Hotel San Francesco, Trastevere, Rome

Several bridges will take you from the heaving capital into Trastevere. Broad, wrought-iron-framed Ponte Palatino; solid stone Ponte Garibaldi; Ponte Fabricio which hops across to Isola Tiberina in the middle of the river, and Ponte Cestio, which skips from there to the western bank. Crossing any of them is like breathing a sigh of relief, as you leave the crowds and the traffic and the heat behind and plunge into a leafy suburb which seems far more separated from the commotion of the other shore than a mere fifty yards or so of churning brown water.

Trams rumble along Viale Trastevere, a broad avenue of dusty plane trees, where men sip coffee outside bars, a florist waters his stock from the nearby drinking fountain and an Indian family sells fabrics and bags from a tiny stall which we never saw closed. Along Via San Francesco a Ripa tables and chairs burst the boundaries of their restaurants and spill out onto the sanpietrini pavements. In the Piazza Santa Maria a Trastevere people enjoy the relative cool of the evening after another stifling day; happy just to mingle amongst the gentle activity of the square, the musicians, the living statue dressed as a Pharoah, the Indian street sellers whipping illuminated frisbees high into the night air.

Tucked into all this, a block back from the Viale, past the laundrette and the Jaipur restaurant, just by the convent in the Piazza San Francesco d'Assisi, we found this modest hotel of contrasts: smallish bedrooms, but spacious bathrooms; smart reception but peeling stairwells; and a roof terrace that looked worn around the edges by day, but was a magical retreat at night, when the canopy flapped in a breeze that carried thin chimes from the nearby church bell, the seagulls flew like pale ghosts through the black sky, and the pre-dinner beer was as refreshing as the post-dinner grappa was warming.

I'm a big fan of roof bars. And bridges.

Hotel San Francesco, Via Jacopa De' Settesoli, 7, 00153, Roma

Tel 006 58300051

Hotel San Francesco

Hostaria Da Paolo, Trastevere, Rome

Anywhere you can get a litre of decent house wine for less than the price of a plate of green beans deserves a mention, in my book. Hostaria da Paolo is one of those places that withdraws like a snail into its shuttered shell during the day; to emerge in the evening, as the sun dips and the temperature drops a little, spreading itself across the pavement and into the piazza. At the end of each night it retreats once more, shutting down so comprehensively that it might never have been there.

They begin setting out at around seven, un-padlocking the tables and covering each with a gold-coloured cloth, bringing out plastic chairs from inside. Luca D'Alfonsi (we assume it is him from the name on the bill - we never found out who Paolo is) performs this task, as he must have done a thousand evenings before, in a careful, measured way, stopping now and again to chat to passers-by. He is a small gorilla of a man; straight-backed, barrel-chested, full-stomached, in denim shirt, apron and jeans. When we had chosen our table, Alfonsi's leaner brother appeared, in official red waiter's waistcoat. If anyone remembers Mister Pastry from the earlier days of British children's television, then this is the briefest way in which I can describe him to you; but with less grey hair. A twinkle in his eye told us from the outset that he had a reliable sense of humour.

As we picked our way through the written menu, Mr Pastry delivered a comprehensive inventory and imaginative explanation of what was off that evening: it equated to most of the things my brother-in-law had planned to order. I'll start with the zuppa advertised on the menu, please: "No." said Mr Pastry firmly, with a shake of the head. "We don't have any. Anyway, who would want to eat soup in this heat?" He had a point. Next then, how about the abbacchio scottaditto? "No." said Mr Pastry. "That's off. You'd prefer the pollo al peperone." What about some roasted potatoes? The reply was predictable: "I'll bring you fagiolini." Musicians appeared in the square to serenade the diners; an accordianist, then a guitarist who also sang, while my dining companion contemplated his singular achievement of not actually receiving anything he had so far ordered.

