Italy Archives

Corinna B August 13, 2023

How To Move To Italy: What You Need To Know To Live The Dream Life

Are you planning a move to Italy? Maybe you’ve been to Italy and are dying to live there, be it part time or full time. Or maybe you are dreaming of retiring to Italy? Perhaps you just got home from a trip to Italy and desperately want to infuse your home life with some Italian magic? Whatever it is you are looking for or hoping to do I have all the help you need!

Some European countries, such as Holland and Portugal make it super easy to obtain long term visas. Italy on the other hand, is a complicated country to move to. The visa process is not only complicated, it is also confusing. Italy doesn’t offer many visa options for long stays or to move there. If you’ve ever looked into the Italy visa process, you’ll know it is completely overwhelming. On top of that each consulate has different rules and requirements for your visa application. The New York consulate requires different things from the Miami consulate, which is different again from the San Francisco consulate – and on it goes.

The amount of paperwork required is staggering too. This is not a complaint – it’s just the reality. If you want to move to this amazing country you need to amass an enormous amount of paperwork, and if you arrive to your meeting at the consulate missing even one piece, your visa will be automatically denied. Consequently most of us mere mortals need help navigating these potentially treacherous waters. I’ve been working with a company that does just that – helps people like you and me move step by step through the process.

Smart Move Italy is doing a FREE 3 day bootcamp on September 12th, 13th and 14th (details here) Each day has a one hour live class, which you can watch as a replay is you can’t do it live. Each day covers a different aspect of what you need to know to successfully move to Italy.

What You’ll Learn

Some of what is covered includes:
Cost of living: How you can afford the lifestyle in Italy.

Timing is everything: Why now is a great time to move to Italy

Tips to success: The #1 reason people struggle to make the move & how to avoid it

Save money: How your residence location can save you thousands in taxes

Preparing is key: Top things to prepare for when buying or renting property

Benefits: How living in the EU can have huge benefits to your lifestyle
Visa’s & more: What are the pathways to legally move to Italy

Avoiding pitfalls: The top three problems most people face when preparing to move

Save time: How you can make the move and spend less time, money and live stress free

Smart Move Italy only offers this free Italy Bootcamp once each year. So far more than 15,000 people have attended and been helped to make the move of a lifetime. They also have programs to help you with your visa application, they can help you secure accommodation, help you wade through the paperwork needed once you’ve moved to Italy, and even have expat groups for you to join. You are immediately included into groups of other folks just like you who are in various stages of the process.

Maybe you just want more information about maybe moving to Italy some day. Or maybe you want to find out about living between Italy and your home country. Perhaps you love Italy and just want to know how to spend more time there. If you love Italy this free bootcamp is for you! You can REGISTER HERE.

If you can’t make the live event you can still watch the replays, so long as you have registered.

Bonus!

Samantha Wilson, CEO of Smart Move Italy has kindly agreed to do a special live Q & A session for members of my newsletter and followers of my blog. On Saturday September 16th at 7pm Italy time/ 10am Pacific Standard Time/1pm Eastern Standard Time, Samantha and I will be doing a live Q & A from Italy. Samantha will be coming to you from Florence and I will be patching in from Rome. You can ask us questions about the Italian lifestyle, how to get a deeper travel experience in Italy, how to spend more time in Italy and how to move there. You can ask specific questions about visas, getting your Permesso di Soggiorno, anything about the moving process, whether it’s a full time move or a part time move.

Sign up for our free Q & A session here

You don’t have to have done the bootcamp to join the Q & A, but I definitely recommend signing up for both, as once you’ve been to the Q & A session you will definitely want to go back and watch the replays of the bootcamp classes!

Corinna B April 28, 2023

How To Travel Italy On A Super Tight Budget

I was just on NBC talking about travel in Italy. One of the points I mentioned but didn’t have time to get into depth on is how to travel Italy on a really tight budget.

I was a single mom and we never had money to spare, yet not only were we able able to go to Italy each year, we were able to have amazing vacations on a budget so tight it squeaked when we walked. (I also did trips on my own, kiddo free.) All it took was some planning and some strategy, both of which I am going to share with you.

Planning

1. Know When To Go

The first plan was not to travel during high season. My normal time frame to travel was late May/early June, when school had let out but the season wasn’t yet in full swing. Over the years I also traveled in December, February, March and October, depending on when I had time to go.

Mid June to mid September are high season and are a more expensive time to travel.

