Cordoba in the south of Spain is the hottest town in Europe. Temperatures reach an average daytime high of 37° centigrade in July and August (100° F). In July 2022, the city experienced 19 days with 40° or more (104° F), a record for any European city, and one day in April 2023, the thermometer…
There are two reasons to travel to the town of Beaucaire. Firstly, there is the experience of walking across a border: not a national but a cultural border, one that has divided France into tribes of different customs and habits for centuries. Up to a point, it still does so today. Take the train to…
A river always comes in handy for a human settlement – that’s why so many towns across the world have one. Still, it’s rare to find a place that has found as many purposes for its natural waterway as the Provençal town of L’Isle-sur-la-Sorgue. First of all came the discovery that the river Sorgue was…
Having returned from our recent trip to Avignon, I went through old Easy Hiker posts to check what we had posted from our previous visits of the town – and found, much to my surprise, that the answer was: nothing. Nothing at all! Was that even possible? We must have visited Avignon at least four…
The Santuario di Oropa aka Sacred Mountain of Oropa, in the northern Italian region of Piemonte is one of the largest sacred shrines in the Alps – and also one of the most storied. It all started with St Eusebius in the 4th century: on a pilgrimage to the Holy Land, as the legend has…
Here is something about Madrid that many people may not know: a river runs through it. But why is the Manzanares so much less famous than, say, the Thames, the Seine or the Tiber? One reason is certainly that all of Madrid – not just its river – flies a bit under the radar, and…
The Centro with the Madrid dos Austrias, the Gran Via neighbourhood, Malasana and Chueca: last week, we gave you a good roundup of the Spanish capital’s “greatest hits” while walking through its central districts. But big cities like Madrid are always a sum of all their parts, not only the three of four that make…
People either love big cities or they don’t. If you are not energized by the noise, the speed, the rapid flow of images – and if the prospect of having to process all the stimuli and information at the same time fills you with dread rather than nervous excitement, you will not love Madrid. There…
Rocamadour in the Dordogne valley east of Bordeaux is one of France’s top visitor attractions, but unlike most of the other entries in tourism’s Top Of The Pops, it has been a hit for centuries. Had visitor numbers been measured in the Middle Ages, Rocamadour would have topped such a statistic year after year, centuries…
Limoges is in possession of not one but two town centres. This does not make the capital of the Limousin province (located about half way between Paris and Bordeaux) unique as such, but its two richly storied ancient quarters, unlike most of the other town centre twins, are not conjoined. Centuries later, they still resemble…