Today the coolest thing happened. I was at the beautiful Fattoria La Pievanella by chance. I was helping out the owner with some translation work when I heard her talk to some American people who had stopped by to ask if it was possible to get something to eat.

Normally, it’s always better to book in advance there (and be prepared for the prices) because the restaurant works mostly for the guests and if the guests choose to go out for the day, the chef gets some time off. As you can imagine, he cannot leave at any other time during the tourist season. Anyway, I went out to help out with the language barriers (the owner is German) and in the end she decided that she could ask the chef to prepare a light lunch for them anyway. She asked me if in the meanwhile I could take them around to see the pool etc. They seemed very nice, so I did.

While we were walking down to the pool, I noticed they had something printed and I asked how they found the place. They told me they had read about an off-the-beaten-path drive in Tuscany online… It was the guest post I wrote for Keith’s Velvet’s Escape Travel Blog!!! There was a  photo of me, my bio etc! It was so weird and so cool at the same time! We had a good laugh!

They had lunch there, and then we took photos and talked a while! It was so funny! I almost felt like a star! LOL

In the end, when I was ready to leave, I guided them along my favourite route around there, to the Castle of Monte Antico. There they stopped to take a walk around and some photos and we said goodbye!

Ah…the power of the web!!! I need to thank Keith once again for asking me to write that guest post and in so doing, for giving me a chance to meet nice people like them!! I hope they will send the photo we took with the print-out of the article!!!

Driving in the countryside is like a therapy against stress for me, especially on perfect summer days like today.

Even when we go somewhere on holiday, driving around is a big part of our vacation. It is not about getting from point a to point b: it’s our way of enjoying beautiful landscapes, stopping along the road to enjoy the views and take pictures, and taking it slow. The drive, for us, is often not just a necessary part of a day-trip: it’s the whole point of a day-trip. We like road trips very much.

I am always a bit surprised when I hear our guests worry about driving in Italy or on winding country roads: that’s the best part of a vacation in Tuscany! Our recommendation is always to take it slow, stop when you feel you need to, and ignore those behind you: do your own thing as you feel comfortable, the world will adjust to your rhythm!

Country lanes are generally a good place for slow drives because there is very little traffic. This morning, on my slow drive through our corner of Tuscany, I only met two other cars.

I left Civitella Marittima and drove towards Grosseto along the E78-SS223. I turned left on a road that I really like, called La Cerreta, which connects the main highway E78 to the road to Monte Amiata (SP64). It’s a road that cuts through the woods and the countryside.

I got on the main road to Monte Amiata and almost immediately turned left passing under an old railway bridge to get onto the Strada Provinciale di Petriolo and followed towards Monte Antico.

The road to Monte Antico is a beautiful drive. It takes you through the prettiest landscapes of Tuscany, with old bridges, fields dotted with hay bales, olive groves, vineyards and sunflower fields. Monte Antico itself is a little hamlet home to less than 100 people, but they can be very proud of their local restaurant, La Taverna di Campagna. They serve both traditional food and excellent pizza, and the owners are the proud producers of one of the best Montecucco D.O.C. wines in the area, Begnardi.

To many, Monte Antico is probably just a group of houses, but I find it fascinating, with its yellow church, and the little train station, which is one of the main stops on the old Grosseto-Siena  railway line. The steam engine train called Treno Natura always stops here. It is one of those places which still bear traces of the old times, when lots of people lived here or in the many farmhouses around this group of houses.

From Monte Antico a picture perfect cypress tree-lined road climbs up to the top of a hill, where the ancient Castle of Monte Antico is located. The castle looks like a fortress from the outside, and it is now a beautiful hotel. It has a lovely courtyard with a well, and breathtaking views over the valley of the river Ombrone.

Driving up to the castle you can enjoy very beautiful views over the hills where our village, Civitella Marittima, is located, and over the surrounding vineyards, nestled among the cypress trees. It’s really pretty. Coming closer to the castle, the old church of San Tommaso, now a theatre, welcomes you to this fabulous corner of the inland hills of the Maremma.

That’s right. Most people don’t have this image of the Maremma in their head. They believe it’s a flat area by the coast. Not at all. The inland areas are quintessentially Tuscan, with rolling hills, vineyards giving way to olive groves, giving way to woods and fields. It’s Tuscany at its best.

