Hiking in the Italian Riviera
Riverwalks are popular for a large number of reasons. They are easy-to-navigate (there are only so many possibilities of heading the wrong way) so you can concentrate on what’s on view, they are lined with towns and public transport connections so you can stop and start your hike almost anywhere you like, and changes in…
La Spezia is that rare kind of thing: a tourist town without tourist attractions. The town is full of visitors who have travelled there halfway across Europe – some of them halfway across the world – not to visit and experience La Spezia but to use the town as a base for explorations of the…
… domes of foliage from which burst forth a polyphony of lemons and oranges and the ephemeral veil of a foam,of a sea powder that no human foot has ever touched or seems about to, but unfortunately the train accelerates …Towards Tellaro by Eugenio Montale There are about 350 members in the federation of the Borghi Piu Belli d’Italia…
In the afternoon of 8 July 1822, Percy Bysshe Shelley, poet and heir apparent to a baronetcy that came with a large fortune, rigged his sailing boat in the port of Livorno to return from a meeting with friends to his home further up the Italian coast in the bay of La Spezia. Ahead of…
Sometimes, it is best to know little or nothing about the destination you are about to visit: this allows you to keep the option open of surprising yourself. Sometimes, however, a little knowledge can help – and feel like adding a key ingredient to the sauce that turns a pleasant but bland meal into something…
Most people would classify Sestri Levante as a “tourist town”, but you should not think that this is a good reason for bypassing Sestri on your tour of Northern Italy. First of all, because the tag “tourist town”, although commonly used with more than a hint of contempt, is not, if you think about it,…
In these bleak mid-winter days of sleet, snow and icy winds: what could possibly bring more joy than a trip to a place where you can still feel the breath of summer on your neck, a place where, while the season’s paraphernalia (parasols and pleasure boats) may have been mothballed, the spirit of summer is…
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…
A little over a year ago, we deconstructed the French Riviera’s mainline railway route and gave you a station-by-station guide to tell you a little bit about the towns and the landscapes that lie on the far side of the stations’ concourses. Today, we are going to do the same for Italy: The Italian Riviera…
Last week, John and Julie asked us to take them on a walk. We had met John and Julie for the first time shortly after our arrival in Menton, nearly seven years ago. They were already familiar with our little corner of the world back then, but freely admit that they still have relatively little…