Bordeaux in the sunny southwest of France is the unofficial wine capital of the world. The label of “Bordeaux”, however, under which the locally produced wines are distributed across the world and which has earned the city its fame, only serves to indicate the name of the place where these wines have been stored, blended…
At first glance, the small lakeside town of Orta – located roughly 70 km north of Milan at the foot of the Italian Alps – comes across as a typical Instagram town: beautiful … … but perhaps a little too confident in the expectation that her many admirers will be so dazzled by her looks…
The Easy Hikers have been going on country hikes and urban walks in roughly even proportions for well over 10 years now, and I still cannot decide which of the two I would go for if I could pick only one. Simply stated, the problem is this: a good country hike beats a good urban…
For many years, Lecce was the only major tourist destination in the entire mezzogiorno, the bottom of the Italian boot south of Naples. The town likes to style itself as the “Florence of the South” and can bolster this claim with some great architecture from different periods … … but particularly with its richly decorated…
Genoa, “La Superba”, proudly stands apart from the rest of the country – and, in many ways, does not feel like an Italian city at all. It is neither elegant (like Milan) nor full of joie de vivre (like Naples), and it is certainly not an open-air museum where everything has been neatly arranged for…
Scenic walks in urban environments come in one of two guises: they take you either through a cartoon version of nature that has been carefully designed for the delight of urbanites or through feral landscapes – abandoned “brownfield sites” such as railway lines, port installations and industrial depots – that have been reclaimed by nature….
Bari, the largest city on the Adriatic coast, is not a mandatory stop on the Great Italian Tourist Trail. No Renaissance masterpieces are on public display, the town’s history does not feature names that you would recognize from old High School lessons, and you will not see reflections of magnificent medieval architecture in the sparkling…
Why yearn for faraway countries when so much beauty is close at hand? I would love to say that we went to explore the Parc du Cap Martin on the French Riviera inspired by these famous words of Goethe, but the truth is far more prosaic: a friend had invited us for a drink in…
Today, we will be offering you: a lake that looks occasionally like a piece from the Amazon jungle … … a river that looks occasionally like a canal … … a gem of an old town with plenty of interesting views and motives … … and a spate of horses, largely in one shape and…
For many years, Aix-en-Provence had cornered the market for Picturesque Market Towns In Southern France. Easy-to-reach (just over an hour by train from Marseille) and pretty-to-look-at, it ticks all the important boxes for visitors. If you came from Northern Europe or North America and wanted to see a Typical Town In Provence, old men playing…