Scotland's best classical music festivals

The festival Mostly takes place around Kirkwall, on Orkney's "mainland", including St Magnus Cathedral and the Auction Mart. St Magnus has been the stage for many newly commissioned works, most notably by Sir Peter Maxwell Davies, master of the Queen's music. He will be leading sessions at a composers' course, and there are also courses for conductors and writers.
The setting It's quite a hike, but worth the trip: sweeping beaches, rich history with Neolithic remains, rolling greenery and shifting light, refracting the swift weather changes. The Orkney Islands – there are 70 of them – are a low-lying cluster just off the north-east tip of Caithness, accessible by ferry from Thurso or Aberdeen, or by air from Glasgow, Edinburgh, Aberdeen and Inverness.
Highlights Celebrity recitals, including Catherine Wyn-Roberts, mezzo-soprano, 23 June (£9/£17); Aronovitz Ensemble, 24 June (£9/£17); Gwyneth-Ann Jeffers, soprano, sings Wagner, Ravel and Verdi, 26 June (£7/£11).
• 01856 871445, stmagnusfestival.com, visitorkney.com

East Neuk, Fife, 27 June-1 July

The festival Most of the concerts staged here are held in village churches. But there have been some unusual venues: Scotland's secret nuclear bunker in Anstruther, built in 1951, a potato barn, a scout hut in darkness and a cave. East Neuk is a firm favourite with Radio 3, and a venue to which performers like to return. There's also a programme of "ideas and writing" featuring authors, such as Sara Maitland, and Richard Holloway.
The setting East Neuk pokes out into the North Sea and comprises an unspoiled cluster of charming fishing villages near St Andrews – Pittenweem, Elie, Crail, Kilconquhar, Anstruther and St Monans. Merchants' houses and quaint old cottages huddle around harbours boasting good restaurants and pubs. This is a playground for Scotland's moneyed classes, surprisingly little known south of the border.
Highlights Hagen Quartet plays Beethoven, 27 June (£12-£25); Leipzig Quartet performs Shostakovich, 29 June (£12/£17); Scottish Chamber Orchestra Winds performs Haydn, Stravinsky and Mozart, 1 July (£7/£12/£15).
• 0131-473 2000, eastneukfestival.com, visitscotland.com

Mendelssohn, Mull, 1-7 July

The festival It's different in a couple of respects. It's free and is performed by talented youngsters handpicked by Levon Chilingirian, founder of the eponymous quartet and artistic director. It's a bit of a chamber fest, with chosen stars of the future performing alongside him and his quartet colleagues at Glengorm Castle, Dervaig village hall, Tobermory church and other landmarks scattered around the island. Iona Abbey, a short ferry-hop away, is also playing a part. This is a great opportunity to hear musical performances curated by one of the greatest exponents of the age.
The setting Mull has a dramatic 300-mile coastline of ash blond sand dominated by black basalt cliffs. Little wonder that Mendelssohn himself, on a trip to Mull, Iona and Staffa, was inspired to write the Hebrides Overture. Mull is accessible by ferry from Oban, Lochaline and Kilchoan (calmac.co.uk). Tobermory is an increasingly lively tourist attraction and has several decent restaurants and pubs.
Highlights It's all free. It culminates in a performance of Mendelssohn's String Symphony, when all groups come together on the Friday and Saturday.
• mullfest.org.uk, holidaymull.co.uk

Paxton House, near Berwick upon Tweed, 13–22 July

The festival The programme includes well-known works by Schubert, Beethoven, Haydn and Bartok, but there's also a world premiere by young Scottish composer Alasdair Spratt.
The setting The house and grounds were built by the Adams brothers in the mid-18th century and the rolling landscape of the Borders provides a scenic backdrop.
Highlights Scottish Ensemble and pianist Alasdair Beatson premiere Alasdair Spratt's Bite alongside Schubert's Trout Quintet 13 July, (£20); the Carducci Quartet plays Haydn, Debussy and Mendelssohn, 14 July (£20); harpsichordist Mahan Esfahani, BBC New Generation Artist, plays Bach and Couperin, 19 July, (£20); Ibragimova and Tiberghien play an all-Schubert programme on the final night, 22 July, (£22).
• 0131-473 2000, musicatpaxton.co.uk, scot-borders.co.uk

