If you love links style golf like me, this time of year is both a blessing and a curse.

Last October, I spent a week cycling through Piedmont with a group of family and friends, and it quickly became one of the most memorable travel experiences I've had in Italy.

That's a meaningful statement for someone who has made nearly twenty trips there. But Piedmont earns it.

The Setting: The Langhe by Bike

Piedmont sits in Italy's northwest, bordered by the Alps to the north and west, and the Apennines to the south. The Langhe — the rolling hill country south of Alba — is its heart: a landscape of vineyards, hilltop villages, forests of white truffle oak, and narrow roads that seem designed specifically for cycling. Which, in a sense, they were. The region has been farmed and traveled by foot and wheel for centuries, and the roads reflect that — winding, human-scaled, logical.

What stood out most about cycling here was the rhythm of it. Long, winding climbs and descents with modest grades and perfect pavement. Almost no traffic — except for the occasional wild boar crossing, which keeps you attentive. Small villages and castles appearing around each turn, as if someone placed them there for effect. Espresso stops in quiet piazzas where the barista knows every person who walks through the door. Views stretching across Barolo and Barbaresco wine country that make you stop pedaling, just to look.

This is not aggressive cycling terrain. It's contemplative cycling terrain — the kind that gives you time to think and something worth thinking about.

The Base: Relais San Maurizio

We based our stay at Relais San Maurizio, a former Augustinian monastery perched above the village of Santo Stefano Belbo in the Moscato wine hills. The conversion from monastery to luxury hotel is one of those projects that seems obvious in retrospect — the architecture, the cloister, the silence, the views — and yet takes a particular vision to execute well. Relais San Maurizio has a Michelin-starred restaurant, a spa carved into the hillside, and the particular atmosphere of a place that has been used for contemplation for several centuries. It holds on to that quality.

This kind of accommodation does something important for an active trip: it makes the recovery part of the experience. After a long day in the saddle, arriving at a place that asks nothing of you except to sit down and eat well is its own kind of reward. That's L'Equilibrio — the balance — in practice.

The Wine: Barolo, Barbaresco, and Beyond

Piedmont is Italy's most serious wine region. It produces Barolo and Barbaresco — both made from the Nebbiolo grape, both among the most age-worthy and complex wines in the world — along with Barbera d'Asti, Dolcetto, Moscato d'Asti, and a dozen other varieties that rarely leave the region in quantity. Cycling through these hills and then drinking the wines made from the vines you just rode through is a particular kind of pleasure.

One highlight of the trip was visiting Agricola Marrone, a family-run winery in La Morra in the heart of the Barolo zone. We toured the cantina, tasted through several vintages, and then had lunch on their rooftop terrace overlooking the vineyards — a meal that lasted the better part of the afternoon, which is exactly the right amount of time. The wine was serious. The food was regional. The view was the Langhe in October, which is to say it was remarkable.

Barolo is commonly called "the king of wines" — which sounds like marketing until you taste a well-aged bottle and understand why someone said it.

Why Piedmont Over Tuscany?

Piedmont may not receive the same international attention as Tuscany — and that is, at the moment, its advantage. The roads are quieter. The towns are less oriented toward tourism. The prices are more reasonable. The wine is just as extraordinary, possibly more so.

For a traveler interested in cycling, wine, cuisine, and a slower pace, I think Piedmont is one of the most compelling regions in Italy — and consistently undervalued precisely because it doesn't work as hard to be discovered.

October is, in my view, the ideal time to visit. The harvest is underway in the vineyards, the truffle season is beginning, the summer crowds are gone, and the light on the hills in the afternoon is the kind of light that makes you want to stay.

What a Trip Here Looks Like

A well-structured Piedmont cycling trip typically centers on the Langhe — the area between Alba, Barolo, Barbaresco, and Asti — with routes calibrated to the group's fitness and ambition. The terrain is genuinely varied: you can design a trip around easy valley riding, moderate hill climbs, or proper multi-hour efforts depending on who's in the group.

The non-cycling days matter just as much. A truffle hunt in the hills around Alba. A cooking class focused on tajarin and agnolotti. A tasting at one of the region's great producers. Evenings at the kind of restaurant that doesn't need a famous name because the locals already know where it is.

Relais San Maurizio is one natural base. There are others — smaller, simpler, equally rooted in the landscape — depending on what the group is looking for.

If Piedmont is on your radar, it should move up the list. I'd love to help plan it.

Reach out through the contact page — October fills quickly, and this is the kind of trip worth building carefully.

