Throughout history, few large cities in the world have managed without a navigable waterway, but there are some whose river or canal passes out of sight and out of town, through countryside or distant suburbs. (Milan is an example for this, as is – more surprisingly, perhaps – Vienna). This applies to Strasbourg as well,…
Some countries do city tourism well, others badly or not at all. At one end of the scale, you have France, Spain and Italy. Their great cities are firm fixtures on the global tourism itinerary, and most of these countries’ regional capitals have become popular destinations in their own right. Toulouse and Strasbourg, Seville and…
Nantes is one of France’s great provincial cities and stands – in the minds of the French – for the Atlantic West as Marseille stands for the South and Strasbourg for the East. Foreign visitors may be familiar with the city as the entry point to two of the country’s most famous tourist regions: Brittany,…
If you travel a lot in Europe, there is a good chance that you will, sooner or later, pass through EuroAirport. This airport – which is located near prime hiking areas such as Lake Constance and the Black Forest and used a lot by low-cost airlines including Wizz and Easyjet – is the only airport…
Of all the major European countries, Italy has always appeared to me the most culturally uniform. There is little that connects the baroque splendours of Catholic Bavaria with the Protestant restraint of Germany’s Hanseatic North and little common ground between Strasbourg and Nice, but there is an “Italianate-ness” of streets and buildings that is immediately…
Hiking in Germany The Prettiest German Hiking Trail The Saar Hunsrueck Steig Trail The Saar-Hunsruecksteig in southwest Germany features 12 stages with a total length of 180 km. consists of two older and somewhat less high-profile trails (the “Saar-Steig” in the west and the “Hunsrück-Steig” in the east). Because of its Y-shape, however, you cannot hike…
Hiking in Germany The Black Forest Westweg The Trail Westweg: 13 stages and 280 km through theBlack Forest, from Pforzheim in the North to the Swiss city of Basel in the South. Profile The Black Forest is the most famous of all German Mittelgebirge (literally “mountains of medium size”), the country’s sub-Alpine mountain ranges. It is…