Edinburgh International Festival, 9 August–2 September

The festival No guide would be complete without a passing mention of the biggest festival of them all, which of course also features theatre: 3,000 artists from 47 nations will gather. The Usher Hall plays host to Valery Gergiev with the London Symphony Orchestra, performing the complete Szymanowski and Brahms symphonies. Visiting international orchestras include the Cleveland, Les Arts Florissants, Australian Chamber Orchestra and the Budapest Festival Orchestra. The European Union Youth Orchestra and the Gustav Mahler Jugend orchestra contribute to a festival focus on celebrating the world-class emerging artistic elites.
The setting The heart of Auld Reekie pulsates as the city's 500,000 population doubles in size. Dominated by the festival fringe, the EIF offers a traditional and tasteful counterpoint to the goings on in Edinburgh's Underbelly and other outré venues around the old town.
Highlights There is the premiere of a new production of Janácˇek's The Makropulos Case by Opera North (£16-£66) and a concert performance of Tristan und Isolde with Welsh National Opera and Ben Heppner (15 Aug, £12-£46). Two epic choral works bookend the festival: it opens with Delius's A Mass of Life, with the Edinburgh Festival Chorus joined by Sir Andrew Davis and the Royal Scottish National Orchestra (£12-£46), and closes with Walton's Belshazzar's Feast, with Welsh baritone Neal Davies (£12-£42).
• 0131-473 2000, eif.co.uk, edinburgh.org

Lammermuir Festival, East Lothian, 16-23 September

The festival Now in its third year, the Lammermuir offers an eclectic selection of ancient and modern, from Bach and Albinoni to contemporary composers William Sweeney and David Fennessy. Walks, talks and gardens will punctuate concerts, with the magnificent church of St Mary's Haddington playing a central role.
The setting It spans East Lothian, the sweeping coastal plains and rolling hills east of Edinburgh, where neat villages are connected by quiet country lanes. There's an imaginative use of the spaces for venues: in addition to the churches, Tantallon Castle looms large this year, as did the Concorde hangar at East Fortune for last year's memorable performance of Philip Glass's 1,000 Airplanes on the Roof. Good use is made of the area's many stately homes. Look out for Yester House, Gian Carlo Menotti's former home at Gifford.
Highlights The spectacular world premiere of Tantallon! These Lands, This Wall, a sound and light show by William Sweeney, in the grounds of the castle. The artist in residence is young Scottish guitar virtuoso Sean Shibe, who plays Bach, Britten and Fennessy at Lennoxlove on 18 September. And much more …
• 0131-473 2000, lammermuirfestival.co.uk, visiteastlothian.org

Dar al Hossoun: a real riad in Morocco

Let's get one thing straight – this is a riad. Forget all those Marrakech hotels with their measly courtyards – they're not proper riads. I've barely set foot inside the Dar al Hossoun and the owner, Ollivier Verra, who is giving me a tour of the amazing hotel gardens, can't resist a little dig at Taroudant's more famous neighbour.

"All those trendy hotels in Marrakech are not riads," says Ollivier, "they're medina townhouses. Riad means garden in Arabic [in the strictest sense of the word] and most of them don't have gardens. But why call yourself a maison when riad sounds so much more exotic, right?"

Absolutely right if you happen to be the owner of one of the most stunning "riads" in the whole of Morocco. For the desert gardens at Hossoun, in the ancient town of Taroudant in southern Morocco, are truly unique. They contain more than 900 different species of plants collected from all over the world – mainly succulents, aloes, palm trees and cacti that can adapt to a desert environment where rainfall has dropped to 100mm a year over the last decade. Wandering through the labyrinth of connected courtyards, which have been semi-landscaped over 15 acres of a former olive grove, you come across a new garden at every turn. It's like the desert conservatory at Kew Gardens with the roof off, a collection of rare plants from Madagascar, Mexico, the Middle East and South America added to indigenous Moroccan species, and forms a spectacular and incredibly peaceful setting for this small hotel. On a clear day you can see the snow-capped High Atlas mountains from the roof terrace.

The main courtyard is bursting with large cacti, euphorbia, tropical grasses, jacaranda and palm trees, and through its heart runs a "line of water", a long narrow swimming pool (just 3m wide by 29m long), inspired by the Alhambra in Granada, which creates a dramatic counterpoint to the garden. Four resident peacocks add a regal touch.