Roads Less Traveled | Cycling Through Le Marche, Italy

Some destinations are personal.

Le Marche is that place for me. My family roots trace back to this region — my grandparents, who spoke mostly Italian to each other, peppered our home with the word "Marchigian." On the table were dishes I knew by their dialect names before I ever knew their Italian ones. That was my first introduction to Le Marche, long before I ever set foot there.

I've now been back twice. This August, I'm going for the third time — exploring new territory in the south, on a five-day cycling loop through some of the region's most beautiful and least-traveled corners. And I keep asking myself why more travelers haven't discovered this place.

What Le Marche Is — and Why It Matters

Le Marche occupies the central Adriatic coast of Italy, sandwiched between Emilia-Romagna to the north and Abruzzo to the south, with the Apennine Mountains rising to the west and the Adriatic Sea to the east. It is, geographically, one of the most varied regions in Italy — beaches, rolling hills, medieval hilltop towns, and mountain terrain that feels like another world entirely, sometimes all within the same day's ride.

What it is not: crowded. While summer tourists fill Tuscany, the Amalfi Coast, and the Cinque Terre, Le Marche moves at its own pace. It always has. The roads are quieter. The towns are less aware of being picturesque. The restaurants are cooking for locals first. That's what makes it feel like the real Italy — the one that existed before the guidebooks arrived.

The Route: Five Days Through the South

This August's loop takes in a stretch of the region I haven't fully explored: south from Fermo along the Adriatic, then inland through the hills, up toward the mountains, and back again.

Fermo and Torre di Palme — Fermo is a hilltop city with a remarkable Roman cistern beneath it, a cathedral, and the kind of main square where nothing seems urgent. Torre di Palme, a few kilometers toward the sea, is one of the smallest and most beautiful villages in Italy — a cluster of stone buildings on a promontory above the Adriatic, with views that stop you mid-pedal.

Campofilone — A name known to pasta obsessives. Maccheroncini di Campofilone — egg pasta cut so thin it almost dissolves in the sauce — has been made here for centuries. We'll make it. There's no other way to understand it properly.

Grottamare and the Adriatic coast — A quieter version of the Italian beach experience. Elegant, unpretentious, entirely local in character.

Ascoli Piceno — The architectural jewel of Le Marche. The Piazza del Popolo — built in travertine marble, lined with Gothic and Renaissance arcades — is among the most beautiful town squares in Italy. Ascoli is also the home of olive ascolane: giant green olives stuffed with spiced meat, breaded, and fried. They are, without qualification, one of the great things to eat in Italy. We'll be staying at Palazzo dei Mercanti, a converted medieval convent in the historic center — the kind of property that makes you want to stay an extra day.

Offida — A small hilltop town known for its lacemaking, its carnival, and its wine. The Rosso Piceno produced in this zone — a blend of Montepulciano and Sangiovese — is serious, underpriced, and pairs well with whatever the kitchen produces. We'll sip some.

Communanza and Castellucio — The route climbs into the Sibillini Mountains toward Castellucio, the high alpine plain that floats above the surrounding valleys at 1,450 meters. In early summer the plain blooms into a carpet of wildflowers that is genuinely difficult to describe. By August, the flowers are gone, but the landscape — vast, quiet, exposed — remains one of the most singular things I've seen in Italy.

Cycling Le Marche

The roads through Le Marche's interior are among the best cycling roads in Italy — varied terrain, light traffic, and a landscape that changes constantly. The coast road offers flatter riding; the inland hills and mountain approaches offer everything from moderate climbs to serious efforts. The route can be shaped around fitness level and preference.

Guiding this trip is Luca Pelliccetti of CTF Travel, based in Fermo — as skilled a local cycling guide as you'll find anywhere in Italy, and an even better ambassador for everything that makes this region warm and genuine. He knows these roads the way you know your own neighborhood.

Why Le Marche Belongs on Your Italy List

For a traveler who wants to go deeper into Italy — who has done Tuscany and the Amalfi Coast, who wants something more real, more local, more surprising — Le Marche delivers consistently. The food is extraordinary. The cycling is excellent. The towns are alive rather than preserved. And the people, who haven't spent thirty years managing tourists, are simply happy to see you.

My family knew something when they left this place and still talked about it every day. The region has that quality — it stays with you.

This is part of my ongoing effort to go deeper into Italy's lesser-known destinations, bringing back firsthand knowledge to design the best possible active experiences for my clients. Le Marche is not a compromise or an alternative to somewhere better. It is somewhere better.

