Travel Italian Style

04/23/2025

Spring 🌸 | Holy Week Recap on the Sorrento Coast

Easter week in Italy isn’t just a holiday, it’s the unofficial start of tourism season, festivals, and our beloved “sagre.” The air shifts, piazzas buzz, and there’s that unmistakable feeling that spring has arrived.

This week reminded me that not everything needs to be dramatic to be meaningful. Some moments are quiet, simple, and still manage to leave a mark.

Here’s to spring, tradition, and the little things that stay with you. 🌿

NOTE: Yes, that is an olive branch with caciocavallo cheese on it in the first pic. A beautiful Palm Sunday tradition from the Sorrento Coast. ☺️

04/12/2025

Spring in Southern Italy 🇮🇹🌸 Answering a few Qs from stories:

Yes, my company Travel Italian Style is still planning custom Italy trips (all 20 🇮🇹regions) and offering travel consulting—over 10 years strong. Save this post for future travel inspo!

These photos are from the beautiful area of Cilento, just south of Amalfi Coast/Sorrento. An immersive vacation spot, or for us locals, the perfect day trip.

Is this area quieter here than the coast? For now, yes! But it gets busy by July and August, so I say plan ahead.

I’m doing great. I’ve been quiet on social as we plan for our 2025 guests, fixing up my apartment and I have a boyfriend now,so been enjoying the “slow life” a bit more.

Tomorrow marks the start of Holy Week here in Sorrento. One of my favorite local traditions. Be sure to follow along with our stories.

Thanks for all the sweet messages and let me know if you have other questions. 🤍

12/24/2024

From our Italian family to yours, Buon Natale, Buone Feste, and Happy Everything! We wish you kindness, love, and togetherness this holiday season.
Reflecting on a truly wonderful year, we are immensely grateful to our incredible partners, dedicated team, and cherished guests who have shared this journey with us in Italy.
As we celebrate, we’d love to share some festive highlights from our recent travels across this beautiful country:

🎄Atrani (Campania)
🎄Altamura (Puglia)
🎄Matera (Basilicata)
🎄Matera Live Nativity Scene
🎄Altamura
🎄Milan (Lombardy)
🎄Minori (Campania)
🎄Sorrento (Campania)
🎄Minori (Campania)
🎄Sorrento (Campania)
🎄Florence (Tuscany)
🎄Amalfi Coast in Winter
🎄Milan (Lombardy)

We hope these glimpses inspire you to visit (or revisit) these incredible places. Until we meet again, Grazie mille to all!
Buone Feste and Buon Anno ! 🎄

10/31/2024

We finally made it to the local pumpkin patch here in Italy! After years of anticipation, we ventured out to and here are our thoughts:

🎃It’s absolutely worth the experience. It is beautifully set up to mirror the classic American pumpkin patch experience! The space is incredibly organized, offering activities for all ages, from little ones to adults.

👻Arrive hungry, as the menu is packed with fall-inspired Italian and American favorites, all vegetarian and with gluten-free options. And if you haven’t seen the reels already here on Instagram just know they have pumpkin spice lattes.

💀Take your time selecting the perfect pumpkin, as you’ll have about 40 minutes designated for exploring the patch itself. Then we opted for pumpkin carving, but they also offer painting, so you can choose the activity that feels right for you.

🌽 During the day, there’s a free corn maze to explore. Closer to evening and Halloween, you can grab a ticket to the labirinto infestato or haunted trail (though I admit, I wasn’t brave enough for this one).

🍁 Allow plenty of time to enjoy everything; we ended up spending several hours there, just soaking up the experience.

🍂 If you’re planning a weekend visit, be sure to book your tickets well in advance. We reserved ours a month ahead! Keep in mind that it’s typically open only in October and the first weekend of November, so don’t miss your chance in 2025.
Have you been already? Would love to hear about your experience below.

🎃Buon Halloween a tutti.

08/29/2024

This summer, instead of doing my usual 20-region sprint through Italy, I wandered through almost every tiny village, festival, and hidden beach on the Sorrento Peninsula.

