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. Additionally, my sister and family […]
Our second and third WorkAway visits have just come to an end. We are delighted to report that our second visitors – a couple from Tasmania, who are travelling and working their work around the world – were another massive success. Like we said we preferred, they were a couple, they were independent, resourceful, creative, […]
Italian supermarkets are generally very, very good. Produce is usually always very fresh, and locally grown – great for the carbon footprint – and often loose, so you can avoid the plastic overload. Fish, meats and cheese are often sold in the same way – loose, unpackaged and by the weight. Same with breads and […]
Bergamo, located west of Milan, in the region of Lombardy, is beautiful. Often overlooked for the more glitzy (and possibly more brash) Milan, it has everything. There is the lower, more modern town (Citta Bassa) – although, as well as your retail therapy kicks, you can still soak up the history of the town. Wide […]
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 small square called Piazza Camillo – perhaps the easiest way […]
We often drive around the outskirts of Padova (Padua) when we travel back to Istria from Italy. We’ve always found it – even with Google Maps – quite a perplexing city to get out of. It’s not a big city, but the outskirts are a bit on the confusing side, so we generally use the […]
Apart from Easter in Seville – Santa Semana – we’ve not witnessed a spectacle quite as amazing as the Venice Carnival. Two years ago, we arrived in Venice on a cold, misty February morning, a stop-over on our way to take over our Istrian stone farmhouse. Because we were so consumed with the move to […]
The first time I visited Venice was on a school trip, back in 1977. We’d been on a ski trip and spent a day on the way back to the airport, in the city. It was January. It was cold. And, the city was flooded. St Mark’s Square was like a pool – I remember […]
When we visited Brescia, not too long ago, we decided to visit the town of Salò, located on the western banks of Lake Garda. I’d seen Salò on Francesco da Mosto’s “Italy : Top to Toe” and was fascinated by it. As we were so close, it seemed a wasted opportunity not to visit the […]
So, last weekend saw us returning to Rovinj to watch the World Cup Final. We’ve stayed in Rovinj a few times since we arrived in Istria and although The Adriatic Hotel is our favourite place to stay, we just can’t justify the prices in high season. But, it gives us an opportunity to explore and […]
When we saw that Eels were playing in Italy, in a town we’d never heard of, called Cesena, we decided to go for it and booked tickets, researching the town afterwards. Cesena is in the province of Emilia-Romagna, about 30 kms inland from Rimini, so a fair distance from us in Istria, but we decided […]
We’ve just said goodbye to our second set of friends who’ve been staying with us for a few days. Amanda and Steve had a few days in Italy first – they flew to Venice Marco Polo from Manchester and then spent a couple of days 30km north of Venice, in Treviso and then took the […]