Delivering training sessions about some of the destinations we’ve visited over the year prompts us to reflect on our experiences in a specific location; something which doesn’t always happen immediately after a trip as there’s nearly always somewhere else exciting to visit steaming toward us.

For a similar reason, I enjoy indulging myself with a round-up of the best, and worst, travel experiences from our year.

Biggest WOW of the year
No need to mull over this one, the herdsmen’s village of Velika Planina on a high plateau in Slovenia was the biggest travel surprise of the year. The photos we’d looked at beforehand didn’t prepare us for just how wowed we were when we actually saw it for ourselves. This is an exceptionally beautiful place. As well as being the biggest surprise, strolling around the village and eating buckwheat mush and sour milk outside a herdsmen’s hut was the most enjoyable travel experience of 2019.

Most beautiful destination
For years our nephew Liam has been raving about Zermatt in Switzerland. Finally we found out why. With the world covered by a thick snowy duvet, exploring Zermatt and surrounding countryside was like stepping into Christmas card scenes. Waking up to widescreen views of the Matterhorn each morning made sleepy eyes ping open with untypical enthusiasm. Greatest revelation was just how much fun following walking routes in thick snow can be.

The destination which disappointed
Last year Venice exceeded expectations, this year Florence failed to live up to them. The Florence north of the Arno didn’t charm for a variety of reasons – too many tour groups and grabby restaurants. A measure of a place is how long you want to spend there; our forays into the tourist hot spot across Ponte Vecchio were short-lived. It was simply too frantic. Thankfully, the south side of the Arno was a tranquil and charming contrast. Our experience of Florence was of a Jekyll and Hyde city.

Favourite city
Ljubljana isn’t the prettiest city we’ve visited but the feel-good factor was off the scale. We wandered with permanent smiles fixed to our faces. It’s a city with a big town feel so getting to know it doesn’t take much time. It’s a destination for anyone who enjoys good food, smooth wines, craft ales, and live music; a place to eat, drink, and be merry. After a day there, and some beer and wine, we declared it a place we could happily live.

Best hotel stay
Another category where there have been lots of contenders – Hotel Plesnik in Slovenia’s Logar Valley for its dream location; Hotel Agua Geres in Geres, Portugal, for being ultra comfortable and having excellent food after a tough day’s walking; Quinta Roja in Garachico, Tenerife, because it’s a favourite of ours; Oltrarno Splendid in Florence because it was actually splendid and as cool as Vincent Vega. Best though was Hotel La Laguna Gran in La Laguna, also Tenerife, as its lounge is a compelling blend of colonial and contemporary decor, it has a fabulous Michelin star restaurant, and the bar is of the sort which puts an arm around your shoulders and says “come on in, we’d love your company.”

Top nosh
There were so many excellent meals wolfed throughout the year, ranging from Michelin standard to quality street food, it would be unfair to single one out, so I’ve written a separate piece listing our favourite dishes of the year.

Send it back
The Etrop Grange near Manchester nearly came top as a) their already limited menu had even fewer options by the time we ate at 7.30pm and b) the chef managed to make fish and chips dull to the point I wasn’t tempted to pick at leftover chips (a really bad sign). But biggest culinary disappointment was at Mar e Sol in Sesimbra where the pez espada preto (scabbard fish) we’d told my mum would be meaty and tasty was mushy and bland, the worst pez espada we’ve eaten to date. Not that my mum cared, she was just happy to be sitting in the sun overlooking a gorgeous beach on a warm October day.

Exhilarating walking route of 2019
For having just the right level of challenging walking, boasting contrasting stop-us-in-our-tracks scenery, possessing an eclectic mix of ingredients (a mountain lake, sanctuary in a ravine, stone slab bridges), and just being loads of fun (a rare occasion of being able to walk with our friend and colleague from InnTravel, James) a route from Roucas to Peneda in Peneda-Geres National Park in Portugal ticked all the boxes which make for an exceptional hike. A difficult choice as all the routes we walked in Peneda-Geres were winners.

