Emilia Romagna
Travelling through Emilia Romagna by train
Emilia Romagna’s main cities lie in a line between Milan and Rimini. Throughout the day, travellers rarely have to wait to long to catch a train south east or north west. […]
Travel Talk
Travel Talk
Can travel experiences be too authentic?
Someone who books into a 5-star hotel and eats in a fine dining restaurant populated by well-to-do locals could end up with a more authentic experience than, say, someone who stays in a hostel and eats at Maccie D’s. […]
Hotels
Ten annoying things about hotel bathrooms
In ascending order of the level of teeth-gnashing involved, these are 10 annoying things about hotel bathrooms. […]
El Hierro
How many Canary Islands are there?
The Canaries are made up of large islands, small islands (islets), and lumps of land protruding from the sea that ambiguously lie somewhere between being tiny islets and big rocks. […]
Travel Talk
What do locals think about tourists?
A thought struck me as I tootled along behind a visiting driver enjoying the scenery at under 40mph in a 60mph zone. Apart from when I lived in Manchester and Stockport, I’ve always lived in places that were popular tourist destinations. This has covered four different countries. […]
Travel Talk
What is Slow Travel?
We’ve been working in the Slow Travel business for over a decade, helping create Slow Travel holidays around Europe and writing guides to accompany them. But that’s just a decade since there was a label attached to what we do. […]
Lisbon
How to avoid a bad Lisbon experience
If experienced travellers can make mistakes when it comes to visiting popular cities, so can the average traveller. With than in mind, I’ve put together these tips on how to avoid a bad Lisbon experience. […]
Great Britain
Are we making a fuss about heatwaves in Britain?
Twenty-five years ago, I would have greeted news of heatwaves in Britain with a ‘YAY! About time we got some hot weather.’ But nearly twenty years of living on Tenerife and in Portugal completely changed […]
Spain
Writing about the real Tenerife
It’s sixteen years since we set up our first website to share what we were discovering about the real Tenerife. The website was an afterthought, designed to accompany a driving guide to some of our […]
Checking In
The Secret Lives of Hotel Guests
It’s 9 o´clock, we’re in a small rural hotel miles from anywhere, we know the hotel is almost full as all the tables in the dining room were taken, but now the place is empty: a ghost hotel. There’s no village nearby, so where have all the other guests gone? […]
Cornwall
In a Pandemic, Does Customer Service Still Matter?
We felt as if we’d just dined in a motorway service station, albeit one with good food. We would not be dining here again and would probably give them a mediocre rating on TripAdvisor. […]
Great Britain
Abuse in the hospitality sector is a two-way street
At the end of summer, newspapers in Britain carried many reports of abuse in the hospitality sector; of workers nearing breakdown point due to being overworked and suffering stress due to unsympathetic customers who were […]
Bute
A Comment on Travel Articles
A couple of examples over the last week highlighted some of the problems travel writing faces in a world where anyone who’s connected to the internet can pass themselves off as an expert. […]
Europe
Spotting the Cultural Differences
One of the areas where it’s easiest to spot cultural differences is food & drink. Living abroad, and travelling for work, has taught us that British palates aren’t any fussier than other nationality in Europe. […]
Portugal
How living abroad has changed us
The wounds are still gaping red, raw, and very sore. After years of living abroad, it’s too painful for me to talk about Brexit at the moment. No, painful is not the right word at […]