Culture and Culinary Treats - A Romantic Trip to Southern Italy

Ten days through southern Italy designed for two, with the walking, the boat and the cooking doing more work than the driving.

Praiano opens it with three nights on the Amalfi Coast, which is the right choice of base because it is a working village rather than a resort. A boat takes in Capri and the coves along the way, and the Path of the Gods is the highlight on foot: four hours from Bomerano to Nocelle along a mountain path several hundred metres above the sea, with the coast laid out below the whole way.

The hire car is collected at Salerno for the drive inland to Matera, where a single night is enough to see the Sassi but not really enough to absorb them, since it is among the longest continuously inhabited places on earth.

Puglia takes three nights on the coast. Locorotondo and Martina Franca supply the Baroque, Alberobello has its streets of trulli, conical limestone houses built without mortar and now UNESCO protected, and there is a Puglian cooking class, which in this region means vegetables, orecchiette and olive oil rather than anything heavy. Lecce closes the trip with two nights and a private tour of the cathedral, the facade of Santa Croce and the sunken Roman amphitheatre in the main square. Original Travel include the hire car, accommodation, the boat trip, the cooking class and private tours, concierge access, a 24-hour helpline and carbon absorption. Flights and most meals are separate. Prices run from 6,050 to 9,650 pounds per person, so season and hotel choice move this one a great deal.