custom travel itineraries to italy

December 26, 2019December 26, 2019 | a love letter to rome and italy!

CUSTOM TRAVEL ITINERARY TO ITALY – click here!

($200 for a basic TRAVEL ITINERARY)

CUSTOM TAILORED ITINERARY:

$300.00 – 5 days / $600.00 – 10 days / $900.00 – 15 days

(other prices can be customized in choose your own package, contact me at: rebecca@romepix.com)

A custom Itinerary: example: 5 days / $300 : Multiple cities, resorts, hotels, any time frame, focus on specific interests and pursuits, tailor made precisely to your tastes and desires. One hour phone or Skype consultation is available by request, but there are unlimited email questions and requests which tend to satisfy most trip goals. Whatever you prefer. I can design your DREAM TRIP TO ITALY. (Rome – with Daytrips).

(including the general:) cross section travel itinerary for Italy including Rome, Florence, Venice, Capri and Amalfi Coast, Naples and Campania and Sorrento, and 4 day trips per city!

What to do, see, eat, drink, and where to stay on trips designed for: 24 hours, 1-2 days, 3 days, 5 days. 7 days, 10 days, 2 weeks, and longer.

Art and museum and architecture recommendations: what villas, buildings, and churches to visit for architecture, art masterpieces like Caravaggio and less well known works, Latin masses, Byzantine decor, choral recitals, special holiday galas, masses in a variety of languages, hidden histories of patron saints, churches built on top of ancient Roman and Etruscan ruins, Gothic churches, and major pilgrimage sites.

How to get past ALL the lines in Rome and Florence for museums.

The five museums in Rome you cannot skip!!

Best times to visit the cities versus the seaside spots.

How to walk the 3000 year old pathway of Classical Antiquity in one day in Rome.

The BEST ROMAN (AND GREEK!) RUINS in ITALY (especially in Rome) in fascinating, historical detail with maps, and a clearcut and fascinating set of walking tours through Pompeii!

Secret spots of Roman Emperors on beautiful islands.

For every budget: Hotels, air bnbs, apartments, rental villas, convents and monasteries for pilgrims, and hostels!

Slow Food Italy: eat authentic Italian cuisine by region, eat seasonally, what wines to drink where and when, the best gelato, cocktails in Rome and Naples, the best cafes in Rome, Florence, and Naples. Best seafood, best chocolates, top ten tea rooms in Italy. How to drink Italian wine and order any local dish with confidence in Rome. Shopping for deals for made in Italy bonafide artisan goods, olive oils, spices, pastas, and more. The best desserts and the best pizza in Napoli. How to get Neapolitan pizza in Rome cooked in a 500 year old oven. The local watering holes and bookshops and supermercatos – for half the cost of tourist spots. How to break your cafe bill in half like a local. FRUGAL BUDGET TRAVEL that is elegant and authentic!

30 best spots to photograph Romantic Rome and top five spots to watch the sunset. Photography tips for capturing the beauty and color of Rome. Swimming day trips from Rome and Naples. Shopping artisan goods: gourmet foods, wines, liquors, sandals and shoes, fashion, hand painted tiles, coffee beans, art, perfume, monastic and convent handmade products, spice markets, cooking schools, souvenirs and mementos. Limoncello and vineyard visits.

Easy to follow, informative, beauty-focused historical art walks of Italy.

Literary and cinematic fun and glamorous mini-tours of Rome, Florence, and Campania.

Top ten in depth profiles of the best villa art museums with museum cafe reviews and garden walks.

Top ten fountain hopping romantic walks at night in Rome.

Tons of events and easy to navigate for mums and dads with babies and children in the Family Guide To Italy.

A respectful and realistic guide to traveling in style and comfort in Italy with physical disabilities.

The Elder guide to traveling in Italy during your Golden Years.

How to see Italy solo (safely and with fulfilling solitary and group ideas).

How to see the big things in Rome and throw in a few off the beaten path sightseeing (and eating) without exhausting yourself.

The honeymooners and lovers romantic itinerary.

Students in Italy (how to get cultured and still have fun AND stay safe while you study in the beautiful country of Italy).

Green eco travel! Hikers and swimmers and nature lover things to do and experience.

