easy hiking trails in Europe
The Canal de la Siagne is said to offer one of the best easy hiking experiences in the southeast. We found this only partly confirmed in April when we walked down the waterway’s final stretch near Cannes. For our second visit, we picked a section much further “upstream” – just to the south of Grasse…
If you have been in Nizza at any time during the past three years, you will have noticed that large sections of the city appear to be under construction. The various building sites across the town centre are all part of the Nice Tramway Line 2 project, the east-to-west line designed to complement the T1…
Michelin classifies sites and restaurants with a simple three-star system: sites are either “interesting”, “worth a detour” or “worth a trip”. Please note that this is not simply a way of saying “good”, “better” and “even better”: 3-star attractions such as Florence and Venice are good in different ways from a picturesque fishing village. A…
There are many ways in which you can divide up human beings meaningfully in two groups: NOT on the basis of whether they hear yanny or laurel or whether the colours on “the dress“ are black and blue or white and gold. But take for example holiday destinations: are you attracted to travel destinations because…
There is no longer any such thing as an “undiscovered” bit of Italy. Entire libraries have been written on the major sights and places, while even small villages produce thousands of hits on a Google search. There are still, however, parts of Italy that do not get the attention they appear to deserve, that are…
Briga is the Italian mountain village from central casting … … that somehow got lost and wound up on the other (French) side of the border where it was subsequently renamed La Brigue. Whatever nomenclature you prefer: this is a pleasant little place, much more charming than gloomy Tende a few kilometres to the north,…
Scars, as a rule, do not make human faces prettier but can make them more interesting. The same mechanism is at work in towns and cities. Many modern cities with long histories bear the scars of old catastrophes in their townscapes: we can still see where the structure of London was altered following the Great…
In certain – generally rather expensive – restaurants, they offer you what they call a menu de degustation: which means that rather than feeding you properly with meat and two veg, they show you a little of their art, teasing your taste buds with one bite of this and two bites of that and indicating…
Ready for more “Cologne through the prism of its Romanesque architecture”? All right then, here we go. This week, we shall visit six more early medieval churches, now turning our attention to the southern half of Cologne’s Old Town. We will walk through some pretty and picturesque streets with much local atmosphere, making sure that…
Why is Germany such an uncool travel destination? One reason, I suspect, is that most of her major cities come across as rather charmless. Not that they lack historical interest or scenic spots. The problem is that any such attractions have been buried in mundane urban fabric and that you have to look for them…