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…
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…
French Riviera Walks How about this… … a short walk through the prettiest town in France, topped off by a visit to one of the world’s most famous gardens, with splendid views over the Mediterranean Sea throughout? Menton, in the extreme southeastern corner of France, combines the best of France – a downtown area of…
For once, Mrs. Easy Hiker and I are in total agreement: the most striking change that Barcelona has undergone since we last visited the city a mere twenty years ago is the rise in the number of people with an apparent interest in the works of (the architect) Antoni Gaudí. What is the Weirdest Thing…
Kurt Vonnegut says that unusual travel suggestions are Dancing Lessons from God So, of course, we could not decline the offer of travelling to Genoa, even if this meant that we had to change our carefully laid out travel plans at the shortest of short notices. The story is this: we had been planning to…
There can be no question about it: Midnight in Madrid – Magnifique! Some cities just are. When spotlights carve out individual buildings out of the darkness, leaving others in a haze of indirect light and shadows, we, the observers, lose some things (context, a certain degree of detail) and win others: mainly scale. Some cities…
Disastrous Days Out I have been silent about this day for a good reason, as you soon shall see, but since today, the last day of the year 2011, is the day for overdue confessions, here we go. Our plan was to walk on the new-ish “X18” trail from Ibbenbüren to Tecklenburg. We found the…
The German Forest One more reason to go hiking in Germany’s forests: they may not be there for much longer. In 20 or 30 years, there will still be life in the German countryside, but perhaps not as we know it. In the 1980s, the German forest appeared to be on its last leaves. The…
Why I Do Not Like Hiking by Hugh Sluggard 1. Hiking is hard work I do not like hiking because I abhor physical and, indeed, challenges of any other kind. If it weren’t for the kids, I would gladly spend my holidays on the sofa, watching old episodes of Happy Days. Ah, the Fonz! They…
Day Trip from Paris The White House Le Corbusier Built I am not a great fan of art museums – mainly because I have hardly ever learned anything from looking at a picture on a museum wall that I had not already learned from looking at a good reproduction in a book. Architecture, however, is…