Osteria Bancogiro, Venice

Now here, I'm afraid, is a classic example of style over substance. It's very nice to sit in a first floor brick vaulted dining room near the Rialto market, a babble of tourists drinking and taking cichetti below, the Christmas lights of the souvenir stalls twinkling across the campo. It's nice to gaze on a square white plate of salmon and fennel and pear, or a salad of duck ham, blue cheese and grapes. How about smoked tuna with aubergine and a pumpkin and cardamom sauce, or lamb with tarragon? They read well on the menu, they look good on the plate...if only they tasted of something!

I'm not trying to be unkind or harsh, really I'm not. There are lots of people on Tripadvisor who would say I'm an idiot, that the food here is the best they've ever tasted. (And four who would say I'm being too kind). So I'm prepared to think that we just came on a bad day. Maybe the chef had a cold and had lost his sense of taste. Maybe he had had his tongue cut out with a stiletto in a feud with with a gondolier over a beautiful woman. Well, you never know in Venice.

For whatever reason, he clearly wasn't tasting his food that day, and we paid over 100 euros for two plates each of mediocre dishes, eaten in beautiful but empty dining room. The wine was good though. Listen, don't let me put you off. Dozens of Tripadvisors can't be wrong (surely?), and I can be, easily, and often. But really, everything here was in very good taste; except the food.

Osteria Bancogiro, Campo San Giacometto, San Polo 122, under the porticoes, Venice, 30125

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• Osteria Bancogiro

Ca' Favretto, Venice

A room with a view of the Grand Canal: you'll pay a pretty price. But actually, the cost of our room at Ca' Favretto, which had this view from its window, was quite reasonable and the room was large and comfortable. Maybe it's because we were at the 'tradesman's' end of the canal, amongst the market and the post office rather than the galleries and palazzos and piazzas. But this is a convenient place to be: San Stae or Rialto Mercato vaporetto stops are just steps away, as is the Rialto bridge, and the traghetto across to San Marcuola gets you to Canareggio in minutes – if you master the art of standing up in a gondola.

The water laps and sucks at the hotel's canal frontage, and here is where you'll arrive if you have the taste to come by water taxi. Arrival on foot is a bit less salubrious, and more obscure, but not difficult if you're used to the anonymity of Venice's alleyways.

Breakfast was a good natured bun fight, in a room too small, or at least too narrow, for the number of guests, making for lots of polite giving way as people head for the fruit juice and coffee or return with a plate full of ham and cheese. A pity that, when we were there, it was too raw and cold to open the breakfast room doors out onto a balcony over the canal.


At night the noises from the canal were reassuring rather than disturbing. Vaporetti in the night and delivery barges in the early morning, bringing produce to the market. Not just a view, you see, but an ambient soundtrack too.


Residenza d'Epoca Ca' Favretto, Santa Croce, 2232 30135 - VENEZIA
Tel 041 52 41 768   


Hotel Ca' Favretto

Il Clandestino, Portonovo

Even in the shade of the forest it was hot. The searing midday sun pumped the resin through the pine trees until it sweated from the needles and the bark and the cones, filling the drowsy air with its soporific bitter-sweetness. Even the birdsong had grown lazy in the heat. The network of dusty tracks through the trees occasionally emerged into secretive coves of dazzling white rock and surf, each presenting a different, slightly surreal little scene. Here a deserted little beach, save for a bicycle which had been propped against a signpost, a small towel draped across the crossbar. No sign of its owner. A ramshackle jumble of boats and trailers, kayaks and sailboards filled the next beach. A man wearing a heavy mask was busy welding, creating flashes and sparks brighter even than the rock. Another, wearing only trunks, his skin tanned to the colour of chestnuts, sanded the fibreglass hull of a dinghy.