I really like the short stretch of road that from the Castle of Monte Antico takes you back to the old Leopoldina road. The road is one of my favourite places near here. I wrote a post for the Velvet Escape Travel Blog about it. The views area amazing!

I drove as far as Fattoria Nuova Pievanella, one of the most beautiful countryside villas in Tuscany. It’s a holiday farm with rooms and apartments, a tennis court, swimming pool, gym, paths through their grounds and a restaurant. But most importantly it is in a stunning location. It’s the perfect romantic retreat in the Tuscan countryside.

I turned around and drove back down to Monte Antico, along the road that runs below the castle. There are a few spots where one can stop and enjoy the view over the hills towards Civitella. The fields have just been harvested and the hay bales are still there: so pretty!

I got back to the old Strada di Petriolo, also known as the “ancient salt road”, because it was the old road that led from Siena to the sea and ensured the salt supply to the city. There are plenty of spots to stop here, and I did stop quite a bit, and took some really cool photos of some hay bales on the top of a hill!

The road is wider than the other one so it’s an easier drive. It is also busier but I still only met two other cars. Most of the fields have been transformed into vineyards over the last few years, since the creation of the Montecucco DOC wine region.It’s very beautiful, especially the part which overlooks the Castle of Casenovole and Monte Amiata.

I then turned left to take the road that goes down to the ancient Ardengheschi Abbey and finally leads back to the village passing by the old village fountains.

A perfect way to spend a Sunday morning in Tuscany!

Here is a photogallery with 62 photos I took this morning. To see them in a larger size, please click on the box with an arrow symbol in the bottom right corner of the gallery. Thank you. They are also available on Flickr.

This itinerary (avoiding the highway) is also perfect for expert cyclists and for horseback rides and walkers.

This is the seventh post of a guest series. We ask friends and colleagues to share with us what the expression to “feel at home” means to them. We believe that to truly enjoy a place, you need to really experience it, to make yourself at home. This means different things for different people, but it is an essential part of our lives, both as travelers and travel professionals. The idea came from a post I published in March and that you can read here.

At Home in the Kitchen

I could define my way of traveling as “from kitchen to kitchen” .

I spend big part of my (little) free time dreaming about  our next family holiday. A dream holiday must include amazing cultural experiences, plenty views, lots of relaxation and above all great food.

For relaxation I like a comfortable room with an individual touch and interesting surroundings. I adore funky designer hotels. You see, I live in a quaint bed and breakfast atop an emerald green Umbrian hill, I need something different once a year.

Fig 1: a bizarre Bangkok hotel where we stayed a couple of years ago, definitely it does not look like a home, but my daughter thought it was the best

However, after we have dealt with our  yearly supply of urban craziness, we tend to return to what we are used to, small homey B&Bs where people talks to us, we are hardly ever disappointed.

Fig. 2 This is what I am used to, my home

As for food, I am not interested at all in those funky-foamy-fusion-vertical concoctions. I need real, recognizable, local food. Preferably flat on the plate.

Everywhere I go, home food is central to my travel experience. Food is a focus of family life. Therefore savoring basic, every-day food is an opportunity for a deeper understanding of the local culture, its rhythm and needs.

Fig. 3 Bruschetta: a plate of toasted crusted bread drizzled with fragrant olive oil, the quintessential Umbrian food  (Photo E. Hazard)

How do I find home food?

1) I get informed. What’s special and what’s best in the season when I will be there. I am appalled by some Italian travelers who are so happy to find good lasagna in Bali. I stay away from international food.

2)  I try to visit friends who live in interesting places. Friends are obviously  an invaluable source of local information. My friends tend to be foodies, I wonder why.

Fig. 4 By visiting a local market you get to know new and seasonal ingredients. Here is where I buy my vegetables in Assisi

3) I cross-check tips from local bloggers, guidebooks and review sites for small, family run restaurants, cafes, bakeries, markets, deli shops, etc. These places also make for good people watching.

4) I join a family-style cooking class. Yes, that’s what  I do professionally and – I must admit – it’s nice to be that one who’s pampered. If one does not have local friends, it’s a polite way to obtain seating at someone’s home table anywhere in the world.

