Surviving Tuscany
Sunday Espresso X.
Buona domenica!
It faded a bit, but I still get this: “Oh, you live in Tuscany!! How amazing that must be!!” People assume this was on purpose. Oh boy…
We started slow traveling in Italy in 2021, during the pandemic. A month in Florence, two in Rome. We came back that November, planned a winter in Palermo, and ended up in Rome for almost a year. Then we went home to Budapest, packed up our lives, rented out our apartment, and put a “?” at the end of the sentence “for how long will we stay.”
We found a place in the mountains first. I’ve covered that here. Then we moved down to the seaside, to Marina di Pietrasanta, and somewhere along the way decided that no matter the cost, we stay. We sold the apartment back home and made it official a year later.
There was no single moment when we sat down and said, “hmmm, let’s move to Tuscany!” The original Airbnb up in the mountains? We booked it because it was dirt cheap. The other option was Umbria.
So we only realized how messed up we are after our first full summer here, in 2024. Not just anywhere in Tuscany. Versilia, one of the most prolific beach destinations in Italy, is half an hour from Pisa and an hour from Florence. The heart of the Beast. The Big Swallowing Dirty Hole Of Mass Tourism.
From that summer on, our main goal was figuring out how to survive Tuscany during peak season. That’s what today’s Espresso is about, because our solutions might help you too.
1
I am horrible, sorry, but our first solution was to put our home on HomeExchange and spend July and August in the British countryside. Our apartment is 50 meters from the sea, four rooms, all with A/C, a huge terrace with the Apuan Alps on one side and the sea on the other. Via HomeExchange, which trades for a countryside mansion in Britain. Last time it was Cambridge and the Fens. We loved it. I lived in London for years, so Britain has a very special place in my heart.
So the first solution is: don’t come in July and August at all. Especially in August, that’s the worst idea. I wrote a full manual on when to come, but the short version is: ask yourself if you want to swim in the sea. If yes, May to September. If not, literally any other time is better. No heatwaves, mild temperatures, most tourist traps closed, fewer people. My personal best months are May and September, but I also love November, when everything is closed. Italy is mostly an open-air museum anyway, who cares? And the actual museums stay open.
2
Another solution is not to time within the year, but within the day. I mentioned this in my piece on San Gimignano. That town is the most photographed in Tuscany, and it is small. One piazza, maybe five streets. You feel the masses. And if there’s a ranking among tourists (there is), San Gimignano gets the worst ones. The bus crowd. Round-trip from Florence, three towns, one winery, one cooking class, all in a day. The restaurants cater to them, which is why it’s normal to see a Tuscan meat platter with spaghetti bolognese at noon. Yukh.
But the bus crowds disappear after 6-7 pm. They crawl back to their Best Westerns or Four Seasons. Dinner is included in the room, thanks to God! I kid you not, there are restaurants in these towns where the entire menu changes in the evening. They ditch the food made for people wearing baseball caps and start selling local dishes. After 7 pm, the town takes back its own.
So, suggestion: sleep in town for a day or two. Do day trips to less famous places, and spend the evening in town after the people who think cargo pants are “practical” have disappeared.
3
There’s an ongoing joke between my wife and me whenever we pick a town for a day trip. Sophie: “I’m sure they have a piazza in the middle of the town.” Me: “Yeah, don’t forget the church and the pizzeria named Carlino’s, right next to the bar Gabbiano (if it’s on the sea), or bar Piccolo Coniglio (if it’s in the mountains).”
Truth is, after you see 100 towns in Italy, they start to look the same. Sure, some are unique. San Gimignano has its towers. But ask me for a hilltop Tuscan town with medieval walls, a piazza, a church, and some local restaurants? I can give you 100. If you don’t live here and this is all new to you, you will find them all lovely and perfect. Which they are, by the way.
So my third tip is to accept that there is more to Tuscany than Montepulciano, Volterra, or even the Cinque Terre towns of Liguria. Almost every famous town has alternatives offering 90% of the same experience with 80% fewer people. And remember, the primary goal is to avoid mass tourism, because it kills everything. The experience, the honesty of a place, the pricing, the locality.
4
The last tip is actually me, or the very reason publications like this exist. I’ve been blunt so far. If possible, I’m going to be even worse now. Sorry.
When people say “ask a local,” it’s not just an empty marketing trick. Well, I’m a marketer by trade, so I know sometimes it is. But it reflects one single truth: most information about a country written in English is absolutely bonkers bullsh-t crap. There are exceptions: high-value editorial pieces, The New York Times, maybe, some niche magazines. The general travel content in lifestyle magazines and generic blogs? Oh my freakin’ God, baby Jesus. Worse than TikTok. No, there’s nothing worse than TikTok. But you get the idea.
Gordon Ramsay puts butter in an Italian meat sauce to “give it more body.” No Italian does that. Butter for cooking may exist in Piedmont only because it’s next to the French border, and French people, well, they love their butter just as Brits do. I respect the principle fully, by the way. If I want to cook a Mexican dish, I go to a random taco Pablo on YouTube, they are the best. Chinese? Same. Indian? If it’s an old Indian lady who’s speaking English with a horrendous Gujarati accent, she is almost certainly the best cook on the planet when it comes to Chicken Tikka. If I want to cook Scandinavian, Dutch, or Canadian food? Oh, come on, why would I want to do that…
This is all true with information as well.
Mass international tourism barely existed here until the 70s. Almost every place that’s popular now is popular because some English-language source pointed at it (except the obvious ones like Rome, Florence, Venice). I honestly don’t get why the Cinque Terre and not any of the towns nearby with similar settings.
Meanwhile, Italy has an almost equivalent level of domestic tourism. Most Italians don’t speak English, and all their information is informal. A relative with a house by the sea. The same hotel for decades, because why change? It is very rare for a place to be popular with Jimmy and Jennifer and favored by Marco and Francesca. Not a coincidence.
TL;DR tip: read content written about Italy by those who actually live here. They know better than anyone else, just by the sheer amount of time spent locally. Or read Italian, go to the source. I mentioned our local Paspartú magazine in Versilia, which we use to check local events and places. It’s in Italian, obviously. And I also do read the local paper, mostly to practice the language, but also to check for events.
This is the personal purpose for doing this publication, at least for me. If I can help just one person avoid an overcrowded place, I help not just that person, but also the locals, who can serve others in a more sustainable way and maybe preserve their local way of life.
Because that local way of life was the original reason why others all around the world came here. If that is lost, all you have left is an empty shell of a theme park. And we already have more than enough Disneylands.
Peter
Pietrasanta, 5 July 2026
What’s new on the page
Mainland Tuscany, finally
Some of you asked why I publish almost daily. Simple: I have years to catch up on, and I write in batches. Once I’m caught up with my memories, I’ll slow down and write only about recent things.
Meanwhile, I finally started pushing out my mainland Tuscany experiences. The places everyone already has a picture of. Nobody knows the Lunigiana, but say Chianti and everyone suddenly has a memory. Writing about these is a different challenge, so I’ll try to tell you how to enjoy them despite their popularity.
More next week, but for now:
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I started learning Italian after moving here. Restaurants run on English, but anything past ordering lunch doesn't. Before I hired a teacher, Babbel did most of the work, more real learning than Duolingo's gamified fake learning. I'm a Babbel affiliate, but I only point you to things I've used and liked.