We first discovered the beautiful medieval city of Metz, two years ago, on our first road trip from Istria to England, for Christmas. Positioned where it is, in north eastern France, it was a good place to stop and break up the journey to Calais. We’ve stayed a few times since – and although there […]
Over the last few years, we’ve been very lucky to be able to pack in a huge amount of travel – as well as actually move abroad, relocating from Manchester to Istria, in northern Croatia. We’ve spent the last couple of years renovating a stone house and exploring our new environment. But, one place has […]
Marrakech is up there as one of the craziest, loudest, most colourful, chaotic, beautiful, exhausting and intriguing cities we’ve ever visited. Hot and dusty (even in January when we’ve visited), it’s somewhere that we only do for a couple of days before escaping to the calmness of the coast, and the gorgeous Essaouira. You can […]
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 online, in another country, and planning a spontaneous […]
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 […]
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, after a spending a night in two different hotels – yes, seriously, the story is here – we left Carcassonne and headed south, this time to the Cote d’Azur. A road trip along this glitzy coastline seemed just too tempting, especially as we had booked a night in Nice. The countryside, travelling south, is […]
Troyes is a town in the Grand Est region of northeastern France. Its medieval old town features narrow, cobbled streets lined with colorful, half-timbered houses, mostly dating from the 16th century. The town is home to several Gothic churches with striking stained-glass windows. These include the Troyes Cathedral, the Église Sainte-Madeleine and the Basilique Saint-Urbain. […]
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 […]
…maybe not so hidden, because Bale (or Valle) is well sign-posted on the main road to Pula, but until this weekend, we’d not actually visited it, despite forever saying that we must. So, after spotting a great deal at Hotel La Grisa, we decided to go for it and do the Gourmet Package for €138 […]
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 […]