In the next cove we came across the appropriately named Il Clandestino; a laid back but acclaimed shushi (sorry, susci) and tapas restaurant in the middle of nowhere. Just a pale blue shack with a few tables and chairs outside, laid bare to the sun. A lone customer, a single man wearing a crisp linen suit and a panama hat sat at one of the tables sipping a glass of ruby red liquid and gazing out to sea. The man who served our drinks now lay on a large flat rock on the beach, apparently asleep. It was like a scene from a Buñuel film. We sipped the drinks we had ordered and felt a little out of place. And very hot, though it seemed uncool to sweat.

We later learned that Il Clandestino is owned by Moreno Cedroni, who holds two Michelin stars. Now if only we'd gone back for dinner...

Il Clandestino, Localita Baia di Portonovo 60100 Ancona

Tel 071 801 422

Il Clandestino

Osteria del Cinghiale Bianco, Florence

It was early October - the start of the mushroom season - and in the markets the air was heavy with their heady, earthy, almost other-worldy scent. Crossing the Arno as the sun set, silhouetting figures on Ponte Santa Trinita against a golden sky, we plunged into the shadows of Borgo San Jacopo, just as one might step across some unseen threshold and sink back in time. The light from the osteria's narrow entrance spilled onto the pavement like a beacon.

Inside, the dining rooms veer towards Tuscan pastiche (dark wood, white walls, old farm implements, pottery wine jugs), but hold short of overstepping the mark. When the service and the food kick in, there's no question that this is the real deal. The season's ingredients were very much top of the agenda here, as we were told "off menu" and with some pride that they had mushrooms – a plate of raw porcini was wafted regularly through the dining room – and persimmons, which featured in a dessert. Persimmons, it seems, are widely grown in this part of Italy.

The ubiquitous Florentine crostini with chicken livers was at its best here, and our first taste of fettunta was a revelation. I've no idea how simply bread and garlic and oil can taste that good. As befitting the restaurant name, we chose wild boar with grilled polenta and, as befitting the season, we also chose pork with wild mushrooms. Both were superb. So was the bottle of Classico we washed it down with.

It seemed that tourists, mainly, came here to be wrapped in a cosy Tuscan embrace for the evening, but it seemed too that the osteria offered no concessions, no compromises to this ready flow of business. The sunset that had escorted our arrival had turned to blackness when we spilled out onto the narrow street. The air was still warm, but a breeze caused a shiver on the surface of the river as we crossed it and picked our way through the city back to our hotel. This time-warp thing kicked in again. Hardly anything you walk past in Florence hasn't been around for centuries, and I felt a strange feeling of déja vu and timelessness as we wandered back to our hotel.

Okay, the Classico may have had something to do with it.

Osteria del Cinghiale Bianco, Borgo S. Jacopo, 43R, 50125 Firenze

Tel 055 215706

Osteria del Cinghiale Bianco

Relais Villa Antea, Florence

We were greeted first by a bat-eared and wire-haired young thing called Marta, who met us in the courtyard and we followed her into reception, where a young lady took over the formalities from this otherwise perfectly hospitable little dog. She had something of the theatre about her, this girl: when she showed us to our room she paused for a moment outside the unlocked door and said "Are you ready?", as though we should prepare ourselves for some life changing experience waiting on the other side of the door.

Life changing, no; but life enhancing, yes. Large room, parquet floors, comfortable bed, dressing area and thoughtful touches like a kettle and some tea and coffee. And a good value mini bar. A large bathroom and a huge shower. Every comfort. From our window we looked over a scene of leafy suburban Florence, and a few steps from the hotel the quiet Piazza della Vittoria went about its gentle daily business. A buffet of cheese and hams, bread and pastries in the first floor breakfast room set us up for our own gentle daily business of wandering and exploring the relaxed and sunny streets.

In two days we got to know the routes from the hotel into the main parts of the city and across the river: nowhere was more than a pleasant fifteen minute walk. In the end we didn't even need to look at the map. I always like it when you no longer have to look at the map: it either means you've settled in, or it's time to move on.

