Enjoy The Amalfi Coast Without The Crowds In Cilento
Roughly 90 minutes south of Naples and the Amalfi coast, is the less visited but equally beautiful Cilento region, a UNESCO World heritage site with sea, sand and ancient Greek temples. Between the Archaeological Park of Paestum and the pine forest-lined beaches of the Mediterranean Sea, The Savoy Hotel & Spa is one of the few hotels in the area, thanks to its location in a protected national park where no other hotels can be built.
Pool at The Savoy Hotel & Spa, Cilento, Italy Savoy hotel
Just 30 minutes from Salerno airport, the family-owned hotel is a member of Preferred Hotels, the world's largest independent hotel brand, which guarantees a luxury hospitality experience. And because the area is not as well known, it's much less expensive than the Amalfi coast. The hotel was founded in the 1980s by Giuseppe Pagano and the business is now run by the second generation. Next door to the Savoy is the four-star Esplanade Boutique Hotel, also owned by the Pagano family.
A suite at Savoy Hotel & Spa, Cilento, Italy www.aquilamattia.it
Inspired by the area's close ties to ancient Greece, the Savoy hotel's design features a white-washed exterior accented by contemporary columns and a series of lush gardens. The Savoy has such a grand, expansive lobby that you'll feel like you're entering a much larger hotel. Instead, it is actually boutique hotel size, with only 44 rooms, suites and villas. The design palette in the guest rooms has a cool, retro Italian seaside feel with red, green to blue, with wooden furniture and marble. Accommodation ranges in size from Classic Rooms with Italian marble baths and forest views to Terrace Rooms with outdoor space and seating areas and Suites, which offer large baths and covered verandas.
Savoy hotel, white terrace for breakfast Gabriele Rivoli
The Cilento area is the birthplace of the original Mediterranean Diet, with an emphasis on plant-based foods, healthy fats and seafood. Prominent cardiologist Ancel Keys studied the population's eating habits here in the 1950s and 1960s to understand the secrets of their longevity. The results of these studies generated a global revolution, leading the doctor to describe this way of eating as the "Mediterranean Diet." And this is the focus of everything served at the hotel which has an impressive kitchen garden and beehives. The Pagano family's award-winning San Salvatore 1988 farm and winery nearby also supplies the hotel with products including Buffalo mozzarella, yogurt, olive oil and wine.
Tre Olivi Restaurant at the Savoy Hotel, Cilento Savoy Hotel & Spa
The hotel's dining options include Bistrot Olivella with a farm-table menu of traditional Cilento dishes. For lunch or dinner, Beach Club 93 Restaurant is bliss. Located a short stroll from the hotel on the beach, the hotel's Mediterranean restaurant serves fresh and raw seafood as well as pizza prepared by the in-house pizza chef. For a really special meal, Michelin- starred Ristorante Tre Olivi is the hotel's gastronomic Mediterranean restaurant. A tribute to the Mediterranean diet and the olive tree, Tre Olivi has been under the helm of German-born Chef Oliver Glowig since 2024. Chef Glowig has lived in Italy for a while with stints at the Grand Hotel Quisisana in Capri with Gualtiero Marchesi and both Capri Palace Hotel & Spa and Hotel Aldrovandi Villa Borghese in Rome. The restaurant offers a fully immersive farm to table experience from the furniture made from olive trees to the scents and tastes of the menu. There is an a la carte menu plus two tasting menus (starting at €160) to choose from served with wines from their own vineyard. Chef Glowig's creations have intriguing, tasty food combinations. Highlights from a recent menu included anchovies with buffalo ricotta; pasta and potatoes with blue lobster and chicken scented with fig leaves and smoked eel.
