easy hikes and city walks in Italy
Happy Italian families, sunshine and local delicacies combine for a perfect winter walk on the Mediterranean Winter walks very much have their own logic: a successful outdoor experience between December and February requires more careful thinking than a journey at any time of the year, even in the relatively mild and balmy climate of the…
If you are in a rush, you could reduce those two hours in Milan to 15 minutes …. and still see Italy’s largest Cathedral, the world’s oldest shopping mall and opera’s most famous theatre, all of them “next-arcade neighbours” in one of the smallest central cores of any major city in Europe In the last…
… at Milan’s Cimitero Monumentale But there are cracks in the bombast, and you can feel how a very modern sense of discomfort is creeping in. For centuries, death operated a strict two-tier system: cathedral tombs it was for crowned heads and high clergy, the local churchyard for everybody else. (Unless you were a certified…
The provincial capital of Bolzano has a long history, rich cultural attractions – and even some lessons for all of us. One thing is for sure when you go hiking in the Gardena Valley: sooner or later you will come to Bolzano, in nearly all respects the hub of the province, if only between trips…
… with the sound of sizzling frying pans on our Selva-to-Monte-Pana hike in the Dolomites Something I forgot to mention in the report from our first hike in the Dolomites: for the hiking guides, that hike served as their “orientation tour”, intended not only to familiarize the hotel’s newbie guests with the landscape but also to…
In terms of drama, scale and majestic beauty, few areas in Europe can rival the Italian Dolomites For us, one way of rating the quality of our hikes is simply to count the number of pictures that we have brought home. On some of our hikes in the past, we have made no more than…
In the footsteps of the impressionist master at the Riviera resort of Bordighera, follow the Monet. The French painter Claude Monet spent one winter – the early part of 1884 – in the Italian town of Bordighera, having been introduced to this part of the Riviera by his friend Renoir the year before. Monet was…
I don’t know to what extent we have become experts in Tuscan art and landscapes (there is simply too much of either to see and to experience). Our recent trip has certainly improved our expertise in one specific area: Italian food, more particularly Tuscan dishes. How We Enjoyed Eating in Tuscany We now know that…
Once the Pilgrim’s Progress has led him to Siena, the Pilgrim may be excused for thinking that it will not get much better than this For nearly a thousand years, the 2 km stretch of the Via Francigena that cuts through the city of Siena has been the highlight of the trail. Imagine: most of…
The half-stage to Monteriggioni delivers a good lesson in authenticity –and the key to unlocking the treasures of the Via Francigena If you have neither the time for a full trip down the Via Francigena from Canterbury to Rome (a journey of 2000 km that features 80 stages and crossings of both the Channel and…