One of the rooms at Dar al Hossoun

The gardens are so imposing that the series of single-storey bedrooms, sitting rooms and the hammam that frame them are inevitably overshadowed by all the greenery, yet they are equally original in conception.

Both house and garden are the creations of Arnaud Maurières and Eric Ossart, two French globetrotting botanists, plant hunters, architects and art and craft collectors.

One day, the pair were walking in the Atlas mountains and came across local builders making a house out of rammed earth. They were so impressed with the work they asked the builders to come and make a house for them at Hossoun, and then learned how to do it themselves. They obviously got the knack of it, as several architectural commissions soon followed – including one for their neighbour, the former empress of Iran, who wanted her residence built with rammed earth, but in a traditional Persian style.

All the rooms in the hotel are these traditional structures with thick earth walls that provide insulation against the heat and the cold. The only concessions to modern architecture are the large picture windows that connect the houses to the gardens.

Outside my window is a large courtyard featuring a deep sunken garden within the quarry of earth created to build the houses. It is sheltered, slightly cooler and more humid down there, so ideal for banana and papaya trees as well as the Brazilian potato tree and Mexican desert willow. From outside the sunken garden, you peer down on the treetops as if looking down into a tiny valley.

The rooms are stylish but understated, the earth walls and surfaces painted in natural white or muted earthy browns to complement the architecture. When Ollivier bought the house a couple of years ago, he was smart enough to purchase the rich collection of artefacts that the previous owners had built up from a decade of travelling, so the place is simply but beautifully adorned with Mediterranean pottery and rare Middle Eastern carpets, as well as locally made furniture. Two of the stand-out pieces are a long stretch of an antique Berber tent that fills a wall in the sitting room and the tall warped wooden pillars from a mosque in southern Morocco that date back to the 18th century.

Housson fulfils the role of a riad perfectly: a private house that is a world within a world and attends to your every whim. It is so relaxing that it was an effort to leave the hotel, and I was content to laze in the gardens, swim a few lengths of the pool and wait for homemade delights to come out of the kitchen.

The hotel's food is pan-Mediterranean rather than pure Moroccan: one day we had a Lebanese lunch of fresh homemade hummus, baba ghanoush and tabbouleh, along with salads of homegrown leaves and raw papaya; another day it was a mixed platter of delicious fried fresh seafood.

One day Ollivier did manage to drag me for a walk in the Anti-Atlas mountains, an hour's drive away. We didn't see another soul as we walked up a dry, boulder-strewn valley, the sides so steep we were sheltered from the sun. But on the way down we met Aisha, a lovely Berber woman who invited us in for mint tea, figs and biscuits, and showed us round her rambling old house.

Another day I took one of the hotel's bikes into Taroudant, a couple of miles away, and explored the souks inside the high, crenellated terracotta ramparts of the medieval city billed as the grandmother of, or mini Marrakech. As a first-time visitor to Morocco, I'm not sure how accurate that description is, but for someone who speaks little French and had always been slightly wary of the country's reputation for giving tourists a run for their money, I found Taroudant the perfect introduction to the country. I walked around the city's two rambling souks without any bother; most stallholders would smile when I entered their shop, leave me to browse alone, and smile again as I left.

Taroudant has a small, arty expat community who prefer the easy-going authenticity of the town to the excesses of Marrakech, or "Paris's 21st arrondissement", as one them bitchily described it. I was lucky enough to get a peek inside one of their houses – an amazing Aladdin's cave over several uneven floors with fine artwork and a roof terrace literally on top of the ramparts – and guessed it won't be long before such places open up as riad hotels (in the looser sense of the word, of course). The King of Morocco has given the town the royal seal of approval and is currently building a house here.

My guess is that Taroudant is much sleepier than Marrakech – more of a little sister than a grandmother – but the impressive rammed-earth ramparts, winding souks and lively street cafes, plus the lack of tourists, make it a fascinating place to wander around for a day or two.

I don't think many people would come to Morocco just to visit Taroudant – although it is doable for a long weekend as the town is less than an hour from Agadir airport. Most visitors use Taroudant in the same way it has been used for centuries, as a stop on the caravan route, a place where the desert meets the Atlas mountains, en route to Marrakech to the north over the stunning Tizi‑n‑Test Pass, the Sahara to the south and the Atlantic coast to the west.

