Sicily
This is a question that every traveller will, sooner or later, have to answer: is it right to only see or visit what is beautiful at my destination, or should I go for a rounder picture that also includes the typical and the truthful? Lets us say, we are visiting Italy : do we concentrate…
Locals always tell visitors of Northern Sicily to do three things during their stay: go to Palermo and visit at least one of the city’s markets (been there, done that), take a swim at a coastal beach resort and to visit one of the region’s colourful villages and small towns. And since these picturesque small…
The Italian South is not all of one piece, contrary to what visitors from the North (folks like us) may assume. Rather than having been cut from the same cloth, it is a coat of many colours. Think of the American South, if you will: Tennessee is not like Louisiana, and Texas is another story…
We have just returned from a trip to the northern coast of Sicily and will tell you all about it in a three-part series of posts starting next week. As usual, we will tell you where to go for scenic “easy hikes” but also how to discover some off-the-wall sites and where to go for…
Water. If you want to know what shapes and sustains the Mediterranean way of life, just follow its flow. Drinking water is the magical essence of the Mediterranean alchemy. It turns scruffy woodlands into orchards and lush gardens, baking-hot courtyards into oases of coolness and calm, and parched savannahs into fertile fields that can sustain…
Greek heritage is big in eastern Sicily. Most places in this part of the world were established by Greek settlers, after all, and have the ruins to prove it. But even in this distinguished company of heritage sites, Siracusa is in a class of its own. For one, there is the hardware: Siracusa’s Temple of…
There is a group of tourist destinations throughout Europe that I like to refer to as the Instagram Girls of the Grand Tour. You can find these destinations in every corner of the continent, but no matter how large the distance between any two such destinations may be, you will find that they have more…
Today, we start telling you about the walks we squeezed into the pauses between the various lockdowns over the past six months. This is something we did in October 2020. Sicily is the largest island in the Mediterranean. You probably knew that already. What you may not have known is that it is also the…