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POSTED: 02 JUNE 2011

Destination: Italy

Tongue firmly in cheek and expectations down round his socks, ROB INGRAM embarks on a revelatory busman's holiday around some of the world's greatest sites.

Now we’re passing through the medieval castles and villages on the outskirts of Montecatini Terme, through the quiet green peacefulness of cypress and vineyard and silvery olive grove that provided so much inspiration to Byron and the Shelleys.

“Long life to the grape! And when my summer is flown,

The age of our nectar shall gladden my own.”

And all that stuff.

From behind me comes the slightly less lyrical, “I’ve finished my book. Anyone wanna trade?”

That’s one of the things you have to come to terms with on European bus tours. You’ve come halfway around the world to a timeless landscape that has excited the imagination and creativity of writers, artists and composers since time in memoriam, and all around you fellow tourists are reading, checking out the news at home on their laptops, sleeping, and playing Duck Hunt on their iPod touch tablets.

For my sins, I’ve been recruited for a back-in-fashion tourism phenomenon – the Whistlestop Grand Tour. In this case, it’s Insight Vacations’ Best of Italy – the highlights of a 15-day tour compressed into 10 days. My preview itinerary has been further compressed into the first five days of the Best of Italy. So it’s Rome, Assisi, Venice, Pisa, Montecatini and Florence between Monday and Thursday. Worse, I’m embarking on it with the preconception that the tourist bus is nature’s way of promoting any alternative method of travel.

Travel snobbery isn’t limited to the red carpet at First Class check-in, the blue carpet at Business Class check-in, and no carpet at all for those smart enough to pocket the Economy Class saving and spend it at their destination. There is also the old distinction that the traveller doesn’t know where he’s going and the tourist doesn’t know where he’s been.  But I may be on the bus step of an experience that changes all that.

So, it’s Saturday night in Rome and we gather in a small seminar room in the Crowne Plaza St Peters to meet our tour leader and fellow travellers. The tour leader is unmistakably and reassuringly Italian, and approaching middle age the way Evel Knievel approached the Grand Canyon take-off ramp. She is capable-going-on-bossy, which I guess is in her job description. She emphasises her heritage with a flat-vowel ‘e’ at the beginning and end of most words and sentences. She assumes the drill sergeant posture and assures us that touring is no holiday – it’s damned hard work. Slightly abashed, we each stand and introduce ourselves. Honeymooners, spinsters and shoppers, second honeymooners, and a lone travel writer from Australia.

So let la dolce vita begin. Our “breaking the ice” event is an evening of gaiety at Ristorante al Gladiatore which we’re resigned to by the queue of tourist buses picking up and dropping off. There’s an antipasto plate, a pasta dish best described as pasta generico, a slice of pizza, and “Italy’s very special dessert” – tiramasu.

Flouncing from tour group to tour group are a couple of wannabe opera stars with their faithful accordionist, singing all those old favourites that we know from pasta-sauce commercials at home. It’s a Dean Martin meets Mario Lanza duel of Sorrento Love Song, That’s Amoré, a Merry Widow medley and a rousing Funiculi Funicula before a brief break to sell their CD for Euro15.

Italy is famous for its formaggio, but for sheer cheesiness nothing could top Welcome Night at the Al Gladiatore. Then the slow realisation that it really worked. It blew away the barriers, the pretensions, the snobbery, the unrealistic expectations that we had signed on to the Uber Bus of Intellectual Elevation.

Sunday is an intensive course in The Eternal City icons. This is the full-on Rome of vespers and Vespas as bell towers and 150cc motor scooters compete for decibel dominance. But we turn up the volume of our headphones to enjoy the erudite commentary of our destination guide Marco. Marco’s gait, voice and eyes betray some deep sadness within, but his limitless knowledge and sardonic wit re-energizes the awe of the Sistine Chapel, St Peters Basilica and the Colosseum. Recent restoration and cleaning has brought astonishing new vibrance to the Sistine’s ceiling frescoes.

“It is like the 40-watt bulbs have been replaced with 100-watt bulbs,” observes the melancholy Marco.

Rome, of course, has turned on its old charm again. Despite its buskers, its beggars, the tourist-driven absurdity of bandy-legged men dressed as centurions wanting Euro 5 to pose for a photo with you – between cigarettes – even the first-timers, somewhere within their souls, knew and hoped it would be like this. And God bless it, you can still stray into a dark cobbled lane between McDonalds and Starbucks, turn a corner, and come face-to-face with one of the great structures of our civilisation.

Monday, and at the farting of the sparrow we’re all on board for a full day’s bus travel to Assisi in the province of Perugia in the region of Umbria, linked in legend with its native son St Francis. The first full day on the bus is ground-rules day. Apparently the ground rules are all the same, irrespective of the bus or tour. The bus is rated a luxury coach because it has an onboard toilet. So the first instruction is to avoid using it. Several reasons are given, the most compelling being that the door opens out for emergency reasons and that if the driver needs to brake suddenly, you may be propelled down the aisle – perhaps as far as row six – with your knickers around your ankles. The real reason is that Umberto, the driver, won’t have to clean it out at the end of the day. The second universal ground rule is that you change seats in a clockwise rotation each day so that you can get neighbourly with the most unlikely of fellow travellers.

One of the unavoidable truths of Whistlestop Touring is that you are going to be on the road all day in order to sleep overnight at impossibly romantic destinations. And being on the road all day, you are going to eat at highway eating stops. You get to choose what you eat, but you also get to pay for it. Remember this when calculating out-of- pocket expenses. Often two or three competing dining establishments share a lay-by. Choose the one that the long-distance trucks are parked at.