Fig. 5 Spending time in someone’s kitchen is a way to experience another home away from home

5) I ask the hotel’s concierge and nearby shopkeepers to indicate their local food joints.

That’s how I plan my holidays. When I get somewhere I generally have a pretty good idea of what will happen for lunch and dinner. And snacks. And breezy breaks at leafy cafes. In between, we even try to do some sightseeing.

This week’s guest writer

Letizia Mattiacci is a first of all a dear friend. She is a generous, smart woman, incredibly passionate about her work.  She is the owner of the Agriturismo and Cooking school Alla Madonna del Piatto , near Assisi in Umbria that she runs with her husband Ruurd and her delightful daughter Tea. After a career in insect ecology and plant chemistry she has turned to studying the magical flavors of authentic Italian home food. She teaches much appreciated cooking classes. You can find her recipes, cooking tips, beautiful images and stories about Umbria in her blog. Our “incursions” to her kitchen (and to her table) are the best evidence of her cooking skills!  She is also on Twitter as @MadonnaDP and on Facebook.

The fact that we own a vacation house in Tuscany might simply look like a job to some people. To us, though, it’s often much more than that.

It’s a funny feeling, especially for me, but I guess for my husband Marcel too in a way. Casina di Rosa is the house where my great-grandparents raised their family, my grandfather Gino’s family, after actually building it with their own hands. My mother was born there (and I mean right there), and so was my uncle. I have grown up knowing that that was my greatgrandmother Rosa’s home for as long as she could live on her own. And now it is a holiday rental in Tuscany… but to me offering Casina di Rosa does not  equate selling accommodation, it’s actually like opening my family’s home’s doors to our guests.

We have tried to make it comfortable and pretty. But mostly, we hope we have managed to preserve the fact that it is a home.

For this reason, when we meet our guests on Saturdays, it’s always exciting and worrying at the same time. There is always a funny feeling inside of me that makes me worry about whether they are going to like it or not, or whether they will enjoy spending time in the village or if they will rather think we are a bunch of hilly-billies and how can people ever live like that!? For me, it’s like opening a door on who I am and on where I come from, on my life, my culture and my history.

I obviously love my village and our little home: it inevitably does get personal.

Most people, luckily, end up loving both the house and the village: and that is enough to make me happy, because it makes me proud. It is hard to explain.

And then, there are those special cases in which our guests really get to experience life in the village: they participate in local events, they mix and mingle with the locals, and contribute to the local community in many ways. When we are lucky enough to meet these people – and the first sign that that is the case is when others in the village ask about our guests and tell us that they “hanno fatto amicizia“, they made friends -  then I know my “heritage” is in very good hands!

When those guests leave, it’s like saying goodbye to friends, and you wish they will be back. I told you: it’s not a job. It’s getting to know people, opening the doors of your home and connecting.

And I think, recently, we have been very lucky.

No, you haven’t got all your history wrong… the Egyptians were never actually in Pisa, but, in a way, the city has had a special relationship with Egypt since the early 19th century. That’s when a young University professor (yes, 190 years ago you could actually become a full tenure professor of the University of Pisa at 24…) called Ippolito Rosellini left Pisa to go on a 16 month expedition to Egypt with Jean-François Champollion, the scholar who had recently deciphered the Rosetta Stone. They (and 12 other people) joined the so-called Franco-Italian expedition to Egypt funded by Leopold II, Grand Duke of Tuscany, and by King Charles X of France and traveled along the river Nile for 16 months in 1828 and 1829.

They brought back from this expedition a very large number of artifacts, drawings and manuscripts, 200 of which have been chosen to be exhibited at Palazzo Blu. They are normally part of collections preserved at the University of Pisa and at the Egyptian Museum of Florence and seeing them all together there, at that incredible location and within that installation was just incredible.

The exhibition will close on July 25: I don’t know why I waited so long to go. The perfect excuse was that our nephew Alessandro is spending the week with his other aunt and uncle who also live near Pisa, so this morning we took him there.

I am not sure if he enjoyed it, but Giovanna and I certainly did! The exhibition is nothing like the usual boring stuff you would normally expect in an Italian museum. Not at all.