(Major and minor) food allergies and sober travelers: the most in depth guide you can find on how to eat and drink beautifully and healthfully in Italy in any city or town without getting sick or centering a trip around alcohol. Support group meetings, 12 steps, and recovery guides, medical contacts, recommended doctors and psychologists and help lines in Italy.

Historical Italy: Etruscans, Romans, Middle Ages, Renaissance, Baroque, Counter Reformation, Romantic Poets and Artists Era, Victorian, Fascist Era, 1950s/1960s renaissance, Modern 21st Century Italy.

Holidays in Rome.

Seasonal delights and attractions.

The most up to date information on Holidaying in Rome.

Pilgrimages. Sojourns. Art meccas. Study art in a workshop at the Florence School of Academic Art. Take a cooking class. Go to a vineyard and attend a wine tasting. Attend a classic music concert on a rooftop designed by Borromini, overlooking the Bernini fountains and cupolas of the ancient Piazza Navona or attend an intimate opera performance in a room full of Caravaggios. Follow the footsteps of the English and German Romantics. Take architectural walking and driving tours.

Maps and many images to utilize to make your holiday to Italy fun, easy, off the beaten path, and unforgettable!

And much much much more! email rebecca@romepix.com for questions.

“Chasing Beauty In Italy”

March 18, 2019March 18, 2019 | a love letter to rome and italy!

My “Chasing Beauty In Italy” BOOK

(The Second Edition, 2019 is available now!)

purchase here:

https://www.romepix.com/prints/a-love-letter-to-rome-photo-book-5fbkk-9f3yy

THIS IS MY LOVE LETTER TO ITALY

(& to beauty, art, history, architecture, nature, slow travel, cuisine, & Romanticism!)

My bestselling travel book “Chasing Beauty In Italy” …

NOW THE UPDATED SECOND EDITION FOR 2019 WITH 50 ADDITIONAL PHOTOGRAPHS, MEMORIES, MEMORIAL STORIES, ROMAN AND ART HISTORY, (CAFÉ, RESTAURANT, and ROMANTIC WALKS OF Rome GUIDE), EXPANDED MUSEUMS GUIDE, CINEMA AND TV IN FLORENCE, AND MUCH MUCH MORE.

THE TYPE SETTING AND THE ART AND DESIGN OF THE BOOK HAS BEEN COMPLETELY REVAMPED TO FEEL LIKE AN ART BOOK GUIDE TO ITALY.

ALL BOOK PURCHASES WILL COME WITH AN EBOOK COPY AND A PDF.

PREVIOUS PURCHASES WILL BE SENT THEM THIS WEEK.

PLEASE NOTE: THE BOOKS SECOND EDITIONS ARE AT THE PRINTERS AND WILL BE SHIPPED OUT LATE NEXT WEEK FROM THE PUBLISHERS.

CHASING BEAUTY IN ITALY:

129 PAGES,

RICH COLOR PHOTOGRAPHS OF ITALY AND ITALIAN CULTURE:

LANDSCAPES, CAFES, RESTAURANTS, HOTELS,

SCENIC VIEWS AND HISTORICAL WALKS,

LITERARY SPOTS,

CLASSICAL ARCHITECTURE,

AND SHARP ART REPRODUCTIONS

ALONG WITH TRAVEL ITINERARIES,

HISTORY, STORIES, MAPS,

AND A CULTURAL GUIDE OF OFF THE BEATEN PATH RECOMMENDATIONS –

IN BETWEEN MUSINGS AND MEMORIES OF ITALIA.

Read BOOK SAMPLES AND EXCERPTS: https://www.romepix.com/blog/

My first novel length book on Roman Italy; exploring 20 years of love, passion, art, and loss chasing beauty in the eternal city and (all over the cultural hot spots of Italia).

ORDERS DO SHIP OUTSIDE THE US!

SHIPPING IN USA $5.00

Canada and Mexico FOR $7.00 SHIPPING FEE

EUROPE / AUSTRALIA / NZ / THE WORLD: $10.00

See and read MORE BOOK SAMPLES AND EXCERPTS here: https://www.romepix.com/blog/

for daily European Art History & Western Culture: follow me on twitter: @romepix

for more ITALY photos and books: romepix.com

Rome laid out before you from far far above the rooftops

Image | October 18, 2017 | a love letter to rome and italy!

Take an elevator ride on the “wedding cake” and see the Roman gods’ view of the Eternal City.

