Casa del Brodo, Palermo, Sicily

There's something about a table for one in Italy that's an especially lonely experience. Eating is such an important part of Italian social life that to do it alone seems a bit like... well, never mind what it's a bit like. It's not as good as eating in company. You want to share the food, try your partner's, discuss it, compare it, make ecstatic mmm and aah noises about it, and you can't really do those things on your own. There's only one thing worse than eating on your own, and that's eating in a room where everyone else is eating on their own. The silence is deafening.

You don't often see lone Italian diners, but for a while at the beginning of the evening an Italian chap and I were the only people eating in the Casa del Brodo in Palermo, and we spent an uncomfortably hushed half an hour ordering and waiting for our food to arrive. Even the waiting staff seemed embarrassed that their restaurant could only attract a couple of Billy-no-mates.

The place is sub-titled 'dal dottore', a reference to the original chef's broths that were restorative enough to heal the sick. Today it's one of Slow Food's Palermo eating recommendations. Actually I was a bit disappointed and didn't feel terribly restored. I ate a plate of battered fried vegetables that were pretty tasteless. Then maccu di fava - a soup of broad beans and wild fennel that purports to be one of their specials, but didn't taste very special to me. Finally cotoletti di agnello, a platter of grilled lamb cutlets that were, frankly, fatty and tough. My fellow solo diner must have chosen better, as he cleared both of his plates. But I'm prepared to bet that, when sharing the table with a companion, everything would be better: the service would be brighter and even the lamb would be tender. So I'd go again, just not on my own.

This shot of the police has little to do with Casa del Brodo, other than it was taken nearby. And maybe that they were on the lookout for rogue lone diners, in an attempt to banish them from Palermo's streets.

Casa del Brodo, Corso Vittorio Emanuele, 175, Palermo

Tel 091 321655

Casa del Brodo

Casa di Flora, Torino, Piedmont

Turin is a rather dour industrial city, we found. Perhaps it was just the autumn greyness, which persisted in the city as it had over the fields we'd crossed by train from Venice. So when, on a dour street in a dour quarter we found our bed and breakfast, it was a pleasant surprise to be greeted by Flora, our distinctly cheery black-haired hostess, and shown to a top floor room that wasn't dour at all.

We'd arrived at the station with no directions to the guest house, just an address, and couldn't understand why the map that we bought from the platform stationers made no sense whatsoever. Nothing was where it should have been. The street we should have stepped onto as we emerged from the station didn't exist. It took several minutes of map turning and head scratching to realise we'd arrived at a different station to the one we were looking at on the map.

Simplest solution was to grab a taxi. The twelve minute journey that followed was probably the most hair raising since we'd screeched around Amalfi coast bends at the hands (well, only one hand on the wheel, the other was used to hold his phone to his ear) of the self-proclaimed Americano. But that's another story. Our Turin driver shot off at a pace, employing an unusual technique of driving in the opposite direction to the bulk of the traffic, which was usually heading straight towards us. Anyway, we reached Via le Chiuse and Casa di Flora in one rather shaken piece. A grinning Flora met us at the front door and showed us up the stairwell of wrought iron balustrades, wooden handrails and blood-red polished plaster to the top floor, and our room. Actually, make that 'apartment'.

Right up in the roof space, with velux windows looking over on the nearby rooftops, the generous room had a full kitchen area (though curiously no cooking pan, crockery or utensils), a sitting area, double bed and a spacious bathroom. Breakfast was cosy and communal, as guests squeezed around the table in Flora's own kitchen while she made tea and coffee.

During our short stay we never did get to grips with the bus and tram system. Thankfully not all the taxis were as manically driven as our first.

By the way, did you know that the T in FIAT stands for Torino?

La Casa di Flora B&B, Via Le Chiuse 85, Torino

Tel 011 4733456

La Casa di Flora

Sagra degli gnocchi, Santa Maria, Monteleone d'Orvieto

This one's a bit different. It's not a hotel or a restaurant, but a tent in a field. And it's only there for a few days a year. It's a sagra, a kind of food festival. All across Italy towns and villages arrange festivals to celebrate a particular food and drink that's either exactly in season or especially good in that region. There are sagre celebrating everything from sardines to wild boar, chestnuts to lemons, and probably things we've never heard of too.

Marta, hostess of the agriturismo we were staying at, explained to us that a neighbouring village was holding a sagra degli gnocchi, and directed us to tiny, workmanlike Santa Maria on a warm summer's evening. We weren't really sure what a gnocchi festival might consist of, but when we arrived at seven the village showed no signs of preparation for it. A few people wandered about, but the streets were empty of stalls or flags or people dressed as potato dumplings, or anything else that might comprise a celebration. Perhaps it kicked off at midnight, we wondered. I imagined a surreptitious moonlit pagan gnocchi-fest in which offerings were made to the great potato god. Or maybe we just had the wrong day, or were in the wrong village.