Relais Villa Antea, Via Puccinotti 46, 50129 Firenze

Tel 055 484 106

Relais Villa Antea

Pane e Olio, Florence

You can learn a lot about a town's eating habits by browsing its markets. You won't find much fish in Florence's Mercato Centrale, but stall after stall presents wonderful displays of meat: pork, beef, veal, chicken, guinea fowl, turkey, tiny milk fed lamb, suckling pig, rabbit, hare. There are trays of quivering offal: tripe, hearts, lungs, liver and other nondescript innards snuggle up alongside calves feet, nervetti and pale soft calves muzzles, peeled off as cleanly as if by a plastic surgeon. I'm not quite sure how you eat a calve's muzzle, or why. But it all goes to show that the Florentines like things meaty, and so it's not surprising that the city, a hundred miles or more from the sea, isn't exactly awash with fish restaurants.

We were a bit surprised then to find this little restaurant near the Ponte Rosso, and discover that the menu is almost exclusively fishy. It makes more sense when you get to know that the owners are from Liguria, and therefore accustomed to the abundance of the Ligurian coastline.

Outside is what you might call discreet. Inside is what you would definitely call small: we counted 18 covers, but that was only because a party of 12 was happy to share a communal table. It's a family affair, with mother in the kitchen and son front of house, and none the worse for that: a wordless intuition seemed to be at work to ensure seamless continuity between restaurant orders and kitchen output. Without asking, we began with breadsticks and slices of toast dunked in a little pot of anchovy mayonnaise. We ventured a little off the seafood track, but things maritime are undoubtedly this place's strong point. So the show was stolen from the various crostini of liver and tomatoes and mushrooms by the mixed seafood antipasti: a platter of fresh sardines and cheese, stuffed mussels, prawns, eel and pickled vegetables and unidentified (but delicious) little fishy tartlets. The trofie with pesto was bettered by the seafood lasagne. (No, I'd never had seafood lasagne before either, but I'd have it again here.) A bottle of Greco wine was a fitting accompaniment.

Service was careful, almost over-delicate, but efficient. The doors to the kitchen were thrown open throughout the evening, so the other, exclusively Italian, diners would have spotted, like me, the occasional use of a microwave to finish the food before serving. They didn't seem to mind, so neither did I.

I don't have a picture of Pane e Olio I'm afraid, so here's just a nice reflection in the Arno.

Pane e Olio, Via Faentina 2R, Ponte Rosso, 50133 Firenze

Tel 055 488 381

Pane e Olio

Osteria Santo Spirito, Florence - again

I have a soft spot for Santo Spirito; both the piazza and the osteria which takes its name. It's a gentle relief from the crowds around the Uffizi and the Duomo and the Ponte Vecchio. Six years after we were first here, we found ourself standing in the square again on this warm autumn day, breathing a sigh of relief that almost nothing had changed. Except that this time, this Sunday, the square and the streets around were filled with the stalls of a flea market: tressle tables of bric-a-brac, arrangements of old furniture, pictures (some good, some tacky), rails of second-hand clothes, boxes of records, glass cases of old jewellery, stacks of crockery, tablefuls of books...

It was lunchtime. In one corner of the piazza a drift of smoke rose enticingly from a mobile kitchen serving porchetta and fried polenta to a growing queue of market browsers (and, I think, traders too). In the other, only one table was left on the osteria's little terrace on the square. We couldn't resist, and were taking our seats almost before we knew it. Some little things were different: the tablecloths, the cutlery tied with dark blue ribbons, the bread now served in a colander. But the essence of the place remained the same as we remembered: young, rafish and lively. And though we ourselves felt distinctly less young, rafish and lively than we did even just six years ago, we were happy to join in.

We didn't overdo it. We ate pizza with salamino piccante and salad with celery, walnuts and gorgonzola dolce, dressed at the table with apple balsamic. And drank a glass of Orvieto each. And we knew (and breathed the second sigh of relief that day) that the osteria hadn't lost its touch.

Osteria Santo Spirito, Piazza di Santo Spirito, 16, 50125 Firenze

Tel 055 2382383

Still no website. Still doesn't matter. Still fantastic.