2. Plan Well Ahead

I always start planning my next trip to Italy on the way to the airport coming home! Long range plans give you something to look forward to but also give you more opportunity to be ready for killer deals on everything from flights to accommodation to train tickets.

3. Spend More Time In Fewer Places

Rather than planning a trip that takes you from one end of the country to the other, focus on spending more time in fewer places. Each time you move to another town or city you lose vacation time checking out, traveling and then checking in to your new accommodation. If you do vacation rentals (I do) you pay a cleaning fee each time you leave. If you think of this as €50 per move it can really add up quickly.

We would base in one place – for example San Gimignano, and spend a week or so driving all over Tuscany exploring new towns and villages. Then we would move to Rome for 4 days. One time we stayed in Sicily for 10 days and then Rome for 3. We always had an amazing time, got a feel for the town we were staying in, made friends there, and were able to explore at leisure.

Strategy

When you apply a little strategy you can save enormous amounts of money and even travel for free.

1. Stay Outside The Hot Zones

The more touristed cities are obviously more expensive to stay in. The closer you are to the big tourist attractions, like the Colosseum, the more expensive everything is. Not only accommodation, but coffee, a glass of wine, lunch etc.

Go a neighborhood back from there and the prices go down significantly.

You can also save loads of money by staying in a town close by. You’ll never tear me away from Rome, but instead of staying in Florence you can cut the cost in half by staying in another Tuscan town a brief train ride away. My giant fresco apartment in Arezzo costs half the price of a shoebox in Florence. A Cappuccino and a croissant in Arezzo costs €3, which is around half the cost of central Florence. I adore Arezzo but can also whip into Florence on the train for about €5, and spend as much time as I want there strolling the museums and soaking up the magic.

2. Play The Mileage Game

This is the most important trick of them all. It’s how I have gamed a free flight to Italy every year, and now it has become even easier to earn extra miles super quickly. There are two parts to the mileage game:

Part One: Earn Credit Card Miles

This is the fastest way to earn free flights and/or cancel out other travel expenses such as hotels/airbnbs, train tickets, rental car costs and much more.

The first thing to do is get a non-airline travel credit card. There are plenty out there but in the U.S the two best ones are the Chase Sapphire card and my favorite, the Capital One Venture card. Both these cards offer no international fees when you travel, and both let you earn 2 miles for every dollar spent.

The Chase points need to be used on Chase linked airlines but still is a great program.

The Capital One Venture card lets you use miles to buy flights on any airline, any flight you choose. For several years I used American Express miles to get free flights – they also have an excellent mileage program.

A regular airline credit card only lets you use miles on that airline, and has endless blackout dates. They also don’t let you use miles to buy your ideal flight plan, so you can find yourself stuck with awful flight plans and crazy layovers. When you use an airline credit card the airline has all the power in the relationship. When you build up miles on a non-airline travel credit card you choose the flights you want – you’re not sitting in the back row on some janky plane, instead you fly the airline of your choice (and build up more miles with them while you’re at it!)

Whichever travel credit card you get, you now want to run your entire life through that card. Other than mortgage/rent and car payments you can run almost all of your life expenses through your card. From groceries to gas in your car to insurance payments, paying utilities, cell phone bills – everything! Even buying a coffee or paying for parking. You’re not buying anything extra, just turning your cost of living into frequent flier miles. You will be amazed at how quickly the miles add up. You just need to be disciplined and pay the card each day/week so you don’t run up a balance.

When you purchase airline tickets or any travel related expenses your Capital One Venture card tracks them. When you want to pay the bill you hit Redeem Miles and all your travel expenses will populate, with the number of miles you need to use to cancel out each one. You can now zero out the cost of your flight, or maybe the cost of your airbnb, your train tickets – whichever travel expenses you want to cancel out. It’s brilliant! And even better, you didn’t spend extra money to get these miles, this is just rerouting your cost of living.

Part Two: Get More Miles Using Shopping Portals

This is a newer way to add even more miles for doing what you were already doing anyway. The main U.S based airlines now have their own online shopping portals. (Capital One has their own portal too.)

I mostly fly with American Airlines, so use their portal the most. All you do is sign in and create an account using your airline frequent flier account number. Then every time you want to buy something online you go into the portal and type that business into the search bar. You can see the American Airlines portal here. It’s just one extra step to take you to where you were shopping anyway, but you get extra frequent flier miles in the process. It takes a while for these miles to add up, but it’s worth it when you get a free flight!

