“The name of Italy has magic in its very syllables.” Mary Shelley Tuesday Fine weather and Shell feels like lunch in Italy. We can take in the Swiss Alps and almost all of Liechtenstein with a few detours. Liechtenstein is 25 km in length, and a neatly matching 25,000 people live here. A constitutional monarchy,…
Category: Italy
Departures – Italy
A shocking night of sleep. Possibly the noisiest apartment I have had the displeasure of staying. Complimentary breakfast around the corner at cafe Aroma is equally unimpressive. Naples is doing itself no favours convincing me it deserves its popularity. Then again, Naples doesn’t care what I think about it. Airport. Home. The end. Sometimes simplicity…
The Train to Napoli
The cold is having one last attempt to pull me down. We head to Wine Bar De’ Penitenzieri for a coffee and breakfast. We saw some panini and focaccia two days ago that would make a perfect breakfast. we are too early, the delivery does not arrive for another hour. We oder some coffee and…
Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea
We skip breakfast and walk to Trastevere. We would walk through this suburb on the way to hospital when Shell needed surgery. It became an almost daily walk at one point. Trastevere is quiter than the area surrounding the Vatican. It is a little dirtier, a little darker. It is a place that was once…
Walking the Eternal City
It is foolish to think a place will be how you remember it. Places, like people, change. When we were last in Rome, around two years ago, we had a regular place for coffee. Every morning we went there, ordered the same breakfast and the same coffee. “You cannot step into the same river twice”…
The Sacro Bosco
Fair warning, this post will be picture heavy. Clear blue skies as the sun breaks the mountains. A piercing blue that seems impossibly blue. It is a special sunrise that pictures can’t do justice. Today we head to Rome. There is an element of luxury in having a car. Sometimes it is hard to justify…
Christmas in Tuscany
Watching the sun come up over the Tuscan hills from the balcony of our Montepulciano apartment on Christmas Day. It sounds like a bad romance novel, but here we are. Merry Christmas. Last night was the best night sleep I have had in a long while. The antioxidants must have kicked in, because I am…
Montepulciano
The antioxidants failed. There is only so much health providing goodness my liver can take and I am reluctant to drink even more wine. I used all the firewood last night so there is no fire this morning. I am ready to leave Le Pappe, it has been a beautiful place to stay, but I…
Montalcino
I have woken up slightly ill. A sore throat. A heavy chest. Lack of antioxidants is the likely issue. More wine definitely the solution. “Illness is the night side of life, a more onerous citizenship. Everyone who is born holds dual citizenship, in the kingdom of the well and in the kingdom of the sick….