Meanwhile my bucatini amatriciana was earthily rich, as a dish involving dried pig's cheek and pecorino cheese should be. The chicken with peppers was meagre on chicken but generous on flavour. To my brother-in-law's horror, the beans were served cold, with just a dribble of oil and a squeeze of lemon. The outside tables were now filled, mostly with locals, and plates of food that we hadn't seen listed on the menu regularly appeared. At the end of the evening, attempting at least to get on the scoresheet, my brother-in-law, knowing that it was against convention, ordered a cappuccino. Mr Pastry's face acquired a look of alarm. "No, no!" He clasped his hand theatrically to his chest and asserted that this was absolutely impossible: they didn't serve milk, because it was bad for the heart. "You will have an espresso." My companion was defeated. With such a maestro at work, attempts to order anything other than what he was determined to serve him were futile. I ordered a grappa to toast him in admiration. And got it.

Next morning when we passed, any evidence of the previous evening was gone. Until this evening, when no doubt it's happening all over again. That litre of wine cost three euros, by the way. The beans were four.

Hostaria "Da Paolo", Via San Francesco a Ripa, 92 Roma

Tel 06 5812393

No website. Even if there were, you'd probably be redirected to a different site altogether.

B&B Accademia, Venice

Venice has an abundance of many things. Water, obviously. Tourists, clearly. Dimly lit calle and dripping sottoporteghi. Gondolas. Art. And graffiti. There's a lot of self expression in Venice.

This particular piece of plebeian art was right outside the window of our first floor rooms at the B&B Accademia in Dorsoduro, and during our short stay here we grew to quite like it. It acted as a landmark, assuring us that we'd turned the right corner on the way back; reminding us to turn left as we left in the morning. Appearing mainly on temporary structures, the graffiti comes and goes, appropriately transient in a city of such crumbling history which is itself passing away, and might not even remain in as few as fifty years, they say. What Venice may no longer have in abundance is time. In the comfortable rooms of this lovely old bed and breakfast the polished parquet floors, the original shutters, the heavy door furniture, even the creaks and groans seem stoically rooted in the past, as if denying the prospect of such an insubstantial future.

We fell asleep to the sounds of the evening's last vaporetto chugging away into the night, and woke to the morning's first, noisily disgorging its passengers into the alley below our window. The autumn days when we were there were damp and grey, only occasionally broken by a pale, ineffectual sun. We opened the French doors of the breakfast room hopefully one morning, only to close them against the chill before we'd finished our coffee. It was that time of year when a shroud of quiet melancholy seems to fall over the city (and nowhere does melancholy like Venice), as if in mourning for summer past. Or maybe in mourning for Venice itself. The swell slapped the gondolas on the Riva degli Shiavoni and a keen wind blew in off the lagoon. The gondoliers had put on their coats and pulled up their collars. By mid afternoon in the Campo Santa Margherita the few stallholders had begun to pack up and head for home, leaving only puddles of water where they had cleaned down their stalls and a dog snuffling for scraps. In the empty Rialto fish market at dusk the heavy red tarpaulins between the pillars snapped and billowed in the breeze. At night our footsteps echoed along the alleys, filled with the foggy yellow light of the city's lamps, and with black shadows. Venice's ghosts surge easily in on nights like this.

Perhaps one day, maybe sooner rather than later, they'll have the city to themselves again.

Accademia Bed and Breakfast, Dorsoduro 1054, Venice

Tel 041 5221 113

Accademia Bed and Breakfast

Al Vecio Pipa, Burano

The islands of the Venetian lagoon are like children from the same family who share common parents but have developed their own characters and gone their separate ways. Murano is industrial and commercial, still churning out glass in its furnaces located a safe distance from the city. Atmospheric San Michele, the island of the dead, groans under the weight of Venice's departed (but only temporarily, until they are removed and deposited in the ossuary, in readiness for the next inevitable occupants). Torcello exudes abandonment: a portent of Venice's own eventual fate, perhaps. So Burano, with its brightly painted houses and displays of delicate lace, feels the most cheerfully wayward of the offspring, even on a misty autumn day.