Hilltop Assisi is jaw-dropping beautiful. It suffered massive damage as a result of two major earthquakes in 1997 but the restoration work is both remarkable and invisible. The major attraction – the Basilica of San Francesco d’Assisi (St Francis) – is a World Heritage Site. Upper and Lower Basilicas plus a Franciscan monastery all date back to the early 13th Century when St Francis was canonised. We visit them all, plus the Basilica of St Mary of the Angels, and, in fact, most of the cathedrals, chapels, basilicas, baptisteries and bell towers along our route. The architect of the Best Of Italy itinerary may well have been the Pope himself.

“I think we’re on the ABC tour,” says Wayne from the Gold Coast, “... Another Bloody Church.”

Dusk is fading as we leave the Basilica where Giotto heralded a new era in Italian art, but that only lends magic to the lantern-lit castles, caverns, cafes and cobblestones of this charming place. The charm extends, too, to the old Hotel Subasio with glorious elevated views over the Umbrian countryside, accommodation throughout the tour being an agreeable blend of comfort and character.

Next morning we trundle our suitcases down the zigzag lane to the bus park, buzzing with the prospect of being in Venice by late afternoon. Optional excursions are a feature of the Best Of Italy itinerary, and long hours on the road are a perfect opportunity for our tour leader to spruik their appeal. In Venice, for instance, there’s the chance of taking a water taxi to Piazza San Marco for a peach and prosecco bellini at one of the piazza’s cafe’s. Euro 45. Normally live music would be playing outdoors but, alas, in November it is too cold.

We do get to ride on a gondola, however. On my first visit to Venice the gondolier sang. On a subsequent visit, the gondolier played music from The Merry Widow on a ghetto blaster. This time the ride was in silence ... and no bad thing. The musicians’ union has demanded that singing or broadcasting gondoliers must become union members.

There’s something obscene about visiting Venice and just staying overnight, but it’s an obscenity to be treasured. Longfellow called Venice “White swan of cities slumbering in thy nest ...” Truman Capote was sufficiently moved to say it is “like eating an entire box of chocolate liqueurs in one go.” I woke early at the imposing Hilton Molino Stucky and opened the drapes on the waterfront of the Giudecca (no, they don’t have venetian blinds in Venice). For a couple of hours I watched as activity returned to the canal and the gondola-shaped group of islands that lie minutes away from the Piazza San Marco and thought that both Longfellow and Shortfellow could have done better.

So it’s farewell to Venice far too soon, and an unfortunate detour away from the road alongside the Brenta Canal with its elegant Palladian villas – once the summer residences of Venetian nobility. Flooding rains have turned the road into a miniature Grand Canal, so we spear off across the plain of the Po River, cross the Appenines to the Arno Valley, and follow it west to the coastal town of Pisa.

Pisa introduces me to what I never want to be – one of the many hundreds of people so lonely that they take pictures of themselves in front of the Leaning Tower by holding their digital cameras back to front. Largely overlooked for its beauty but famed for its poor structural engineering, the tower is now an artificial phenomenon having undergone geotechnical stabilisation. The visitor experience is somewhat destroyed by the tawdry tent city of souvenir stalls that surrounds both the tower and the marble cathedral and baptistery.

We’re happy to be back on the bus and heading for Fattoria Il Poggio near the old town of Lucca, where, our tour leader assures us, mamma and nonna have been up all night preparing fresh pasta for our lunch. It is, of course, a totally commercial operation feeding bus tours and selling its wine and olive-oil products, soap and recipe book, and the “family member” who greets us is a hired English-speaking presenter who lives in the neighbouring village. But, what the hell, we are a bus tour, I remind myself.

So, it’s on through the medieval castles and villages and onboard book trading on the outskirts of Montecatini Terme which once attracted all of Italy with its healing thermal spa waters and now attracts all of the world for the fact it’s just 40 kilometres from Florence but offers much cheaper accommodation. No complaints about the Grand Hotel Tamerici & Principe, though, acclaimed throughout the region for its cupola of Tyrrhenian sole fillets stuffed with crabs, crispy prawn with oyster sauce and eggplant oriental tambourine, and for its accompanying Life Music guitar duo.

Back on the bus for the final assault on Florence and the realisation that Italy has so captivated our hearts and minds no-one can remember a third verse of The Wheels On The Bus Go Round and Round. We can all remember the wheels and also the fact that  the horn on the bus goes beep, beep, beep ... but I guess we’re too excited by the prospect of Florence to get any further.

The tour leader passes around samples of jewellery and leathergoods from famous Florentine producers that she will personally introduce us to before we’re released for a couple of hours with a thoughtfully prepared menu of Florence’s famous galleries. We get to pick the one we want to visit, and also get to pay. The Uffizi is a reminder that two-thirds of the world’s art treasure came out of Italy ... but it could do with a Jackson Pollock.

The bus drops me at a cab rank for my airport connection. I farewell my fellow travellers and tour leader with mixed emotions ... and they me. They’re still together all the way to Sorrento and the Capri Island Cruise, Euro 32, weather permitting.

The report card will say the concept of travelling halfway around the globe for overnight stays in the world’s great cities has limited appeal, but if you’re travelling alone the company and organisation of tours like this are a comfort. Our leader ran a taut tour and dispensed a wealth of useful information, and the specialist guides were excellent. The accommodation reflected the character of the destinations but beware the energetically recommended optional excursions which I calculated would add Euro 259 to the cost of the tour. And the wheels on the bus go round and round ... and round.