easy hikes and city walks in Italy
“Slow Travel”, above all, means to explore your destination at a speed which is natural to the human species. The human mind did not evolve to process impressions when hurled along at the speed of a car or a coach. So if you want to give your travel experiences a chance to penetrate the mere…
You probably have heard about the concept of slow travel. If so, you will have a broad understanding of its principles. After all, up to a point, the movement’s name is self-explanatory: if you intend to “travel slowly”, don’t rush. Take your time and take it easy. So far for general principles. It is a…
Michelin classifies sites and restaurants with a simple three-star system: sites are either “interesting”, “worth a detour” or “worth a trip”. Please note that this is not simply a way of saying “good”, “better” and “even better”: 3-star attractions such as Florence and Venice are good in different ways from a picturesque fishing village. A…
There are many ways in which you can divide up human beings meaningfully in two groups: NOT on the basis of whether they hear yanny or laurel or whether the colours on “the dress“ are black and blue or white and gold. But take for example holiday destinations: are you attracted to travel destinations because…
There is no longer any such thing as an “undiscovered” bit of Italy. Entire libraries have been written on the major sights and places, while even small villages produce thousands of hits on a Google search. There are still, however, parts of Italy that do not get the attention they appear to deserve, that are…
Scars, as a rule, do not make human faces prettier but can make them more interesting. The same mechanism is at work in towns and cities. Many modern cities with long histories bear the scars of old catastrophes in their townscapes: we can still see where the structure of London was altered following the Great…
In certain – generally rather expensive – restaurants, they offer you what they call a menu de degustation: which means that rather than feeding you properly with meat and two veg, they show you a little of their art, teasing your taste buds with one bite of this and two bites of that and indicating…
One of the main tourist attractions of the Italian Riviera actually lies a few miles further inland: no visit to this stretch of the Mediterranean coast would be complete without a trip to at least one of the Ligurian mountain villages with their narrow lanes and dark cobbled alleyways. Ligurian Mountain Villages Ten or twenty…
This week’s post takes a leaf out of your local supermarket’s sale strategy. If “2 for the price of 1” helps shift chickens, deodorant, toilet paper and what-not, it should also attract the punters to the Easy Hiker blog. Today, we shall give you a taste of two of the outstanding Ligurian trails, the north-to-south…
Bussana Vecchia has a mixed press. For every admirer on TripAdvisor and similar social media sites who calls the small ghost town north of Sanremo “a picturesque artists’ colony”, you can find someone who left unimpressed, calling the place “unbearably twee” or “soulless and commercial”. Whichever way your own opinion may fall, it is undeniable…