Hotel Emilia, Portonovo

It was all a bit like a James Bond film set. A glistening white building surrounded by green, green lawns dotted with sunloungers and pine trees and oddly industrial sculptures: all overlooking an Indian-Ocean-white beach and a pigment-blue sea. Crickets sang from the lavender bushes. The reception staff were dressed in white too, loose white linen tunics and trousers: they moved slowly, as if performing Tai Chi, and smiled alot, inscrutably. The hall and sitting room were hung with modern art, some of it very good, and large French doors opened onto a shaded terrace of smooth pale stone. Our rooms were all cream carpets and billowing curtains, cane furniture and dark wood floors. I half expected Ursula Andress to pad across the lawns, dagger strapped to her still-dripping thigh.

But, like a film set, it all looked better from a slight distance. Upon closer inspection the whitewashed building showed signs of wear, the cream carpets bore stains of spillage and the staff chose not to venture out from behind their reception desk, leaving us to haul our own luggage to our rooms. The art, on the other hand, remained as good close up as it was from across the room.

We spent a happy couple of nights here though, lounging in the gardens and around the pool, sipping cold beer beneath a shady arbour. We took dinner one night, outside on the terrace. Earlier in the day, when we asked to see menus, one of the floaty-linen reception staff felt it necessary to point out that the portions were small: an odd way to entice diners. Perhaps she thought we were gluttons. We were served fish that was overcooked and vegetables that were tasteless, so in the event we were grateful for the small portions. And whilst we ate we knew, could even faintly hear, that down the road in the bay people were eating the freshest of seafood, in the most garlicky, fishy liquor or the crispest of batters, looking out over the inkiest of seas.

But you can't have everything. And taking coffee in Emilia's gardens, with the breeze from the Adriatic wafting over the cliff and the sculptures looming vaguely in the darkness, was very pleasant; until it was too chill, and we moved into the living room: in the dimmed light the paintings took on a different quality. The strange filmset feeling returned. I might have ordered a martini, but I worried it might be stirred rather than shaken...

Hotel Emilia, Collina di Portonovo 149/a, 60129 Ancona

Tel 071 801117

Hotel Emilia

La Mulinella, Ponte Naia, Todi

Vitello tonnato is at once a robust yet delicate dish: cold slices of cooked veal smothered in a smooth, light sauce of tuna, capers, eggs and olive oil. A classic if slightly unusual summer plate. I mention it because the version I was served at La Mulinella was so far removed from this description as to be either a regional variation warranting definition as a sub-species in its own right, or a joke.

A few hundred yards steeply downhill to the south of Todi, a large sports ground dominates the scattering of modern houses that makes up the suburb of Ponte Naia. One house has been turned into a restaurant and sits in a carefully tended garden with shaded tables. This is La Mulinella. On the sunny lunchtime we rolled up, a few local diners - workmen and families - had already taken their seats and were smoking and chatting as the waiter brought bread and water. We ate crostini with mushrooms, a rich chicken liver paté and torta al testo with spinach. Then ravioli with butter and sage and lamb scottaditto. This was all very good, made even better by warm sun and chilled wine. But the vitello tonnato... if I didn't know better, I imagine the conversation between waiter and chef may have gone something like:

Waiter: "He wants vitello tonnato."

Chef: "I don't have any tonnato sauce."

Waiter: "He's English."

Chef: "I have a can of tuna."

Waiter: "That will do."

Chef: "Are you sure?"

Waiter: "He's English."

So the plate put before me was simply two slices of veal topped with with mashed tinned tuna. There may have been a few capers sprinkled on top, I can't remember. Sadly neither my Italian nor my culinary expertise were up to questioning the dish, so I ate it. It was okay, but it was a bit odd. I think I detected a faint raise of eyebrows when the waiter collected my empty plate, which I imagine he returned to the incredulous chef and said "I told you so."