The bright colours of the houses were traditionally employed, apparently, to help the island's fishermen find their way back home on murky days and nights. Days like this. Today they have become a design statement. Philippe Starke owns three houses here, apparently. So it's hard, when wandering Burano's streets, to know what's real and what's pastiche. Those nets and sticks outside that small house, are they awaiting a fisherman's next trip or just there for effect? The fishing boats tied up at the side of the canal; do they really fish any more, or just take tourists on safe little rides into the lagoon? That lace in the window, is it really made by hand here, or on some machine in China?

And then we stumbled upon 'Al Vecio Pipa' for lunch, and all seemed real again. An elegant wood panelled dining room. A reserved but efficient waiter; older, wiser. And very good food. This place must host tourists by the boatload, but seems to have resisted any temptation to lower itself to the common denominator that so often results. We ate risotto with a brisk taste of the lagoon and drank crisp white wine. An elderly, elegant French couple were the only other diners. After lunch the mist thickened and even the bright colours of the houses were subdued in the greyness. We chugged back across the water as if surrounded by cotton wool, the dim votive lamps of the Fondamente Nuove appearing suddenly as we docked.

Behind us, the cemetery, the foundries, the forsaken church and the colourful houses out there in the lagoon had slipped away: receded into the insubstantial fragments of our imagination.

Al Vecio Pipa, Via San Mauro 397, 30012 Burano

Tel 041 730045

Even the website seems to have disappeared in the mist.

Da Anna, Portonovo

Before we discovered Marcello's, we found Da Anna amongst the scattering of wooden buildings that line the shore around the bay. Further on towards the headland are smaller, scruffier boathouses and fisherman's huts. But this is the restaurant quarter of the beach. Da Anna is painted powder blue beneath an asbestos roof, with troughs of oleander below its windows. The lovely Anna takes things at a measured pace. In the late afternoon a man carefully raked the fine pebbles of the beach outside the restaurant, and tended to the parasols. At seven in the evening, as the shadows of the parasols lengthened across the shingle, the mainly Chinese staff sat outside the restaurant in what was left of the evening sunshine, eating. At seven thirty they were talking and smoking. At eight they unhurriedly began to open the restaurant, and we were the first eager diners through the door and into the vaguely nautical dining room.

First, garlicky, winey, chilli-spiced vongole, then crisply rustling fritto misto. You can judge a lot from a restaurant's fritto misto. The batter should be thin, crisp and very light; the misto may be squid, octopus, tiny fish, but all must be spankingly fresh. There may be courgette too. The fried morsels should leave hardly a trace of oil on the greaseproof paper and no aftertaste in the mouth. And there must be salt, and lemon; in quantity. Nothing else is needed. Like fish and chips, it's best eaten directly out of the paper. In Venice we ate a slightly sad version, served with salad. In Amalfi a better one, mainly of octopus. The very best exposition we've enjoyed is a few steps up the beach from Da Anna, at Il Laghetto, but this came a close second.

Down to earth, prompt service from a slightly swarthy waiter kept the place up to speed with the seemingly endless stream of customers that poured through the door like the tide had come in. Here a young couple gazing into each other's eyes. There a family with a young baby. Over there two young chaps who ate their pasta more quickly than anyone I've ever seen (apart perhaps from Alessio Villa's father in Assisi). At intervals an increasingly sweaty Chinese head would appear from around the kitchen door to check progress then disappear back into the kitchen, no doubt to report that the deluge continued.

As we left Da Anna, more diners squeezed past us through the door and yet more waited outside, good-humouredly, in the now chilly dark. The tide was still coming in.

Trattoria Da Anna, Via Portonovo, 60020, Ancona

Tel 071 801 343

No sign of a website I'm afraid. You'll just have to wander along the beach until you find it.

Antica Focacceria San Francesco, Palermo

It's more than a year since I was in Palermo, yet odd reminders still draw me back. The weather was like it is here now – hot and close, threatening to rain. What made me think of it this morning is the fennel growing in our vegetable garden, now so tall that it waves to me through the kitchen window in the breeze. I ate bucatini with wild fennel and fresh sardines at the Antica Focacceria San Francesco, sitting outside in the shaded piazza. There was a breeze there too, this one warm and scented with the smells of cooking.

