Hill Town Hopping Through Central Italy
It’s a beautiful, sun-drenched morning and we’re driving through tranquil rolling hills, past the occasional vineyard and olive grove, and tiny picture-perfect rural villages. We’re so distracted by the scenery that it’s a while before we realise the roads are getting ...
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The Marvellous Mosaics Of Ravenna
We’re sipping frothy cappuccino in a café on a charming cobbled street while I run a crash course on the small town we’ve just arrived in. It’s a little over an hour since we decided to day trip here from ...
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Shifting Views Of Most Serene San Marino
San where? Few people have heard of the tiny landlocked microstate of San Marino, even though it’s been clinging precariously to the hills and high places of the Appenine Mountains in north-east Italy for more than 1,700 years. But staying ...
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Eat, Drink, Marvel, Repeat: A Wander Around Bologna
We had one major objective for our trip to Bologna: Eat ragu. Everything else would be a bonus. Having grown up on Spaghetti Bolognese, this was – for me – effectively a pasta pilgrimage. I’d done my research though and I ...
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A 36-Hour Flirtation With Florence
We were definitely easing into our travels when we picked Florence as our launch pad for a stint in Italy. With 36 hours in the Renaissance city followed by two weeks in the region, drinking all the wine, eating all the food, drinking all the ...
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A Marrakech refresh: Three days in the Red City
As we approached the exit at Marrakech airport, I had a distinct flashback to this very same moment five years ago. It was July 2011, our first visit to Morocco, and as the airport doors slid open on the world ...
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Diving into the past in the Bay of Naples
We’re staring down a wide, stone-paved roadway that winds off into the distance. Nearby, low walls of crumbling brick trace out the arcades, rooms and courtyards of seaside villas in what was once the summer playground of Ancient Rome’s rich and famous. It’s ...
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Hong Kong & Macau: Foreign and familiar
In Hong Kong, I felt the dormant shopper in me stir. Who wouldn’t feel the burn of their credit card, standing under the bright lights and big brands of what feels like the world’s biggest shopping mall? Somehow, I resisted. ...
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Sri Lanka: Circumnavigating the emerald teardrop
We arrive at Colombo International Airport at 5am, weary and a little tetchy after taking the red eye from Mumbai. After a long queue through immigration with a plane load of other grumpy travellers, we finally emerge into a breaking ...
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A love affair with Petra
Petra – where camels are touted as ‘air-conditioned taxis’, donkeys finally get the credit they’re due as ‘Ferraris’, ‘happy hour’ prices and ‘buy one get one free’ rides come into play at a moment’s notice, and horse rides to the ...
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From the Red Sea to the Dead Sea
It was a journey of biblical proportions, starting with a mad dash across three countries in as many hours as we crossed borders from Egypt through Israel and finally into Jordan.
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Trip to Jerusalem
As day trips go, we knew we were being ambitious. It didn’t look like a big deal. On the map, Jerusalem was barely 40 or 50km away from us in the Jordanian town of Madaba…as the crow flies, anyway. From all ...
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