Northern Italy TRAVEL
September has come around again and it is time for another European trip. We had been to Italy in our pre-’van life but never to the north. After an evening of intensive research at home – open a bottle of wine, browse our Lonely Planet guidebook, read some MMM articles and Google several lists of best places to visit in northern Italy – we sketch out a rough circuit, anticlockwise, taking in the Italian Riviera, the Cinque Terre, Venice, the Dolomites, Milan and the Lakes, a month in total sandwiched between a week to get there and a week to get back.
More by good luck than judgment, we had created the most stunning of itineraries but, on the trip itself, we spent an inordinate amount of time working out where to stay. We hadn't reckoned on two things.
First, in Italy, reasonably priced, decent campsites are quite hard to find, and camper stops (aree di sosta) are much more expensive and thinner on the ground compared with France. Secondly, until late September, sites in popular areas tend to be heavily booked and, in October, many shut up shop. Whilst we don't like to tie ourselves down by booking in advance, in the future we will invest a bit more time working out a sensible range of camping options
