Grasse, as Joe Namath very nearly said, is not for visiting, it’s for smoking. And you’d be surprised how many locals share this opinion, at least the first half of it: that your time would be better spent going somewhere else (not to put too fine a point on it.) Nice-Matin, our local rag, recently…
Münster is one of western Germany’s most favourite day trip destinations and also happens to be a modern art hotspot. People from the region and beyond like to come here partly to experience the town’s ancient and interesting history: in 1535, the Siege of Münster ended the tyrannical regime of the eccentric Jan van Leiden, a…
Here is a tip if you face an acute what-to-do-with-the kids emergency in Barcelona. If you are visiting the Catalan capital with teenage kids in tow who have become ever so slightly rebellious after three days of art nouveau, hallucinogenic architecture and the musty smell of museum corridors take them to Girona (it’s a little…
Over the years, this blog has featured many different kinds of walks for different occasions: exhausting hikes as well as gentle strolls, explorations of the wild and urban walks with a cultural theme, walks for summer and walks for winter, walks that you can spread over several days and walks that you can squeeze in between…
Enough about painters and the French Riviera! Entire books have been written about the way in which the great modernists of European painting – from Monet to Picasso – fell in love with the lights and the sights and the colours of southern France. You don’t even have to go to the library to read…
Now that we have established that the local food alone is worth a trip to Barcelona (by eating a lot of it, intrepid adventurers that we are), only one question remains: how do we get all those calories off our waistlines? Well, by walking, of course. I am sure you had already figured that out…
In our last post, we talked about something that Mediterranean countries do not, on the whole, do very well – Christmas, or, to be more precise, the “universal” (but in fact Northern European-North American) version of it. Today’s post, conversely, is about something which lies very much in Southern Europe’s comfort zone: food. Which is…
8000 Japanese citizens live in the German city of Düsseldorf and they built a little colony complete with a Japanese Garden in Duesseldorfproviding middle and upper management people of Japanese companies in the city with their home comforts with Japanese shops and Japanese restaurants. There is probably no other place in Europe where you find such a wide array of excellent Japanese eateries.
Themed Walk in London Many of the city’s restless souls have chosen to reside in the tomb-like tunnels of the underground railway The most popular Themed London Walks deal with one of the following: Jack the Ripper (been there), pop music (done that), and ghosts – more of which soon. But please don’t be impatient: you…
Underneath and between the City’s futuristic skyscrapers, a 2000 year old structure is still weaving its way I suspect that some of you may have heard about the Berlin Wall. I also believe that far fewer will be aware that London has a wall, too – which was equally the product of a foreign invasion…