The Bernina Express connects the northern Italian town of Tirano with Chur in Switzerland. It is included on the UNESCO World Heritage list.
Think the Tour de France is just about cycling? Wrong. The Tour has evolved into a roving carnival traveling through the back roads of France. This has largely occurred due to the preceding caravan. The Tour de France Caravan features a stack of sponsorship vehicles in a 40km-long…
Almost every second store in Venice sells glass products, whether it be cheap mass-produced necklaces or bracelets for about five euro or elaborate designs with a price tag to match. While some it seems a bit tacky, glass making has a rich history in Venice. Murano Island, a quick…
In Casino Royale, Daniel Craig, as James Bond, races around Venice. In the film the city looks so gorgeous. (As does Daniel Craig) Lovely old buildings, the weaving canals – a-one-of-a-kind city. What those scenes don’t show are all the tourists. So many tourists. I can’t be too critical. I was one…
“WELCOME to the most beautiful bookshop in the world” reads the sign. In the maze of streets and canals that is Venice we have stumbled across Libreria Acqua Alta. From the street it looks no different to any other: cluttered tables spilling with dusty, second-hand books, masses of…
Michelangelo’s David. The world’s second most famous David. I’d be a lot more excited about seeing the first one naked, but I’ll leave that for Victoria Beckham. So why all the fuss over this naked statue? I honestly have no idea. I call it the Mona Lisa effect.…
I’m a fan of exploring outside the major cities. I find big cities to be more or less the same. There are exceptions and Italy is one of them. But I always viewed our visit to Florence as eating into the time we could have spent in the…
Ah Tuscany. Beautiful, hot, scenic, hot, lovely, hot Tuscany. Yes, Italy is experiencing its first heat wave of summer. A sticky, sweaty, police-patrolling-the-fountains-in-case-people-jump-in kind of heat wave. Yay. I’m not a summer person. Give me a rainy, cold day and I’ll make the most of it. Give me…
While Tuscany and Umbria are the go-to regions when touring Italy, Le Marche is touted as an equally beautiful but less populated alternative. With rich farmland and twisting mountain roads inland and the Adriatic Sea on the coast, it’s the best of both worlds as far as a…
Italy isn’t a big country. You can drive from one side to the other in about two and a half hours. So it didn’t take us long to trade Rome’s crazy, narrow, city streets for countryside. Aside from our brief taxi trips, our experience on the Roman roads has been…