Luxury holidays to Italy: luxury hotel holidays, touring holidays and special interest holidays
Luxury holidays to Italy from Italian Expressions with 30 years’ experience in offering luxury, tailor-made hotel holidays to Italy for individuals (plus some special interest tours for small groups), featuring a personal selection of luxurious hotels, full of regional and local charm and character, which offer exceptionally high standards of comfort, service, facilities and cuisine. Many of our personally selected luxury hotels are among the most acclaimed in Italy; others are full of rustic local Italian character and charm.
Italian Expressions offers tailor-made luxury holidays to regions throughout Italy, from the Alps and the Veneto in the north to Calabria and Sicily in the south. With Italian Expressions you can visit popular destinations such as the Amalfi Coast and Tuscany but also venture to less well-known areas such as Basilicata, Puglia and the Veneto. We will construct a holiday according to your requirements, based on our knowledge and experience.
A strong feature of Italian Expressions which reflects our specialist knowledge and expertise in Italy is our range of special interest holidays, such as opera breaks, wine tours, cookery holidays and garden holidays, offering a real flavour of authentic Italy. All our special interest holidays are tailor-made for you although some can also be for small groups with designated departure dates.
Our bespoke, luxury holidays can be
● Single centre or multi-centre● Long or short stays
● Combine a number of different hotels in different regions
● Utilise a variety of transport arrangements to Italy and within Italy, combining flights, hire-car, rail, ferries and private transfers
Included in all our holidays
● Concierge service● Handcrafted helpful hints and local information provided with all our holidays
● Personal service by your sales consultant who looks after all aspects of your holiday
● Full financial protection with our ATOL (3076) for all holidays including a flight and our ABTOT for all non-air holidays
Call us on 01392 441245
Luxury holidays to Italy: luxury hotel holidays, touring holidays and special interest holidays
Our hotels
Each hotel featured by Italian Expressions has been personally selected to deliver exceptionally high standards of comfort, service and cuisine. Many of our luxury hotels are among the most highly acclaimed in the whole of Italy. Some have more local or rustic charm and character, but all are authentic and typical of their region. Although most of our portfolio of hotels tend to be 4- or 5- star hotels, each hotel has unique qualities and an authentic individuality. We offer you a choice of room types at each hotel, so whilst the sample prices we quote are usually just based on a standard or entry-level room, we can offer you upgraded rooms, junior suites and suites. Really according to the variety of rooms each hotel has. In Italy, we almost always include bed and breakfast in the basic holiday price. Some hotels offer only half board and at others we can offer you a supplement for half board if the hotel offers this. We know the hotels we work with and we have built up an experience of them over many years. Let us share this knowledge with you can guide you in your choice of holiday hotel.
Travel
The travel options we offer reflect the diversity possible for holidays to Italy. Travel can be by air, by train, by own car, with hire-cars, with private transfers, and by local ferry and hydrofoil. Again, the choice is yours. You choose your departure date, method of transport, duration and number of hotel stays.
By air
We include British Airways flights from London in the basic price, but we can book other airlines for you if the route is more appropriate. Easyjet, Jet2 and Flybe are the most popular airlines in addition to British Airways but there are also charter flights from regional airports that we can book for you too. With British Airways we can offer you Club Europe as an option. Many of our holidays will involve flying into one airport and out of another.
By rail
Rail travel to Italy is a popular method of travelling, both with overnight sleeper services from Paris, daytime services from Paris to Turin or Milan for example or taking a train from Paris to Switzerland and breaking the journey there for a night or two, before continuing through the Alps into Italy. Rail travel within Italy too is a very popular and convenient (and quick) way of travelling between the major cities, for example from Venice to Florence, Florence to Rome and Rome to Naples. The route from Naples to Sicily is particularly scenic with the train travelling by boat across the Straits of Messina.
By own car
Some clients choose to travel to Italy in their own car, taking Eurotunnel and then driving through France and perhaps Switzerland. We can organise overnight stops for you and have a sample touring holiday on our website which takes you from Calais to Tuscany and back by car.
Hire-car
A hire-car is an absolute necessity for many of our holidays as without one the transfer is long and expensive and you need to be able to get out and about whilst at your holiday destination. Certainly, for all the country areas such as Umbria, Tuscany, Puglia, Basilicata, the Veneto and most of Sicily, a hire-car is a must. We offer you a choice of cars of various sizes.
Private transfers
We organise private car transfers for many of our clients. For some destinations in Italy a private car transfer is the most suitable option, for example, for holidays to Capri, Ischia and the Aeolian Islands, or if you are to be based on one of the Lakes or on the Amalfi Coast and you don’t need or want the use of a hire-car.
