Some travel destinations make you look long and hard for a scenic and entertaining walking route, while others come up with a whole range of suggestions. But there is a third group of destinations that urge rather than suggest, leaving you the sole alternative of doing the hike of their own choosing or no hike…
With its English looks and metropolitan feel, Dublin invites comparisons with London, and while it is friendlier and cozier than its British counterpart, the Irish capital inevitably falls short in some other respects. It is, for one, less international, less multicultural and does not give out the same buzz of nervous excitement. But there are…
Having explored Lake Como and Lake Lugano on the first few days of our trip to northwestern Lombardy, we had a distinct appetite for something completely different. Which is why, on the last day of our stay, we decided to go Into The Woods … … not anticipating that, in the end, we would get…
This week’s walk is, at first glance, a carbon copy of last week’s: we take a walk along the Loire, … … see a beautiful castle … … and visit a historical little town that was built in its shadow. What’s more: the centrepiece of the walk is another river island in between the train…
Hiking and cycling make good bedfellows. There are only a few areas where you see one and not the other – even in high altitudes on rugged terrain where mountain bikers have become ever more prominent over the past decade. One exception is the Valley of the Loire in central France. This valley is famous…
Unusual travel suggestions are missions from God. You may be familiar with this quote (it comes from Kurt Vonnegut). But the Easy Hikers have always gone one further: rather than waiting for someone to make such an unusual suggestion, we actively search for pretexts to go to places where one would not normally go. Because…
If you are familiar with the landscapes of north-western Italy, you will know that many towns along the Riviera coast are “twinned“ with an older village in the mountains. The reason for this is that coastal settlements were deemed unsafe during the long period between antiquity and the restoration of order under effective governments sometime…
The Romans never much liked the Riviera. They found its stony slopes too tiresome for agriculture, its small settlements too poor to plunder, and its mountainous interior too difficult to protect against the troublesome natives. Which is why the Romans did not settle in great numbers here and only ever built a few garrisons in…
As the last walk before our summer break away from the Mediterranean, we had to complete some unfinished easy hiking business along the River Var after last month’s aborted mission. The Var is the river of the French southeast. Not so much because it was long or mighty – it is neither, not even making the…
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…