It's funny; I kept insisting I was not traveling, yet I was somewhere new every week. When one leads a nomadic life, the nearby places can often seem so easily accessible and, therefore, no longer significant.

However, these past two months have revealed abundant beauty, and I'm grateful that I chose not to do my usual weekly plane or train getaway. I love being on the road and will continue to do so. Yet, I have become so accustomed to constant movement that I sometimes forget that every day is an adventure as a foreigner living abroad.

As with my more extensive journeys, this experience has offered valuable insights—not only about the places I've experienced but also about myself and those closest to me. It reminded me of life's and Italy's simplicity, which essentially motivated me to return to Italy from NY.

I am grateful for the many memories you can see in these slides.

08/12/2024

July and August are always my favorite months in Southern Italy, even though I know many others feel the opposite. What’s your thoughts?

Yes, these months coincide with the peak of the Italian vacation season, leading to traffic, chaos, and even closures in big cities. The heat can be intense. Despite this, I never understood why foreign travelers tend to avoid 🇮🇹 summer. June and September are just as busy, but without the same abundance of local events.

For me, these summer months embody the true spirit of “la dolce far niente” — the sweetness of doing nothing. It’s a time when Italians come together to celebrate with festivals, enjoy long, lazy days at the seaside, and relaxing aperitivo evenings lit by vibrant tropical like sunsets.

If you would like to immerse yourself in Italian culture (and you can handle the heat) then I will be one of the rare travel planers recommending you to experience summer in Italy, particularly during the week of the Ferragosto holiday in August.

See slides for location /festivals in Sorrento Peninsula.

If interested in the next days I can provide more summer tips for other southern Italy regions too! This way you can get ahead of 2025 summer.

Photos Recap:

Naples By Boat
Seaside Hikes and beaches in and around Massa Lubrense
Festivals = Panuzzo / Zucchini / Riavulillo
Light Show = La Luminaria di San Domenico
Saint Day = Celebration of Sant’Anna in Sorrento

07/02/2024

There’s a quirk of mine that’s hard to miss. I never leave a table without capturing the post-meal experience in a photo. It’s become a signature move of sorts for me.

At first, this habit received some strange glances. Knowing their curiosity, I usually, without hesitation, glance their way with a slight smirk and say, “So I remember the day.”

Pretty tables, freshly made food photos, and filtered landscape scenes are easy to create. Yet, with those picture-perfect scenes, you miss the memories of those messy dinner tables filled with laughter until you cry or tears of sadness, pep talks with friends, and simple yet profoundly important life moments. Many that probably changed our lives in some ways.

There’s a strange but strong belief in me that these photos can capture all those emotions and memories, making them more than just pictures.

These are just my own captures taken between March 2024 and today. I have hundreds more on my phone from the past ten 🇮🇹 years.

Whenever I have a terrible day or doubt my path in life, I scroll through these post “cena” photos as quick reminders. Ones of beautiful days spent catching up with friends and family, BBQs that started at 11:00 am and went late into the night, those I lost, those I love, accomplishments, change, or simple reminders of how lucky I am to wake up each day and experience all of this in its various forms.

While I’ll continue to snap these photos, I’d be thrilled if you’d like to join in. Tag and use the hashtag to share your own post-table experiences. If you’d like, include us for a chance to have your memory reposted, or share it with us privately so we can be part of your special moment.

Every day may not be perfect, but if we take more time out of our day to reflect on these simple yet profound encounters, it can remind us of that love, hope, happiness and kindness are always around us. 🤍



Photos: Florence, Sorrento Peninsula and beyond!

06/13/2024

Are money belts back in style?! Or maybe they never left. Our founder shared some thoughts about the latest trend of money belts and their comeback with journalist Valentina Valentini and CNN Underscored

Read more about what Cassandra and other travel professionals have to say at the link below.

Are money belts making a comeback? Absolutely! These are the 11 best money belts that blend safety, style and convenience for your travels. From RFID blocking to chic designs, find the perfect money belt for your next adventure.

