In the end we didn’t buy anything, however I want to share the good and the bad moments of that journey I did during the month of october, several years ago…

We departed from Bologna very early, our plan was to stop in a hotel (or cheap place) as soon as we passed the french border. But we didn’t take into account the usual insane italian traffic that makes driving a true nightmare… and also the weather wasn’t helping at all: raining all the time!

We also had a small car accident while passing on the “Freejus pass”, one of the tires got hit by something fallen from a truck we had a few meters before us! the tire of our Yaris was completely destroyed and we were unable to continue.

So after we substituted the normal tire with the emergency one, we had to stop in the small town of Bardonecchia to fix the problem. We had lost 2 hours of time this way!

Two hours we had to recoup in our travel plan.

At last we passed the border and we decided to stop nearby the medium-sized town of Chambery, where we found a very cheap motel.

Since it was quite late we didn’t find any place to eat, so we had to take a sort of bizarre “french sandwitch” that honestly wasn’t really attractive even if they didn’t taste too bad after all.

After such a troublesome start we didn’t know what was waiting for us the next day!

The nearest airports are in Parma, Pisa and Geneva, so it is really possible to get there easily and quickly in less than 4-5h of travel with airplane+train from almost anywhere in europe.

If you’re looking to buy a holiday home, it is a very good place: it has less pollution, less traffic, and more quality in the services than all other areas of Italy. There’s a big hospital in Borgo val di Taro, which is the biggest town of the valley, in which you also can find a train station.
From this train station you can reach comfortably the Cinque Terre, or travel to Pontremoli in Tuscany, or get to Parma in just 1h. So, a ideal holiday place for everyone that’s looking to stay in a quiet zone, yet with great restaurants serving excellent local dishes (like the famous mushroom “porcino”). Recently I saw a TV show in which they were talking about this zone as one of the best italian real-estate zones for at least the next 3 years.

Prices are very low compared to other zones of Italy. For example you can get a house with 600m of garden nearby Borgo val di Taro in good conditions for only 159k euros! such a house in other regions of Italy would cost at least twice. Prices are starting to rise quickly though, so I suggest you don’t delay too much!