And, as a place to stop and rest, the paradise garden of Dar al Hossoun is about the most peaceful place you could ever wish to find

Tuscany on a budget

Tuscany has a pricey rep. You can spend hundreds on a hotel room or luxury villa, travel everywhere by car (diesel €1.75 a litre), and shop Florence's Via Tornabuoni boutiques. You can eat four courses, wash it down with a bottle of Brunello di Montalcino (€50 and up), then climb the Leaning Tower of Pisa (€17 for half an hour). You can do all this, and it's great. It really is.
But it's not the only way to see Tuscany, and the cheaper alternative need not take you "off the beaten track" in search of "undiscovered gems", and all those other travel cliches. You can see the same amazing sights as everyone else, if sometimes from a different angle. You may have to forgo the Frette linens and evening turn-down service, but you don't need to pack your pop-up tent. And welcome shifts in the pound-euro exchange rate are giving a little extra help this summer.

Florence

This city has been separating visitors from their spending money since before the Renaissance. Yet Florence makes a good base for the cost-conscious. Restaurants and hotels are plentiful. You can walk everywhere and are at the hub of the region's transport network. There's even a list maintained by the tourist office, "Firenze a costo zero", if you have no budget at all.
Accommodation in the centre isn't especially cheap. My favourite is Locanda Orchidea (+39 055 248 0346, hotelorchideaflorence.it, doubles from €50). Get a quiet, traditional room overlooking the leafy courtyard. Bathrooms are shared. Though billed as a hostel, Plus Florence (+39 055 628 6347, plushostels.com/plusflorence, en suite rooms from €45) has amenities that would put hotels four times the price to shame, including a new outdoor pool and Turkish bath. It's an ugly building, but great value.
If you're visiting in August, haggle with somewhere in a higher price category. The city is hot, steamy and deserted (apart from tourists), so deals are plentiful. When hunting online for cheap rooms, there are addresses I avoid: Via Nazionale, Via XXVII Aprile, Piazza dell'Unità Italiana, Via della Scala, and Via Por Santa Maria can all be noisy.
For food, steer clear of the streets between Piazza della Signoria and Piazza del Duomo, with the exception of Le Mossacce (+39 055 294361, trattorialemossacce.it), a rowdy place that serves the likes of spezzatino (veal stew) at €9 a plate. I also like rough-and-ready Da Rocco (lunch only), inside the Mercato Sant'Ambrogio. The menu is short, but tasty and cheap. South-west of the centre, but still walkable, Sabatino (Via Pisana 2, +39 055 225955) is a friendly diner stuck in the Florentine 1950s. Hearty mains like stuffed roast chicken cost around €5.

The Uffizi and Accademia (David) cost from €15 and €11 respectively, unless it's your birthday, when they're free. A discount Firenze Card (firenzecard.it) gets you into those two and a lot more over 72 hours for €50. But you can see amazing art for nothing in several city churches. The cloister at Santissima Annunziata is a gallery of mannerist frescoes, starring Del Sarto and Rosso Fiorentino. The masterpiece of recluse Pontormo is his Deposition, inside Santa Felicita. Santa Trínita has wall art by Lorenzo Monaco and Domenico Ghirlandaio. The city has multiple versions of the Last Supper: by Ghirlandaio, in Ognissanti (where there's also a Botticelli); by Andrea del Castagno in Sant'Appolonia. The panorama from the steps outside San Miniato al Monte, south of the Arno, is better than any paid-for viewing point in the city. You can bag a free art guided tour, sometimes in English, from Ars et Fides (+39 055 276 3757, arsetfidesfirenze.it). The website has a timetable.
Temporary show Americans in Florence: Sargent and the American Impressionists runs until 15 July at the Palazzo Strozzi (+39 055 264 5155, palazzostrozzi.org). Admission costs €10, but is two-for-one between 6pm and 11pm on Thursdays – or cheaper still, download the exhibition catalogue from the iBook store, at 99 cents until 31 May.
For shopping, skip the Guccis and Ferragamos of Via Tornabuoni in favour of the indie stores along Borgo degli Albizi. I also poke around the flea market in Piazza dei Ciompi; last time I was there, I picked up a fistful of vintage postcards and some costume jewellery for under €10.
If you've eaten well and late at lunch, maxing out on aperitivo should be enough for dinner. The drill is straightforward: there's a buffet piled high with simple dishes and hearty salads. As long as you're drinking (slowly, slowly is fine), you can usually eat while the buffet is out (generally 7 to 9-ish). Negroni (Via dei Renai 17, negronibar.com, cocktails €7) is usually jumping. At Derb (Via Faenza 21, derb.it), a cocktail and plentiful North African aperitivo (plus music) costs €7.
Clubs are pricey, so cap the evening with a free organ concert at Santa Maria de' Ricci (Via del Corso, +39 055 215044) or something eclectic at Le Murate (Piazza delle Murate, lemurate.it). Free magazine The Florentine (theflorentine.net), out every second Thursday, always has listings for cheap events. ArtTrav.com is worth bookmarking for reviews and openings.

