Every ski season around 490 scheduled flights from the UK land at Caselle, 10 miles north of Turin’s city centre. Charter airlines also use the airport as a jumping-off point for Valdostan resorts like Courmayeur and Cervinia or the Milky Way ski area, and few passengers ever need make the short journey into the city centre.

Which is a shame. Under-rated Turin is northern Italy’s culinary capital, a Wonka-esque paradise for chocolate lovers, home of Europe’s longest-lasting royal house, Catholic Christianity’s holiest relic, and the best collection of Egyptian artefacts outside Cairo.

So, my advice for this winter’s skiers is to book the last flight home (Ryanair’s late Stansted departure is 8.30pm), deposit your bags at the airport early and make the 19-minute train ride into town your first departure of the day.

Read the rest at Timesonline

Up in Italy’s highlands they still know how to make their own fun. Last night’s local sports bulletin featuring fiolet, rebatta and tzan hinted at a taste for the bizarre. Not for Valdostans a convenience–sport diet of Monday night football or cricket on the green.

But then the people of the Valle d’Aosta are a parochial bunch: these 120,000 mountain–dwellers secured an autonomy agreement and live under their own government. Stop in for a bite and you’ll clock some very un–Italian dishes on the menu—does your local trattoria serve Fontina cheese and cabbage soup?

Read the rest at Perceptive Travel.

It was announced this week that my second guidebook, co-written with Stephen Keeling, has been judged Best Guidebook 2008 at the ENIT Travel Writing Awards. Obviously, we’re chuffed to bits to have impressed the panel of Italian tourism experts, and to have beaten so many other fantastic new guidebooks. The new goal is for my next book, due out next year, to win the 2009 prize.

There’s more on the announcement here:

The winning Frommer’s title written by authors Donald Strachan and Stephen Keeling was singled out for the quality of its research, writing and opening up a new area in Italian tourism.

So, you’re heading to the eurozone with sterling at a historic low; to Italy, where inflation is at a 12-year high; and to the country’s priciest region. Are you in for a cashflow nightmare? Not necessarily.

Booking value summer accommodation for families can be tricky [Read more →]

The notion that sport and politics should never mix is a curious, and also deeply political, one. Sport, after all, is just the waging of international politics by other means. Ask the East Germans.

Rarely has the mix been quite as fruity as this weekend’s end to the Italian football season [Read more →]

Here’s a lesson for guidebook writers: never, ever make predictions about football.

What we wrote in the book, p. 142:

They might not be a household name, but AS Livorno are a team on the up. In 2004 the team returned to Italy’s elite Serie A after a 55-year wait…

It was the kiss of death, clearly. Yesterday, the team were relegated after a 1-0 home defeat by Torino. [Read more →]

So, who wants to hear a joke?

Q: What’s the difference between libertarianism and anarchism?

A: Under anarchism, the poor people get to shoot back.

Boom, boom. I guess that’s more a caricature than a joke, as such. Anyway, I’m not here for the standup. What I want to address is the arts, partly by way of reply to Chris’s post here last week, specifically the estimable libertarian objection to arts funding. In libertopia, arts funding is for private individuals. “There is no such thing as society” (some of them really write stuff like that, non-ironically), so spending on the collective is wasted. Immoral. Theft. In any case, the Dead Hand of the State (10,300 Google hits for a phrase I’ve never heard anyone actually speak) can only have a pernicious impact on private interaction, and what could be more private than art?

Let’s look at some evidence. [Read more →]

Ed:

I think Materazzi probably deserved it…With any luck, Materazzi will be disciplined for racist abuse by FIFA.

Dave Hill:

If – and it’s a very big if – I had been him and Materazzi had said to me anything like any of the remarks attributed to him, I think I would have done the same and maybe more.

Matt Foot:

Materazzi called Zidane a “terrorist”, presumably in some disgusting reference to his Algerian descent…Materazzi would be guilty of an offence in this country: racially aggravated disorderly conduct, on the basis of abuse of someone because of their nationality

Piara Powar, national co-ordinator for the anti-racism group Kick It Out:

If there was a racial slur then Fifa needs to act.

I’m sure there are plenty more. You might put this down to footie partisanship. We love Zizou. He’s the peerless footballer of his generation, the greatest since Maradona. Materazzi was a` pantomime clown (and occasionally violent) during his time at Everton. But something more interesting is going on here. [Read more →]

The seasons switch rapidly in northern Italy. In spring, the dirty white of melting snow and parched brown of desiccated foliage turns to emerald green with staccato bursts of pink fruit blossom, yellow cowslips and violet alpine flowers. Over the summer, the greens will pale, before autumn’s mustards and russets erupt, a last riot before the long winter. It is a cycle played out in Italy’s hills from the Val di Susa to Udine, but nowhere is it more marked than in the Parco Nazionale del Gran Paradiso. [Read more →]

Whether you’re into German rieslings or Spanish bubbly, there are some great day-trips for wine lovers, writes Donald Strachan.

Alsace, France

The lowdown: The place names sound German, the wine bottles look German, the local dialect, Elsassisch, has a definite Germanic twang to it. But this is France, and the wines are distinctively French.

Highlights of this 200-kilometre route, tracking the Vosges mountains from Thann in the south to the border of the Palatinate in the north, are bunched up in the central stretch around Colmar and Selestat. The favourite tour bus stop is Riquewihr, which would normally be good reason in itself to avoid it, but this uniquely Alsatian walled village stays (just) the right side of kitsch. And, anyway, it’s home to Hugel and Dopff au Moulin, the best exponents of local white wines.

Alternatively, the co-operatives at Turckheim and Beblenheim make great stops to try gewurztraminer in its natural home. And while you’re at it, the region is one of Old Europe’s best for gastro-tourism – Michelin-starred restaurants are scattered like hundreds and thousands, and Alsace onion tart is unmatchable.

Base yourself in: Everyone else heads to Colmar for chocolate-box holiday snaps, but to avoid high-season crowds try Selestat. [Read more →]