So hungry I could eat a horse's head (tacky Godfather reference, sorry), I claimed my outside table for one and ordered mixed antipasti and a portion of caponata to start. Most of what arrived I'd expected. There were arancine (deep fried rice balls filled with ragu), panelle (chickpea fritters), sfincione (a kind of pizza) and cazzilli (potato croquettes). But there was a surprise too, which I hadn't ordered. Pani ca' meusa: a small bread roll filled with boiled veal lungs and spleen, topped with slivers of caciocavallo cheese. Yum. Probably not on McDonald's NPD horizon, but evidently extremely popular in Palermo. And any city that offers veal innards in a bun as its signature dish deserves respect.

In for a cent, in for a euro, I bit into the soft bread and the meat inside. And chewed. The taste was oddly sweet, meaty but sweet, like cow's breath, the texture rubbery. I peeled back the top piece of bread to investigate. The innards were layered in thin slices, and pinkish brown. One piece had a delicately frilly and anatomically detailed pale centre. I closed the bun and chewed some more. As I chewed, I noticed a few people emerging from the Focacceria with serviettes wrapped around buns of their own. Then more people. Theirs were not little buns, like mine, but large ones, the size of saucers, stuffed so generously that the filling oozed out from between the bread. The Big Macs, the Whoppers of Palermo fast food.

Soon almost everyone in the piazza was chewing. And talking. They stood, they walked, they sat on the steps of the church, and they chewed. The Palermitans must have the most exercised jaws in Europe. Next day, wandering around the market, I saw the raw materials of the dish hanging from hooks like wet chamois leathers, and realised why all that chewing was necessary.

Talking of jaws, it would have been nice if the waiting staff at the Antica Focacceria had managed to stretch theirs into some semblance of a smile. Whilst the food here was acceptable, the service was the epitome of Sicilian surliness. Perhaps the fawning attention lavished upon the crisply suited and sun-shaded businessmen on the next table had left them drained, bless them.

Antica Focacceria San Francesco, Via Paternostro Alessandro, 64, 90133 Palermo, Sicily

Tel 091 6090261

Antica Focacceria San Francesco

Tentazioni di Gusto, Trapani, Sicily

I like the way Italians name their restaurants. There's practicality and down-to-earthness at work in a naming convention that often includes the owner, or even previous owner, or grandmother; sometimes refers to its location or an attribute of the place's history; and that usually makes reference to the accepted coding system which only Italians seem really to understand that tells you what kind of establishment it is - osteria, trattoria, ristorante. So a name that translates as Temptations of Taste seems to break with all of that accepted wisdom, and risks sounding a bit tacky. When the B&B owner drew circles on my map of Trapani to indicate good places to eat, he wrote just Gusto, so either he couldn't spell Tentazioni or he felt the name is tacky too. There was nothing tacky about the food though.

It was a hot evening. The clear skies of the day had clouded over thunderously and occasional spots of rain spattered the pavements, threatening to break into a downpour. Gusto (as I prefer to call it) didn't start serving until 8pm, so I spent the previous hour outside a bar within spitting distance, so to speak, of the restaurant, drinking cold beer and watching my fellow drinkers, thinking how different this was from a British pub. Men in smart suits dropped in, presumably after the office and before home, and sipped from cocktail glasses. A beautiful, elegant young woman in an evening dress joined them and drank a glass of wine. Pairs of young girls in jeans sat and sipped coke and coffee, and smoked. Groups of teenage boys gradually swelled in numbers, pulling in more chairs as required, and carrying on earnest and animated conversation. They didn't drink, and as each additional boy arrived, there was much kissing of cheeks. See what I mean about not being like a British pub?