I talked about this on the Untold Italy podcast. I explained how I wanted to buy two J Crew white t-shirts. I went into the American Airlines shopping portal, typed in J Crew and it took me to the J Crew website. From there anything I bought earned me twice the dollar value in American Airlines miles. Often there are bonus days where you earn more than 2 miles per dollar. Recently I bought products from Sephora online and earned 5x miles per dollar spent. Again all you are doing is adding one more step to your online shopping process, but you are earning frequent flier miles in the process!

Double Dip For Miles

The last thing I want to tell you is to double dip for miles. In the last example where we talked about using airline shopping portals to earn airline frequent flier miles, we are now going to double our miles by using our non-airline travel credit card to make the purchase. When I bought those J Crew t-shirts I earned 2x miles with the American Airlines by using their portal, but I also earned another 2x miles with capital One by using my travel credit card. I do this for every online purchase. It doesn’t seem like much but the miles add up like crazy and before you know it you are taking yourself on free trips or trips that cost you next to nothing. You can hear more about it in the untold Italy podcast #116 (linked below). I go into depth with lots of examples and explain more about how to travel to Italy (or anywhere else you want to go) on a shoestring budget, and have an absolutely amazing trip!

Check out the Untold Italy Podcast episode where I explain more about traveling on a budget here

Want more Italy travel tips? Join the thousands of members of my monthly newsletter for updates and information on all things travel and Italy travel. Join here.

For more tips on how to plan a trip to Italy, plus information on everything from how to use the trains to which foods and wines to order where, check out my best selling book Glam Italia! How To Travel Italy: Secrets To Glamorous Travel (On A Not So Glamorous Budget). Available worldwide in paperback and eBook versions, on Amazon.

Best Italy travel guide — Order your copy **here**

Corinna B April 11, 2023

Five Fabulous Places In Rome The Tourist Crowds Don’t Know About

This year Rome is already packed with tourists, and it looks like this summer will be busier than ever.

The most famous tourist attractions, all of which were overcrowded in the past, are going to be even worse now, so it’s really important to plan lots of things that take you away from the crowds. Before you worry about getting lost or spending loads of time getting to the uncrowded places, just know this normally means only walking a block or two – sometimes even less!

My best selling book Glam Italia! 101 Fabulous Things To Do In Rome tells you about all kinds of wonderful things to do in the Eternal City. Today I want to tell you about 5 fantastic things to do in Rome, things that take you away from the tour bus crowds and show you things that will blow your mind.

The Baths Of Caracalla

If you want to visit a truly spectacular site in Rome with almost no other travelers, this is the place for you! The Baths of Caracalla are easily one of my favorite places to visit, and even when Rome is so packed you want to scream, the tourist masses don’t know about this absolute gem.

Caracalla was co-emperor with his father Septimius Severus from 198 A.D until his father’s death in 211 A.D. He became emperor in 212, and rather than allow his younger brother Geta to become co-emperor, Caracalla murdered him. Then had all of Geta’s friends murdered. Then went on a killing spree so savage he became known as one of the most bloodthirsty tyrants in the entire history of Rome. This wasn’t good in terms of public opinion, so he had to find a way to win over the population of Rome. He did so by creating what was at that time the largest public baths in Rome.

This spectacular complex had a huge swimming pool, plus a hot pool and a cold pool, meeting rooms, and a gym. It was so massive it could hold up to 1600 people at any given time, and is thought to have had between 6000 and 8000 bathers per day.

The towering structure was marble clad and had incredible mosaic floors, many of which you can still see today. Walking through here (with no crowds and barely any other visitors) you get a sense of how enormous and opulent these baths were, and just how small you really are.

Recently a VR component was added to the visit. Be sure to get the VR headset.

As you stop at each numbered section the VR mask shows you how it would have looked in the 3rd century. Italy does a brilliant job of using VR and multimedia to enhance ancient sites, and this one is no exception. I go to Caracalla several time per year with my Glam Italia Tours, and still always get the headset!

Getting there: Baths of Caracalla are a 10 minute walk from the back of the Colosseum and a 5 minute walk from the top end of the Circus Maximus.

The Virus Capricus

This one never ceases to amaze me. The Trevi Fountain is always packed with thousands of tourists, and Rome’s most enterprising pickpockets. Visiting the beautiful baroque fountain can be a nightmare, especially if you don’t enjoy being squashed like a sardine amongst multiple bus loads of tourists.

