The Canal Grande Hotel in Venice, Italy, offers all visitors a free trip from its canal-side breakfast balcony to the Vetreria Artistica glass factory Monday through Friday at 10 a.m. It's all part of the seduction. A sleek mahogany-hulled water taxi pulls up to the hotel, and the interested guests are carefully guided by the…
How many of us think of the Venetian lagoon and its imperilled circumstances when we imagine a trip to Piazza San Marco?
Venice has been a feast of art, archaeology and escape for tourists since it began to attract them in the 15th and 16th centuries. But it is under attack. One of the world’s first cities to be founded almost exclusively on the conduct of financial transactions, its promotion of mercantile capitalism led the way to…
Imagine golden sand, 25C with a blue sky in May, and the cleanest blue-green ocean you’ve ever seen. Add boardwalks stretching for kilometres and fabulous food
Imagine golden sand, 25C with a clear blue sky in May, and the cleanest blue-green ocean you’ve ever seen. Add boardwalks that stretch for kilometres across salt marshes and sand dunes. Every so often, include colonies of beach lounge chairs, arrayed under stretched blue canvas canopies. Add swirls of swallows and gulls above, and cue…
The shared borders with France and Switzerland have clearly contributed to a multilingual society in this very northern and beautiful corner of Italy
Newly retired and eager to explore some new territory, I admit I knew nothing of the Italian Alps. We flew into Switzerland, and then drove south through the 11-plus km of the Mont Blanc Tunnel into northern Italy. We were with old friends who know the area well because they have a son who lives…
Český Krumlov often catches the first-time visitor by surprise, arousing a feeling of wondrous awe
The child in all of us yearns for a magical land where we can hide away from all our cares – places like Camelot, or Brigadoon, or Shangri-La., or Český Krumlov. Český Krumlov? Graced with a name that to the North American ear sounds like a suppressed sneeze, this medieval town in the South Bohemian…
Living with your environmental choices and the ones others make for you while on the road
We must reckon with the environmental impacts of our personal travel decisions in this time of climate crisis. For us, it was our current trip – to hike in northern Italy with friends, just after my wife’s retirement and, coincidentally, climate activist Greta Thunberg’s trip to New York from Sweden on a sailboat – that…
It doesn’t do to embarrass oneself in front of the waiter in the lobby bar of the Four Seasons George V hotel
When we were dating, my wife-to-be made the mistake of mentioning that it would be nice to stay in the Four Seasons George V hotel with me in Paris. I took this idle chat as a mission. Twenty years went by, but I remembered my assignment. I had some business in Geneva and suggested that…
There's no more Scottish an image than that of a castle surrounded by swirling mist, and most of Scotland's castles ooze a colourful and turbulent history ... the stuff of swashbucklers, legends and ghost stories. All the classic imagery can be found in abundance: secret passageways, spiral staircases, dungeons, haunted rooms, four-poster beds, old oil…
But like a flirtatious mistress, she will drive you to distraction while capturing your soul
Everything you’ve ever heard about Paris is true: Expensive. Unfriendly. Grimy. Noisy. Gaudy. Congested. So why do I ache with longing whenever I hear the name? And why do I spend every cent I can spare to fly there again and again when there are a thousand-and-one other places in the world I’ve yet to…
The beauty and hospitality of Italy soon becomes apparent whether astride a bicycle or driving down its twisting, narrow country roads
The Most Serene Republic of San Marino is located in the middle of Italy. At 62 square km, it's one of the smallest nations in the world. Although only a few dozen kilometres from Italy’s Adriatic Coast, San Marino’s summit is almost 800 metres above sea level. And crowning this mountainous micro-state is the medieval…