I think (though I may be wrong) that Mulinella means little windmill, though there's no evidence of one. Mind you, there was no tonnato sauce either. But, really, don't take this as a reason not to go: it was very good, and I hope you're luckier with the tonnato than I was.

La Mullinella, Vocabolo Ponte Naia, 06059 Todi, Umbria

Tel 075 8944779

No website of their own that I can find. I don't have a picture of little Ponte Naia, so here's one of big sister Todi.

La Locanda del Baio, Loreto Aprutino, Abruzzo

Imagine the scene, if you will. Two English people with little grasp of Italian save for a few words walk into a small ristorante pizzerie in a remote village in Abruzzo. The staff have even less grasp of English, and why would they? Until the recently converted Castello Chiola started attracting British and American tourists to its new hotel rooms, such foreigners were, I imagine, a rare sight in the village. Perhaps even now they are a rare sight at La Locanda del Baio, as the hotel does its best, understandably, to keep hold of you for dinner as well as for bed.

But sometimes the hotel restaurant thing is just too much. They can try too hard, the dining room can be too hushed for comfort, the service too attentive and yet the food mediocre. We didn't eat at Castello Chiola so I may be doing them a great injustice and the food may be spectacular... but that evening we just didn't fancy the rigmarole of smartening ourselves up for dinner. So we found ourselves knocking, in jeans and tee shirts, at La Locanda's door. The welcome we received was beautifully, correctly, indifferent: you're not Italian, you're tourists and we can't understand you, but this is what we serve and this is how we serve it, so what do you want? No fuss. We had a very good meal here, and paid an exceptionally good price for it. The same price, I imagine, as the locals who frequent the place. Most of all we felt completely welcome. And relaxed.

Bruschette and pasta and grilled meats later, we left. And as we did, the entire staff, who had gathered anyway at the end of the evening for a chat, bade us a friendly farewell. I hope that La Locanda has, if it wants it, picked up some more diners staying at the Castello. But I hope too that this tourism doesn't go to its head. If our gum-chewing waitress has anything to do with it, I doubt that it will.

La Locanda del Baio, Via Baio 21, 65014 Loreto Aprutino

Tel 085 829 0674

No website I can find.

Caffe Calce, Ravello

Ravello's Piazza Vescovado is roughly square, and dominated along one side by the duomo of San Pantaleone, patron saint of the town. Directly opposite, the square ends in some iron railings, and the ground drops away into the valley. To the left, a café with outdoor seating and a small shop and, beyond, the Villa Rufolo. To the right, a run of ochre coloured peeling plaster on what was once an elegant building. And up a few steps in the corner, between Via Roma and Viale Richard Wagner, a white building with a wooden bench outside. If you peek through the open door you may see behind the bar a chap with greying-black slicked-back hair and glasses pushed back high onto his forehead. If you do, don't hesitate: walk in and ask him for one of his arancini, for this is Signor Alfonso Calce and his are the best arancini in all Ravello; perhaps the best on the Amalfi coast.

For each night of the week we were here, Caffe Calce was our last stop of the evening, after dinner at the Villa Maria where we were staying. We'd wander into the square and, usually, sit under the stars at one of Signor Calce's outside tables for coffee and limoncello. On a couple of nights, when the weather was cool or when spots of rain blew in on the breeze, we sat inside; sometimes the only customers, apart from an odd drop in for a takeaway or a beer. The television blasted out the football loudly on the wall in the corner while Signor Calce watched and cleaned glasses, and his daughter fed her own baby daughter at a table opposite. We'd often call in in the morning too to pick up arancini for a picnic lunch. We became temporary regulars and nodding acquaintances and on our last evening, when we said goodbye and explained we were going home, Signor Calce gave my wife a gift of a small bottle of limoncello. The contents are gone, but we still have the bottle. When we were last, more recently, in Ravello, he was still there: a little greyer, perhaps, but the glasses remained perched where they always did.

