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My idea is to use Segni, or the
nearby Fiuggi, as a base to tour the country. I do guided tours in the countryside, providing, guidance and any kind of assistance needed, including hotel
bookings. |
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Most of the tourists
who come to visit Italy, especially from the American Continent and
the Far East, visit Rome, Florence, Venice and the general area of
Naples. Lately the Tuscan and Umbrian countryside have become
destinations for many who have been introduced by
"Under the Tuscan Sun", book and movie, to the beauty
of the area. I would now like to propose to anyone who wants to
travel to Italy to travel further south and discover a land that has
nothing to envy to Tuscany and Umbria, except maybe for the number
of tourists! This area south of Rome which includes the Agro Romano
(Roman Countryside) and
Ciociaria is filled with very interesting little medieval towns
which can rival with the better known places in Tuscany |
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like San Gimignano and Pienza, but are not even nearly as famous. Being this area yet to be discovered by the masses of tourists,
everywhere you go you'll have the privilege of being the only
tourist there, except for when you visit places like
Castel Gandolfo,
Tivoli or
the
Roman Castles which are very well known. But when I take
tourists to visit places like the fortress of Sermoneta, the Abbeys
of Trisulti and Valvisciolo, or even more so when we walk through
the streets of San Vito, Bassiano, Segni and all the other little
towns, we are the only tourists there! This is great because you
really see how the people there live, walking through the streets of
the little towns you the sound of the dishes and smell the food
being cooked or, if you come at the in the months of September and
October, you can smell the must. Driving on the roads you
often have to pass tractors full of grapes or olives in November. |
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Needless to say, you're always welcome to stop and lend a hand
harvesting! What I want to say is that you'll not see towns that are
waiting for the tourists to arrive, you'll visit towns that live
their own life in which you'll be a welcome intruder, but no
souvenir shops or fancy restaurants. Talking about restaurants you'll find the local
trattorias to be pleasantly inexpensive, compared to the prices
in the big and famous cities, and foods and wines to be really
genuine. You'll be discovering the place like the English, German
and French travelers in the 1800's or, I might as well say, like the
Americans and Germans discovered Tuscany in the 1970's. |
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Kind of like the
atmosphere my friend Dario Castagno well described in his book
"Too Much
Tuscan Sun", for those who have read it! Another thing that
is favorable around here are the accommodations. It is notorious
that to stay in a hotel in the big cities in Italy is expensive, and
now that Tuscany and Umbria have become so famous and frequented by
tourists, it is expensive also to stay in an inn in the
countryside there.
Here you can a rent a double room in a pretty good 3/4-star hotel
for a price range that goes between 60 and 100 Euros a night and
that means about half, if not one third, of the cost of a similar
hotel in Rome. |
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Of course I agree that to visit Rome you
better off staying in the city, but most tourist spend their first
couple of day visiting Rome and then they do excursions in the
country or day trips to Pompeii, Florence etcetera. That's when my
suggestion is most valid.
Pompeii and the Amalfi Coast for example, are
a lot easier to reach from Segni than from Rome. So a day trip to
those places with me would be a lot less expensive than from Rome, also because of the price of the hotel,
and you would have more time to dedicate to the places you visit and
a less stressful journey. |
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I started to take people around this area when I first moved
here from Rome, about 17 years ago. The first people I showed around
here, were my Roman friends when they eventually came to visit
me. They enjoyed it so much that it made think that if though
they were indigenous and they had a pretty good idea of what they
were going to see they had a great time, then maybe a tourist from
abroad would have enjoyed it even more for it would be more unusual
and surprising to him.
The first opportunity came, several years ago, when I was hired by a couple from USA for
a week. |
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I took them to all the famous places and finally they
had one day left that was open, no plans. I proposed to them a tour
in my area, off the beaten path: Fiuggi, Trisulti, Alatri and
Fumone. I was hesitant to to make this proposition and must have not
sounded too convincing, there's a big difference between taking
paying customers on a tour and showing friends your place! In fact
they declined the offer and said they would have just strolled in
the streets of Rome taking it easy. But fortunately they later
changed their mind and called me in the evening saying they wanted
to go on this tour. Well, to make a long story short, at the end of the day they told
me it was the best tour of their whole vacation! I was so happy and felt so confident that since then I
started to advertise this tour on my website. It has been selling
well, in spite that most tourists don't stay in Rome long enough to
have time for it, |
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I still get to do it quite often and always with very satisfied
clients.
It has also happened that my clients stayed in Segni. The first time
it was a family that booked an apartment in Rome but the agency
messed up with their reservation and they couldn't find another
accommodation in Rome. In July the city is packed! I got them rooms
at "La Pace", they stayed in Segni for a week and loved it. Another
time it was a group of two couples who were going to stay in Rome
for three nights but they only had rooms for the first two. So they
stayed in at "La Pace" their third night and it worked out well
because the final day I had to transfer them to Florence and it was
a lot easier going from Segni than from Rome because |
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we didn't have to drive through Rome's
early morning traffic which can be really horrible. And of course
"La Pace" cost them a lot less than the hotel in Rome did: 65 Euros
instead of 240! |
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This doesn't mean that if one
wants to go on a countryside tour with me he has to stay in Segni,
not at all! You can stay in Rome if you want and transfer to the
area for the day. I can send one of my collaborators to pick you up
at your hotel and transfer you to my place and from there we would
start the tour and than we would transfer you back to Rome at the
end of the day. Wanting to save money, you can reach Segni by train,
you would have to take a train from Rome's main train station,
Termini, to Colleferro or Anagni. Both of these places are only a
few minutes drive from where I live and the train ride is only about
50 minutes.
But the
best would be to spend at least one night here. Most of
my clients stay in Rome 3 or 4 nights and dedicate the first two
days to visit the city (with my help) then the third day I take them
to an excursion in the country. |
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Finally they move to Florence or the Amalfi Coast. I
thought that the third night could be spent in Segni, adding maybe a
fourth or fifth night (the cost for two nights at "La Pace" would
still be about half the price of one night in a similar hotel in
Rome) and do the tours in the countryside from Segni instead of
starting from Rome. This way one would also get an idea of what the
country of Italy is like and not only the big cities or the most
famous tourist attractions!. Concluding, my suggestion to the
tourist is to plan to spend a couple of days in this area to explore
the countryside near Rome Rome, but also to use the area as a base
to do day trips from here. |
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These are some possible options:
1 - First 2 nights in Rome to visit the
city, 3 nights in Segni to visit: Tivoli and the Roman Castles (1st
day), any tour in the area (2nd day)
(pick one from here), day
trip, or transfer, to Florence or Pompeii and the Amalfi Coast (3rd
day).
2 - Transfer from Rome's airport to the
Amalfi Coast, spend the the time you want and then transfer to Segni
and visit:
Trisulti and Fumone (1st day),
Sermoneta and
Valvisciolo (2nd day), transfer to Rome doing the tour to the
Roman
Castles and Tivoli
on the way (3rd day). |
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You might wonder why I live in Segni. Well, this is
where my mother's family came from and when, back in 1990, my
landlord wanted back the apartment I was renting because she needed
it for her son, I decided to move to the country and chose Segni
because I was very familiar with the place since, when I was a kid,
often I spent my summers over at my grandparents'. |
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Just in case you shouldn't find
the accommodations in
Segni
comfortable enough for you, or if they shouldn't have availability
there, Fiuggi offers lots of good hotels and
the most famous of these is the
Palazzo
della Fonte, an incredibly luxurious
5-star hotel with all the possible comforts, including a golf
course! |
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