If Le Marche has been on your radar — or if this is the first time you've heard of it — I'd love to talk about building a trip there.

Reach out through the contact page. There's a lot more to come from Le Marche.

It's been over ten years since my last golf trip to Ireland — and much has changed.

I'm currently planning a return trip for 2027 with the same group of friends who once took on the great links courses of southwest Ireland: Lahinch, Tralee, Doonbeg, Waterville, Old Head, and Ballybunion. While our golf games didn't always hold up against the Irish wind and demanding links conditions, the trip remains one of my favorite travel experiences to this day.

As I plan this return journey — now through the lens of a travel advisor — it's striking to see how dramatically Ireland golf tourism has evolved over the past decade. And equally striking to see how much has stayed exactly the same.

What Has Changed: Planning, Demand, and Cost

The demand for premier Irish links golf has exploded internationally. When I last visited in 2014, advance planning certainly mattered. Today, the most sought-after courses and peak-season tee times often need to be secured a year or more in advance — especially for groups. Ballybunion, Lahinch, Old Head, and Doonbeg in particular fill up quickly. If you're planning a buddies trip for summer 2027, the conversation needs to start now.

Greens fees have risen significantly as Ireland has firmly established itself among the world's elite golf destinations. At many premier links courses, peak-season rounds now exceed €300–€400 before caddies and other costs are considered. The total investment for a week of serious Irish links golf has grown considerably — which makes thoughtful planning and prioritization more important than ever.

The southwest corridor — County Kerry, Clare, and Limerick — has always been the heart of Irish golf, and it remains so. But the planning window and the price point have fundamentally changed. Working with an advisor who knows which courses are genuinely worth the premium, when to go, how to sequence the routing, and how to build the non-golf days around the experience makes a real difference in what you get for your investment.

What Has Not Changed: The Reason You Go

Despite the increased popularity and rising costs, the essential magic of golfing in Ireland remains unchanged — and that's the honest reason anyone should make the trip.

Golf without pretense. Even the most legendary Irish links still feel welcoming, relaxed, and deeply connected to local character. There's no stuffiness at the first tee, no dress-code theater. The caddie who walked Lahinch in 1994 is probably still walking it. The pint after the round is poured by someone who wants to hear how your day went.

Golf that rewards imagination. Irish links golf is less about precision yardages and more about creativity, adaptability, and embracing whatever conditions each day brings. The wind changes your club selection, your ball flight, your strategy. You can't just hit the shot your GPS tells you to hit — you have to think. That is, for the right golfer, deeply satisfying.

Scenery that puts the round in perspective. Shifting Atlantic skies, towering dunes, rugged coastline, and rolling green landscapes create an atmosphere unlike anywhere else in golf. Standing on the 17th at Old Head, the Atlantic on three sides, you stop caring about your scorecard for a moment. That doesn't happen everywhere.

Hospitality that extends well beyond the course. The villages, pubs, music, and warmth of the Irish people become just as memorable as the rounds themselves. A proper post-round evening in Lahinch or Ballybunion — dinner, a session at a traditional music pub, a late Guinness — is as much a part of the trip as the golf.

Camaraderie. This is what a buddies trip is actually for. Shared meals, long drives between courses, stories retold late into the evening, the friend who made a double on 18 and blamed the wind for three days. Ireland is an exceptional setting for all of it.

How I Think About Planning an Ireland Golf Trip

A well-planned Ireland golf trip has a shape to it. The courses need to be sequenced thoughtfully — some days are longer drives, some courses are better suited to fresh legs, and the non-golf experiences in between matter as much as the rounds.

The southwest loop is the classic foundation: Lahinch and Doonbeg in Clare, Ballybunion, Tralee and Waterville in Kerry. Not every group needs to play all of them. Part of what I do as an advisor is help clients decide which five or six courses make sense for their skill level, schedule, and budget — and build the rest of the trip around those anchors.

Accommodation choices shape the experience significantly. Staying in a character inn in Lahinch is a different trip than staying at Doonbeg Lodge. Both are right for different groups.

And timing matters. May and September offer the best balance of weather, daylight, and crowd levels. June, July and August are peak demand — beautiful but busier and more expensive.

For 2027, the window to plan is now. The courses that matter book early, and the best accommodations go with them.

A Final Note

Yes, Ireland golf has become more competitive, more expensive, and more globally recognized than it was a decade ago. But for a group of friends who love the game and the experience around it, I still believe it remains one of the great travel experiences anywhere in the world.

