Is Italy v expensive - much more than France or Spain?

[another20]

Any tips to doing it in the cheap?

Absolutely can’t do massive heat - not my thing at all. Would have to visit Pompei or Sicily at another time of the year. Stuck with August this year?

Italy, France, and Spain can all be dirt cheap if you eat where the locals eat.

It depends on where in Italy you go!
Amalfi coast is v v expensive, same for tourist areas such as the centre of Milan or Firenze.

My advice for traveling in Italy would be to pay a little bit more for a decent hotel room, had some pretty bad experiences with 2* hotels over there (small, lack of hygiena). Food is generally speaking excellent whereever you decide to eat so no need to splurge on that (I always say that it’s very very difficult to find any bad tasting food in Italy, even if you’d try!)

If you're stuck with August then focus on the north. It will be cooler there. So that's Lake Trasimeno/Umbria, Piedmonte (the area around Turin) or Emilia Romagna, which is Bologna/Ferrara/Ravenna. The latter is a bit more expensive than the others. I've travelled all over Italy. Lake Trasimeno will fit your needs best.

Don't do Emilia-Romagna in August. We did it for our honeymoon and it was 40 degrees every day. Whole population of Bologna basically decamps to the beach for August.

We went round Bologna/Ravenna/Padua/Mantua/Ferarra/Verona and it was fabulous but the heat was brutal. Truly mad dogs and Englishmen.

I've lived here for 25 years (Puglia) and find general groceries much more expensive than the UK for example. Fruit and veg from proper greengrocers will be cheaper because it's seasonal.

Eating out is more expensive than Spain, slightly more expensive than the UK in my experience.

There are lots of exposés going on at the moment about how restaurants and bars will charge tourists twice what they will charge locals. Tourist menus though, whilst simple are generally fine.

Bologna is an oven in summer.

Down here, the hottest time is July. By August we're getting into end of summer/thundery days.

I was in Bologna a fortnight ago. It was 30 degrees and it was brutal, despite the covered walkways. We had to abandon plans to get the train to Florence as it was meant to be 35 degrees there. I'd imagine in July and August it would be brutal. We've also had a summer holiday in Tuscany and the DCs basically had to be inside from 11-3 - it was that hot.

However we did a Sorrento and Rome trip in October a couple of years ago. Perfect temperatures around 25 most of the time - much better for sightseeing.

Everywhere in Italy is going to be hot in August - 30 degrees+. If you want it to be cooler, you need to go end of September / October, or April / May. Naples is amazing but will be hot as hell in August, and I wouldn't recommend Pompeii that time if year either.

It's generally a few degrees cooler in the mountains but in the south these are pretty small towns generally with not much to do.

It might be a bit cooler right up in the Italian alps, somewhere like Aosta.

The Lakes region will be as hot, but I stayed here a few years ago and you can go hiking in the woods, which might be a bit cooler? www.ledronatura.it/it/

From what you have written I don't think you'll have an enjoyable Italian experience in August. It's super hot almost everywhere and unbearably crowded at the lakes/seaside. Maybe holiday in the uk? Easy to get away from it all in the Lake District or Scotland.