They have recreated the shape of the river Nile on the floor, and on the walls, panels tell you where you are supposed to be at every step of your own very personal expedition to Egypt, and, for every place Rosellini visited and sketched, drawings and objects are on display. The drawings are incredibly beautiful, in their bright colours. And the quotes from Rosellini’s diary printed on large boards all along the “path” add a lot to the experience.

Whomever has worked to implement the exhibition has really done a great job in recreating the atmosphere and the sense of discovery and amazement that those scholars and explorers must have experienced in uncovering such incredible treasures, also considering that they could actually understand the hieroglyph inscriptions for the first time.

A nice video is projected on a screen placed under a camp tent similar to what is supposed to have been in use back then. A really, really interesting exhibition. I couldn’t take many photos as in theory it was not allowed I guess… but I took a couple anyway, with no flash of course. A few pictures can be seen here, on the official website, in the “multimedia” section: http://www.mostraegittopisa.it/

I also learnt something new about the University: after the expedition, the first course of Egyptology was created exactly here in Pisa for Rosellini, and the archaeology department is still one of the best in the country, and possibly in the world.

We also took advantage of the fact that the entrance ticket (8.50 for the adults and 6.50 for the kids) gives visitors the right to visit the permanent collection so we went up to the first floor of the Palazzo where some rooms have been brought back to their original splendour with original furnishing and lots of paintings hanging from the walls. It is really a beautiful place, which gives a good idea of the lifestyle of noble people in the 18th and 19th century.

Palazzo Blu will host another fabulous exhibition in the fall devoted to Mirò. I won’t wait until the very last minute next time. Actually I cannot wait to go back.

There is also a specialized book store selling art catalogues and art books, with titles that are normally difficult to find elsewhere.

This is the sixth post of a guest series. We ask friends and colleagues to share with us what the expression to “feel at home” means to them. We believe that to truly enjoy a place, you need to really experience it, to make yourself at home. This means different things for different people, but it is an essential part of our lives, both as travelers and travel professionals. The idea came from a post I published in March and that you can read here.

Feeling right at home in a strange place

I’ve lived in various places around the world and visited many more but there are only a handful of places where I truly felt at home. These places share one common trait – they all felt right, almost familiar, like I’d been there before, even though it was my first visit. One place in particular springs to mind: Cape Town.

I’ll always remember the first time I visited Cape Town in 2004. My flight from Amsterdam arrived in Cape Town in the evening. Before the plane landed, it swooped past the floodlit Table Mountain. It was a surreal experience to see the mountain cast in a soft glow, right from my seat in the aeroplane.

As I stepped out of the plane and into the airport terminal, I sensed a surge of excitement – I’d always wanted to visit South Africa – but the emotion that really struck me was how I felt so much at ease. Hardly anything felt strange. It was like taking a stroll in my own backyard.

That evening, after checking into my hotel, I headed to the hotel bar for a snack and a drink. I ordered a seafood platter and a glass of wine. The fresh kingklip was grilled to perfection while the full-bodied Chardonnay tasted like a divine vanilla crème brulée with gorgeous aromas of oak, apples and pears. I sat at the bar feeling like I’d returned home, and I couldn’t stop myself from grinning with glee.

I WAS HOME!

During the next few days, that feeling of ‘coming home’ only grew stronger. I somehow knew my way around town without a map, I chatted with the locals like I’d known them for years and I savoured each and every meal (and wine) with a degree of delight I’d not experienced in years. I kept wondering what it was that made everything feel so familiar. Was it the excitement of being on holiday in a country I’d always wanted to visit? Or was it because everyone speaks English? Maybe it was Cape Town’s attractive lifestyle: with its mild climate, oceanside setting, great array of gourmet eateries and excellent wines, and the stunning scenery, it’s really not hard to not like Cape Town.

The answer probably lies in a combination of elements: I enjoy good food and fine wines; I love the outdoors; nothing inspires me more than the sight of towering mountains or the colours of the sea; and the fact that English is spoken certainly helped me feel much more at ease. Cape Town combines these elements effortlessly. In addition, South Africans are some of the friendliest, most hospitable people I’ve ever met. All these factors make Cape Town an incredible place to visit; a place that makes me feel right at home.

I’ve visited Cape Town twice since that first trip and each time felt like an extraordinary homecoming.

