Most international flights land at Leonardo da Vinci International Airport, also called Fiumicino (%06-65951; www.adr.it), 29km (18 miles) west of the city. The airport is compact, with three terminals connected by a long corridor, with departures on one level and arrivals below. There you’ll find ATMs (one per terminal), as well as 24-hour currency-exchange machines, a cambio (change) office (open 8:30 a.m.–7:30 p.m.), a tourist info point, and a help desk for last-minute hotel reservations. Public transportation — including taxis, and car-rental shuttle buses — is outside along the sidewalk. The flat rate to hotels in the historic district is 40 ($64) with a Rome-licensed taxi. (At press time, Fiumicino-licensed taxis were still charging 60/$96, a quirk that the administration was working to resolve.) The ride will take between 40 minutes with no traffic, to well over an hour at rush hours.
Beware of Gypsy cabdrivers who approach you as you exit the arrival gate: They’ll easily charge you double the regulated cab rates. Regulation taxis are white with a checkered line on the sides, have a meter and a city license inside, and wait at the regular stand.
The train station is on the second floor of a building attached to the terminal follow the TRENI signs. You can buy tickets there from the ticket booth, the tobacconist store, and from vending machines for the Leonardo Express, a first-class-only express to the main rail station, Stazione Termini (30 minutes; 9.50/$15). You can also take a local train every 20 minutes to the Tiburtina or Ostiense rail stations (final destination marked ORTE or FARA SABINA; 45 minutes; 5/$8) from the same tracks. The local train fare is included in transportation passes (see “Getting Around Rome,” later in this chapter).
Leave the crowds of the big city behind, and explore the country on foot. Buy the best, most detailed, small-scale map you can find that shows all the unpaved roads and trails (if any). The tourist offices of most smaller towns can help you out with maps, and sometimes even itineraries, or they can point you toward the local trekking group. A few cities are so small (Florence comes to mind) that you can start many country walks right outside your doorstep — or from the end of a local bus line.
Once in a while, stow away this and any other guidebooks you may have. Check out sights and restaurants without following our advice. If the bistro is cheap and full of French patrons, chances are, it’s good. Wander into a church without even checking to see if it’s listed in your book and admire the baroque altarpiece and paintings for their aesthetic value alone, not because you know someone famous made them.
Try a dish that your menu translator doesn’t cover. (Okay, that can be risky, but if the locals are willing to eat it, it probably isn’t poison just don’t hold us responsible if it involves more tentacles than you’re comfortable with.) Enjoy the thrill of discovery! Turn tourism into travel and your vacation into an adventure. The memories will be more than worth it.
You wouldn’t believe the places you can find where wealthy collectors left behind dusty old mansions jumbled with valuable bric-a-brac ranging from Ming vases and Roman reliefs to medieval suits of armor and occasional paintings by Renaissance masters. Although few of the individual pieces, or the collections as a whole, tend to be first rate, they offer fascinating insights into one man’s or one family’s tastes and styles — and as often as not these places are preserved exactly as the collector left them in 1754 or 1892 or whenever, and as such offer a glimpse into the lives and times of a different era.
And before you pooh-pooh the idea of a private collection, remember the names of a few larger ones installed in the personal residences of Europe’s richest past collectors: the Louvre (the French monarchs’ collection in their city palace), the Uffizi (the Medicis’ artwork installed in their old office building), and the Vatican (the pope’s best heirlooms in his private digs).
Europeans may not be as exercise-driven as your modern North American (they walk more and get their exercise as part of their daily lives), but the concept of a good cardio workout seems to be catching on here. Find out where the locals jog, and join them for a morning (or evening) run. You
can clear your head, explore a city park or two, and maybe make some new friends.
If you want to turn back the clock and see villages and small towns where the leisurely pace of life has helped keep the winding stone streets in a veritable time capsule, Europe is the place to go. And many of these, dare we call them “quaint,” old villages are just a short bus or train ride outside major cities.
San Gimignano, in Tuscany, bristles with 14 medieval stone towers just a hop, skip, and a jump from Florence. Chartres, with its glorious Gothic cathedral, is just an hour from Paris on the train . Salisbury and its massive Gothic cathedral is a similar easy day trip from London. Toledo once the capital of Castille, is today a bright, oversize village full of El Greco paintings that’s an easy day’s jaunt out from Madrid.
The hamlets high in the Lauterbrunnen Valley of the Swiss Alps are centuries away in attitude from the grand business-capital cities of Switzerland, and even from the busy and modernized resort town of Interlaken at the valley’s mouth. And the tidy Tyrolean town of Innsbruck nestles its medieval alleyways and baroque facades amid the Austrian Alps, halfway between Vienna and Munich, making for a perfect stop between the two cities.
Spain spent much of the last century under a dictatorship, so it didn’t end up on most tourist itineraries. Although the backpackers are slowly rediscovering it, and in summer the Brits flock to the coastal resorts, Spain is still woefully overlooked by most travelers — their loss.
This country’s rich history and heritage of Celtic, Roman, Moorish, Basque, and other influences make it one of the most diverse and culturally dense nations in Europe. Madrid is stuffed with museums, and Barcelona is an eminently livable city where life centers on a parklike pedestrian boulevard that runs through the very heart of town.
But if you have to pick one region to explore, choose the southlands of Andalusia , full of genteel Moorish castles, Christian cathedrals, medieval quarters, Renaissance and baroque palaces and churches, and whitewashed villages. Bullfights, flamenco dancing, and fine sherries all hail originally from Andalusia, and there’s nowhere better to experience life a l’Española than in the cities of Seville, Granada, and Córdoba; the hill towns northeast of Jerez (home of sherry); and the beaches of the Costa del Sol around Málaga.
Glorious St. Mark’s Basilica, the pink-and-white Doge’s Palace, the Carnival mask makers — the touristy side of Venice is all fine and well, but for a more authentic experience — and a slower pace — head to a series of smaller islands strung throughout the vast Venetian lagoon.
Hop a vaporetto (one of the ferries that serve as Venice’s public buses) and in half an hour you can chug out to bustling Murano, where the art of Venetian glass-blowing was born and its main factories still reside.
After wandering its canals and poking into its marvelous Byzantine/Renaissance churches, continue on to the islet of Burano, a fishing village of brightly colored houses and tiny boats bobbing in the little canals, where lace making is the local specialty.
Another vaporetto leaves from here to carry you to isolated Torcello, where the earliest lagoon settlement was established (older than Venice itself). Now all that’s left are a few houses, a scraggly vineyard, and a Byzantine cathedral with a tipsy bell tower and gorgeous, glittering mosaics carpeting the apse and the entrance wall. The island is also the improbable home to Locanda Cipriani, a refined restaurant (same owners as Venice’s Harry’s Bar) that Hemingway used to frequent.
Headed back to Venice proper on the last vaporetto, the sun setting over the lagoon, you now know how Venice lives outside the tourist trade.