Beach Club 93 at Savoy Hotel & Spa, Cilento, Italy Savoy
If you're keen to stay right at the beach, the hotel's Beach Club 93 offers three private beachfront villas, each with a spacious terrace with private pool. And for hotel guests, the beach club is a short stroll from the main hotel or you can take the complimentary shuttle service. The private beach club features a saltwater pool with hydromassage, shaded sun loungers, private gazebos and a beachside bar serving cocktails and meals. The beach itself is wide, sandy and uncrowded. Wellness
The spa at the Savoy Hotel, Cilento, Italy www.aquilamattia.it
Hotel Savoy's beautifully designed spa, a haven below the hotel, has three pools of varying temperatures, a salt cave, an ice room, a Turkish hammam and a sauna. Treatments focus on holistic renewal: massages are enhanced by a signature blend of olive oil and the aroma of white mulberry, so distinctive to Cilento. The Ancient site of Paestum
Second Temple of Hera in Paestum, Italy. getty
Following an expedition to Paestum in 1787, the German philosopher Johann Wolfgang Goethe said 'those well-preserved ruins can only be understood after seeing them with your own eyes.' And later, Friedrich Nietzsche said 'it's as if a god here had built his house with enormous blocks of stone.'
Everyone has heard of Pompeii, the world's best example of a preserved Roman city. Pompeii is about an hour away from Cilento and certainly should be visited but if you're staying in Cilento, an incredible Unesco World Heritage archaeological site is right on the doorstep. Although lesser known than Pompeii, the site of Paestum is even older. Paestum was founded by Greek colonists around the 6th century BCE and known as Poseidonia, later coming under Roman rule.
The ruins of Roman amphitheater at Paestum, Italy getty
There are Roman remains from a later city at Paestum but the main reason to visit is to see three fully intact Greek temples, among the best preserved in the world, the oldest of which dates to 550 BC. There's a lot to take in so it makes sense to go with a guide like Silvia Braggio who's been giving tours of the entire area since the 1990s. The three Greek temples in the Doric order, one dedicated to Athena, and two to Hera (wife of Zeus), were built 50 years apart dating from 550 to 450 BCE. It's possible to walk inside both of the Hera temples without any restrictions.
Detail, the Diver's Tomb. in the museum at Paestum, Italy getty
Surrounded by lovely countryside and located near the coast, Paestum also features the National Archaeological Museum, which houses funerary items, pots, etc found in the town, in the nearby necropolises and at the sanctuary dedicated to Hera. Do not miss the museum's thrilling highlight, the Greek 'Tomb of the Diver,' a colorful, painted tomb from 480 BC. Unlike most Greek tombs of the period, which were quite plain, the Tomb of the Diver is decorated with colorful frescoes on the interior walls and lid. There are several scenes of Greek life and an image at one end of an unknown man diving into water is thought to suggest the soul's passage from life into the afterlife. This tomb is the only known example of Greek painting from a tomb of this era. Getting there
British Airways has just introduced a seasonal route of three direct flights per week from London Gatwick to Salerno from May (Mon, Thu and Sat) until October. There are also daily flights from London to Naples International Airport (about 90 minutes from Cilento) all year round.