06/04/2024

After years of working in hospitality, it was in December of 2014, I had an idea. What if started a travel company but I transformed the traditional agency model?

Instead of offering free information to clients, what if I introduced a planning fee before sharing the itinerary?

What if I replaced the office number with a “book a call” link?

What if I personally traveled through Italy to craft unique experiences in place of relying on an online booking system?

What if I provided consulting calls where I got paid to share my expertise?

What if I combined my passion for storytelling and vulnerability with the story of my late father Joe and his Italian heritage on social media, rather than solely posting about Italy travel?

When I launched Travel Italian Style with these “crazy ideas,” many were skeptical. They admired my enthusiasm but doubted its viability. Initially, they weren’t wrong. The first five years were among the toughest of my life. Yet, I never abandoned my dream. From these modest ideas emerged not only a thriving company but also opportunities for global speaking engagements, writing, and traveling across all 20 regions of Italy.

As we approach our ten-year anniversary, it’s time to evole once more. We woud like introduce the next level of Travel Italian Style and showcase more of the Italian team behind it. My personal stories and glimpses of life in Italy will continue, but you’ll find more of them on . While here on this page you’ll discover travel tips, dreamy Italy scenes, and a chance to experience the local life and beauty of Italy through our team’s perspective too!

The coming weeks will be a period of transition, and we welcome your feedback and thoughts to help us grow this page in the best way possible. We hope you appreciate our new look and new goals!

We’re excited to bring you along for the next chapter, which we hope will be the biggest yet. Thank you for your support! We look forward to sharing even more of Italy with you here.❤️💚
Grazie, Cassandra Lena Santoro / CEO + Founder


Photos from traveling working throughout Italy for the past ten years.

05/30/2024

Our goal at Travel Italian Style is to curate custom Italian itineraries that make for an unforgettable vacation. This dreamy location in Sicily does not look like the typical Italian restaurant, making mealtime a highlight of the day.

Interested in learning about this hidden escape? Connect with us today: www.travelitalianstyle.com

05/21/2024

Life in Sorrento has been full of great lessons lately.
The most important one I’ve learned is to “believe in faith over force.” I came across this quote a while back, but it’s meaning only truly resonated with me in April.

Throughout that month, I tried to make several things happen, but nothing seemed to come together. Each time something I thought I desperately wanted or needed fell through, I became angry and frustrated. One example was apartment hunting.

After ten years of traveling across all the regions of Italy, I decided to stay put for a year. However, it was becoming increasingly challenging to find a long-term rental in Sorrento.

I was scheduled to leave town on a Wednesday and as of the Saturday prior I was without an apartment.

Feeling desperate and depleted, that morning at 9:30am I went into my favorite church in town. I dropped a euro coin in the donation box, grabbed a mass card (swipe to see), sat down and told God I surrender. I admitted that maybe it wasn’t meant to be. So I decided to leave it up to Him. If that meant continuing to live nomadically for a while, then so be it.

On that same day at about 10:40am my friend called me, “Cassandra, you will never believe it, I found you a place.” The story ends with me moving into that perfect, charming apartment in Sorrento on the very Wednesday I thought I would depart.

Reflecting on the month, I realized that none of those previous offers truly suited me, and deep down, I always knew it. The same goes for the other scenarios that didn’t’ work out. How often do we find ourselves in such predicaments in life—staying in or entering situations that don’t align with our intuition? Despite sensing it’s not right we often lack the bravery to say no, especially when the future remains uncertain.

Or how often do we fail to trust? If all those earlier attempts hadn’t failed, if I had tried to force those mismatched scenarios, I would have missed out on discovering what was perfect for me.

Life has a way of working out. Non è vero?
Don’t forget for more personal stories follow and stay tuned here for even more Italy tips, videos and photos!

05/07/2024

Planning a summer trip to Sorrento? Don't miss out on my insider tips as a local! We have shared all the details with over at
https://appetitomagazine.com/guides/top-dining-destinations-in-sorrento