Europe

I’m standing on the apartment terrace and below me is the old town of Castelrotto with its red roofs and white houses. Right in front, maybe two kilometres away, rises Sciliar (the Germans say Schlern) – a rock mountain with two peaks, like two teeth set into the sky. The sun is beating down so…

I open the shutters on the first morning. The sun hasn’t yet risen over the hill, but it has already coloured the mist hanging over the valley. In the distance, maybe a kilometre away, on a neighbouring hill, two bell towers. The church of Sant’Michele. Around it a handful of stone houses clustered into a…

Torre Santa Sabina is a small seaside town in the Carovigno municipality, in the province of Brindisi, in the northern part of Salento. In summer there’s a feverish Italian-holiday life here, with aperitivo until midnight and the “Tre Vele” (Legambiente’s green-beaches mark). In April maybe three families live here, there are two customers in the…

I’m standing in the middle of the bridge and below me, somewhere 37 metres down, is a deep gorge with a dried-up river and rocks that look as if someone cut them out of an old Western. And under my feet are the stone slabs on which, a few years ago, Daniel Craig staged his…

The evening I understood why we chose Salerno I’m standing on the balcony, and below, far below, the city lights flicker, the lights of ships move in the harbour, and somewhere in the distance, like a mirage, the edges of the Amalfi Coast glow. Below, everything is lit up; above my head, the stars; and…

I’m sitting on the terrace of an agriturismo, and in front of me are hills, vineyards and cypresses. On my lap sits a one-year-old human chewing a crust of bread, completely uninterested in the fact that one of the most beautiful views in Europe is right in front of him. He’s far more concerned with…

Sperlonga was our fourth stop on the Italy road trip – after Venice, Tuscany and the transfer day from Chianti. We stayed for 4 nights. And if the earlier stops had been about “seeing”, Sperlonga was about “stopping.” With a one-year-old baby who doesn’t talk yet, that was exactly what we both needed. If you’re…

I’m writing this article from my own experience. Venice was one of the stops on our month-long road trip through Italy with a baby. We stayed two nights, left the car on the mainland, and all day I carried my little one through the canals. And if anyone asks whether it’s worth taking a one-year-old…