How do you like your coffee ? A scalding hot espresso, a frothy latte or a Turkish coffee with just a tad of sugar. When you prefer it to your exact liking, you hold the cup to your nose, inhaled its wonderful aroma and took a sip. You suddenly felt more alert, more in-tune and [...]
Lately I am dreaming of Marrakesh, the city of palaces and snake charmers. We’ve arrived there one evening, around sunset. The airport - just another modern airport that could be anywhere - gave no signs of the city that we were about to discover. The first clue came from our taxi driver. He told us [...]
Normally when I have some free time I start planning my next trip. But, thanks to Covid-19 I found myself cancelling the already made plans. No worries, if I can’t plan new ones, I’ll just re-live the ones I already had. Nanny Cay at sunset My daydream-de-jour is the sailing trip I took to the [...]
When Julius Caesar was looking for places to conquer at 58 BC his options were somewhat limited; huge parts of the world as he knew it back then had already been conquered, most by non other than his childhood hero, Alexander the Great. So he went to North, to the land of the Gaul where [...]
We had a two-week gap in the beginning of October and decided to take a road trip to Provence. It was a bit late in the season, but we decided to trust our luck. People go to Provence because of the good weather, great cuisine and charming towns. We found that the seasons took a [...]
Sprawling between the great rivers of Saône and Rhône, Lyon is a grand dame of a city. Sure, she's old - built by the Romans kind of old - a bit tired, definitely in need of a face lift, but confident in her powers of survival and adaptation. We had a bit less than two [...]
I love chocolate. I mean who doesn’t? It's an amazing super-food; nutritious, a powerful source of antioxidants and endorphin plus it’s mouth-wateringly delicious. Ever since the Aztec emperor Montezuma served Spanish conquistador Hernàn Cortés a cup of hot cocoa in 1519, which were native to the New World, chocolate first became a fad in the [...]
Waking up in Italy is a great way to start any day. Waking up on a sailboat criss crossing the Aeolians is the best, even if the boat in question is the Josephine, the noisiest boat of the modern seafaring era. Off the coast of Sicily, the Aeolian islands offer seas as clear as the [...]
In order to escape the spring rains and kick-off summer properly we decided to fly to Crete for a short holiday. It’s a land full of hills and gorges, rocks and beaches, Venetian castles and Minoan ruins and miles and miles of winding roads surrounded by oleanders. As such, Crete is a challenging geography to [...]
Now that spring is here we have decided to escape the city and explore the Trakya region, famous for its beautiful scenery, colorful culture, tolerant people and fertile vineyards. Our first stop was Vize, just 138 kilometers from Istanbul and a world apart. It's one of Turkey's expanding network of Slow Cities or CittaSlow. Slow [...]
