Peaceful Calabria

Come to Tropea if you need some peace and quiet. You won't have to fight through crowds of tourists, there isn't a checklist of must-see sights, but there is natural beauty in abundance.

Quick Tips:

Spend a few days here after visiting the chaotic Neapolitan Riviera to recover. Bring that book you've always meant to read.

Best Way To Get Around:

Travel by train. They are a cheap way of getting around, and you can get north to Naples or south to Reggio di Calabria (and ferries for Sicily) very easily.

For a 1-star hotel, the Miramare is actually quite nice. But be warned--the owner doesn't have much patience with helpless foreigners so practice your "una camera doppia's" (double room) before you get here.

Breakfast is extremely simple--a hot drink and some pastries--but it's nice enough.

The best bit about this hotel is that our room had a balcony with a magnificent view overlooking the beach and across to the island of Stromboli.

The room was basic, but had an en-suite bathroom and cool, marble floors. Not all the rooms have a view though, so ask to see what you're getting (another couple we met had a less enticing view of a laundry instead).

There are three main beaches in Tropea, though really, it's one line of sand interrupted--once by a group of rocks that you can walk around, and once by an island with a disused monastery on it. It's a bit like Tenby with sunshine!

The sand is golden and soft, but take care of the water--Calabria's coast can be pretty violent. The slope of the beach under the water is pretty steep and if there have been any storms anywhere nearby, the waves get really strong.

This bit of Calabria is described by the locals as the "purple coast," and the water is a beautiful inky blue. Contrast that with the golden sand beaches and sandstone cliffs and you have a truly beautiful spot for a doze in the sun.

Walk down the high street of Tropea, away from the railway station and you will eventually walk off a 100-foot cliff--the road simply ends where the floor no longer is.

Tropea, from the seaward side, is an incredible sight. The town is built into and onto a high sandstone promontory, with doors, windows, and bits of old buildings popping out of the sandstone cliffs at random places.

Many of the old buildings that still exist (a fair few have fallen onto the beaches below over the years) were built for religious orders, but these are mostly private homes now. You can only wonder how much these people pay in insurance every year. Especially when you consider that the base of the cliff is home to dozens of shrines to people who have "fallen" off Tropea over the years.

Street cafes line a wider bit of the high street which passes for a town square. This is where the locals come to relax, meet, drink, and more often than not, drive slowly around the extremely small one-way system being "seen." Although this doesn't sound like much fun, everyone's very friendly and it's a cheap, relaxing place to hang around.

Tropea is stuffed full of gastronomic shops. The best local produce is definitely the sundried chillies and tomatoes that you will actually see hanging on strings from shops, houses, and even washing lines all over the town. You can also get really good pasta sauces made from the chillies--the pasta arrabiata down here is as hot as hell. The quality is absolutely wonderful, as everything is very recently and very locally made, and you can buy a bag of dried chillies (about a 5-year supply unless you run a curry house) for a couple of Euros.