The ruins are laid out before you betwixt cupolas and Renaissance rooftops of villas and apartments like dollhouses.

Hints of the past stir some ancient feeling in you you never knew you possessed until you saw Rome from a mount.

The sign of greatness and the sign of a fall and all around you the beautiful noise of life that will not stop long enough to extinguish itself into the remains of dust it lives among.Rome lives among the shadows and the bones and the blood and the ghosts and the stone and the picked away marble because it is the heart and the remnants of the past are the nervous system which still courses with life from that heart center of a slowly dying immortal, entombed in the blessing and the curse of a memory which feels like a dream.

Church bells ring and ring through the city when the golden hour colors everything and there’s time for one last sun-glow walk and one last smile exchanged like kisses on the mouth, not the cheeks.

I will remember you even if the imprint of my self is swallowed up in the city of too many stories and too many lights and too many songs to find a memento mori for me in some nook or cranny when I’m gone.

And so I have Rome written on my soul should I be able to take it with me.

Bury me not in the earth of the place I love but burn my ashes to the sky so I may float like some augur of another time, a shadow to pass over a new face with her own love flashing on her face as she falls in love with the Roman sky at sunset, as she dreams to be remembered somewhere somehow in the eternal city, to leave her mark somewhere and to be known and felt by some future stranger intoxicated by the same love for the same city and the same ringing of bells and the orange becoming purple and the golden lamps flickering on and the smiles becoming kisses, not on the cheeks, but on the mouth.

Italy and England

Image | December 31, 2014June 6, 2016 | a love letter to rome and italy!

There’s old Winston Churchill watching Big Ben, in Westminster, London, in March 2014.

An anglophile’s dream: the omnipresent iconic red telephone box.

Wandering around Portobello Road, in the Notting Hill neighborhood.

The street art / grafitti is like The Sex Pistols and the Bbc all rolled into one.

Tea at Sherlock Holmes and Watson’s house was quite amusing.

Enjoyed searching for british china tea cups and white darjeeling on a half deserted faire.

After wandering the many lovely garden parks of london wound up at Buckingham’s Gate.

Making the pilgrimage to John Keats house at Hampstead Heath, London, after years of visiting the flat he died in, and laying flowers at his grave, in Rome.

A room with a view…over the Thames, I was always excited to wake up to (and to raise my glass to) Big Ben.

Saw the beautiful La Boheme set in 1940s Paris at the Royal Albert Hall.

From the window of “221 b Baker Street, London

From the beautiful garden of John Keats home, where he fell in love with Fanny Brawne and wrote some of his greatest poems.

From the cloisters of Westminster Abbey. I do love a cloister.

You have no idea how deep my anglophilia goes because I am always going on about Italy but these signs gave me a profound joy.

This sign is so British it hurts.

One of those moments in London an American or most foreigners savor.

Always, a pilgrimage, a beauty, a joy. John Keats forever. English Romanticism forever.

Down the cloistered hall… like a dream of English classics, literary characters dancing in my head, London, a city looming in my brain of larger than life characters and eccentric, wonderful stories and frightful tales.

The heartbreakingly beautiful dream of Italy view from my dreamy Sorrento hotel room terrazzo.

Walking along the Appian Way on a quiet, car-free Sunday in Rome or along the Renaissance Via Guilia, I am forever excited and in awe over the small beauties and signs of the ancient world in this magical, mysterious city open-armed to the world.

The architecture and cafes are familiar but I feel and live Rome anew each visit. There’s always something new to discover or a passion to stumble onto. Life is in the moment. It is heavy with the past, it is so alive it smacks of the future, but it is so wildly, lightly felt in the now, in the moment, Rome is like dreaming awake, feeling everything. Everything!

Finding new off the beaten path cafes was a big favorite of mine in Italy this year. Always in search of the quiet moments and the hidden corners of Rome. This cafe was in Trastevere where you can sit and sip espresso and gaze at a Baroque Madonna painted onto a church exterior wall.

I love the Eternal City because it has so many layers of history and love and unknown stories and marks of time and beauty in decay and new life bursting forth in a macabre, colored, brilliant celebration in Roman life today.

Took a boat around my favorite island and swam in the Tyrrhenian sea on Capri, a place which invokes everything beautiful, lush and ancient about Southern Italy. There’s nothing quite like it.