Caffe Calce, Via Roma, 16 - 84100 Ravello, Campania

Tel 089 857 211

Caffe' Florian, Venice

"How much?!" Our indignant son could never quite understand, or even believe, that we had paid that much for morning coffee. I can't remember now how much 'that much' was. But it was a lot. More than I've ever paid anywhere for three cups of coffee, a hot chocolate and a liqueur. I told him that we were seated in Venice's oldest caffe', that they had been serving coffee here since 1720, that some of the most influential creative minds of Europe had partaken here and discussed great things. We were just another moment in its history, I said. He told me we'd been had.

So it depends, I suppose, on your take on life as to whether you appreciate Caffe' Florian or not. It's beautiful inside, certainly, and the staff is impeccable. But coffee can only get so good, and in truth I couldn't discern that much difference from the pot I'd had at breakfast in the hotel that morning. Our daughter's hot chocolate disappeared as quickly as a Starbucks version, and the liqueur was, well, alcoholic. Call me a philistine, but what's all the fuss about?

Well, for a start, how many branches of Starbucks will still be here in 300 years time? Florian is unique, a piece of Venetian history, and of its culture. The fact that tourism has also turned it into something of a theme park experience is hardly the fault of the caffe'. "We even tried increasing our prices to astronomic heights", they might say, "and still the tourists come!"

So, I've been, and I probably wouldn't go again. It's a bit like paying to see an ageing rock star who is unique and you know may never play another concert. You just want to say you were there. And then I noticed on their website that they've opened a branch in Harrods, and another in Dubai. Maybe there are some similarities to Starbucks after all...

Caffe' Florian, Piazza San Marco, Venice

Tel 041 520 5641

Caffe' Florian

Ristorante Etrusco, Turin

On our last night in Turin an Italian friend called us to say he had just arrived from the UK, also to visit the Salone del Gusto, and we arranged to eat together that evening. Taking an Italian for dinner, especially in Italy, has something of the double edged sword about it. It's helpful to have a knowledgeable and fluent companion, of course. But what will they think of our choice of restaurant? If the food's not up to scratch will they say so? What if we think it's really good and they don't? The sword has been honed to a sharp edge when your Italian guest is a chef, and threatens to draw blood at the slightest touch when that chef is a Marchigiano. Good job we know him well.

We chose Etrusco on some recommendation or other which I can't remember now. We were already in the restaurant when our friend arrived, like the whirlwind that he is, ushering in cold air from the crisp November night outside, then much shaking of hands and kissing of cheeks. We toasted each other with a bottle of prosecco and threw ourselves upon his mercy with the menu. He enquired politely of the hostess some things we didn't understand, but with a directness that clearly put her on her guard, which is exactly what our wily friend intended. Instead of the easy evening she was expecting with the two British know-nothings who had booked, she was clearly to be tested to the full by this knowledgeable Italian guardian. Her initially cool approach to us rapidly melted into eager-to-please fawning.

We shared three dishes of pasta: tagliolini with walnuts and speck, tagliatelle ragu and agnolotti. We thought the pasta was fine, but our friend was carefully non-committal. In the meantime our hostess attempted to ingratiate herself by recommening a fine bottle of barbera, which our friend tasted and merely nodded (I thought it was fantastic). Then osso bucco for the three of us, accompanied by roast potatoes. It wasn't outstanding.

The woman breathed a visible sigh of relief when we drained the wine, paid the bill and left, our friend bidding us thanks and farewell in clouds of breath on the night air. Tentatively I asked him if everything had been okay. "Oh, yes," he said, "it was all fine. But you have to keep them on their toes, don't you?"

Ristorante Etrusco, Via Cibrario Luigi, 52, 10144 Torino

Tel 011 480285

Didn't have my camera with me that evening, so here's a picture of the old Fiat building instead. Etrusco has no website of its own. Think they're worried in case our friend might contact them.