This week’s guest writer

This beautiful post was written by Keith Jenkins. In case some of you don’t know him, Keith is a thirtysomething who lives in Amsterdam and writes about his travels on his Velvet Escape travel blog. In addition to being a travel blogger, Keith offers travel writing services as well as social media consultancy and marketing services (check his Velvet Connect). He is also the co-founder of the Global Bloggers Network, a community that helps individual and corporate travel bloggers grow and monetize their blogs. And since he is a real busy bee, he has just started a new venture: a new photoblog called The Happy Explorer, where you can take a peek at his travels around the world and be jealous! You can follow Keith on Facebook and on Twitter where he tweets as @velvetescape.

I am still working on the itinerary for the Canadian crew which is supposed to come film lavender fields and olive groves on Sunday. I have to say that this has been a really interesting experience because I have had a chance to look at the area of Tuscany where we live with different eyes and I have found out that… as a matter of fact… there are a few farms actually growing and processing lavender!

I have always told our guests that lavender is used in gardens but not as a proper cultivation as in Provence, but looking for places to film I have discovered that over the last few years several farmers have started cultivating lavender.

Today I have visited another of these farms, and beside the stunning location on the top of a hill overlooking on one side the plains of the Maremma down to the coast and on the other the Val d’Orcia hills and the Monte Amiata, this is what I have learnt:

• lavender is a plant that doesn’t need much work, except for keeping the fields clean. It doesn’t need to be watered, quite the opposite: it dies if the soil is too humid.
• it is in bloom in early to mid July.
• it is used to make many products such as lavender extract, body creams, detergents and soaps. It is also used dried as a perfume for wardrobes and underwear.
• bees love it, so it’s the ideal setting for beehives where an excellent honey is produced (I was given a jar!)
• apparently my dog loves it too… she must have sniffed every single bush!!!
• there are different types of lavender, that differ in the shape of the leaves and flowers but also in their colour (more or less purple/bluish) and smell.
• in the Maremma there is a variety of wild lavender that grows spontaneously: people who decide to grow lavender look for the presence of spontaneous plants before planting the “domestic” variety to see if the terrain is potentially good.
• selling lavender and lavender products in Italy is very difficult. Apparently the larger factories who make lavender-based products don’t buy flowers from the local producers. Only 10% of what they need comes from Italian lavender farms and the rest is imported. However since the transformation is carried out in Italy, they still have the right to say that their products are made in Italy…

If you want to discover how lavender is grown and processed in Tuscany, contact us! We can arrange half day and full day visits to several lavender farms!

Today, I went online to find out a bit more about this holiday, and I actually found out that July 4th is a day to celebrate even if you’re not from the States (damn Italians, every occasion is good to party!!)

Anyway, here are the 10 good excuses I found to have a day off even if we are in Tuscany, and not at all American.

1. We have to be sympathetic with our American friends, so we could still celebrate the 4th of July! In the end, this day is a celebration of independence and freedom, and who doesn’t like and need that? These are certainly values that we should remember and celebrate a bit more in Italy too, especially these days…
2. Being a 50% Canadian family, we could celebrate the 374th birthday of the city of Trois Rivières, founded on July 4th 1634. A way to celebrate new beginnings!
3. We could also celebrate progress in civil rights remembering the 183rd anniversary of the abolition of slavery in the State of New York (July 4, 1827).
4. We could celebrate our freedom to travel by remembering the 173rd anniversary of the first long-distance railway ever opened: the Great Junction Railway between Birmingham and Liverpool officially inaugurated on July 4th 1837. Or the 124th anniversary of the first scheduled Canadian transcontinental train that arrived in Port Moody (British Columbia) on July 4th 1886.
5. We could celebrate dreams come true and the anniversary of the publication of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (July 4th 1865) or of the NASA’s Pathfinder landing on the surface of Mars in 1997.
6. We could celebrate women’s rights: on July 4th 1903, Dorothy Levitt was the first woman to compete in a motor race.
7. We could celebrate the importance of culture and free speech by remembering the terrible massacre of Polish scientists and writers by the Nazi during the capture of the Polish city of Lwów in 1941 or the first first broadcast by Radio Free Europe in 1950.
8. We could celebrate moral integrity by remembering the anniversary of Samuel Richardson’s death (July 4th, 1761): who has ever explained better than him that “virtue is indeed rewarded” in hundreds of pages of epistolary novels?!
9. We could celebrate love, passion, nature and life, with all our vices and virtues, by remembering the controversial first publication of Walt Whitman’s book of poems Leaves of Grass in 1855.
   
