The capital of the Italian region of Tuscany, Florence was the staging and focal point for the Italian Renaissance, a period of artistic, literary and architectural rebirth (renaissance means rebirth). Florence Cathedral, officially Basilica di Santa Maria del Fiore...
Read any number of pamphlets on Venice and I promise they’ll all tell you the same thing: that it was built on 118 islands within a lagoon in the Gulf of Venice; that it has canals instead of streets; that it’s a UNESCO World Heritage-listed site; and that...
The Jungfrau Region of the Swiss Alps in Central Europe is perhaps the most dramatic & certainly the most memorable mountain scenery in the whole of Switzerland, if not Europe itself. It’s a region of clean air, hiking trails, cow bells, idyllic alpine...
Palais du Louvre (Louvre Palace), which houses the giant collection of the Louvre Museum, cuts a grand Classical swathe right through the centre of the French capital of Paris, its stately ranks of carved pilasters, arches and pediments stretching west along the right...
By the summer of 1944, some 5 years after the outbreak of World War II, Hitler had a firm grip on the European continent, much to the ire of the English, French, Americans and Canadians (The Allies), most of whom were taking refuge across the English Channel in...
Sitting right slap-bang in the centre of mainland Europe (meaning it’s hot, hot, hot in summer & downright freezing in winter), Prague, the capital of the Czech Republic, has a unique charm that draws tons and tons of tourists each year. Guidebooks wax...
The Eastern European country of Poland was largely used as a battleground during World War II when the majority of its cities were reduced to ruin. The only exception to this is Kraków, the country’s cosmopolitan second city & definitely its best preserved...
The Eastern European city of Warsaw, the capital of Poland, is not a city renowned for tourism. For the most part it’s a vast, drab place with long streets full of uninspiring communist-era grey & boxy concrete (blame the Soviets). But it does have one gem...
Vilnius is the capital of Lithuania, the largest of the three Baltic states in Eastern Europe. A city of gypsies, bohemian types & general misfits, there’s a definite & bizarre anything goes mentality wafting through the air at any given time. One...
Riga is the capital of the small Baltic country of Latvia in Eastern Europe. It’s the largest city in the Baltic States & is a major shipping centre sitting, as it does, at the south end of the Gulf of Riga, on the mouth of the Daugava River. Founded in 1201...
