Travel
Cool hotels, stylish bars and endless beaches, Rimini just got its mojo back. Film director, Federico Fellini, and his iconic films, such as Amarcord, La Strada, 8 ½ and La Dolce Vita, are shorthand for cool and sexy, but his birthplace of Rimini was once considered a little down-at-heel; harsher critics described it as the ‘Southend…
June 2012 I’m looking forward to going back to Rimini. The last visit was back in 1970, on a ’round Europe’ caravanning holiday with my parents and three sisters. I was nine years old. Needless to say, with four girls ranging in age from seven to seventeen, there were tensions. The eldest, going through a Garbo…
The Faroes – a group of 18 islands located in the Norwegian Atlantic – are halfway between Scotland and Iceland. I’d heard of them, of course; I’m a Radio 4 listener, fan of the arcane Shipping Forecast
The Mille Miglia is one of the most famous classic car races in the world. As a participant in the Blogville project in Bologna, I got to hang out in the VIP area. It was an opportunity to get close to the sort of cars that I’d recently drooled over in Modena’s Ferrari museum. Some…
The tappity-tappings of fellow bloggers on the way to the Ducati factory meant that they had a connection. So why didn’t I? I could see the Blogville WiFi appear on my phone but I wasn’t able to read tweets or emails… must be something about my phone. Perhaps androids don’t pick up signals as well…
I’m a bit of a luddite to be honest. These days, the term ‘ luddite’ describes one who is opposed to new technology. According to Wiki, the Luddites ‘were a social movement of 19th-century English textile artisans who protested – often by destroying mechanized looms – against the changes that they saw as dangerous and likely to change…
I’ve written about this unique archaeological site for Travel Weekly and Time Out magazine, as well as for the Time Out Naples guide (that I also edited). ‘Ash was already falling, hotter and thicker as the ships drew near, followed by bits of pumice and blackened stones, charred and cracked by flames;: then suddenly they were…
Unlike Pompeii, which was buried in volcanic ash, nearby Herculaneum was submerged under pyroclastic flows of molten rock, mud and gas, and it was this intense heat that carbonised so much organic material, offering incredible insight into the lives of the town’s citizens. In 2013, the British Museum’s spectacular exhibition, ‘Life and Death: Pompeii and…
Read my 10-page feature on Milan’s Expo here (Fifth Chukker, 2015). The second-largest city in Italy is renowned for its designers, the Duomo, Museo del Novecento, and for its proximity to the beautiful lakes. If you’d like an article written on Milan’s hotels, restaurants, or the surrounding area – including Bergamo and the Lakes – please contact…
In May 2012 I joined the BlogVille Project, a brilliant concept realised and sponsored by the Emilia Romagna region. As well as picking up a few tips on blogging, I discovered plenty of things to do in Bologna. I was in Parma in January, writing for ‘Bologna for Connoisseurs‘, and was keen to know the…