Most enjoyable transport
A cruise up the Douro River on a sizzling May day proved a scenic overdose as well as being a blast. The hills lining the river were hypnotic – their natural rolling curves artistically enhanced by the addition of narrow terraces of vines whilst the atmosphere on board ship was bizarrely booze cruise, but one mainly full of septuagenarian Portuguese. Why the nationality of partying pensioners made the experience more enjoyable rather than less so, I don’t know. But it did. It was an eclectically experience and the Douro lived up to the promise we’d seen in old films in a Port cellar in Porto.

Most emotional experience
The winter sun sparkling on blades of frosted grass; long, kilted shadows on a crisp forest path; a silhouetted lone piper playing a haunting lament; a roaring fire warming numbed legs; my nephew and his new bride wearing Cheshire cat-sized beams as they dodged a downpour of heart-shaped confetti. Scotland, you tug at my heart like no other destination.

A couple of weeks ago we spent a week in Tuscany, visiting Florence, Siena, and Pisa. It was hardly enough time too gain any sort of real insight, but heading back into deepest Alentejo provided the opportunity to indulge in a spot of compare and contrasting. Trying to find the ‘new Tuscany’ article again on Google, I noticed that since The Guardian article there had been a number of subsequent travel pieces referencing the same claim. Some attributed it to The Guardian, some to Condé Nast. Most said it had come from the New York Times. I’d read an excellent article in the NYT about Alentejo which had compared it to Tuscany but only in the following sense:- “As in Provence and Tuscany, food and wine bond families and strangers alike.”

Travel is subjective – one person’s all inclusive hell is another’s all inclusive paradise; historic streets lined by architectural delights can be magical places to wander, or a deadly dull destination with nothing to do. And classing Alentejo as the new Tuscany is most definitely subjective. To try to objectively explain why, I’ll set the scene with a couple of descriptions from external sources.

Tuscany according to Insight Guides
“From the glories of Renaissance Florence, with its wealth of artistic treasures, to the golden landscape and hilltop towns of the Tuscan countryside; from the terraces of the Chianti and Montepulciano vineyards to Pisa’s notorious Leaning Tower and Siena’s scallop-shaped piazza: this is a region that has fed the imagination and delighted the senses of countless visitors for many years.”

Alentejo by the official Portugal tourism website
“To the north, the pastures of the marshlands; in the vast interior, unending flatness, and fields of wheat waving in the wind; at the coast, wild, beautiful beaches waiting to be discovered.
The vastness of the landscape is dotted with cork oaks and olive trees that withstand time.”

Scenery
One of the above mentions a golden landscape, the other talks of fields of wheat waving in the wind. There’s a clear similarity. Driving for hours through an unchanging Alentejo countryside, we remarked how the land resembled an immense, golden quilt; thirsty, wheat-coloured dry grasses broken only by evergreen cork oaks, silvery olive trees, and occasional jade ponds where rusty cows and lithe horses gathered for water. On paper, Alentejo might share similar natural aspects with Tuscany – olive groves, vineyards, and even a few cypress trees. But on the ground the difference is as clear as the cloudless Alentejo sky. In the last couple of months we’ve stood on lofty battlements on numerous Alentejo hilltop towns, gazing in awe at plains which stretch to infinity and beyond. Where Tuscany’s soft-focus landscape could have been designed especially for an artist’s canvas, Alentejo’s is a vast, untamed wilderness mostly devoid of people. But, to be fair, at Elvas we commented to one another that one small section of the view from the castle looked Tuscan.

Towns
Historic buildings aplenty; a bewildering maze of streets careening anarchically around towns located inside protective walls; strategic hilltop positions. Yup, Alentejo and Tuscany share these features as well… but then they’re also found in other European locations, Provence’s villages perchés for example. However, even if you were drugged, blindfolded and dropped into the likes of Monsaraz, Marvão or Castelo de Vide there would be no mistaking any for Tuscany. Where Mediaevel Tuscan towns mirror the earthy shades of their surroundings, Alentejo’s are blindingly white; sunglasses essential protection for exploring their winding, cobbled streets. Both offer architectural banquets for the eyes, but ones with quite different flavours. Alentejo boasts some of the most outstandingly picturesque towns I’ve set eyes upon.