From where I sat I could watch the staff at Gusto lay the tables and set out the chairs in the alley outside the restaurant. Lighting the oil lamps at either end of the alley signalled they were ready to serve, and I sidled up to my table for one. The two dishes that most tickled my fancy on the menu were both pasta. A busiate with wild board ragu, which I ate second, was excellent. The two glasses of wine, white with my first bowl of pasta and red with the busiate, which the waiter had gently but firmly steered me towards, were superb. The service, the knowledgeable explanation of the dishes, the genuine desire that you enjoyed the food, was exemplary. But it was the first bowl of pasta, bucatini with sardines, that was the star. I'd eaten this dish in Palermo, and was impressed. But this rendition was so many notches up it was in a different league. Sardines so fresh you needed your sea legs to eat them just melted in the mouth. Pine nuts and raisins wafted in the Arab world like a breeze across an oasis. Wild fennel lent a heady other-worldliness. I don't usually photograph the food I'm eating (I'd rather just eat it), but on this occasion I couldn't resist recording how simply this dish was presented, compared to how sublime it tasted. Unsurprisingly, every table was filled by the time I left.

So, that name. I still think it's tacky. But maybe there's something about that temptation thing after all.

Tentazioni di Gusto, Via Badia Nuova, 27, 91100 Trapani, Sicily

Tel 0923 548165

Can't find a website of its own. Google probably rejected the tacky name. Doesn't matter - if you're in Trapani, this is where to eat.

Tavernetta Ai Lumi, Trapani, Sicily

I wasn't sure, when I was in western Sicily in the early summer, whether La Mattanza - the ritual tuna slaughter - still existed or had slipped into folklore. I saw no evidence of it in Trapani or on the island of Favignana, where the old tuna processing factories now lie empty. No one seemed to want to talk about it much. I did see an awful lot of fresh tuna for sale though, so someone's catching it.

In Palermo the arrival of a whole tuna at the Ballaro market had been greeted with noisy excitement, as stallholders barked and a crowd gathered to watch the huge fish being butchered into bright red portions. In less than an hour the head and a few bits and pieces were all that remained of the glistening black torpedo. Here in Trapani, the sale of tuna is a more considered, less frenetic affair, perhaps because there's so much of it. In the fish market by the harbour a whole tuna had been neatly portioned and the pieces laid out knowingly, like some mystic arrangement of symbols. The colour of the flesh varied markedly from piece to piece, some almost black, some deep crimson, others bright scarlet, a few as pale as raw chicken. Elsewhere in town every fishmonger displayed their hand drawn cardboard signs advertising tonno locale, all at the same kilo price. On the odd street corner little trucks sold a few pieces of red flesh off slabs of chipped marble, covered by the makeshift shade of an old umbrella. At a stall by the seafront I was cheerfully offered a tuna sandwich: a huge bread roll stuffed with thin slices of cured tuna, a squeeze of lemon and a twist of black pepper. While I waited for it to be assembled the stallholder invited me to taste a thin, dense, dark slice of intense fishiness. Cuore di tonno, he smiled: tuna heart.

So, in a town awash with tuna, it was no surprise to find it on the menu at the tavernetta Ai Lumi. I took a table outside in the early evening. The heat was just going out of the day and the sun had sunk low enough that the pedestrianised street was in full shadow. Lamps were lit and the bars and restaurants were filling. A waiter not unlike Cristiano Ronaldo weaved skillfully between the tables on the wooden terrace, taking orders and brusquely delivering bread and water. I started with something I'd never seen before on an Italian menu, or any other for that matter: fried eggs, salsicce, red onions and pecorino cheese, served in its cooking pan. It was quite tasty. Ronaldo shimmied neatly past the other diners to deliver my main course: the tuna. A thick slice topped with a yellow dollop of sweet and sour onions, and a side of roast potatoes. It was okay, but a tad overcooked, and in truth I was a bit disappointed.

It was dark when I left, nearly ten o'clock, and as I wandered back to my B&B I passed a chap on a street corner selling something off the back of one of those tiny little vans. You've guessed it.

Tavernetta Ai Lumi, Corso Vittorio Emanuele, 75, 91100 Trapani, Sicily

Tel 0923 872 418

Tavernetta Ai Lumi

Ristorante Bar Nuovo Edelweiss, Erice, Sicily

As far as I'm aware, I'm the only paid up member of the mile high arancini club. Okay, eating deep fried crumb-coated balls of rice at altitude may be a bit of a minority sport, but someone has to do it, and it was at the mountainously-named Ristorante Bar Nuovo Edelweiss in Erice that I broke my previous record. Smashed it, actually.

