easy hiking trails in Europe
Bricks in Buildings Architects in most European countries have always considered bricks second rate material, i.e. inferior to stone. As a consequence, there are fairly few “prestige buildings” across Europe – churches, palaces of the high aristocracy – that are made of bricks. The exception to this rule is the extreme North of Germany (and…
Hiking trails near Paris Confession time for a hiking blogger What I normally do after our hikes is this: I sit down, on the very same evening, to write down a few lines for later reference, so I will remember what happened when we eventually want to publish the post – which may be weeks,…
Spend Two Hours in Hamburg The best thing about Deutsche Bahn’s Across-the-Country 1-day rail pass (the “Quer-durchs-Land” ticket or QdL for short) is that it’s very cheap. Forty eight euros for two people on any regional train in Germany: that’s an unbeatable offer. Journeys take a little longer than on the fast IC trains, that…
We really should start putting out posts about food because one of the many pleasures I get when we go hiking anywhere is the anticipation of trying a local delicacy. And I’ve tried some unforgettable ones. Oh, Food Glorious Food Jabuguitos and fried eggs for breakfast in Madrid (This one was a regular on the…
Hiking trails near Paris Discover Hiking Rural France It never fails to amaze me how profonde – how deeply, relentlessly rural – France can be as little as one hour away from Paris. Today’s walk – which features some pretty and prosperous farms, some new, some hundreds of years old – could serve as a…
Hiking near Paris The Parisian Banlieue – a term covering anything from just outside of the city limits to villages and small towns a one-hour railway journey away – has a bad reputation, not all of it undeserved. But for every town over which a pallor of tristesse – actually, the bitterness of exile –…
Day Trip from Paris Remember when I took you on an unexpectedly adventurous journey from Pontoise to the outskirts of Auvers sur Oise? And I promised you: no more bad surprises? Today, I am going to keep that promise. The Auvers-sur-Oise Van Gogh knew The first thing you will notice when crossing the bridge into…
Barcelona has a Secret In the shadow of Barcelona’s Palau Nacional, near the former bullring of the Plaza Espanya, you can find one of the city’s best kept architectural secrets: Ludwig “Less is More” Mies van der Rohe’s celebrated “Barcelona Pavilion” The pavilion, one of the masterpieces of modernist architecture, was constructed in 1929 for…
Hiking in France We headed back to the Mediterranean for some unfinished business. The Sentier Littoral Revisited Last year, my son and I visited the southern French town of to hike along the Sentier Littoral, the footpath that stretches along the entire length of the country’s coastline. When we inquired at the local tourism office for…
Walking in Barcelona Architecture in Barcelona One of the great joys of walking through Barcelona is discovering the great architecture that the city’s grand boulevards have to offer. Whenever you look up on one of the main streets in the city’s grid-like “new town”, you will not need laser eye surgery to be sure to see…