People
In Alentejo, flat caps and checked shirts are de rigueur for the men. In Tuscany…

Gastronomy
The travel article which may have instigated the comparisons with Tuscany focused on Alentejo cuisine and the richness of ingredients, touting it as a foodie destination. I suspect the Tuscany comparison was simply a travel writer’s ‘pitch’, hoodwinking an editor by presenting them with an angle which felt different enough to get given the green light. But the pressure to come up with a ‘new’ angle in the world of travel writing can occasionally mean some poetic licence regarding accuracy. There’s a very good reason gastronomic comparison with Tuscany might not have been written about before. Tuscan cuisine is sublime, rural Alentejo’s might be good quality but it is mainly unsophisticated, country fare.

In Tuscany we ate in traditional restaurants whose menus differed but whose dishes invariably included delicately seductive sauces; these were places we could go back to numerous times before we exhausted the dishes which appealed. When we stayed for four months in Alentejo we virtually stopped dining out after the first couple of weeks. We enjoy gastronomic diversity and like to eat meat only now and again as part of a balanced diet. Alentejo’s hinterland is a meat-eater’s paradise where the food is hearty, prices are low, and portions are generous. It’s a region which will satisfy the appetites of many visitors, but possibly not those ‘foodies’ the article was aimed at. This visit we ate out twice; the first notching up sarapatel, (seasoned offal stew), bacalhau dourado (shredded salt cod with onions, egg, and potatoes) and secretos de porco preto. There are Alentejana dishes we thoroughly enjoy, but only every now and again as the food is generally too heavy for frequent consumption. The second time we dined out was because it was our last night and we felt we should. It was good quality fare, but the hefty dose of meat (wild boar stew, Iberian pork steak) hung around like lead weights in our stomachs. When it comes to wine on the other hand, I prefer Alentejo’s to Tuscany’s Chiantis and Montepulcianos.

Ultimately, it isn’t fair to invite comparison between Italian cuisine and that of rural Alentejo. Both have their merits, but are universes apart.

And that’s where the problem of comparing regions in two different European countries fundamentally lies. Alentejo doesn’t need to be touted as the new Tuscany, it has its own strong and fascinating personality. Go seeking Tuscany and there’s a chance you’ll be disappointed. Travel there with an open mind and there are wondrous surprises to be uncovered.

One final comparison, travelling back to the coast from border country where Alentejo meets Extremadura, we paused at Elvas for an explore and a snack lunch consisting of a typically gigantic tosta mixta with a couple of drinks. We nearly ordered two tosta mixtas but the owner of the pastelaria talked us out of it, insisting one was enough. A similar lunch in Florence a couple of weeks previously cost a whopping €30. In Elvas I coughed up €4.70.

Alentejo is so not the new Tuscany.

Piazza della Signoria should have knocked me off my feet – it’s one of the grandest looking piazzas we’ve strolled. Proud, iconic statues are as common in the piazza as pigeons are in lesser locations. Nearly all are naked (given the sky-high temperatures I’m jealous), some are gruesomely macabre. It’s a glorious piazza, it’s a fascinating piazza… and it’s ruined by selfie-takers and tour group leaders waving umbrellas high in the air to attract their particular flock, making unobstructed views of the exquisite artistry on show even more difficult.

It’s hot, 38C hot, late in the afternoon, we’ve not eaten lunch yet, and I’m narky.

We head for side streets, hoping for an atmospheric cafe/bar to nibble at a snack with a refreshing beer. It takes some time to find one which appeals – Caffe La Posta on a corner on Via Pellicceria looks promising. We order a large and a medium bier and two filled rolls. Andy orders hummus, which has lots of aubergine and no hummus. I order… I order what exactly? It’s so unremarkable, I instantly forget what I’m eating. The bread is shred-yer-gums hard and the beer pump isn’t working, so we’re given two small bottles but charged for the original order. When questioned, they knock 1€ off the bill, and add on a table charge. It’s poor, poor value and my feelings toward Florence descend into blackness. Maybe I’m in Dante’s Inferno.

My dark mood is infecting Andy’s so we decide to take refuge in our hotel room on the other side of the River Arno, to maybe ‘benefit from resting a little’ before tackling the city again. First we have to wade through a marauding horde heading in our direction across Ponte Vecchio. As well as foot soldiers there’s cavalry, charging through the crowd on two-wheeled steeds with little regard for any object which stands in their way. I learn quickly that cyclists who stop for anything in Florence, including red traffic lights, are a rarity.

