Because of where we now live - northern Istria, near the Slovenian and Italian borders - we get to travel a lot more than we ever used to. We rarely fly now, as our location means many places, especially in Italy, are so much more accessible and so we are very lucky...
Strasbourg, frequently named “European capital”, is a city in eastern France in Alsace on the left bank of the Rhine, playing a major role as a business, commercial, and cultural centre. Besides its traditional role as the chief city of Alsace, Strasbourg is also the...
We'd never been to Arles before, a city on the Rhône River in the Provence region of southern France. It's famed for inspiring the paintings of Van Gogh, and was once a provincial capital of ancient Rome, known for many remains from that era, including Arles...
Autumn is our favourite time of year to visit Lake Bled in Slovenia. It's only just over a couple of hours from our home in Istria, and if coupled with a break in Ljubljana, it makes the perfect out of season get away. The little town of Bled, on the shores of the...
The last couple of years have been a bit crazy, haven't they? Travel, in the early days, was for very obvious reasons much curtailed and so for a long time we didn't get to see family and friends in person. Thank goodness that we do live in an age, though, where...
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...
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...
Winter is a gorgeous time of year to visit Venice. I've only been once in the summer and it was crowded. And hot. Accommodation was much more expensive and I think I just found it all a bit of a faff. So, whenever we go now, we choose to go in the colder months. You...
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....
Sometimes, you see somewhere online and you just have to go. No matter what. This happened recently when I discovered the website for the Hotel Grand Wiesler, in Graz, in the Styria region of southern Austria. When we lived in Manchester, the thought of seeing a hotel...