10. We could celebrate spirit of community by remembering Garibaldi’s birthday: he was born on July 4th 1807. You see? I told you I would find the perfect excuse for Italians to celebrate!!

Happy 4th of July!!

Centre of equal daughters, equal sons,
All, all alike endear’d, grown, ungrown, young or old,
Strong, ample, fair, enduring, capable, rich,
Perennial with the Earth, with Freedom, Law and Love,
A grand, sane, towering, seated Mother,
Chair’d in the adamant of Time.
W. Whitman – “America”

The tourism panel at ToscanaLab 2010 resulted in an interesting “manifesto” made up of 5 points. In order to make sure ToscanaLab was a useful experience, I think some “soul-searching 2.0” is in order. So I thought that, as people in the tourism business, we should probably ask ourselves what we do or should do to comply with the 5 points of the manifesto.

1. Changing perspective: from “me” and “you”, to “us”.

Travelers and people in the tourism businesses should stop working as two separate categories and instead they should work together to create a better tourist experience. Of course there are many different ways in which the different domains in the tourism sector can apply this first “recommendation”.

As far as we are concerned, we participate in online communities and social media so that we can interact with the travelers to our area. This has the double advantage of (hopefully) being helpful to people who want to visit the area, and of gaining a lot of useful information on what they expect and hope to find when they arrive. This way we can try to offer something that makes them happy, even if on occasion, we have to “adjust” their expectations to the reality of what they will find.

We also try to interact with our guests when they are here as much as possible. We like to get to know them both before they show up and after, so that when they finally arrive, it feels like those friends you haven’t seen for a long time are finally here. Unfortunately, work sometimes prevents us from dedicating as much time as we would like to our guests.

2. The web is a real space, not just a means

The web must not be just another advertising platform. The web is a real place where real life happens, where we meet our guests and colleagues, make friends, create relationships. We have been extending our lives from off-line to on-line for a few years now. I feel quite confident when I say that many of the people I have met online are indeed friends.

We do not just promote our properties, we promote our area, via this blog, via our presence in forums, via Twitter, and Facebook. And not just in the hope of getting more guests, but in the hope of making people discover where and how we live.

This comes from our belief that tourism is not just “being in a place” or “seeing a place”, it is experiencing a place, living it with its peculiarities, and with its good and bad sides. I do not believe that a territory should change to meet the demand. The demand should be created among those people who are interested in seeing what a territory is and what it offers (and not what they expect it to be and to offer), otherwise we become just a uniform brand with no individuality. I believe that, even thorugh all destinations can be sold to anybody, the truth is that not all destinations will make everybody equally happy.

Ultimately, online we present ourselves, who we are, what we do, what we believe, in the hopes of finding like-minded people who enjoy what we enjoy and therefore to whom we can cater to the best of our abilities.

And here I think point 1 and 2 meet.

I hear people talk about the importance of instant booking. We will never, ever offer that.

We want to have contact with the people we welcome into our homes before we accept a booking. We want to make sure they know what they will get, and that the “us” will work. We need to know that they are the type of people who will be happy with what we are and what we offer and with the philosophy that forms the foundation of our work. To do this, we need to meet in this “Mid-Earth” called the Web and interact as in real life to see if we and you can really be us. If not, then we have never been afraid to say “sorry, we think you are looking for something we cannot offer“.

And here we move to the third point.

3. Internet helps extend the travel experience

Internet helps extend the travel experience because it includes the pre-trip stage, during which people gather information and build their holiday, the on-trip stage, when people use the web to enhance their experience through mobile devices, and the post-trip experience, when people tell their travel story.

I have already described what we do at the pre-trip stage. We also do another thing: we try to figure what people are interested in these days and look for aspects of our territory to satisfy those needs. In this sense I think we also comply with the importance to listen.

But I am not sure we are going all the way for the reasons I mentioned above.