Until then the highest place I'd consumed an arancino was in Ravello, on the Amalfi coast. 350 metres below, past the hairpin bends and the tumble of roofs and lemon groves, the azure sea twinkled. Signor Schiavo at the Caffe Calce on the square twinkled too as he worked his magic with humble rice and breadcrumbs.

The journey to Erice's summit was more of a serendipitous trip than a planned record-breaking attempt. A number 23 bus brings you to the foot of the mountain and a cable car whisks you silently high over scrub and rocks (and the odd villa with swimming pool) to deposit you in deserted Erice. You only have to peer over the edge to know that you're pretty high up. 751 metres high up, to be precise, making Ravello look like a hillock. There are two bars in the tiny central square, and I chose this one. Of course for the sake of research I could have ordered an arancinu (which is what Sicilians call them, apparently) in each bar and compared them. But I judged that would involve wasteful effort, so I ordered two from this same bar, and compared them instead. The first was filled with ragu, rich and slightly spicy. The second contained cheese and peas. Both were encased in crisp golden breadcrumbs and surrounded by soft moist risotto rice. I preferred the first, but it was a close run thing. I congratulated myself on my record breaking achievement with a celebratory ice cold Moretti beer.

The owner of the B&B where I was staying told me that people in Trapani like to visit Erice in the autumn when it is atmospherically gloomy, misty and damp, because there are rumoured to be ghosts roaming the streets. Perhaps it's just high spirits.

Ristorante Bar Nuovo Edelweiss, Piazza S. Domenico, Erice, Sicily 91016

Sorry, no phone or web that I can find, but if you've made it to the piazza you can't miss it.

I Colori del Vento, Trapani, Sicily

Trapani is Sicily's westernmost town. The westernmost point of the westernmost town has an edge-of-the-world feeling: a single road runs along a promontory to a squat stone building, beyond which a few rocks tumble into the clear sea, then nothing but an eye-squinting sky meeting a dark blue horizon. If you were to set sail from here it feels like you would go on forever. You wouldn't of course. Before very long you'd bump into Sardinia to the west or Tunisia to the south west, but it's a romantic idea.

My rooms at the bed and breakfast I Colori del Vento felt a bit end-of-worldly too, in a comfortable sort of way. Staying here on my own for a few nights in an enormous apartment, with two double bedrooms, a sitting room and kitchen and bathroom, I imagined this as a place of anonymity, a place where you could disappear from the world for a long time. Maybe forever. (Well it was hot, and the sun may have heightened my imagination.) The windows of my room, full length and shuttered, looked over the treetops and across the road onto the port, where the ferries between here and Tunisia dock and depart. At night the sounds of mopeds and the shouts of boys and the thud of a football against a wall drifted through the open windows on the warm air, and often the low and steady engine-throb of a ferry at anchor. I settled and relaxed here: felt at home. When I first arrived, late at night, the owner appeared from the darkness to greet me, give me maps, tell me where to eat and offer me a glass of limoncello. All I really wanted was a bed, but I was touched by his concern. When I struggled to open the front door, returning one morning to collect something from my room, one of the young cleaners climbed out of the window to help. And late on the night before I left, when I went upstairs to the owners' rooms to pay, I was offered again the limoncello. This time it would have been impolite, I judged, to refuse.

Not everyone, apparently, agrees with this assessment. I Colori del Vento's reviews on TripAdvisor are at opposing ends of the spectrum: 'five star fantastic' to 'avoid it like the plague'. It's all about expectations, I think, and whether you consider yourself lucky or unlucky to have bagged the 'apartment' on the first floor. I did, and if I ever travel to the edge of the world again, here is where I would stay.

I Colori del Vento, Viale Regina Elena 62, Trapani, Sicily

Tel 347 2504630

I Colori del Vento