easy hiking trails in Europe
The town of Alba in Piemonte, approx. 50 km south of Turin, is beautiful in a way that Italian towns appear to have patented for themselves. It has a beautiful central piazza, … … and, to counterbalance the weight of 2000 years of history, a more busy and modern town square (between Via Roma and…
Most people who visit Naples for the first time put a day trip to Pompeii near the top of their agenda. We, however, did not. Our recent trip to Naples was our fourth – we still had not seen the ruins – and I finally surrendered, much in the spirit of a man who hates…
What people want most in life is love – or so psychologists had thought for a long time. Latest research in the field, however, appears to indicate that humans crave respect even more: and, above all, the kind of respect which is most hurtfully denied to them. Beautiful women want to be admired for their…
The concept of a journey implies that with every step of the way, the world changes in some aspect and also that something changes in us. (Italo Calvino) There is no Italian town without tourists. You only have the choice between different degrees of crowdedness: some towns at the extreme end of the spectrum function…
Just as Italy is not just the sum of Rome, Florence and Venice, Campania – the region south of Rome and its province of Lazio – is more than Naples plus the Amalfi Coast. Today and over the next few weeks, we will present this region to you in its full diversity, offering you something…
Here is how to explore Naples: if you only have two hours – time to kill between two trains, let’s say – I would suggest you walk up and down Via Tribunale, the main street of the city since Roman times. If you have one full day, you may want to extend your focus to…
There are several ways of discovering a city. For Naples, we suggest to discover the city through its art. Don’t worry: we are not proposing to explore the city by walking from one Caravaggio to the next. We invite you instead to follow us on a stroll through Napoli’s unique open air art museum, which…
Vive la serendipité! Yes, you guessed it: this is another post in praise of serendipity walking, the art of making discoveries while wandering around aimlessly with the sole purpose of entertaining yourself. At least, this is how it is commonly defined, although, on a deeper level, there is much more to it than that. Serendipity…
If it is true that, as they say, all art aspires to the condition of music, Italian gardens aspire to the status of opera – with their love for grandeur, spectacle and full-throttled drama. This aspiration, however, does not burn with the same passion in all of Italy’s gardens. When, after the Renaissance, Italy fell…
For almost a thousand years, Saint Malo has been the best defended town not only in Brittany but in the whole of France: the only one that has been continuously surrounded by a fully functioning defensive wall. There has, after all, always been a lot for Saint Malo to defend itself against: the extent of…