We look into what the territory naturally has to offer; we might try to find ways to make those aspects more prominent but we do not advocate a change that follows the demand of the market, as we see that as a transformation that in the long term will make the territory something it is not.We listen and we try to find ways to respond, whenever possible.

At the post-trip stage we try to keep in touch, we ask our guests to send us photos, write reviews, reports, tell their story, help us provide other travelers with insights into what the area and our properties have to offer. This has proved the most valuable thing over the years: first, it helps us avoid autoreferentiality and second it gives us different points of views on the things we look at every day.

Who knows the tourist potential of an area if not the people who have discovered it as tourists?

We value our guests’ feedback above anything else, and through the years I have to say that they have taught us quite a few things. I have lived here all my life, and now I see my home area with completely different eyes. It is a very interesting exchage.

I have left the on-trip stage for last because this is the most difficult. First, the infrastructure is not ready. Or not always ready. In areas like the Maremma, it is sometimes impossible to get a cell phone signal, never mind 3G coverage. Mobile devices are not a viable option most of the time.We now offer internet access to our guests. We invite them to keep a blog or an online journal while they are vacationing in the area so that others can see what spending some time here means. Not many do that, of course, and rightly so… not everybody is a nerd like us! People have lives! They are probably on holiday to run away from their computers, so we cannot ask them to spend time at their desk when they are on holiday too!!! But we hope to work on this stage with those who will want to participate through a few ideas which we will try and implement as soon as we have time to put online the new websites… the old ones are disgraceful but time is limited…

4. The information gap between travelers and tourism professionals needs to be closed.

Traditionally, those who offered a service had all the information, hence the power. Now travelers have a wealth of resources and information and hence the power. Not sure what we should do here besides helping by adding to that information and becoming ourselves sources of information.

Ideas?

5. The traveler as a “channel”.

Travelers are looking for an experience and not just for objects to look at. They then become the best channel through which the good news about that experience is spread. We know that, we always have. And for this reason we have always tried to offer more than just accommodation in Tuscany, we have always tried to offer an experience into our way of life. And we have always asked people to tell other people about it. The good and the bad. And they have.

I think what I wrote above goes to explain how we treat this aspect too.

Taking a stock

So what is the result of my soul-searching 2.0? I am not sure.

I see large space for improvement in our practice as far as point 3 and the on-trip stage are concerned. I am not sure what to do differently with regards to the other points.

Have we been doing it wrong in the past? Have we always been doing what people are now noticing should have been done and we had no idea we were doing it?

I don’t know. Any ideas, or suggestions, recommendations, etc are more than welcome.

Maybe the reason we found the debate a bit less surprising than we would have hoped for is that we have been working like this for a long time. Ok, maybe  in an naive way, without the capabilities of the marketing professionals, or probably we do this in the wrong way, who knows…

Anyway, if the question is “did internet make your life better and how?” the answer is yes.

We have met an incredible number of great people and we have learnt to look at our home as a destination as well.

It’s a bit like being on vacation all the time.

Related articles

If you are interested in this kind of rumbling and mumbling, you might find the following of some interest:

• ToscanaLab 2010 Unplugged
• Elena Farinelli’s Blog - A summary of the points raised at ToscanaLab 2010 in the Tourism Panel (in Italian)
• BTO Educational – Internet Better Tourism Manifesto (in Italian)

I’d be glad to have other interesting links to add to this list. Please leave a comment (in Italian or English) with a link.

This is the fifth post of a guest series. We ask friends and colleagues to share with us what the expression to “feel at home” means to them. We believe that to truly enjoy a place, you need to really experience it, to make yourself at home. This means different things for different people, but it is an essential part of our lives, both as travelers and travel professionals. The idea came from a post I published in March and that you can read here.

Itchy feet and the call of home

Ever since I first travelled, a need for home has fought against an insatiable burning desire for something new, my thoughts swinging like a pendulum from one to the other. When I’ve been on the road too long, the lure of home is incredibly strong, whilst at home – boredom and lack of inspiration drive an insatiable urge to head away. Along the way I feel I’ve learnt about how to balance the desire for home and travel – but are the two needs simply irreconcilable?

Travelling at length for the first time, after 4 or 5 consecutive weeks on the road, I began to crave home, to crave the familiar, English pubs, friends, nesting. At its worst it could get to the state where mustering enthusiasm for even the greatest sites, places and cultures became a chore. I strongly remember sitting in a lovely hostel in Queenstown, unable to generate excitement at the prospect of sky diving the next day. After this experience, all future travels would combine time on the road with time settled in one place.

