What is your idea of easy hiking
If we have whetted your appetite with our last two posts, you may be wondering: what is the best way for yourself to explore the villages of Provence? When you are looking for answers on the Internet, you can easily get the impression that the public transport infrastructure of the area will not be very…
Provence is famous for its pretty villages: their street markets, busy sidewalk cafes and colourfully decorated handicraft shops. Les Baux, however, one of the region’s top destinations, is not like that at all. For one, you will find fewer sidewalk cafes and restaurants, certainly none that would line the high street. You will also find…
Tourist Italy mainly consists of cities and towns. There are beaches and lakes, of course, but close your eyes and conjure up an image of an Italian tourist destination, and I bet that it will be the image of a historic town: Rome, Florence, Venice, Milan, Naples – urban destinations are also Italy’s Big Beasts…
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…
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…
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…
Having explored the Brittany coast to the west of Saint Malo for last week’s hike, we will today turn in the opposite direction. But although the landscape around Rothéneuf – the starting point for today’s exploration of the GR34 coastal path – may look familiar with its mix of dramatic scenery … … and more…
A few years ago, French hikers were asked to name their favourite hiking trail in the country, and it was the great Brittany stretch of the nationwide coastal path that received the largest number of votes. I don’t know whether this vote was a one-off or whether it is conducted every year or so, and…
We began our brief series of Roman walks where the city’s history began: on its legendary “seven hills”. Today, we will finish there as well, returning to the starting point of our journey but focusing on what has always been the odd one out of Rome’s seven hills The Aventino on the Eternal City’s southern…
Our latest trip to Rome was the 4th time we visited the city. We went first in the mid-1980s when the world was a different place: the Iron Age of the modern world. Many things have changed since then, but the Eternal City is not one of them. Which, after all, is why it bears…