A wine tour of Chianti … by public bus

To see the vine-cloaked backroads, you need to hire a car or join an expensive tour. Fortunately, the most famous wine road in Tuscany, the Chiantigiana, is also a bus route.
It's a scenic hour from Florence to Panzano – catch the Firenze to Gaiole bus, via Greve and Radda. Wander up into the old village as far as the Accademia del Buon Gusto (Piazza Ricasoli 11, +39 055 856 0159, accademiadelbuongusto.com), an enoteca where tasting is "without obligation". Owner Stefano Salvadori is such a knowledgeable host that you'll definitely buy something, but it needn't be pricey. Eat lunch at Dario DOC (Via XX Luglio 11, +39 055 852020, dariocecchini.com). The "fast-food" outlet of celebrated Panzano butcher Dario Cecchini is a lively spot with communal tables, and top value at €10 for a breaded burger, sage and garlic chips, salads and water. Walk it off: a little south of the village are views over the Conca d'Oro (Golden Shell), one of the winelands' most picturesque tracts.

Hop on the bus back north to Greve, Chianti's "capital", to see the triangular piazza and browse an enoteca or two. Take another bus north one stop to Greti, and the roadside tasting room of Castello di Verrazzano (Via Citille 32, +39 055 854243, verrazzano.com). It's free to taste here, and there are affordable bottles from this top-notch estate. The last bus back to Florence leaves at 8pm weekdays, 5pm on Saturdays, but forget it on a Sunday. See acvbus.it for timetables. Tickets for the whole journey will total under €10.

Central Tuscany and Siena

The central Tuscan hills are unmissable, but tricky on the cheap, because medieval San Gimignano is a tourist magnet. It's best tackled by switching your base to Siena. The Florence to Siena bus (€8) is quicker than the train. From Siena, eschew an escorted tour to San Gim. Direct buses leave hourly in the morning (sangimignano.net, €12 return). San Gimignano's church of Sant'Agostino has a frescoed apse by Florentine Benozzo Gozzoli that's free to see. The Torre Grossa, the tallest of San Gim's towers, has great views. But if you walk uphill behind the Collegiata, opposite, to the ruined Rocca (fortress), you get the same sublime views – out over vine-clad hills – gratis. Contemporary Galleria Continua (+39 0577 943134, galleriacontinua.com) is free, with an Antony Gormley show running until 20 August.
You can take a guided walk-with-views through those hills for €20 a head. Better, the tourist office (Piazza del Duomo 1, +39 0577 940008) sells a hiking map for €8 and you can guide yourself. San Gimignano's spiky towers are visible for miles around – it's practically impossible to get lost.
I usually eat at tiny, unshowy Chiribiri (Piazza della Madonna 1, +39 0577 941948), because Tuscan classics cost about €3 less than anywhere else in town, and it's open all day, 11 until 11, so when I'm with my children they eat at their normal times. Mains cost from €8-10 (cash only). Decent cheap rooms are hard to come by in San Gimignano, so catch an early evening bus back to Siena.
Central budget rooms here can be a little spartan – you're paying to lodge at the heart of one of Europe's best preserved medieval towns, not for the decor. My top choice is Alma Domus (Via Camporegio 37, +39 0577 44177, hotelalmadomus.it, doubles from €66 B&B); request a room with a view. For somewhere with panache, you'll need to stretch the budget, for example to Antica Residenza Cícogna (Via dei Termini 67, +39 0577 285613, anticaresidenzacicogna.it, doubles from €87 B&B).
The best free art in Siena is at the Archivio di Stato (Via Banchi di Sotto 52, +39 0577 247145). Inside are the tavolette della biccherna, medieval wooden covers (for the civic accounts) painted by Siena's leading artists. For €12, the Opa Si Pass (operaduomo.siena.it) gets you half-price entry to everything arty around Piazza del Duomo, including up the Facciatone, for a better (and cheaper) view than the Campo's Torre del Mangia. If you can't stretch to that, follow St Catherine for free: she was born at the Casa di Santa Caterina, now an ornate oratory with a 16th-century majolica floor, and is now in the nearby church of San Domenico – her shrivelled, venerated head, anyway.
The pungent delis along Via di Città and Banchi di Sopra are tempting, but expensive, for lunch. Behind the Palazzo Pubblico at Gino Cacino (Piazza del Mercato 31, +39 0577 223076, ginocacinosinena.it), Gino will load you a hefty roll with salami and pecorino sott'olio (ewe's milk cheese preserved in olive oil) for around €4. Grab a snug dinner at La Chiacchera (Costa di San Antonio 4, +39 0577 280631, osterialachiacchera.it), where there's no main over €9.

