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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
We had originally planned to end our winter road trip in Ravenna, in Italy, spending four days at Alighieri Theatre Charming Suite but we felt that we had been on the road long enough, and so, in very nice communcations with Silvia, the owner, decided to postpone until later in the year. However, we also […]
We were up with the larks this morning – no mean feat as our builder popped by late last night to discuss some new ideas (wine & beer were involved) – and packing the car as we’ve never packed before. We’re not instinctively organised travellers. We can arrive on a beach with not a flip […]
Our house in Istria is in the most perfect location. When we bought it, we hadn’t quite realised just how perfect, but now that we are getting to know the area, we’re realising just what a gem we bought. Being located in northern Istria, our travel options have really widened out and we can now […]
I suppose the name should have given it away – Paul VI – but we just didn’t cotton onto the nature of this hotel. We wanted somewhere to stay in the Centro Storico in Brescia and when we googled accommodation, this hotel just stood out. The architecture and interiors looked amazing – OK, the rooms […]
We’ve made no secret of our love of Bergamo, a stunning walled medieval town (with a more modern lower town) in Lomabrdy, usually over shadowed by Milan. Which for us is good, because it means we can hopefully keep it as our little secret a bit longer. However, we don’t feel it’ll be a secret […]
We visited Brescia a few years ago and to be honest, it didn’t leave much of a lasting impression. To be fair, we were only there to change trains and as our next destination was the stunning Verona, it had some big competition. We only really saw the area around the main train station and […]
This place is definitely worthy of a blog, all of its own. If you are lucky enough to be able to visit Rome out of season – or at least not slap bang in the middle of the tourist season – your trip to The Colosseum will be much more enjoyable as you won’t competing […]