Vanlife in italy
- hollie-mae1
- Oct 3, 2023
- 2 min read
How do I begin to explain our Italian experience?!
We spent two weeks travelling along the west of Italy in our campervan, exploring Tuscany and Liguria, plus the cities of Milan, Siena, Florence and Rome. We saw many landmarks and fell in love with the varied architecture; Italy truly is a stunning country.
But vanlife in Italy was honestly quite hard and at times, we felt out of place and unwelcome. We didn’t know what to expect of Italian campsites but we discovered that camping is a big deal in Italy! Italians themselves travel to different regions for the summer, living in caravans turned into homes with permanent structures built around them.
We chatted to many locals during our time in Italy and found that some felt that foreigners like ourselves should not be allowed to camp on their sites- they felt that their second homes were being disturbed by our presence. I can understand this, especially when you see how close the community is that they build on these campsites.
We developed a deep understanding of the ways of life in Italy during our time there and although we will definitely visit again and travel along the east and down to the south, we know what to expect for next time and will perhaps make different plans as a result.
One thing to note for your future Italian travels is about beaches- most are not free! We learnt this the hard way, as we plotted ourselves on the beach and could not find any sunbeds available to rent. After trying various ways to rent some loungers, we gave up and plonked ourselves on some plastic chairs whilst watching the children frolic in the sea. Jamie went to buy some drinks and lunch and while he was gone, an Italian man forcibly removed me from the chair! He couldn't speak English, I can't speak Italian, so I assumed the chairs must be for rent too and placed all of our things away from the chairs and sat on the sand. He then took my arm, standing me up and pointed to his left and said 'free beach'. I soon realised that we couldn't even be in this part of the beach as we hadn't paid. Crazy! Rather than trying to work out who or how to pay, I called Jamie back and we took the children back to the van, deciding that this wasn't the day for the beach. Back at the van and after a quick google, I realised that most Italian beaches have a section that is 'free', which means the rest of the beach requires booking a space with a sun lounger in advance. So if you plan to visit the beach on your future Italian holiday, make sure you do some research first.
We stayed at Camping continental in Tuscany which has its own private beach. However, to stay on the main beach and hire two sun loungers, we paid 35€ for the day... crazy!
Here are the different campsites we stayed at during our time in Italy:
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