The Flip Flop Forecast // 05.24
Spring hath sprung, finally! Let's go to the beach (on a budget), plan a feast for the tummy and your soul in Umbria & Izzy Letty guest edits.
Let me tell you, Spring is a busy old time to be a travel agent so forgive the tardy receipt of this months Flip Flop. Whilst security queues at Heathrow have been growing with the pale and pasty, passport control struggles to identify the rouge returners. It’s chaos. I love it.
I have saved you from the long whimsical thought piece I had written on ‘rec-culture’ having been all consumed by
recent reflection on it. Luckily for you, it was after my boyfriends third attempt to change the conversation I realised my opinion wasn’t that interesting at all.So let’s penguin dive into some good old fashioned and non affiliated inspiration from me to you.
Beach Hotels Under £200 a night in Summer*
*Because there is no joy in knowing how much a seaside destination costs in March
Casita Casita Lindos, Rhodes from £200 a night
A home away from home with just seven Suites and two generous hosts in a car free coastal village, where donkeys and wild goats outnumber locals
Hotel le Sud, Juan les Pins from £150 a night
C’est chic! Croissants for breakfast and a rooftop bar for Provençal wine at sunset
Blue Sand Boutique Hotel, Folegandros from £200 a night
10 metres from Agali Beach and white-washed like all great Greek hotels should be
Comete, Brittany from £130 a night
A seaside townhouse a breast stroke from the sea with a bistro serving the best of its bounty
The Windmill, Kimolos from £140 a night
Mamma Mia but make it an old Cycladic windmill on the island of Kimolos (best beaches in the Cyclades)
Umbria Travel Guide
An Umbrian Guide for you from me, with love and local wine.
A woman is waving a card reader at us. For the third time today, our Italian fails us. After a short game of charades she leaves and soon reappears with some Aperol Spritz. She didn’t seem in the mood for another round of charades, so a bowl of focaccia nibs suffices for our lunch.
A town without English menus and waiters without patience for language barriers is an increasingly rare Italian predicament. After all, this is a country where tourists easily outnumber locals during much of the summer.
Eluding the spotlight, Umbria retains a rustic legacy of rural idyll. The pace of life is slower - avoiding Tuscan manicures, Umbria prefers to grow wild, leaning into natural beauty. Medieval villages peer over vineyards and ancient forests and wild flowers pepper the ground in spring, like a Milky Way on earth.
Best Time to Go
Spring for wild flowers (Norcia) and hiking (Via di Francesco and Monte Cucco Regional Park)
Autumn for wine (Orvieto), saffron (Città della Pieve), olive oil harvest (Trevi) and truffles (Norcia)
Summer can be stifling so make sure you have a pool
Hotels
£ Budget Borgo Della Marmotta // Relais Casamassima // Agriturismo Il Sarale
££ Boutique La Segreta // Tenuta di Murlo // Palazzo Seneca // Aethos Saragano
£££ Best Castello di Reschio // Vocabolo Moscatelli
Things to Do
Hike: National Parks - Monte Cucco, Monte Subasio and Monti Sibillini / Spello to Assisi along an ancient Roman Aqueduct / Spoleto - Norcia along an old railway track
Truffle Hunting: San Pietro a Pettine / Ristorante Piermarini
Wine Tasting: Paolo Bea in Montefalco / Tenuta Castelbuono Carapace in Bevagna / Tenimenti d’Alessandro in Cortona / Tiberi Vini Artigianali / Cantina Margò / Fattoria Mani di Luna / Madonna del Latte in Orvieto
Olive Oil Tasting: Montioni / Gaudenzi
Cheese & Wine Tasting: Calcabrina Farm / Cugusi Silvana
Visit: La Scarzuola - a 13th-century Franciscan monastery transformed into a surrealist architectural dreamscape in the 1950s singed with madness. La Scarzuola is a pilgrimage for the curious, to say the least
Missing the beach? Head to Lake Trasimeno, visit Citta della Pieve and Italy’s smallest alley, grab a local griddle bread sandwich at Faliero
Hilltop Towns & Villages to Visit
Spello / Solomeo / Assisi / Norcia / Deruta (ceramic shops) / Gubbio / Spoleto / Montone / Orvieto / Bevagna / Perugia / Trevi / Todi
Trattorias
Il Cappano / Osteria da Mamma Angela / La Cantina del Mercataccio / Faliero's
Restaurants
Ristorante I Sette Consoli / Osteria a Priori / Ada - woman run and Michelin starred
Guest Edit: Izzy Letty Potter & Globetrotter
I was lucky enough to live with this talented sun beam of a woman. Now her beautiful face doesn’t greet me at breakfast but her candlesticks do, thrown with her own fair hands. Influenced by the places she goes and the people she meets, come and spend five minutes with one of my sweetest and most talented friends.
