high peaks.

Here are three of the most fascinating resorts of the Dolomites of Trentino region, north-east Italy.

Predazzo

Tourist resort of Val di Fiemme, at the confluence of the Rio Travignolo with the Avisio river, on the Dolomites.