Italy
To visit Italy is to feel a sense of individuality, of regional pride, of place. Like Spain, Italy's turbulent past means that Italians tend to feel more loyal to their region than to their country.
Italy only became a unified state in 1861, and due to its sheer size and the variety of its landscapes, weather, dialects and standards of living, to travel around this absorbing country is immensely rewarding. From the bilingual mountain villages of the far north to the remote and largely undiscovered deep southern regions of Basilicata and Calabria, where Africa is a closer reference point than Milan, Italy is a country of great contrasts and surprises for the visitor prepared to spend the time to explore properly.
From their Mediterranean love of long lunches and siestas to their national obsession with fashion and the passeggiata (evening stroll), Italy's people love life and are rarely indifferent to anything. Like the Spanish, their fiestas - celebrating everything from the local harvest to the saints of the Catholic church - are legendary, and it is wonderful surprise to roll up in an arbitrary Italian village to spend the night only to discover that there will be no sleep due to a huge fiesta involving everyone from youngest to oldest to pets and livestock!
As befits a country with a a variety of landscapes and environments, for every sun-bleached southern beach there is a mountainous inland, and the Italians love to ski as much as they love to sunbathe. From the Dolomites and Mont Blanc in the north to Abruzzo in the south, there is always a good ski resort within easy reach wherever you are in the country.
Calabria
Always popular with Italian holidaymakers, Italy's sun-bathed deep south is only now being discovered by the rest of us. With mile after mile of coastline, Calabria has a glut of sandy beaches, rocky coves and spectacular headlands.
While it has holiday resorts growing up on the extensive Tyrrhenian and Ionian coastlines, and towns such as Maratea, Scalea, Tropea and Diamante making the most of the superb sunny weather, sandy beaches and warm sea, Calabria is also a region of remarkable beauty. Explore its valleys on your Calabria holiday and you will discover a culture apparently untouched by recent centuries.