We were about to leave, disappointedly, when we found it: a sign pointing down a lane leading to a field, at the gate of which two mannequins dressed in rustic costume were seated at a check-clothed table. An English-speaking girl gave us a warm welcome and explained the ropes – order from the menu, pay, keep the ticket and take a seat in the marquee, where our food would be brought to us. We passed a field kitchen in which steam rose from dozens of giant pots, watched over by ranks of ladies from the village, and smoke drifted from barbecues watched over by the men. Inside the giant marquee dozens of trestle tables and benches had been neatly arranged in rows, the end of each table adorned with a carved wooden number decorated with a few ears of wheat. We took our seats at a table near the entrance and waited expectantly. A few other people drifted in, chatting and laughing – couples, families, friends – and a band started to warm up on a stage at the far end of the marquee. The first part of our order arrived: two plastic bowls of steaming gnocchi, plastic glasses and an opened bottle of white wine. Next a paper plate of herb-scented guinea fowl which we ate greedily with our fingers. The band was in full swing now, as more people arrived and took their seats and the marquee was filled with happy chatter and bustling grandmothers, ferrying enormous quantities of food from the steaming, smoking kitchen.

We left as it grew dark, with what remained of our bottle of wine, feeling that we should leave the rest of the sagra to the villagers. And glad that we hadn't given up finding the place.

No website or phone number for the field, of course! But if you ever hear there's a sagra nearby on your Italian travels, try and go. You'll probably enjoy it as much as we did.

Hotel Posta dei Donini, San Martino in Campo, Umbria

At first we hesitated to enter the gates, unsure whether we'd arrived at a hotel or a BMW showroom. The car maker's flags and signage adorned the entrance, and the badges on the cars in the car park were all the same - BMW. Turned out that the hotel had been hosting a training session on the then new 5 series for three months. No mention of that when we booked, of course. We felt a bit like gatecrashers, crunching up the drive in our hired Renault, and in fact for a while we were the only non-BMW technicians staying at the hotel.

Inside was all elegance and calm. The slightly cool reception from the staff and the fact that we were left to carry our own luggage up to our room on the second floor was partly made up for by our room – a spacious junior suite with exposed beams and wooden floors, and lovely furniture and fabrics. Beyond the shutters were wonderful views of the manicured grounds. The bathroom had an alcove bath and a showerhead as big as... well, your head!

Around the deserted pool we had our pick of white cane furniture on which to relax undisturbed as the heady scent of jasmine wafted across the grounds. But the BMW presence seemed to have distracted the staff from attending to its leisure guests. In other words, us. There were no pool towels. The bar was unmanned, until we pointed out to reception that we would quite like a cold drink. The attentiveness couldn't have been greater though when we ate that evening in the hotel restaurant, Panta Gruel. They were all over us like a rash.

The restaurant manager, Luigi, was clearly intent on practising his English and, as we were the only diners, was able to lavish his full and concentrated attention on us. The food and service actually turned out to be very good, if a little too nuova cucina for our peasant tastes. We ate lovely things like steamed asparagus and cheese fondue, maltagliata with rosemary, prawns, tomato and chickpea purée; pork fillet with risina beans (I'd never heard of them either) and warm apple and raisin salad. In small portions on huge plates. You get the idea.

To finish, I wanted to try a particular cheese, sairass, a ricotta seasoned in straw and served with chestnut honey. With a face like he had just kicked a football through the largest window in his neighbour's house, Luigi explained that they had run out. But brilliantly he thought of a way to compensate for this seemingly punishable offence: "I am going to serve you a plate of the most wonderful (strong emphasis on this word) cheeses in all of Italy!" Brave words. A plate arrived, generously groaning with six cheeses, each presented with an appropriate accompaniment, and a clear instruction about the order in which they should be eaten. I could publish a whole formaggio-dedicated blog, but suffice it to say that this was the best cheese plate I've ever tasted, and that the final cheese – one which had spent most of its life buried in the ground, apparently – left me speechless, watery-eyed and defeated, such was its intensity. Luigi shook my hand vigorously as we left the restaurant, impressed I think by my bravery.

I retired, to cheese-fuelled dreams of autobahns and ultimate driving machines.

Hotel Posta dei Donini, Via Deruta 43, 06132 San Martino in Campo, Perugia

Tel 075 609132

Posta dei Donini

La Dimora del Genio, Palermo, Sicily

What can I tell you about this guest house on Via Garibaldi, on the edge of the Kalsa district of the city? I can tell you about the most striking, most memorable feature of my three night stay here. The sounds.