Returned to a lot of the same pleasures of the past, freshly squeezed oranges and lemons, under the Italian sun, by a Neapolitan woman who sings all day as she flitters around her Kiosk on the gorgeous Via Tragara.

A return to Pompeii, the fascinating buried city with Vesuvius watchful in the distance.

Meeting new friends abroad 🙂

Long walks soaking in the sun and the past.

Architectural details in half-obscured gardens of small villa art museums (full of amazing Renaissance, ancient and baroque Italian art)!

Being the foreigner in a city you fall into like a comfortable affair.

The moments you can’t anticipate but happen upon in the most beautiful of happenstances.

My favorite spot on earth for the golden hour, on the Pincian Hill in Rome. This is before the view of the Popolo.

A typical Roman street, wrapped into the mystery of fragments and pieces of history.

The beauty of being overwhelmed in Rome.

Cafe life in Italy, a class of wine or a coffee, a little treat, there is nothing like it. Another layered moment captured, to be savored and remembered palpably.

On every wall there is a reminder of death and a reminder of love, the eternal kind, of love that lasts, and of life in the hand too.

Rome, a city to return to, one that keeps its shutters open to the world, long enough for an unforgettable peek.

Since that first moment I arrived there, now, and always, for Roma.

For traveling, for seeing the world, for meeting new people, and for being at home in the world.

Here’s to 2014… and here is a cheers to 2015 and a new year of adventure and experience and chasing beauty!

throw out your guidebooks

Image | November 11, 2014June 12, 2016 | a love letter to rome and italy!

Throw your guidebooks to the side (after you’ve seen the major sights) and get a little lost for an afternoon in Rome.

Side step vespas and taxis and pilgrims and other tourists behind maps, and get lost for a while.

Do as the Romans do.

Bow in and out of the slants of sunlight and vespas, use sounds of water fountains and laughter as your navigation.

An off the beaten path is not merely a passage but a rite and a full circle.

When walking in Rome you are witness to the many passions of people in a cacophony of color and sound and motion.

Roma begins to makes sense to you as you feel follow its rhythm; it is foreign and antique and familiar all at once.

Rome is history in the bones of the city stirring the blood.

Roma changes you.

What could I suggest to you but to drink in the sublime here?

See the city for the thousands of layers rather than one wild jumble.

Beauty is on display, oh yes, —but so is reflection of the human and the divine in every corner.

The celebration of the individual is found even in the smallest of details in Rome.

Art is a living thing.

The story of mankind is in a treasured relic, and in a sip of espresso, and in a stolen kiss.

Life is found in another language where the words are less important than the feelings they conjur in us all in the moment.

Rome is the tug of a heartbeat in a pulse before the veil falls over you.

Rome is a reminder of death that is very much a reminder to live! To live now!!

musings on rome written to a new friend

Image | February 8, 2014June 7, 2016 | a love letter to rome and italy!

I feel, in Rome, as if I am fully entered into the ancient-ness of the place.
I feel the history in my blood.
I feel almost Italian (with a mix of invading barbarian).

But I tread lightly in Italy.

I try to penetrate the history, the stories, but I tread lightly.
I don’t leave any trace.

I only steal moments.
I steal away people’s feelings in a one second snapshot.

I take more lingering pictures with my eyes.

I really don’t want to be the center of attention, I would rather fade into the background, and let people live around me.

I am greedy for their life spilling out.
Still as much a thief as I was as a child, after all.

This is why I love Naples.

I dread it a little, too.
I want to slap it around occasionally.
I want to remind it of its grit (as if it needs my reminder).
I want to shake it awake to its beauty and history and art.
I want it to not lose its charm, ever.

I don’t even care about the trash that much.
I love the darkest alleys.
I love that life is lived on the streets.
I love that the windows are always open.

I love listening to the strains of a language I cannot decipher because it always sounds like music to me that way.

That’s how I linger in churches so long…
I can’t understand the sermons so I can spend time looking at the art and thinking about pagans all day as if in a dream.

In Italy I am living in the dream and I don’t wake up again until I’m back home in the cold north.

I return to Italy like a lover who cannot stand the separation a moment longer. I want to feel the curves of familiar streets. I want to taste the crushed fruit of summer wine and feel that sun so different from mine. I want to see the stars again against the faint glow of the ruins.

snapshots of posthumous john keats in rome

Image | July 15, 2013June 7, 2016 | a love letter to rome and italy!

