The Aeolian Coast · Italy
The Aeolian Slow Coast
Nine days across four islands, at the speed of the boats
The shape of it
Salina, Lipari, Panarea and a night crossing to Stromboli, planned around the evening light rather than a list of sights.
This is the journey Elena has been refining since she stopped running a hotel on Salina, and it is the one we send most first-time Aeolian travellers on. Four islands in nine days sounds like a lot and is not: you unpack twice, and the boat days are the good days.
The structure is deliberately loose. Two appointments a week — a harvest morning, a kitchen, a night boat to Stromboli — and the rest left open, because the best afternoons here are the ones you did not plan. Every base is somewhere you would be happy to spend a whole day, which is not true of most island hopping.
Boats are private where it matters and public where the public one is better. In late September that distinction is the difference between a serene week and a queue.
- Length
- 9 days, 8 nights
- From
- €4,850 per person
- Best months
- Late May to early October
- Season
- Spring, Summer, Autumn
- Format
- Private departure
- Party
- Two to eight travellers
- Pace
- Two islands a week, one long boat day, and three afternoons with nothing in them
- Travel styles
- Coast and islands, Culture and craft
Per person sharing, based on two travellers in late September. High summer is materially more. Dates and prices shown are indicative demo content. Confirm everything with your own operations before publishing.
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The itinerary
Written as it would actually run. Select a day to see where you are, what you are doing and where you sleep.
Day 1
Arrive Sicily, and do not rush
A car meets you at Catania and takes you north across the island to the coast at Milazzo. We deliberately do not put you on a boat on the day you fly: the hydrofoil connection is tight, and the first evening is better spent eating swordfish and going to bed early.
- Transfer from Catania, roughly two hours
- Dinner on the seafront at Milazzo
- Night
- Milazzo, a small harbour hotel
- Getting there
- Catania to Milazzo, 150km, around 2 hours by private car
The country you travel through
Where you sleep
The places we use on this trip
Included
The days worth flying for
Food and wine
Malvasia harvest on Salina
Pick with the family that has worked these terraces for four generations, then eat with them.
A morning, then lunch
Food and wine
Capers, salt and the Lipari kitchen
A kitchen morning built around three ingredients the islands actually live on.
Half a day
On the water
Stromboli by night boat
Out at dusk, then sitting offshore below the Sciara del Fuoco while the volcano works.
An evening, five hours
What is included
- Eight nights in the properties listed, with breakfast
- All island transfers, including one private boat day
- Private car transfers on Sicily
- The harvest morning, the kitchen morning and the Stromboli night boat
- A local contact reachable at any hour while you are travelling
What is not
- International flights
- Lunches and dinners except where listed
- Travel insurance, which we ask you to hold
- Anything you decide to do on an open afternoon
Who plans this journey
Elena Fioravanti
Founder, Mediterranean · planning since 2011
Elena ran a fourteen-room hotel on Salina until 2011, which is where most of the Aeolian network came from: the skippers, the caper growers, the two families whose houses we still use in August.
She plans the Italian journeys herself and will argue with you about the order of the islands. She is usually right, and she will tell you when she is not sure.
Known for: Getting travellers onto Alicudi and Filicudi in the first week of September, when the boats are full and the beds are not for sale.
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