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Did all the cheese and pita bread I ate really do that much damage? Probably not, Wong says. 'That jump won't just be fat but also water retention, caused by eating a lot of salty food, and probably a bit of fat depending on how much you've eaten,' he explains. If you're someone who does a lot of strength training, 'you might even put on a bit of lean muscle mass, because you're giving your muscles the good rest and nutrients that they need to actually grow'. As Wong often reassures his clients, you would have to eat a truly enormous amount of food to put on half a stone of fat in a week. A single pound of fat gained requires 'about 500 extra calories every day on top of the amount you need to maintain your weight,' he explains. As such, the reality is that a week of overindulgence likely won't make you gain more than two or three pounds at most, even if, like me, you've ended up reaching to the back of your wardrobe for an extra pair of trousers. I think I ate at least 4,000 calories a day. To maintain my weight I need about 2,000, roughly what I eat when I'm at home. It's not all as simple as calories in, calories out, either, however. 'Your body has a set point that it really wants to stay at,' says nutritionist Jenna Hope. Once you return from holiday, your body works hard to bring your weight back down to its usual levels, a process that can be masked by water weight and constipation. 'A week or two, or even three, outside of your norm might not actually cause weight gain at all, because you aren't causing any long-term changes to your metabolic activity,' so long as you go back to your normal habits. For this reason, Wong advises that you 'avoid weighing yourself for four weeks after you get home,' he says. 'Anything you see differently in the scales then might be actual fat, but until then, what you're seeing likely isn't real weight gain.' Sure enough, after a week back at home I was only three pounds heavier than I was when I landed in Athens; after a month, I was back to my usual weight. Given the power of your set point, shifting the weight can be as simple as 'going for an extra walk after lunch,' says Wong. If you really are concerned about putting on weight on holiday, 'either eat or drink your calories,' he advises. 'Have the extra cocktail or the slice of cake, not both. You'll likely be satisfied with one and feel a bit healthier afterwards.' What happens on the inside? The scales don't tell the full story, however. Studies that examine what a week of overindulgence does to your body only present bad news. One Oxford University study reveals that three weeks of eating badly is enough to raise your risk of type 2 diabetes and cardiovascular diseases. Their participants were fed a diet high in sat-fats (crisps, cheese, chocolate and pizza) for 24 days, and while their weight didn't budge, their cholesterol levels spiked by 10 per cent, and the fat in their liver increased by a fifth. A summer trip can also give you an 'obese brain', another recent paper from the University of Tubingen in Germany found (clearly, holiday-spoiling is a flourishing academic niche). Just five days of eating a poor diet is enough to cause changes to our brains that outlive 'the timeframe of the consumption', reports Professor Stephanie Kullmann. After eating an extra 1,000 calories a day for five days, 'the brain and behaviour response resemble that of a person with obesity and changes in the brain seem to occur prior to weight gain.' What can also change quickly is our gut microbiome. 'A week or two weeks of eating differently and not getting enough fibre is long enough to see some changes in the makeup of your gut,' says Hope. The happiness of your gut is a core to good energy levels, proper digestion, immune function and even keeping you in a good mood. Spending time away in a totally different food environment is part of why we can come back from holiday feeling more sluggish and constipated than ever before. From the food log before and after my holiday, and while I was away, it's clear that I was eating more than I usually would for a few weeks on either side. I'd have an extra pint of beer or glass of wine on a Wednesday and I'd often veer towards something heavy in fat and salt and therefore attractive to my 'obese brain' for dinner post-holiday. I'm sure that my gut was not impressed. 'If you go away multiple times a year, it can be really hard to reset and not slide into bad habits,' Hope says. Fortunately, this is easily avoided. 'Preparing your breakfasts and lunches for the week that you're back home can be really helpful, as it removes the element of spontaneous choice and helps you make better decisions,' says Hope. 