Rivers are the beasts of our natural landscapes: they can be fierce and raging, but even when they flow gently, when they are settled and calm, they always command our respect. Canals, by contrast, are their mild-mannered domesticated cousins: hard-working, dependable, and content with a life of quiet drudgery. Among these farm animals of our…
Milan, in many ways, is the odd one out among major Italian cities. It has no Centro Storico, that characteristic warren of buildings from different periods. But there is one particular element that is missing from the cityscape: Milan has no major natural body of water, neither a mighty river (such as Rome, Florence, Turin)…
Whether you are heading out for a few walks or decide to spend the happy holidays in the comfort of your own home: we hope you are having a lovely time. We will be back with new hikes, city walks and travel tips in the second half of January, following our brief annual hiatus. We…
For this post, our last before the holidays, I wanted to fulfill as many Christmas wishes as I possibly could. Which meant that, since I had no idea what anyone of you might want me to write about, there was only a single Christmas wish that I positively knew I could fulfill, which was my…
You are in London for a few days and looking for a “typical” local park where you can roam and relax a little? Here are six reasons why you should shun the famous public gardens in Central London and pick another park instead, one on the fringe of the town centre but still easy-to-reach by…
All right, we do admit that many visitors of London and the United Kingdom will allot a good deal more than two hours to this famous university town in the east of England. For every day tripper from London (trains from King’s Cross or Liverpool Street take little more than one hour), there is at…
Rivalries between cities are always about more than mere topographical proximity, although physical closeness is of course a necessary ingredient. But so are envy and mutual resentment. Rivalries typically develop between cities when one of the two is bigger and the other just big enough to convince itself that it plays in the same league….
You may have come across urban art before (for example, here and here), but I bet you have never seen anything like the Kiefernstrasse in Düsseldorf. Where to find the Most Colourful Street in Germany Today, the Kiefernstrasse – located a few hundred meters to the east of Düsseldorf’s central station and just around the…
The showcase gardens of the Riviera fall into two categories: for drama and excitement, you can visit gardens like the Giardini Hanbury near Ventimiglia or Menton’s Val Rahmeh, which were conceived for maximum effect on the grandest of theatrical scales. But on the local tourist board’s shortlist of famous Jardins de la Cote d’Azur, you…
If you like forest hikes that are attractive and at the same time not overly strenuous, I bet you will like this one. It has, after all, everything that an Easy Forest Hiker could possibly expect. You will be entertained by glimpses of dense undergrowth that seem to come straight from the primeval woodlands of…