easy hikes and city walks in Italy
As those among you who are blessed with the gift of observation may have noticed, we are quickly approaching the climax of the festive season. And it was in the spirit of Christmas that I, on our last visit to Genoa, decided to fulfil myself a long-held wish, descending from the train in the suburb…
Hiking trails on the Riviera generally fall into one of two categories: mountain hikes and coastal walks. Today, we will be offering you an alternative in this fascinating hike in Sasso. The Sasso is a small river, but it nevertheless comes with its own valley and its own patch of wetland. The Sasso’s waters flow…
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…
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…
Whatever anyone will tell you, Rainer Maria Rilke is the greatest poet in the German language. If you do not speak German well enough to read Rilke in the original (or if you think, with Mark Twain, that life is too short to learn it), try – for flavour – a painting of Rilke’s near-contemporary…
There are three good reasons to visit the Cimitero Monumentale di Staglieno in Genoa, one of Italy’s (and Europe’s) most famous and important “cities of the dead”. (Hemingway called the Staglieno “one of the wonders of the world”, and writers as different as Friedrich Nietzsche and Mark Twain were among its admirers.) First, architectural history. Archaeologists…
If you are a frequent guest of this blog, you may remember our “two towns for one day’s walk” series of short and easy hikes which connect two villages along the Riviera coast (like Ventimiglia to Bordighera or Bordighera to San Remo or from Alassio to Laigueglia). In the mountainous back country, meanwhile, such a hike is…