After breakfast in Montepulciano, I started the four-hour drive to Poggio, a small village in Tuscany that would be my home for the next two weeks. About an hour from my destination, it started to rain. After the heat I’d been experiencing in Montepulciano, it was a welcome relief. For the last hour of my…
I love Montepulciano and I love saying Montepulciano. This medieval walled city is my favourite Tuscan town. After reading Under the Tuscan Sun many years ago I really wanted to visit Cortona, Tuscany. When I travelled through Italy with my daughters, we visited Cortona and enjoyed a wine tasting in Montepulciano while we were there….
I first visited Venice as a 23-year-old while I was backpacking through Europe. I recently found my old travel journal, where I had written that it was “an unbelievable feeling” walking out of the station and seeing the busy canals. We found a pension for our stay and spent our days walking around Venice. I…
Driving to Cinque Terre My car rental was due back in Pisa in three days and I really wanted to visit Cinque Terre before then. I had never been there, but I had seen the most beautiful photos. I spent hours searching for accommodation online but it was August, the month Europeans take their holidays….
Visiting Verona, Italy, hadn’t been in my plan. However, I was told that operas were performed there in summer. I had never been to an opera or Verona, so I thought that was the perfect reason to visit the city on my way back to Vienna. I had driven from La Spezia to Pisa to…
Julia’s time in Vienna was coming to an end, but there was still one thing left on our list before she flew home — the Christmas markets. Christmas in Vienna My favourite area in central Vienna is Stephansplatz (St Stephen’s Square), home to the Gothic St Stephen’s Cathedral and a large pedestrian mall. It was…
Hallstatt was fun. Where should we go next before Julia had to leave? We decided on Prague. Arriving in Prague I had visited Prague for the first time only a month earlier and loved it so much that I couldn’t wait to experience the city again with Julia. We only had one night, but with…
One photograph was all it took for my youngest daughter to pack a suitcase and fly to Vienna. After seeing a photo of me sitting on a giant block of ice at Dachstein Glacier, surrounded by the Austrian Alps, Julia decided she wanted to experience a white Christmas with me. We were decorating gingerbread cookies…
Good Morning Vienna Waking up to the sound of a rooster greeting the morning was my reminder that I was in Vienna. A curious black cat wandered in to see who was sleeping, then wandered out again. Upstairs, the fish swam to the front of the aquarium as I approached, and I stopped for a…
I had been travelling for a few days by the time we landed in Vienna, and when the captain announced our arrival, it felt surreal. The airport wasn’t the large international terminal I had been expecting, but something closer to a regional city airport. Quiet, manageable, and unexpectedly calm. My host had arranged for her…