The Italian Job

When we started discussing summer holidays with the kids at the end of last year the girls suggested that there were various bits of Italy that they’d quite like to see. I think the discussion was held in a restaurant one evening, although I can’t remember where (or when), and we concluded that we were all prepared to try a “touring” holiday whereby we’d rent a car and book a whole series of hotels so that we could travel around and see a good selection of places. So The Italian Job was born.

Ami wanted to visit the self-styled fashion capital of Europe (in Milan), Izzy wanted to go and eat spaghetti bolognese in Bologna, and someone suggested we should go and pay homage to the original Italian Job film in Turin. I saw a cookery programme on daytime TV once where celebrity Italian chef Gino D’Acampo went to the Ligurian coast to supposedly the best gelateria ever. None of us had ever been anywhere in northern Italy other than a family holiday I had with my folks near Venice 40 years ago, and a little jaunt over the border while we were in Chamonix a couple of years ago (see Three Countries). And none of us had been to San Marino. All of which felt like a sufficiently large number of things on the hit-list to make up a whole 2-week holiday.

A Place to Stay

We stayed in lots of different places, obviously, because it was a touring holiday. Roughly as follows:

In Milan we stayed at the Ibis Styles Milano Est Settala
In Turin we stayed in the excellent NH Lingotto
In La Spezia we stayed in the rather average Hotel Ghironi
In Florence we stayed at the Hotel Mirage
In San Marino we stayed in the small but perfectly formed La Grotta
In Bologna we stayed at the Grand Hotel Elite
For Venice, we stayed on the mainland in Mirano at the Park Hotel Villa Giustinian
We finished off near Verona at the Airport Hotel Verona Congress & Relax

Getting There

We flew from Heathrow with BA into Milan’s smaller airport, Linate.

The Caches

It was a family holiday. I didn’t have any dedicated geocaching days. I did, however, colour in all of the Italian counties/subdivisions that we passed through, making a big loop around Northern Italy. It was mainly a matter of doing a couple in every place we passed or stayed in.

Extras

The first paragraph covers most of the extras, and you can see details in each post. But we ticked lots of touristy boxes – Milan, Bergamo, Lake Como, Turin, The Cinque Terre, Pisa, Florence, San Marino, Bologna, Venice, Verona and Lake Garda.