However very few people seem to know that less than 100 yards away you can visit an incredible site, 9 meters below ground. The Vicus Caprarius is an archaeological site that stretches 350 square meters under modern Rome. La Città dell’Acqua (City of Water) introduces you to the Virgin Aqueduct, which still feeds the water to the Trevi fountain. You can also see parts of a 1st century Roman apartment building that was converted into a private home in the 4th century, as well as a mini museum of artifacts discovered during the excavation.

Speaking of which, this was only discovered in 1999 when the Archaeological Authority of Rome was doing surveys for the renovation of the Cinema Trevi building. So in a way it’s a very new, very old site!

Although tickets do sell out, there are very few people allowed in at any given time, so you have tons of space to breathe in. They also have very clean, modern bathrooms.

Getting there: approximately 30 seconds from the Trevi Fountain.

E-Bike Tour of the Appian Way

This is a fantastic way to escape the crowds and see some amazing sites. I recommend doing a small group bike tour like this one offered by Liv Tours.

The tour meets at Circus Maximus where you get your bike and helmet, then takes off up the Appian Way – one of the oldest existing roads in the world. Built between 312 B.C and 264 B.C, the Appian Way stretches all the way to the coast of Brindisi in Puglia.

As you ride this ancient road you will stop to visit a variety of fantastic churches and mausoleums and ancient Roman ruins. E-Bikes are the perfect way to explore the Via Antica Appia and are much easier and more comfortable than traditional bikes, making the 4 miles stretch covered in this tour very enjoyable.

Getting there: you meet the Liv Tours team at the top of the Circus Maximus near the Baths of Caracalla. More information here.

Palazzo Altemps

In my book Glam Italia! 101 Fabulous Things To Do In Rome I tell you Palazzo Attempts is the best museum you’ve never heard of. And it is.

This sensationally beautiful palazzo was built in the 14th century by the nephew of Pope Sixtus IV, the bought in 1568 by Cardinal Marco Sittico Altemps, nephew of Pope Pius IV. The cardinal made the palace his home, filling it with his incredible collection of antiquities and his library of extremely rare books.

Since 2006 Palazzo Altemps has been open to the public, to show case masterpieces of ancient sculpture owned by the Italian government. The collection of marble sculptures takes place over two floors of the palazzo as you work your way through a labyrinth of stairways and decorated rooms. Did I mention it is sensational?

My favorite piece in the collection is the Ludovisi Gaul, a complex and achingly beautiful statue that is an ancient Roman copy of any even more Ancient Greek statue.

Palazzo Altemps is now part of the Museo Nazionale Romano and can be bought as its own ticket, or as part of a multi-museum ticket. The other three museums are Crypta Bali, Palazzo Massimo, and the Baths of Diocletian, each of which are in the book and should be on your must see list. All of these are spectacular, all are in walking distance from major attractions and all of these get very few visitors, even when Rome is packed with tourists.

Getting there: 1 minute walk from the top end of Piazza Navona.

The Galleria Colonna

One of the best kept secrets in Rome, this stunning private palace was originally built as a fortress for the wealthy Colonna family. Over time it became a private residence with a staggering private art collection including pieces by Tintoretto, Guercino, and Carraci.

The enormous Great Hall with its mirrors, statues, priceless art and magnificent chandeliers has a Versailles level of opulence. Princess Isabella still lives at the palace and you are able to visit some of her private rooms as well as her secret garden.

Galleria Colonna is open to the public on Saturdays. Be sure to book tickets online ahead of time.

Getting there: 5 minutes walk from Piazza Venezia and the Wedding Cake building (Il Vittoriano)

More Cool Things To Do In Rome

Best travel guide for Rome and the Vatican

If you are planning a trip to Rome, or will be spending time in Rome on your Italy trip, be sure to read my international best selling book Glam Italia! 101 Fabulous Things To do In Rome. This travel guide not only tells you about places to visit, but also gives you background on why, who built it and why they built it. You also learn about must try Roman foods, the best markets, amazing underground sites to visit and even the best places to go for a sunset aperitivo!

Glam Italia! 101 Fabulous Things To Do In Rome is available worldwide on Amazon.

Want more fabulous content on cool and fascinating things to do in Italy, including secret towns and villages you’ve never heard of? Join the thousands of members worldwide who belong to my monthly newsletter. You can join the newsletter here.