For almost a thousand years, Saint Malo has been the best defended town not only in Brittany but in the whole of France: the only one that has been continuously surrounded by a fully functioning defensive wall. There has, after all, always been a lot for Saint Malo to defend itself against: the extent of…
Having explored the Brittany coast to the west of Saint Malo for last week’s hike, we will today turn in the opposite direction. But although the landscape around Rothéneuf – the starting point for today’s exploration of the GR34 coastal path – may look familiar with its mix of dramatic scenery … … and more…
A few years ago, French hikers were asked to name their favourite hiking trail in the country, and it was the great Brittany stretch of the nationwide coastal path that received the largest number of votes. I don’t know whether this vote was a one-off or whether it is conducted every year or so, and…
1. Bring a rain coat – and a sweater If you are planning a trip to Lisbon, here are a few notes on travelling to Portugal that you may find useful. The weather in Southern Europe is not always what people from the North expect. As a rule of thumb: winters are wetter than you…
The small town of Sintra north of Lisbon is the home of two royal palaces. The contrast between those two buildings could hardly be bigger. The National Palace near the town centre was built 1000 years ago for the Moorish rulers of the Taifa Kingdom of Lisbon (after the Cordoba Caliphate had broken up into…
Uptown and downtown Lisbon are two different worlds, and your strategy of experiencing the two unequal halves of the Portuguese capital should reflect this. For your uptown walk on the slopes of the city we suggested last week, you should pick a starting point and an end point on opposite ends of the old town…
One of the rules of “adventurous” travel is that you should not read too much in advance about a place you are going to visit, because otherwise, your trip is in danger of becoming a mere ticking-off-exercise of seeing things “in the flesh” that you have already studied in great detail on the Internet. Give…
We began our brief series of Roman walks where the city’s history began: on its legendary “seven hills”. Today, we will finish there as well, returning to the starting point of our journey but focusing on what has always been the odd one out of Rome’s seven hills The Aventino on the Eternal City’s southern…
Here is a quiz question for you. What is the only European country that has never possessed any kind of a railway network? Hands up everybody who said “the Vatican”. Wrong! (The correct answer is Andorra.) Don’t feel downhearted if you could not get it right, as the New York Times comforts those of its…
Our latest trip to Rome was the 4th time we visited the city. We went first in the mid-1980s when the world was a different place: the Iron Age of the modern world. Many things have changed since then, but the Eternal City is not one of them. Which, after all, is why it bears…