“I wish we’d stayed in Siena,” I grumble as I skip out of the way of another demon cyclist.

Sigh, Oltrarno
But then the dense cloud of people parts and we step from the bridge into the Oltrarno quarter. It’s like finally being able to loosen a tie which is too tight. The instant we turn right along Borgo S. Jacopo, Florence changes. The narrow street has only a handful of other people wandering its charming length. Here the bars and trattorias are cosy, inviting, bohemian. As we “ooh, that place looks good,” our way along the street, the storm clouds in my head dissipate.

It takes no time to realise Oltrarno offers a delicious sanctuary from the divine madness just across the River Arno. I thank whichever travel god guided our hands to hitting the book now button for a hotel on this side of the olive waters.

Secreted away behind a large, arched wooden door which wouldn’t look out of place as a portal to a decent-sized church, Hotel Splendid is aptly named. It is a bijou, boutique resting place consisting of fourteen inspirationally designed rooms with such tasteful and artistic decor it makes you sick with jealousy. It’s the sort of place where you might fool yourself into believing you could pen a literary masterpiece (there is an old typewriter in the lounge just in case anyone feels like trying). There’s an ambience which is both old school and contemporary casual, and we love it immediately. It is perfect for a neighbourhood renowned for artists and craftspeople.

From the comfort of leather studded chairs whose skins are as lined as the face of a wise old fisherman, we plan our Florence campaign. We shall soak up the opulent, historic sights north of the Arno and return to dine and drink within Oltrarno’s embrace.

Saturday
Borgo S. Frediano, a backstreet running parallel to the Arno, proves a rich hunting ground for bars and restaurants which exude individual personalities. Bar Le Nuvole is hole-in-the-wall sized with a tiny decked terrace. What little counter space is crammed with bite-sized snacks, Italian tapas. We drink an IPA aperitif, a femme domme-esque Dama Bianca, whose golden nectar goes straight to our heads. It’s a chilled-out spot; relaxed and unhurried – the perfect antidote to our afternoon.

A short distance away is Restaurant Neromo, another style shrine which looks great, and feels both historic and modern at the same time. We’re welcomed with a “do you want a Prosecco? Yes, of course you do. In Italy we don’t eat before the sun goes down, we drink.”
It’s complimentary, everyone gets one, and, on top of the white lady, we’re woozy before the antipasti arrive. A shared coccoli fritti (fried bread dumplings)with prosciutto & stracchino (creamy cheese with the consistency of mayonnaise) and octopus with mash soaks up some of the alcohol (now added to courtesy of a bottle of Chianti) and leaves us full, but with just enough space to enjoy a creamy, asparagus-coloured risotto and penne in a tomato, cream, pancetta and vodka sauce. The food is excellent and the atmosphere buzzing – dining as it should be, fun and fulfilling.

The Saturday scene in this part of Oltrarno is so appealing we pop across the road for a nightcap on the small terrace of La Cité – a beguiling blend of cafe, live music venue, bar, and library.

Sunday
We spend Sunday south of the river. There are plenty of sights to notch up in Oltrarno, starting with the Boboli Gardens behind the Pitti Palace. Created by the Medicis it’s claimed the gardens were the forerunner of all classic Italian gardens. Even at 10am there’s a long queue of people waiting for tickets outside Pitti Palace, so we give it a miss and head away from the river seeking somewhere shaded for a cappuccino. We don’t find anywhere suitable, but what we do find is another entrance to the gardens; one with no queues. We pay the €10pp entrance and breeze in. The gardens are immense, so big the map we’re given suggests three trails with gradients which range from mostly level to 12%. At their highest point they offer sweeping views over Florence’s distinctive skyline on one side and the Tuscan countryside on the other. The morning is eaten up wandering leafy paths and cypress-lined avenues, partly trying to find toilets which aren’t disgusting. The Boboli Gardens are impressive, but the facilities are primitive.

Lunch is at Palazzo Tempi beside the river. There’s no need to order any snacks as a cappuccino comes with a creamy profiterole and a beer comes with a generous tray of two types of crisps and some fried bread cubes.

