What is it that gives the French Riviera its unique flavour? It cannot be the mix of sunshine and spectacular landscapes, because many other places in the world have that, too. It cannot be a richness of history and culture, because there is – frankly – little of either. No: the one ingredient that gives…
One day late in the 19th century, Empress Elisabeth of Austria – on a visit to the Riviera di Levante – decided to go out for a walk. Elisabeth, the semi-estranged wife of Emperor Franz Joseph I, was famous for her eccentricities and, among other things, an avid walker. That afternoon, she took a ride…
Before you travel to a place – any place – for the first time, you should always try to wipe the slate of your memory clean of everything you have ever heard or read about it. Otherwise, why come at all? You can save yourself the money and effort of actually going there by just…
If you travel to the extreme southwest of France in bleak midwinter, the Pyrenees – whose distant peaks are distinctly visible throughout much of the region – provide something like a permanent tease. Shrouded in clouds and covered with snow, they are clearly not sending out any “come-and-visit-me“ signals, but at the same time they…
The Canal du Midi is one of the greatest feats of civil engineering in the history of the world. Its construction stretched the 17th century’s technological knowledge and ingenuity to its very limits, much as the Channel Tunnel project would 300 years later. For nearly 2000 years, people had been dreaming of a navigable waterway…
This is a despatch from the Central European lowlands where winter is neither the season when snowmen freeze to death – as they currently do in North America – nor the right time to sit outside in some balmy sunshine. This, after all, is not the Mediterranean. Not that you would be in danger of…
As those among you who are blessed with the gift of observation may have noticed, we are quickly approaching the climax of the festive season. And it was in the spirit of Christmas that I, on our last visit to Genoa, decided to fulfil myself a long-held wish, descending from the train in the suburb…
Granted: not many famous writers have come from the Riviera. Writers, however, have always loved to travel to the southern coast of France, sometimes only to relax and to have fun, but sometimes also to work and – eventually – to write about it, in one form or the other. The list of visiting great…
One key difference between London and Paris is the pace at which these two largest cities in Europe change their face: in Paris, any such change is slow. Very slow. When I see photos of Parisian street scenes from the years before WWI, more often than not I can recognize the location. In London, conversely,…
Manchester was the world’s first industrial town, the cradle of the global manufacturing economy. Today‘s Manchester, however, is no museum: busy and forward-looking, it seems prouder of its soccer clubs and its modern-day prosperity – a rare thing in Britain’s troubled north – than of any past glories. There is little in the streets of…