Granted: not many famous writers have come from the Riviera. Writers, however, have always loved to travel to the southern coast of France, sometimes only to relax and to have fun, but sometimes also to work and – eventually – to write about it, in one form or the other. The list of visiting great…
Several years ago, when we had already established our base on the Riviera but not yet turned it into a proper home, we decided one day to walk from Eze-sur-mer all the way up to Eze village. This turned out to be a fairly tough hike, particularly for that half of the easy hiking team…
There are three things that we found out about Lake Garda on our recent short stopover.: One: the trains from Venice and Milan all stop on the lake’s southern shore. Two: all the interesting hiking routes are in the North. Three: it is mighty difficult to get from one to the other, because the distances…
One key difference between London and Paris is the pace at which these two largest cities in Europe change their face: in Paris, any such change is slow. Very slow. When I see photos of Parisian street scenes from the years before WWI, more often than not I can recognize the location. In London, conversely,…
Manchester was the world’s first industrial town, the cradle of the global manufacturing economy. Today‘s Manchester, however, is no museum: busy and forward-looking, it seems prouder of its soccer clubs and its modern-day prosperity – a rare thing in Britain’s troubled north – than of any past glories. There is little in the streets of…
Granted: nobody would mistake the Alpes Maritimes for the Himalaya. After all, the mountains which line the coast of the French and Italian Riviera are easily measured in the hundreds of metres rather than the thousands. They can, however, look intimidatingly high when seen from the ground up. When you stand by the sea –…
Genoa is a city with many faces: you know that already since we told you that in our last post. Still, I defy anybody turning the corner behind the church of Sant’Antonio on Genoa’s Corso Italia not to be surprised. Boccadasse is a Cinque Terre idyll, neatly stacked boxes of pinks and bright yellows, transported…
The great thing about Genoa is that it keeps on giving. No matter how many times you have visited, there is always something new to discover. In the Old Town, you never know what you will find when you turn the next corner in its dark and narrow maze: there is the multicultural mix of the…
If you are looking for a short walk to round off your trip to Trieste that is not too long or too challenging, something that will not take more than a total of 3 hours out of your schedule – we recommend the eclectic Miramare Gardens. These gardens were laid out in the north of Trieste…
No country in the world is entirely made of one piece: wherever you go, you will always find differences between individual regions. It is equally clear, however, that some countries are more homogeneous than others, and I have always found that the band of cultural variety is particularly narrow in Italy. There is a certain…