Like mad dogs and Englishmen we choose to climb to Piazzale Michelangelo at the hottest time of the day. Most people drive or take a coach to the sprawling viewpoint above the city, but we do what we always do, walk. And it’s delightful. The path from the river climbs past the Torre di San Niccolò, skirting grottos and fountains. until we emerge at the Piazzale with its mock David statue and encampment of tourist stalls and fast food trucks. It’s not actually very busy and the panoramic, classic Florentine vista reward is more than worth every sweaty step.

During the ascent we spotted a curio, a river beach opposite the Torre di San Niccolò. There are only a handful of sunbathers on the golden sands and even fewer at the River Urban Beach Bar above them even though it’s a shady, riverside spot with views all the way back to Ponte Vecchio. It’s perfect for a couple of birra alla spina (draught beers) after our ascent and descent.

Sunday night in Oltrarno feels like an old fashioned Sunday night, many bars and restaurants are closed. Il Santino on Via Santo Spirito, not far from our splendid Splendid, isn’t one of them. We fancied having a snifter at this tiny deli/bar since we spotted two ‘models’ (i.e. average Italians) sitting outside it sipping white wine lit up by the early evening sunlight (both wine and women). The owner talks us into two glasses of an unusual rosé made solely from Sangiovese grapes. It’s like a silky cross between a rosé and a red. We sit outside and he brings us a smoked salmon tapa to nibble on. Sure enough the sun lights up the glasses, but it’s still far too hot. We scuttle inside where coolness bounces off the exposed brick walls and beamed wooden ceiling.

With a reduced choice of restaurants it’s the sort of night to indulge in pizza. Berberè San Frediano has a good reputation, makes pizza with sourdough, and has toppings which are different from the norm. Andy chooses one with fiordilatte mozzarella from Puglia, tomato, and basil (basically a classic margherita). I copycat the person at the next table and go for prosciutto crudo from Norcia, burrata, fiordilatte mozzarella, and orange-infused oil. The orange oil is a pizza game-changer. Dinner is over in an hour… and most bars are closed. At Piazza del Carmine we stumble across a mini open air concert where the Florence Brass Quintet make a damn fine job of the likes of Smooth Criminal and Bohemian Rhapsody. We listen to them for an hour before breaking up the stroll home by perching on a stool with a glass of red at La Prosciutteria – Crudi e Bollicine Firenze, another deli/bar where you could easily lose hours perusing the produce on display and people-watching.

Monday
Oltrarno has so many quirky, quaint bars, and we’ve too little time to try them all. But we manage to notch up one more place for an aperitif, a no frills Enoteca near La Cité where the wine is €4 a glass and the young couple opposite us on the wardrobe-sized terrace make us feel like gooseberries by being very Italian about how they drink their wine. One reads some poetry, they gaze into each other’s eyes for a moment, and then they snog passionately. Then the other reads some poetry and… repeat.

Dinner at Il Santo Bevitore, a hop, skip and no jump from our hotel, almost matches Neromo for buzzing liveliness. It probably noses ahead in terms of stylish décor – romantically dim lighting and vaulted ceiling. It is rammed (we had to book a table to be sure of getting in). The beauty of these restaurants is although their menus follow a similar format – antipasti, primi, secondi and so on – what falls under these headings changes from restaurant to restaurant. Normally we have a starter and then a primi (pasta) as the pastas and sauces are just so deliciously varied. We change tack a bit at Il Santo, starting with a primi (burrata ravioli with asparagus & scampi for me, a fiery riccioli with nduja, a seriously spicy soft salami, & aged pecorino for Andy that leaves her gasping). The secondi (main) we share. It’s a quite modest portion of roasted monkfish, Zolfini beans, bacon and pioppini mushrooms which suits just fine as we fancy a dessert for a change; although, the dessert choices when we see them don’t get the juices flowing again – too wobbly (mousses, the ubiquitous crème brûlée) and not tarty enough. Still, it’s a cracking meal overall, another über friendly place, and a fitting last night in Florence dining experience.

We leave Florence with very fond memories. Much of those are thanks to the Oltrarno quarter.