Everyone had left. That is the first thing to understand about Milan in the middle of August. The city empties itself almost completely, the whole of it packing into cars and onto trains in the days around Ferragosto and pouring…
Bergamo – A Confession About Sweets
My photographer caught me at it again this morning, and this time he had the decency to take the picture. I was standing at the window of a pasticceria in the upper town with my nose more or less against…
Bergamo – The Most Beautiful Square in Europe
Nobody tells you about Bergamo. That is the first thing to say about it. People will spend a long weekend telling you where to go in Italy, reciting the whole rosary of it, Florence and Venice and the Amalfi Coast,…
Dolomites – The Last Day in Cortina
And then, of course, the last day came anyway. It always does. I had bought myself two extra ones by refusing to leave, and I would have bought a third if the mountains had sold them, but the trip had…
The Complete Guide to Sorrento
Sorrento is the town that taught me a place can be busy and serene at the same time. It sits on a shelf of tufa cliff above the Bay of Naples, looking straight across the water at Vesuvius, with lemon…
Sorrento – A Diary of Lemons and Light
You smell Sorrento before you see it properly. The train comes down through the tunnels and the lemon terraces, and by the time you step out into the heat there it is, that thick sweet green scent of citrus that…