I'm planning to go back. If you've been thinking about it, let's talk about building it together.

Reach out through the contact page — a trip like this takes some lead time, and that's exactly when the planning is most enjoyable.

Why Italy? Twenty Trips and Counting.

People often ask why Italy is the heart of my travel business — and why, after nearly twenty trips, I keep going back as a traveler myself.  My answer goes beyond the food, the wine, the landscapes, and the history, as extraordinary as all of that is.

It's the way Italians live.

There is something about the Italian way of life that resets me every time I visit — a rhythm, a relationship with time and enjoyment and human connection that makes me pause and reflect on my own priorities.  Coming from a culture that rewards hustle and achievement, it's easy to lose sight of the slower, richer things.  Italy has a way of bringing them back into focus.  The long lunches. The unhurried conversations.  The pride in doing things well. The instinct to gather rather than scatter.

After twenty trips — cycling through Piedmont, hiking the Cinque Terre, eating my way through Sicily, watching the Palio in Siena — I keep arriving at the same conclusion.  Five qualities explain why Italy is my travel niche, why I've built a business around it, and why I keep going back.

La Passione — Passion

Italians bring genuine enthusiasm to everything: food, wine, craft, conversation, family, daily life.  It's not performance.  It's a way of being.  You feel it from the pizzaiolo stoking his wood-fired oven at 6 in the morning, and from the winemaker in Barolo who speaks about his vineyard the way others speak about their children.

I've watched a cheesemaker in Pienza explain the difference between two types of Pecorino with the intensity of someone arguing a legal case.  I've sat with a ceramicist in Siena who could trace the origins of every pattern on her pieces back three generations. This isn't nostalgia — it's a living relationship with craft.  La Passione is the reason Italian products, food, and wine carry a quality that is genuinely difficult to replicate elsewhere.

La Famiglia — Family

Life's best moments happen around a table, with the people who matter most. Italy never lets you forget that.  The Sunday lunch isn't just a meal — it's a ritual, a gathering, a weekly reminder that true connection takes time.

One of the most consistent things I notice in Italy is how many generations share the same table.  Grandparents, parents, children, cousins — together, unhurried, for two or three hours.  It reorients your sense of what a meal is for.  Cycling through Le Marche or sitting in a small agriturismo in Umbria, you feel this at every turn.  Food is not fuel.  It is the occasion itself.

La Bellezza — Beauty

A country that treats beauty as a civic responsibility — from Michelangelo's David to a perfectly pulled espresso to the way an elderly man in Verona dresses for a Tuesday morning.  Italians believe that how something looks and feels is inseparable from how it functions.

This extends to the landscape.  Driving the hill roads of Tuscany or descending into a Sicilian coastal town at golden hour, you are repeatedly confronted with the feeling that someone arranged all of this on purpose.  They didn't.  But generations of careful stewardship — of buildings, of towns, of the land — have produced a country where beauty is the baseline, not the exception.

La Creatività — Creativity

The culture that gave the world the Renaissance, Armani, Ferrari, and Fellini hasn't stopped innovating.  Design and individual expression run deep. Walk into any small workshop — a leather atelier in Florence, a ceramics studio in Deruta, a glass-blowing furnace in Murano — and you'll find artistry treated as a serious pursuit, not a hobby.

What strikes me is that this creativity is not reserved for famous makers. The local restaurateur who redesigns his menu each season around what the market offers. The family winemaker experimenting with a single-vineyard bottling. Everywhere you look in Italy, someone is making something with care and originality.  It makes the country feel alive in a particular way.

L'Equilibrio — Balance

This is the one I admire most, and the one that most directly shapes how I plan trips. A fundamentally different perspective on how to balance work, family, leisure, and quality of life. Italians don't just talk about balance — they've built a culture around it.  The shop that closes for three hours at lunch isn't inefficient.  It's making a statement about what a good life looks like.

L'Equilibrio is the organizing principle underneath everything I plan at Sentiero.  It's why I pair hard cycling days with excellent restaurants.  It's why I build rest into itineraries. It's why an active trip to Italy should never feel like a race. The effort and the enjoyment are not in competition — they complete each other.

What This Means for How I Plan

These aren't just things I observe as a traveler.  They're qualities I try to weave into every itinerary I design for clients traveling to Italy — so they come home with more than photos.  They come home with a different way of seeing.

A trip built around La Passione might trace Italy's greatest food and wine producers, from Barolo to Modena to the Sicilian coast. A trip built around L'Equilibrio might pair a week of cycling through Piedmont with long evenings at a converted monastery. A trip built around La Famiglia might center on a cooking class in Le Marche with a family who has been making fresh pasta the same way for four generations.

