recent blogs

mandria del dottore toscano : tarsia : calabria : italy

mandria del dottore toscano : tarsia : calabria : italy

On our road trip around Italy, driving in the Calabrian south was tiring, so we needed to break the journey up from Villa San Giovanni (where you cross to & from Sicily) to Matera and so consulted our trusty oracles – a well thumbed road map and google. Tarsia...

vatican museums : rome : italy

vatican museums : rome : italy

The Vatican Museums are the public museums of the Vatican City, displaying works of art amassed by the Catholic Church and papacy throughout the centuries, including several of the most renowned Roman sculptures and some of the most important Renaissance artwork in...

puglia : italy

puglia : italy

Living now in Istria, the tiny heart shaped peninsula, right up in the north of Croatia - bordering Slovenia, close to Trieste and across the Adriatic from Venice - we are very lucky that we can now travel to Italy very easily. Muggia is our closest Italian town, and...

sperlonga : latina : italy

sperlonga : latina : italy

We’d not previously heard of this place, but now we know about it, it’s very definitely somewhere we’d revisit next time we’re in the province of Latina. Halfway between Rome and Naples, the very pretty village, perched high on a hilltop overlooking the sea, is a...

cagliari : sardinia : italy

cagliari : sardinia : italy

Cagliari is a city like no other Italian city we have visited. It's a port city, and it wears its history on its sleeve. Everywhere you go you come across traces of its rich past, from ancient Roman ruins, to museums filled with prehistoric artefacts, to centuries-old...

ca’ amadi : venice : italy

ca’ amadi : venice : italy

One of the joys of staying in Venice, is trawling the internet beforehand, to find where you are going to stay. We've stayed in apartments and hotels, and thankfully have never had a bad experience. I do spend a lot of time reading reviews, scrutinising websites,...

oprtalj : step into the past…

oprtalj : step into the past…

Our nearest town, Oprtalj, isn't really a town. At least not in the sense of what we'd regard as a town back in the UK. Oprtalj is not much bigger than Burton Road in West Didsbury, but with a couple of restaurants, a cafe bar, a school, a food shop, an interiors...

waste not want not panzanella…

waste not want not panzanella…

Waste not, want not. We're trying very, very hard to live a much more sustainable lifestyle and to really take note of what we buy. In the past, we might have popped into Manchester and come bag with bags of *stuff* that we just didn't need. We don't do this now....

treviso : veneto : italy

treviso : veneto : italy

Amanda and Steve, friends who come and visit us from Manchester, usually fly into Treviso, north of Venice, spend a couple of days there and then hop on the train to Trieste where we pick them up. They keep telling us that we must visit Treviso, because we’d love it....

officine cavour : padova : veneto : italy

officine cavour : padova : veneto : italy

Our second accommodation on our weekend stopover in Padova was an apartment, slap bang in the historical centre, called Officine Cavour. Directions to the car park were great – but we struggled a little bit initially to find the actual apartment. It’s located in a...