What to see. The best starting point to an exploration of Turin is to just simply set off and wander along its expansive network of colonnades- while many Italian cities treat visitors to fancy porticos, Turin has a whopping 18 kilometres of them, of which 12 are interconnected, thus being perfect shelters from the scorching…
Tag: traveldiary
Northwestern Promises- Turin Guide Part One
People usually question my sanity (perhaps I should have put a full stop here, but never mind) when I tell them that Turin is my favourite Italian city. But surely you could have gone for a sexier choice, something like Rome with every bit of it designed by none else than Michelangelo (and buses on…
The Sea is on the Other Side: Genova for the Clueless
The first reason for our presence in Genova on a pleasant spring day was as straightforward as it was silly: it is close to Turin. Actually, most major towns in Northern Italy are close to at least a couple of other potentially interesting locations, often at distances of around 150 kilometres, which in Trenitalia language…
Crown of the Mountains: A Weekend in Brașov
Checking the Wikipedia page of Brașov I was informed that it’s climate is humid continental, the humid part of which disturbed me slightly, but I needn’t have bothered all that much, since during our four day stay we were faced with all four seasons, ranging from a hot and sunny morning to spritely spring rain,…
Underground Adventures: The Salt Mine of Slănic Prahova
There are two rather subjective reasons why I feel, as the blog’s industrious co-photographer would call it, a weird attraction for places called Slănic. Firstly, there is the trip I took with my grandmother to the resort of Slănic Moldova at the dusk of the communist era, where we were both subjected to asthma…
An Awesome Walk and ALT-J @ Wiener Stadthalle
Vienna on a Sunday morning is both very closed, and very open. Shops are closed, except for tobacconist’s, a few pastry shops and newsagents. The situation of the latter is, however, more complicated: those which are open are usually split in half with a rather random red tape, and beyond the tape lies a world…
Barlove: Café Phil Vienna
Borges once said that he always imagined Paradise as a library, and he was right, only you can go one better, and picture it as a coffee house with books, or a bookstore with coffee, depends on how you look at it. And breakfast, because if it’s done right, no matter at what hour, breakfast…
Best of 2017 Travels
Sightseeing. The year began with an Arctic snap, which meant the Balaton was almost completely frozen over, and thus just in the perfect state for my tastes- its summery outing as a sea instead of a sea will stay forever alien to someone who grew up with an actual sea- it’s dark yes, and filled…
Accidental Strudels- The Compulsory Pre-Christmas Visit to Vienna
I realize all too well that I have by now exhausted anything new or interesting I could say about Viennese Christmas fairs (that’s last year’s post, and even the links work with Germanic precision), except that I still like them a lot, and yes, I bought that damn mug from Karlsplatz again. This although the…
People Sitting on Terraces in Paris
The other day, as I was walking through the blunt early evening fog of late autumn in Budapest I had a grand revelation. Before diving straight into it, let me just specify that these days we are having four types of weather around here: milky morning fog, opaque noon fog, blunt early evening fog and…
Pocket Diary Budapest 