This is the view John Keats had of the world for the last months of his life. Once he was too sick to climb the Spanish Steps to the Pincian Hill view of the sunset over the piazza delle popolo and take in the sweeping view of the renaissance rooftops of cupolas, churches, houses and hotels of Rome – he had one final view, the Bernini fountain outside his room, at the end of his deathbed. He could hear the passersby and the fruit sellers. He could hear the horses hooves and the coaches. He could hear the rushing water of the fountain and smell the scent of the sweetest water in Rome. Sometimes he could drink it, a few shallow sips in a brief moment of respite.

I stood and looked out his window and took this shot with my phone. I stood there for ages alone and stared out the window and looked for John Keat’s ghost or a shadow of his memory, an imprint of him somewhere. I think I found him in the golden glow of dusk which touched everything in Rome for the last hour before sunset and made everything so pretty it hurt to lose it each night.

Keats’ Rome house is located at the Spanish Steps by the Bernini fountain.

A white rose I brought for John Keats’ Plaque near his grave on the wall to the left of the garden in the Testaccio neighborhood of Rome in the Non-Catholic Cemetery near the Pyramid of Cestius.

The annual/ bi-annual pilgrimage to the Protestant Cemetery never fails to give me chills when I read the epithet Keats intended for himself; Here lies One Whose Name Was Writ In Water.

“Forlorn! the very word is like a bell. To toll me back from thee to my sole self! Adieu!”

Each time I follow that sign it still feels like a mystery unfolding. No matter how many times I retrace my steps to the back garden, to the memory of him, it feels new again.

Really delicious prosecco at Caffe Greco, Rome, Italy, Oct 2012 (iPhone).

From the bar napkin I penned this:

Tonight I looked for Keats’ ghost.

Spotted Byron in the Borghese and heard Shelley was somewhere around the Villa Medici. Caught a glimmer of him.

Goethe kept a respectful distance when I passed him on the pincio.

Keats silently joined me somewhere on Via delle Magnolie. He slipped out from the shadows and fell into step with me. I felt him quietly by my side for the rest of the night.

art in rome in may

Image | March 19, 2013 | a love letter to rome and italy!

I have thousands of photographs (digital images and film shots on digital files) I am pouring over for this blog and the strictly photo tumblr connected to A Love Letter To Rome. I found this shot of the ruins and cupolas bathed in pink and gold to be a temporary antidote to living in a snow-covered, rainy, icy, slushy, terminally grey winter which is stretching itself past the first rite of spring tomorrow. Since I have so many shots on multiple hard drives, it’s taking me a while to sort them and organize them for posts. My main vision for this blog is moments in Italy, a walk, drinks at a cafe, a neighborhood, a painting, a quote, a sunset – some long and detailed, some short and simple.

For my upcoming return to Napoli in May I am compiling arts and culture listings for museum exhibitions in Italy for day trips.

Here are some links from great Rome blogs on current art exhibitions:

In Rome Now good info

Revealed Rome good reviews! great articles!

The Pines of Rome “Exhibits on Now” – great blog!!

The Titian exhibit at the Quirinale looks great. I’ve seen nearly all those works at one time or another, but not housed together under one roof.

Saint Barbara of the Books

Image | March 2, 2013 | a love letter to rome and italy!

This small church, also known as Santa Barbara alla Regola, after the district in which it is situated, was founded, in the 11th century, in the ruins of the Theatre of Pompey. (It was in an annex in the gardens of the Theatre of Pompey that Julius Caesar was assassinated).

Saint Barbara of the Books, Rome, Italy. 186 Largo dei Librai

The church is just off Via dei Giubbonari between Campo de’Fiori and Piazza Cairoli.

This is a small but absolutely stunning church. It’s definitely an off the beaten path small church. One minute you are walking through a charming neighborhood, the next moment your turn the corner and are stopped in your tracks by this glorious architecture. It looks surreal – a tiny church stuck between houses and a yogurt gelato shop. It’s worth a stop, a snapshot and a walk up past the perfect olive trees into the doorway for a look around the interior. The video below is a literal film walk through the church. Armchair travel at it’s finest.

//photographs copyright rebecca price butler …

find my work on tumblr & pinterest … please link & credit me. (photographs: portra 400 35mm film)