There is a particular kind of morning you only get on your last one somewhere. You wake before the alarm, the light already warm against the shutters, and instead of a list of things to see you have only one…
The Long Way Between the Villages
There is a kind of tiredness that feels like a reward, and this morning I went looking for it on the cliff path above Vernazza. I had promised myself the night before, over the last of the wine, that I…
Let the Sea Keep the Time
There is only one of these five villages where you can properly lie down beside the sea, so this morning I did the sensible thing and went there. Vernazza has its little harbour and its boats, but it does not…
The Complete Guide to Cinque Terre
Cinque Terre means “the five lands,” and that is exactly what it is: five small villages strung along a stretch of the Ligurian coast so steep and so folded that for most of their history the easiest way between them…
Somewhere Smaller
Florence let me go the way the great cities always do, without ceremony, as though it had never really been holding on. One morning I was beneath all that marble and the next I was on a train heading toward…
For When You Are Ready
I had one day left in Florence, and only then did I realise I had been saving it without quite admitting it to myself. All week, coming and going from the hills, I had left certain streets unwalked and certain…