Our bespoke, luxury holidays can be
● Single centre or multi-centre● Long or short stays
● Combine a number of different hotels in different regions
● Utilise a variety of transport arrangements to Italy and within Italy, combining flights, hire-car, rail, ferries and private transfers
Included in all our holidays
● Concierge service● Handcrafted helpful hints and local information provided with all our holidays
● Personal service by your sales consultant who looks after all aspects of your holiday
● Full financial protection with our ATOL (3076) for all holidays including a flight and our ABTOT for all non-air holidays
Call us on 01392 441245
Luxury holidays to Italy: luxury hotel holidays, touring holidays and special interest holidays
Luxury holidays to Italy are all about the appreciation of things Italian: the way of life, the culture, the art, the design, the landscape, the food and the wine. The Italian countryside exudes a classical harmony that is all but imprinted in the Western psyche, while the charm and humour of the Italian people creates an endearing sense of well-being.
Regions of Italy
From the snow-capped mountains of the north to the arid boot in the south, Italy is a country of remarkable contrasts with more UNESCO World Heritage sites than any other country on the planet. Popular options for holidays in Italy are luxury tailor-made touring itineraries visiting more than one place or region, and rail holidays to and within Italy.
Italian cities are unbelievably beautiful and well preserved; Italy’s countryside is a picture-postcard collage of hilltop villages and vineyards; Italy’s islands are fringed with bone-white beaches and turquoise coves. And through it all, Italy’s passion for food and fashion, for family and fun, its sheer appetite for life, is summed up in two words: dolce vita – it’s Italy in a nutshell. To the far north, the Dolomites offer spectacular walking whilst the Alps have wonderful skiing.
Each of the northern Lakes has its own character and atmosphere, while the nearby cities – Verona, Turin, Milan, Bologna and Venice – drip so tangibly with antiquity, each city more improbably beautiful than the last, that at times you just have to put down the guide book, sit back in a piazza café, and soak it all up over a long, lazy cappuccino. In the middle of the country, Tuscany is awash with treasures, from the Palio horse race in Siena to the Renaissance gems of Florence. Littered with hilltop villages and enchanting yet luxurious hotels, Tuscany – and its less visited but no less lovely Umbria – make for a fabulous holiday.
South of Tuscany, the pace of life slows to a languorous, elegant stop, but the beauty of the landscape and its myriad attractions make it impossible to slow with it. You can’t help but explore. The spectacular Amalfi Coast, historic Rome, vibrant Naples, splendid Sicily, and the trulli and olive groves of Puglia – they’re each worth a holiday on their own.
Wonderful climate, superlative architectural and cultural treasures, a nation of warm, effervescent people – it’s possible you may never want to travel anywhere else again after a holiday in Italy. Every evening Italians stroll the streets in a tradition known as the ‘passeggiata’. A gentle, timeless celebration of simply being, it’s everything we love about Italy – and everything we feel sure you’ll fall in love with too.
Capital
Rome
Airports
There are many international airports in Italy, with the main ones being Venice, Pisa, Milan Malpensa, Rome Fiumicino, Bologna, Naples, Genoa, Turin and Bari; on Sicily, Catania and Palermo are served by airlines from the UK and on Sardinia you fly to Cagliari or Olbia.
Currency
Euro
Size
Italy is roughly 650 miles long, but only about 100 miles wide
Population
60 million
Average temperature
Italy’s temperature varies dramatically, from about 4 degrees in Turin in winter to 33 degrees in Sicily in summer, with snow year-round on the summits of the Dolomites and Alps
National holidays in Italy
Some tourist attractions as well as banks etc may close on the following days:
1 January
6 January (Epiphany)
Easter Monday
25 April (Liberation Day)
1 May (Labour Day)
15 August (Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary)
1 November (All Saints)
8 December (Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary)
Christmas Day
Boxing Day
There are a number of local feast days that can affect conditions locally. In addition to the above days, museums are often closed on Mondays in Italy.
Unmissable holiday experiences in Italy
The simple pleasure of sightseeing between gelati; regional cuisine; Renaissance architecture and art in towns and cities throughout the north; walking the Cinque Terre’s perilously cliff-hugging footpath between its spectacular villages on the Ligurian coast; the little visited region of Le Marche; truffle season in Piemonte; Pompeii; climbing Mt Vesuvius; seafood restaurants and sultry chaos of Naples; stepping back in time on Sicily; the beach holiday islands of Elba and Sardinia, as well as quieter Ponza and Pantelleria.