Run-Don
I had a crazy idea when I was furloughed to be a running guide around London. The plan was to have pre-learnt fun facts to bamboozle runners with as we jogged by. If a know it all joined the tour, I would just run faster so they were too busy catching their breath to ask me anything outside my well rehearsed fast facts. Just for you, I am taking Run-Don International. Lace up, let’s Run-Venice. Walkers welcome.
Critical Advice: Do NOT attempt starting this run after 8am, you’ll loose an eye to the selfie stick wielders
Fast Facts as you zip by:
Why is the Bridge of Sighs called the Bridge of Sighs?
In popular folklore, it comes from the sighs of prisoners condemned to life sentences as they take in their last view of Venice from the tiny window in the bridge.
The happier legend surrounding the bridge is that if you kiss someone beneath the bridge at sunset (which you can only do on a gondola) you will love each other forever.
The spooky Ponte degli Scalzi
Some locals will tell you that this bridge is haunted by the ghosts of barefoot Carmelite monks (Scalzi) who once lived in the nearby church. Historically, crossing barefoot was considered good luck.
Rialto Market - Listen Up & Look Out
Listen out for the fishmongers who have a tradition of singing opera or Venetian folk songs while they work, especially early in the morning. Look out too for the market pigeon - Marco who is said to have a taste for fresh figs. Finally, look out for children pranking tourists with black ink from the squids being sold.
Peggy Guggenheim, a canines best friend
An avid dog lover, she had 14 Lhasa Apso dogs during her lifetime. In the garden of the palazzo she is buried next to her beloved pets.
Now, are you bamboozled?
First In(n) - The Rosewood Munich
I am just back from a weekend trip to the capital of Bavaria - Munich. In anticipation of frankfurters and trapped wind we were relieved to discover it was asparagus season. EVERYONE was feeding us asparagus. Asparagus with wurst, asparagus with bratwurst, asparagus with sauerkraut. I wouldn’t have been shocked to discover an asparagus spear adorning a cocktail as a stirrer.
Full of asparagus we next discovered our stay also coincided with Frühlingsfest (Springfest). I have never had much desire to experience Oktoberfest but here I was at the top of a rollercoaster sandwiched between five Germans in non-ironic lederhosen and trying not to myself in fear (particularly given my asparagus in take).
Munich is an easy city for exploring because there isn’t a bounty of things to box tick.
Drink a stein at Horbräuhaus München with the tourists
Drink a stein at Chinesischer Turm beer garden with the locals
Lunch on a jacket potato at Caspar Plautz in the Viktualienmarkt farmers market
Watch the surfers on the Eisbach wave in the Englischer Garten
Museum hop through Maxvorstadt where there is something for every interest
People watch - felt hats and leather short wearing men are a plenty
We were lucky enough to be staying at the newly opened Rosewood. After six years of renovations of the old city bank the hotel is gleaming. Beaming staff know their job is easy, the quality of everything does the talking. Reminders that you are in the capital of Bavaria are everywhere - historic characters of the city adorn the walls in contemporary art form and menus don’t shy away from local specialities.
I’ll have anything but the asparagus please.
From £800 a night Bed & Breakfast
Other hotels nurse a stein induced hangover in Munich:
££ The Flushing Meadows // Louis Hotel
£££ Rosewood Munich
I just landed in Puglia so no guesses where we will be going next month. Ciao for now.