My room was on the second floor. The building opposite, like half of Palermo it seemed, was being renovated. Noisily. I got used to it. My window looked down on a little alley, where I watched – and mostly heard – the daily life of a Palermo family. In the little space outside their door they had chairs and a table covered with a patterned oilcloth. A shopping trolley, a stool and a plastic chair. And at least one scooter, though they came and went so frequently it was hard to tell. They might have had four. In this alley the adults met, sat and talked, and the children played hopscotch and dancing. The house next door was derelict, the roof a pile of rubble.

Throughout my time here, noise drifted relentlessly in through my window, like a soundtrack. The clink of hammer on chisel, the tap of hammer on wood. The whirr of a drill. A shrill sound, electrical, intermittent, which I couldn't place. It mingled with the laughter and shouts of the children, and occasional squeal of excitement or delight. A young man using the alley (regularly) to practise his moped riding skills. Shouts of men from one end of the alley to the other, loud and unselfconscious. The lower conversations of men standing on corners, planning... or plotting. Men singing. Women singing. Tap of utensil on pot. A dog barking. The moped again. The odd blast of incredibly loud music. Fireworks that sounded like gunfire.

On my last night here, there was some sort of party. Much talk and laughter, and the children were outside in the warm evening, shouting and playing, until midnight. Suddenly the proceedings were brought to an abrupt conclusion by two loud belches from the men. Followed by complete silence.

I could also tell you that the house is filled with old furniture and the owner's paintings, that the Bangladeshi housekeeper prepares excellent breakfasts and that the signora who owns the place, Paola Mendola, is hardly ever there. It's on the fringe of a fairly gritty part of town, which is fine if you've come to experience the sights – and sounds – of the real Palermo.

That soundtrack is going on even now, I imagine. Wish I could still hear it.

La Dimora del Genio, Via Garibaldi 58, 90133 Palermo

Tel 347 658764

La Dimora del Genio

Hotel Gardenia al Lago, Gargnano

Agatha Christie would have felt at home here. Or one of her characters. At any moment, Hercule Poirot might have stepped off a boat and into the rose-filled garden, taken tea in the sitting room and pronounced the waiter the unlikely murderer of Lady Clementine, who had visited Lake Garda for the sake of her health, but found the trip was to be the death of her. I have a vivid imagination, sorry.

Elegant is the word. Not stuffy or pretentious, and no hip hotel either, in fact the Gardenia al Lago is just ever so slightly faded, but all the more comfortable and welcoming for that. We arrived in late afternoon rain, which had brought down a mist onto the lake and shrouded the far shore. But the welcome from the Arosio brothers was bright and sunny and as we sipped tea in the living room, rain running down the windows and weighing down the roses, we felt immediately at home here.

Our rooms (we were travelling with my elderly mother-in-law) were directly opposite each other, as we'd requested, at the end of a corridor. Each was spotlessly clean and beautifully furnished – gleaming wood, colourful floor tiles, newly fitted bathrooms – and had French doors opening onto an enormous sun terrace which in turn directly overlooked the lake. Well it would have done if we could have seen the lake that evening. The mist had thickened.

For the three nights of our stay we'd decided to take dinner at the hotel. Panoramic windows in the huge dining room also overlook the lake, creating the feeling of being on a ship (on that evening a fog-bound one). To be fair, the food wasn't stunning, but it was perfectly adequate and served with a friendly professionalism that made up for any lack of gastronomic adventure. Like everything else about the hotel, eating here was comfortable and relaxing, not demanding. Sometimes that's all you want.

Next morning the mist cleared slowly as we ate breakfast, and we saw for the first time the lake's other shore. A few steps along the quiet road outside the hotel brings you to the sleepy hamlet of Villa (where DH Lawrence lived for a few months in 1912), and where orange trees surround the tiny harbour. Oranges occasionally fell from the trees and plopped into the water. A little further on is the only slightly more awake little town of Gargnano, where you can catch boats to other places around the lake.

On the morning we left it was sunny. Signora Arosio, the brothers' mother, was in the garden, secateurs in hand, tending the roses and geraniums and bourganvilea. We had a brief chat in which I told her how beautiful the garden was, and how lovely her hotel. She wore an incongruous combination of a smart dress and pink Marigold rubber gloves, yet was the epitome of elegance - there, that word again.

And not in the least faded.

Hotel Gardenia al Lago, Via Colleta, 53 25084 Villa di Gargnano (BS), Lago di Garda

Tel 0365 71195

Hotel Gardenia al Lago