One of my life ambitions is to retire early and live abroad and my wife and I often talk about how it can be done. Ideally we wouldn’t be stuck to one place for all time. We could spend a year or two here, a year or two there, feel at home in many places. Is this possible though? Does the impulse to travel, to experience the new, an addiction to change dash all hopes of ever calling a place home?

My first experience abroad was as a student studying on exchange in Australia – Despite being miles away from girlfriend and family for the first time, I felt instantly at home. I belonged to a community. I lived in a tight-nit college, played loads of sport, made good friends and explored Australia in our free time with fellow exchange students, unwilling to waste a single second of the experience. Undoubtedly being part of a community meant I felt more at home, but having a fixed time limit felt like I still had permanent bonds to my real home, and also meant I was motivated to make the most of my time.

Many years later my wife and I took a career break and travelled around the world for the best part of a year. We deliberately planned in 3 months staying put in Sydney. On paper it was perfect, we had a small flat in Manly, we surfed every day and I taught sailing in the harbour. The opportunity was there to live like a Sydney local. But ultimately we didn’t enjoy it that much, we didn’t feel at home – and I think it was because we didn’t become part of a community, we were isolated within what is essentially a very international city. I’ve always thought in hind-site we would have been better working on an outback farm. The experience would have been newer, and we would have become part, however fleetingly, of a small community of sorts. Ironically we had felt more at home when months earlier in Sri Lanka we were welcomed into the home and life of a Sri Lankan family for all of a day or two.

Surprisingly, ever since we had children we have found feeling at home when away so much easier. The crazy, mad rush of colour, stuff, mess and noise that is our travelling family of three girls under 5 means that wherever we go it is pretty easy to feel at home. Of course, we have found coping mechanisms, the girls have their teddy-bears and we always have some little travel speakers and an ipod stocked with our favorites, but ultimately the secret is that we have less time to feel home-sick and to our delight other people, be they travellers or locals, stop more and want to talk to us – children are a great introducer!

Our last trip abroad was a house swap to Savannah, Georgia USA. We swapped with a family with two small girls of similar age to ours for 6 weeks. It was perhaps the perfect expression of feeling at home away from home. For 6 weeks we benefited from a real house stocked full of the normal accompaniments to home life – toys, books, films, a garden, an office to work from when necessary even a large family van to get us around. We had the benefit of our swappers tips on where to eat and more importantly which beaches to visit, and most incredibly we pretty much dropped right into our hosting families’ circle of friends. We were invited to dinner parties, bbqs and play dates. We managed to satisfy all our homing instincts whilst exploring what is a fantastically different place – arguably the most strikingly different anglo culture I have encountered. We even established favourite haunts – revelling in the crass Americana of the wonderful creek-side Crab Shack where we dined on seafood before the kids insisted we go check out the alligator pool again…

So when we are lucky enough to be able to abandon work and live at leisure where will we stand, what have we learnt so far?

• We should stay in places for at least a year or two. Unless we have hit lucky, then 2-3 months hasn’t been long enough to feel a part of a community. On the other hand, having some kind of fixed time limit does mean we feel less itchy footed and make more of our time.
• We should make sure the places we visit are compellingly different to home – after all the excitement of the new keeps us going.
• We should plan on working or joining-in in some way, maybe teach English abroad, who knows.
• We should intersperse spells abroad with time at home. We need to feed the homing instinct so it doesn’t become a monster and over-rule our better judgement.

Will this be enough? I suspect that in reality unless we go suburban and attempt to live happily in one place for eternity (which trust me, will never, ever happen) we won’t ever feel completely at home in any community – we will always be temporary visitors. I guess this is the price we have to pay for loving travel, loving change and having exceedingly itchy feet!

This week’s guest writer

This post was written by Ben Colclough, founder of Adventure holidays specialist Tourdust.com. Tourdust is an online travel agent specialising in cultural & adventure travel for independent travellers. All the experiences on the site are operated by specialist local suppliers. Ben writes the Tourdust adventure travel blog and can be followed on Twitter @Tourdust.