'It can be really helpful to order a grocery shop to arrive on the day that you're back.' To make it even easier for yourself, 'try having a healthy breakfast on the days that you're away, rather than diving into the hotel buffet and having everything you can see,' she adds. Having one healthy meal a day makes it much easier to get back to normal once you're home, and if it's high in protein, you won't instantly reach for a snack as soon as you leave your hotel. (And if you're in the land of thick, creamy Greek yoghurt, like I was, it won't feel like a sacrifice.) Will a holiday raise your blood sugar? Blood sugar monitors are increasingly being worn by people who aren't diabetic. The way they work is that you stick them into your arm (there's a small needle, but you can't feel it once it's in), and then you can monitor the amount of sugar that's in your blood after you've eaten from an app on your phone. Ups and downs are normal, but dramatic spikes after meals or prolonged periods of super-high blood sugar can indicate insulin resistance. This is a sign that your body is struggling to handle the amount of sugar you're feeding it, and is a precursor for type 2 diabetes. Discovering the foods that 'spike' you can help you prevent this in the long term, and this can also help you to avoid the sluggishness and fatigue caused by the crashes that follow. It was interesting to see that a typical day in Greece eating a lot of carby and sugary foods made my blood sugar soar. But I can't say it made me behave any differently. I did get a few weird looks from other tourists and it does ruin the bikini photos. The really useful bit came when I looked at my results after landing in Britain. I wore my patch, from Lingo by Abbott before, during, and after my holiday. In the week that I came home, my average blood sugar fell to being 95 per cent lower than it had been while I was away. At first I was shocked. Clearly my body had gone into panic mode because of how much I'd eaten. The stats sound dramatic on paper but in both cases, my average blood sugar remained in a 'healthy' range overall, only briefly rising or falling to unhealthy levels. Such a return to normal is a good sign: 'this shows that you're in good metabolic health and that your body is responding with insulin in a normal way,' says Sophie Bertrand, Abbott's nutritionist. Your blood sugar levels are a result of homeostasis, the complex bodily process that keeps us functioning as normal. It's hard to disrupt this process in a serious way by overeating for a week, Bertrand says. If you're in your twenties and have a BMI that marks you as healthy, like me, then you can eat whatever you like for a short while and be fine in this regard, but this process works less well as you age. Seeing its effects was helpful. 'Someone who's older might find that they have more problems bringing their blood sugar down to normal,' says Bertrand. Over time, this is an issue that can raise your chances of developing insulin resistance, a major risk factor for type 2 diabetes. About 40 per cent of us in Britain are insulin resistant. With this in mind I'll probably start approaching holidays a bit differently as I age. But regardless of your health, there are ways to get back to normal more quickly regardless of your age. Again, a protein-rich breakfast is king: 'this will help to avoid big fluctuations in your blood sugar throughout the day,' says Bertrand. 'Your sleep is also really important in keeping your blood sugar levels stable. Take the opportunity to grab a few more hours each night than you might at home.' Regardless of what you're eating or how much you're sleeping, a quick walk after dinner can work well 'to balance out your blood sugar' too. Besides, the chance to let loose can be good for us. Regularly going on holiday can lower your chances of dying from heart disease in the long run, and can also bring improvements to your blood sugar and 'good' cholesterol levels. As Bertrand puts it, 'a week of treats is much better than a routine filled with less healthy food or binges that follow restricting yourself too severely'. Do you need to worry about your step count? All of this ignores a fact that's fundamental to the concept of holidays: a week or more of relaxation does us provable good. Stress – both the physical and mental kind – can wreak havoc on our health. If you're the kind of person who exercises a lot, a week spent abstaining from lifting heavy weights or sprinting on the treadmill, presents a much-needed break for your joints and muscles. As a result, 'some of the weight you put on while you're on holiday might well be lean muscle mass,' says Wong. That said, keeping your step count up can actually offset the potential damage done to your health by eating outside of the norm. 'Going for a walk before or after dinner is a good way to help bring your blood sugar back down to a healthy range,' says Bertrand. And what's more, you'll probably find it easier to get them in while you're away than you do at home. I certainly did: my average steps per day are 12,000 as per my health tracker, but I got in 15,000 a day in Athens, and it didn't occur to me that I was exercising. Do I regret letting loose on holiday? Not at all. As Jenna Hope says, the really crucial thing for your health is how quickly you go back to normal after your holidays, and making sure that you don't live with your 'holiday brain' between them. Next time I go away, I'll be sure to plan some healthy meals for the week that I get back, and I'll try to find ways to keep my step count up while I'm away too, to counter the effects of eating badly. I'm not sure that I'd take a glucose tracker with me again, but it's certainly helpful to know that beer spikes me more than wine, and that baklava does less damage than chips. Best of all is that, having looked at the changes to my body, I now know that with some thought, I can keep enjoying holidays the way I want for the rest of my life. Broaden your horizons with award-winning British journalism. Try The Telegraph free for 1 month with unlimited access to our award-winning website, exclusive app, money-saving offers and more.