Italy rewards the traveler who goes with intention.  My job is to help you find yours.

If Italy has been on your mind, I'd love to help you plan your own chapter there. Reach out through the contact page — the conversation is where it starts.

You run five days over and through the Dolomites. Then you sleep in a five-star hotel.  This is not a contradiction.

It is, in fact, the point.

I am in the early planning stages of a 2027 trip for myself and a group of running club friends — a trail running adventure tackling sections of the Alta Via delle Leggende, the "High Route of Legends." Five days, starting in Alta Badia in the heart of Ladin culture, threading through the Puez-Odle Natural Park, climbing above 3,000 meters across the Sella Massif to the summit of Piz Boé, then finishing beneath the glaciers of the south walls of the Marmolada — the highest peak in the Dolomites. This is skyrunning terrain: high-altitude ridges, scree descents, aided passages with cables and ladders through the Pale di San Martino where the word "trail" becomes generous.

Then, at the end of it: Como Alpina Dolomites. A five-star hotel. A pool. An alpine meadow panorama. A spa. A Negroni. A Michelin-starred dinner.

The Route: Alta Via delle Leggende

The Alta Via 2 — dubbed the "High Route of Legends" — is the more technical and demanding sibling to the classic Alta Via 1. Running north to south from Alta Badia (1,226m) to the Primiero Valley, it stays at elevation throughout, frequently reaching above 2,900 meters. The route passes through the Puez-Odle Natural Park, across the fortress-shaped Sella Massif, and beneath the Marmolada's enormous south face. In the Pale di San Martino, the landscape turns lunar — vast white limestone plateaus where aided pathways equipped with cables and ladders demand sure-footedness and a head for heights.

For a trail running group, this is exceptional terrain: technically challenging, visually dramatic, and culturally rich. The Dolomites were declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2009, and the Alta Via 2 passes through their most iconic geological features. Rifugios — traditional Alpine mountain huts — appear throughout the route, offering warm meals and shelter at the end of each day's run.

The Recovery: Como Alpina Dolomites

Como Alpina Dolomites sits in the meadows of the Alpe di Siusi — the largest high-altitude Alpine plateau in Europe — surrounded by the very peaks the trail crosses above. The property combines five-star amenities with a setting that earns the description "spectacular" without trying very hard. A pool. A full spa. Michelin-starred dining. The kind of food and wine that tastes better because you've done something to deserve it.

I've been to the Dolomites several times — mostly for easy mountain biking in the Alpe di Siusi when the wildflowers were blooming, or for difficult climbs up famous mountain passes on a road bike until my legs were cooked and my lungs were empty. But planning this trail running trip has meant going deeper — engaging with a local tour operator who knows every inch of the Dolomite trails, and meeting with the Director of Global Sales for Como Hotels to talk through what this pairing might look like. Both understood immediately. They don't need the explanation.

That's because they know what I believe: the greatest luxury you can give a tired body is the rest it has earned.

L'Equilibrio: Why This Pairing Is Not a Coincidence

That's the Yin and the Yang of it. Not two separate products for two separate people. One complete thing. You wouldn't appreciate the Weiss Bier in the mountain rifugio as much without the 3,000-foot climb preceding it. Some clients come wanting to push themselves. Some come wanting to be pampered. The best trips do both.

This is what I think of as L'Equilibrio — the balance — the organizing principle underneath everything I plan at Sentiero. The balance between action and inaction. Progress and regress. Striving and yielding.  Body and mind.  

It is my sincere hope that trips like this remind us that our path is not always as linear as we'd like.  It's up to us to embrace the complete cycle.

The Dolomites, more than anywhere I know, make this easy to understand. The mountains demand something of you. Then they give it back — in every direction you look.

Is This Trip Right for You?

The trail running version of this itinerary requires a solid base of aerobic fitness and comfort with technical mountain terrain — sustained climbs, rocky descents, and exposed passages at altitude. The hiking version of the Alta Via delle Leggende is accessible to strong recreational hikers; the trail running pace compresses the same terrain into fewer, harder days.

The luxury component requires nothing except a willingness to enjoy the fruits of your effort.

This is a 2027 trip, which means there is time to train for it, plan it properly, and build it around your schedule. If you're thinking about something like this, I'd love to start the conversation now — the earlier we plan, the better the result.

[Reach out through the contact page or email me directly at tom@huffmantravel.com.]