The vineyards of the south‑east

There is a bus service linking Siena with Montalcino, Pienza, and Montepulciano, but it's slow and erratic, so you'll need a car to explore this most scenic bit of Tuscany. Detour via the SS438 through Asciano and the Crete Senesi, otherworldly clay hills whose lonely ridges are spiked with cypress trees. Stop en route for the Signorelli and Sodoma frescoes at the monastery of Monte Oliveto Maggiore (monte-oliveto.com), which are also free to view. You can stay with the Olivetan monks, in a private double room, from €62 (monasterystays.com) or make an overnight stop in Pienza, where Il Giardino Segreto (Via Condotti 13, +39 0578 748539, ilgiardinosegretopienza.it, doubles from €55 room only) has simple rooms ranged round a peaceful garden.

Unmissable art freebies around the Val d'Orcia include Pienza's Duomo, an Austrian-style Renaissance church whose Sienese altarpieces remain where they were originally placed by Pope Pius II (most in Tuscany have been shifted to museums); and the honey-coloured travertine Collegiata in San Quirico. A guided tour at one of Italy's top wine cantinas, Poggio Antico in Montalcino (+39 0577 848044, poggioantico.com), is also free, and in English. Call in the morning to check times. Tasting afterwards costs, but starts at just €2 (up to €25) depending on how many wines are sampled. Leave time for mass conducted in chant at the nearby Romanesque abbey of Sant'Antimo (antimo.it). Contact Montalcino's tourist office (Costa del Municipio 1, +39 0577 849331, prolocomontalcino.it) to double-check the chant schedule. Anyone dressed "respectfully" is welcome.
For boutique B&B bargains, head south-east to Etruscan Chiusi, where Casa Toscana (+39 0578 222227, bandbcasatoscana.it, doubles €60 B&B) is a villa with spacious, colour-washed rooms. A half-hour guided exploration of Chiusi's Etruscan tunnels costs just €3 (+39 0578 67111, tourism.intoscana.it).
North of here, my favourite bargain lodging in Tuscany is stylish Vizi Ottavo (+39 334 587 4174, viziottavo.com, B&B doubles from €70) in sleepy Castiglion Fiorentino, whose rooms are themed on the seven deadly sins. Use it as a base to explore pricier Cortona and Arezzo, both within 15 miles.
Donald Strachan is the co-author of Frommer's Florence, Tuscany & Umbria, John Wiley & Sons, £16.99

Golden rules for smart budgeting

• If your hotel breakfast is optional, don't pay for it. Find a cafe.
• Never sit down or (worse) lounge on the terrace for your morning coffee. Stand at the bar (al banco), drink and go. Sitting could treble the price.
• Eat at lunch, snack at dinner … never the other way around. Meal deals are keenest at lunchtime.
• Don't feel obliged to tip. There's a "bread and cover" charge, and few locals leave much extra.
• Just as when you're drinking your morning coffee, cover charges can be higher for lunch/dinner tables on the terrace: sit indoors.
• For car hire, book as far ahead as you can, and shop around – including at Rhino (rhinocarhire.com), which offers a 5% discount if you "like" them on Facebook. Rent for as brief a period as you can, and don't bring a car into Florence. Parking is insane.
• Petrol prices vary wildly. Check the map at prezzibenzina.it or download their app.
• Book high-speed trains at least two days (preferably four weeks or so) ahead of time at trenitalia.com (see advice on seat61.com on how to use the site) and search out "mini" fares. If you're sharp, Rome to Florence could be as low as €9, although numbers are limited at that price.