Aristocampo, Trastevere, Rome

The slogan on the blackboard outside reads "We are against the war and tourist menus". Well as restaurant slogans go, it's more profound than "I'm lovin' it". They have a point about the tourist menus: why do so many restaurants offer them? Perhaps they think that tourists will be confused by a free choice of dishes, so have to be told what to eat. Maybe tourists are attracted by the security of a set menu and a fixed price. We took a look at the odd menu turistico in Trastevere and found that that they're pretty much all the same: same dishes, same prices. So whatever else they may offer, it's not choice.

Anyway, Aristocampo's little rebellion drew our attention. In the July early evening it was still too warm to eat outside, so we settled into the spartan interior. Woven through the menu was an unexpected common thread: pecorino. We started with pecorino with pears and pecorino di fossa with fig marmelade. We could have gone onto pasta with sardines and pecorino but feared we'd have nightmares, so sidestepped the cheese and ate pasta with clams, and chicken with lemon and milk. And some of those oven-roasted potatoes that are pleasantly burned on the edges. All good.

We thought a quiet stroll by the river would finish the evening off nicely. So did about two thousand others. Crowds thronged both banks of the Tevere, and the bridges, carrying tiny lanterns and waiting expectantly. We joined them and waited too, without knowing what for. From somewhere upriver singing started, like a monastic chant, and through the crowds we glimpsed a boat on the river. The singing swelled and applause rippled through the audience as the boat docked and a wooden statue of the Madonna, adorned with precious clothes and jewels, was lifted onto the bank and carried up the steps by Ponte Garibaldi. The Madonna-bearers disappeared amongst the crowds as they carried the statue back (we later learned) to the church of Sant'Agata, signalling the end of an eight-day local holiday.

We wandered back to our little hotel past brightly lit stalls selling porchetta and sweets and candyfloss; the final fling of the festival. We finished the day against tourist menus, and very much in favour of local festivals.

Ristorante Aristocampo, Via della Lungaretta 75, Trastevere, Rome

Tel 06 583 35530

No website of its own I can find. Try searching for pecorino.

Hotel Berchielli, Florence

The main thing I remember about the Berchielli is the motorbikes. I'll explain. The hotel sits directly on the Lungarno Acciailuoli, a long street that runs alongside the Arno between Ponte Amerigo Vespucci and Ponte alle Grazie. It's a busy road, by Florence standards. (By Naples or Rome standards it would be a quiet backwater, but here it's a pretty well-used thoroughfare.) And the traffic that uses it most seems to be motorbikes, scooters, mopeds... all of which descend in weaving waves of determination as soon as the traffic lights turn green. And sometimes, perhaps, slightly before. And when the Amerigo Vespucci lot's lights are on stop, it's the turn of those who have come across the bridge from Via Maggio, thus ensuring an endless two-wheel tide. A single step out the the Berchielli's front door and you're amongst it all, cheek to cheek with the passing moped rider, toes just inches from the motorbike's tyres, a whiff away from the scooter driver's perfume. The other side of the road becomes seemingly unassailable, yet something to be conquered, like the north face of the Eiger. The first time we attempted to cross the road took us maybe half an hour. We got worried, because we were only in Florence for two days.

Surprisingly, once inside the hotel, no hint of this mayhem pervaded its serene ambience. All was calm. The hotel was efficient and tidy rather than personable and friendly. Our room was pleasant enough, though probably identical to the room next door. Breakfast was okay, from what I remember. There seemed to be no quirk, no personal touch. I do remember though that one of the coffee table books in the lounge displayed paintings of a highly erotic and explicit nature, which came as a bit of a surprise as we thumbed through it over coffee one evening.

So maybe the hotel does have a trick or two up its sleeve, after all.

Thanks, by the way, to the hotel website for this picture.

Hotel Berchielli, Lungarno Acciaiuili, 14, 50123, Firenze

Tel - odd, but they don't seem to want to publish their phone number?

