Holidaying on the Italian Riviera

When Italians talk about their holidays, the first question is usually the same: are we going to the mountains or to the seaside? Understanding Frenchman and I were lucky enough to be able to do both this summer, as after our stay in the Valle d'Aosta and our friends' beautiful wedding, we headed off for a few days on the Ligurian coast, a.k.a. the Italian Riviera.

There are lots of lovely things to do in this part of the world. You can visit the Cinque Terre, the 5 gorgeous little fishing villages nestled in the cliffs west of La Spezia, mingle with the international jet set in Portofino, or hike the Alta Via dei Monti Liguri, high in the mountains which drop so dramatically down to the sea.

This time round, however, we decided to have a relaxing time at the beach and booked a little studio in the little fishing village of Laigueglia, half way between Savona and Sanremo. If you would like to do the same, here are some hints and tips from our experience:

Where to stay: there are hundreds of hotels in towns all along the coast, but we preferred to rent an apartment in order to have more space and more cooking options. We found ours on www.abritel.com, a site which has a good choice of accommodation with clearly presented information.

Transport: we had a hired car, but a train line runs nearly the whole way along the coast and there seemed to be plenty of buses. If you have a car, it's worth using the motorway for speed and high-up views, and the coast road if you want to visit the towns of the region at a slower pace. Be prepared for lots of tunnels on the motorway, and steep, narrow, twisty roads if you venture out of the town centre. Our studio was at the top of a hill that had to be taken mostly in first gear, and, for the safety of our relationship, I chose to let Understanding Frenchman drive it every time.

Activities: in August, it was too hot to do much other than stroll around the towns and go to the beach, but there are lots of trails in the hilly hinterland behind the coastal towns. The views are spectacular, but we sweated out about ten litres of fluid each on one little climb from the coast up to the ridge behind Laigueglia, so be careful!

Places to Visit: some of the towns seemed to be little more than strips of hotels, while others had more character. We liked Alassio for its shops, Noli for its architecture and history and Sanremo for its old town, which is a maze of dark stairways and little alleyways which manages to be both picturesque and a bit rough around the edges, and a huge contrast to its glamorous new town, seafront and casino. Sanremo also has pretty public gardens.

Choosing your Beach: at first glance, the Italian Riviera looks quite uniform, with endless promenades and narrow beaches covered with coloured umbrellas, but on closer investigation, we found quite a lot of variety. Most of the beaches are private, and you have to pay around 13 euros to rent a deckchair and parasol for 2 people for the day. While I kind of resent having to pay to go to the beach, I would say that if you plan to stay all day and don't have a parasol of your own, this is probably worth it, because the sun is so strong that spending the whole day without shade is neither healthy or very pleasant. Because we preferred to go to the beach a couple of times a day for an hour or so, we sought out the public beaches, which are easily recogniseable because the the parasols are a non-matching mishmash, rather than being uniform and arranged in straight lines. In Laigueglia, the public beach was stuck way out at the end of town, but Noli's was bigger and very central. 

It's also worth thinking about if you want sand or shingle, and deep or shallow water. We were quite surprised by the difference between Noli (shingle, and it got deep too quickly for small children to play there safely) and Laigueglia (which had sand and lots of very safe, shallow water.

Irritating Creatures: I thought that the sea air might chase away the mosquitoes, but if we hadn't had repellant we would have been eaten alive on our terrace in the evenings. We also spotted a few small jellyfish in the sea, but they were quite easy to avoid and nobody seemed too bothered by them.

Eating: Local specialities include mixed deep-fried seafood, and trofie (a type of pasta) with pesto. We got in the habit of having at least one gelato per day, with the best one coming from a shop in the centre of Alassio. I can't remember the name, but it had a long, curved counter perpendicular to the entrance and an enormous range of flavours. Finally, we were surprised not to find fruit and vegetable markets more easily, but there is a little supermarket in the centre of Laigueglia with excellent fruit and vegetables. We found it on our last evening and were so excited, we bought lots of delicious things to take home with us. We were also delighted when the owner of our flat offered us four big, juicy tomatoes from the garden to eat with our dinner one night.

We were surprised to find that there were hardly any other foreign tourists in most of the places we visited. Nearly all the other people at the beach seemed to be Italian families on their annual summer break.Our time in Liguria wasn't the most action-packed of holidays, but it was nice to relax, take in the lovely scenery and live like an Italian in vacanza for a little while!