To cut costs more, swap the blockbusters for …

• Livorno, for the region's best (and cheapest) seafood, including cacciucco, a spicy, fishy soup/stew.
• The Alta Maremma (turismoinmaremma.it), whose "tufa" region has spectacular little towns such as Pitigliano built on sheer cliffs, a network of Etruscan walks and the free hot springs at Saturnia.
• The Lunigiana and Apuan Alps (parcapuane.it) in north-western Tuscany both have great walks and simple places to stay. Highlights include the warren-like town of Pontremoli.

Mexican street food in Los Angeles

Thomasina Miers stands on a sunny petrol station forecourt in Highland Park, a neighbourhood to the northeast of Los Angeles, enthusiastically eating a marinated beef-tongue taco. "It's so delicious," she says through a mouthful of corn tortilla, coriander and tomatillo salsa.

This low-rise residential area, an hour and a world away from the Walk of Fame, bristles with signs for cheap loans and fast food. It is not on any tourist map. Star-tour buses don't pull up round here. But rather than celebrities, we're looking for Mexican street-food trucks, picking out their vivid orange, blue and pink awnings or distinctive fin-shaped roof vents from among the stucco-covered houses, corner shops and drive-throughs. At the La Estrella and El Pique trucks, we found what we crave. We order more tacos, a beef torta (sandwich) and a buttery hot quesadilla and wolf them as the traffic whizzes past, juices running down our chins.

Miers, former MasterChef winner and co-founder of the Mexican restaurant chain Wahaca, is researching her next venture – a two-year pop-up restaurant opening next month on London's South Bank with a street-food menu. She's here because there are 11 million Mexican-Americans living in California, making up 30% of the population.

"LA has such a huge Mexican population," she says. "In terms of food trends, America, and particularly California, is often five to 10 years ahead of the UK, so it is interesting to see where they're at, particularly with Mexican, which you can find here as easily as getting a hamburger."

Angelenos also have more than 100 years of Mexican street-food history – the arrival and popularity of horse-drawn tamale carts caused the same kind of bureaucratic angst in the 1880s as the influx of taco trucks has done in the past couple of years – so residents have exacting standards. They want rich, slow-cooked sauces, chillies of every hue and heat, soft corn or wheat tortillas piled with meaty fillings, and they want them day and night. There are hundreds of hole-in-the-wall taco stands and trucks to keep them happy.

As we work our way round the best of them, Miers grins from ear to ear. Her interest in Mexican food was piqued when she was in her early 20s and ran a bar in Mexico City. She came home to find she couldn't get authentic Mexican anywhere in the UK and so resolved to open her own casual restaurant. Six years and five Wahacas later, the hunch she and her business partner Mark Selby had about the gap in the market has been proved right and her obsession with Mexico's food has only grown. Yuca's is one of LA's oldest street-food joints – a small shed and plastic awning next to a car park – and she can't help but order almost every dish, while Selby tries to keep things in control.

"I'm on belt hook three at the moment," he says ruefully, "and I'd like to stay that way." Ignoring him, Miers adds a plate of carne asada tacos (grilled beef) to a conchinita pibil (Yucatan-style pork) and machaca (shredded beef) tacos, pickled jalapeño peppers, and a chile verde bean and cheese burrito. This is their first lunch of six today.

Thomasina Miers eating tongue tacos from La Estrella food truck

Our tour continues to take us to corners of Los Angeles most tourists would miss. We visit Olvera Street in Downtown and eat $3 rolled-up beef taquitos with warm avocado sauce from Cielito Lindo. We hit Las Glorias del Buen Comer in Silver Lake – home to an impressive collection of plastic floristry – for creamy shrimp enchiladas in a green coriander sauce; chilaquiles made with fried stale tortillas, salsa and scrambled egg; and huge poblano chillies stuffed with soft white cheese.