Hotel Berchielli

Locanda Canal, Venice

Venice is, on the whole, a city of gentle sounds, free as it is of the rush of roads and traffic. Market stallholders feel no need to shout. The distant 'hoi!' of a gondolier around the corner of some still backwater, the gentle strains of a string quartet in Piazza San Marco, the metallic ring of footsteps in an empty alley are all evocative, but unobtrusive. Even the throb of boat engines and the horns of the vaporetti on the Canal Grande are somehow subdued. But the sound that all Venetians listen for, can pick out above and through all others, is the city's siren; the warning, the harbinger of high tides, of acqua alta.

One blast of the siren alerts the city to the likelihood of flooding (so stay tuned), then further emissions spell out the expected magnitude (how far up your house the water might come). In a time when most of us are glued to our radios, televisions, computers and phones for the latest news, this simple sonic alert remains a neatly effective way to reach the majority of Venice's populus, wherever they are and whatever they're doing. An efficient, well-rehearsed response quickly kicks into action, as flood boards are installed in front of shops and walking platforms assembled. We saw, and heard, it happen one watery September.

Locanda Canal is a small, tucked away hotel with comfortable if unspectacular rooms. It reminded me vaguely of a David Lynch film. The walls of the corridor were lined with padded silk that subsided disconcertingly to the touch. We were served a modest breakfast each morning in a compact room with wooden floors and beamed ceiling, sitting just that bit closer than comfortable to our fellow guests, while an extremely petite young waitress wearing thin latex gloves wordlessly made the most incredible cappuccino. The hotel entrance gives out onto the Fondamenta del Remedio and stepping out one morning into heavy rain we noticed that the level of the deep green canal was considerably higher than the previous day. Other canals we passed were the same, and by midday the lagoon had spilled over the Riva degli Shiavoni and was lapping at the base of the Leone di San Marco. A buzz of expectation ran amongst the tourists in the Piazza, excited as children at the novelty of a city full of water.

Not so for the Venetians: just resigned frustration perhaps. And a quiet acceptance.

Locanda Canal, Fondamenta del Remedio, Castello 4422/c - 30122 Venezia

Tel 041 523 4538

Locanda Canal

Le Colombe Agriturismo, Assisi, Umbria

Gina Lollobrigida springs to mind when I occasionally recall our stay here. Actually Gina Lollobrigida quite often springs to mind for no reason at all, but I think that must be my age. We'd driven up an improbably steep dusty track, following discreet wooden signs, to be greeted (well more bumped into really) by the agriturismo's owner, who was just leaving on some brief expedition or other. Now if 'owner of a holiday farm' conjures up a rustic character in shirt sleeves and cord trousers, with weatherbeaten features and rough hands, you're in for a pleasant surprise. The woman that skipped down the steps towards us was in her early forties perhaps, tanned and lean, wearing a crisp striped blouse with turned up collar, fastened one button less than might be expected, white trousers and sunglasses pushed back into her auburn hair. As she leaned into the car her heavy necklace fell forward from her chest and a heady waft of scent instantly cooled the hot air. I felt we'd arrived.

From the tiny hamlet of Rocca Sant'Angelo across the valley from the agriturismo, a thin bell rings at intervals. Other than birdsong and the chirping of crickets, this is the only sound to be heard here on a summer's day beside the pool. I visited the hamlet one hot afternoon; a small knot of buildings tightly tied against outsiders. I saw no people, only their evidence: scattered chairs beneath a sort of gazebo; low voices from an open window; the smell of cooking; a bike propped outside a door. And cats. There were a lot of cats.

Le Colombe itself was peaceful perfection. Our hostess presided over breakfast, making poached eggs more exciting than usual. Most of the time we had the place to ourselves, to laze and potter in between excursions for food. In the evening we'd make the ten minute drive into Assisi to eat, returning in the dusk as bats flitted around the roofs, to sit beneath our loggia until the stars appeared.

Nights were completely silent and star-filled. And occasionally scented with a waft of expensive perfume.

Le Colombe Agriturismo, Localita Rocca S. Angelo, 42/43, 06088 Assisi

Tel 075 8098101

Le Colombe Agriturismo

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