At Grand Central Market we watch tripe being packed into split gorditas, deep-fried maize-dough pockets, and are given carnitas (pork tacos) to try by a group of men leaning on a red Formica lunch counter, swigging coke out of huge old glass bottles. The sawdust-covered walkways lead to stalls selling jar after jar of dried chillies and piles of tomatillos (a fruit resembling a green tomato) and jicama, which look like turnips and taste like water chestnut.

The best dishes of the day are served in Guisado's, a small, plain shop in Boyle Heights, a Latino neighbourhood east of Downtown. After we order most of his menu, owner Armando de la Torre takes us to the grocery shop next door where, incongruously, he gets his corn cooked, skinned, hoppered and ground, and then hand-makes it into tortillas or adds lard to make masa for tamales (stuffed steamed breads) or conchas (sweet pastries).

His daughter Natalie loads our table with cardboard plates of tacos topped with tinga de pollo (spiced shredded chicken), skirt steak simmered in pimento sauce, fiery grilled fish with chilli diablo, and a chicken mole (a traditional sauce that takes at least a day to make properly). We try chicharron, made with black beans and slow-cooked pork scratchings. It's much more appetising than it sounds: the fatty pork rinds render down and what's left is melt-in-the-mouth pigginess.

Only one dish defeats us: a chilli taco with habanero ketchup so spicy that it leaves anyone who tastes it red-faced and gasping. Legend has it one visitor managed four in one go. "Eat one, get another free!" says Armando cheerfully as he pours us a shot each of smooth tequila royale reposado to sip. We are, finally, sated.

Next day, the main aim is to find a Kogi truck. Kogi shot to local and then national fame in 2008 when the first of a fleet of five vans popped up selling a surprisingly successful blend of Korean and Mexican food – a signature dish is soy-marinated short rib tacos with coriander and cabbage – and has since spawned dozens of imitators. Its trucks change location up to three times daily and can only be located via Twitter, where Kogi has 96,000 followers; in 2010 its head chef, Roy Choi, was named best new chef in the US by Food & Wine magazine – quite an accolade for a kitchen the size of a caravan.

We find the truck (and its lengthy queue) outside an office block next to the Fox studios in Century City and feast on kimchi quesadillas, which are sweet, gingery cheese and pickled cabbage tortilla sandwiches, and Kogi sliders: miniature brioche buns with Korean bulgogi-marinated short-rib burgers. We finish the meal with an entirely unnecessary and ridiculously moreish home-made chocolate bar with squidgy chilli salt caramel and peanuts.

"Coming here, you can see authentic Mexican cooking and lots of its famous street food, but you can also see where else this food can go," says Miers. "This is some of the most exciting, innovative food we've tried. This trip is giving me masses of ideas to work with!"

Santa Monica beach, the usual pull for Los Angeles tourists

Half an hour later we pull up at Komodo, another Korean-Mexican-Asian-Californian truck, where somehow find room in our stomachs to try delicate fish and grape tacos with pickled cucumber and sesame oil and pork meatballs that are charred and crisp on the outside and pink and lightly spiced inside. Although they're incredibly tasty, even Miers agrees that ordering two portions of truffled potato fries was a mistake; we attempt to cleanse our palates with lychee juice.

Our final stop of the day is Mariscos Chente, a seafood restaurant where we sample drunken shrimp and chipotle prawns and drink vast micheladas – beer mixed with Clamato (clam and tomato) juice and lime, served in a chilli-salt rimmed glass. Then it's back to the hotel, where we swim lengths of the pool in a bid to make room for dinner.

Oddly, Los Angeles's very high-end Mexican restaurants don't seem to deliver food that's as exciting as the city's street food. In the evenings we try two of the best: Border Grill, founded by Mary Sue Milliken and Susan Feniger, and Red O, which belongs to Rick Bayless. These three chefs have done more than anyone to popularise and legitimise Mexican food in America. But although the meals were fine, it was as though the punchy mouthfuls of flavour we'd been ploughing through all day didn't taste the same inside, off pieces of fine china and eaten with cutlery; they didn't give us the same intense sense of the place and its inhabitants as the foods they cook and eat every day could. However good a posh restaurant's heirloom tomato tostadito or yellowtail ceviche might be, they couldn't beat those tongue tacos eaten in the roar of the traffic.