The one Basilica to rule them all would be quite an understatement. There is really nothing in this world that can prepare you for the sheer magnificence of this place, or its gigantic proportions or it’s over the top splendour. We have seen our share of wonderful churches and cathedrals but nothing and I mean nothing comes […]
St. Peter’s Square is a massive plaza located directly in front of St. Peter’s Basilica in the Vatican City, the papal enclave surrounded by Rome. At the centre of the square is an Egyptian obelisk, erected at the current site in 1586. Gian Lorenzo Bernini designed the square almost 100 years later, including the massive […]
The Sistine Chapel is a large and renowned chapel of the Apostolic Palace, the official residence of the Pope in the Vatican City. Originally known as the Cappella Magna, the chapel takes its name from Pope Sixtus IV, who restored it between 1477 and 1480. Since that time, the chapel has served as a place […]
Papal Apartments – is where you start seeing the real splendour of the Vatican Museum. If you were a Pope in the olden days you could commission Raphael to paint your apartment. At the age of 25 Raphael was asked to do just that – scrap all the previous work done by some of the […]
If a dizzying array of splendour that adorns the walls with famous paintings or tapestries or the floors done in priceless mosaics or just ordinary marble cut to perfection were not enough then perhaps the rooms and hallways and gardens lined with sculptures by every famous master from the beginning of time will impress and astonish. […]
It appears that whatever is not at the Louvre or at the National Gallery in London is here. There are a lot of priceless sculptures here and a great many of them share the same story. No one knows how some of these 2 or 3 or 5 thousand year old sculptures found their […]
The first thing at the Vatican Museum that you see are the paintings. Each more important and more famous than the last. It appears that over the years the Popes were quite fond of Leonardo Da Vinci, Michelangelo, Raphael and other famous masters. There are some modern works of art here too which the Vatican […]
Our schedule is quite busy for today so we had to decline a visit with Papa Francesco at the Vatican, but we did send our €88 towards the church to get a line up free tickets to see the Vatican Museum. The moment we got off the bus we were happy that we got the […]
If it is true that all roads lead to Rome then this is where we are heading this afternoon. On the way there we are treated to some amazing and spectacular sites along the way. It appears that each mountain top has its own town. Orvieto, Moltepulciano, Fabro, Orte and countless others. Beautiful day […]
This little place in the village below Buccia Nera is where we stopped by for breakfast. It is a bakery / pizzeria place. Basically a breakfast with freshly baked goods and some cappuccino and espresso for the four of us, plus some cookies for good measure was just under €7.00 that is what I call […]
If you don’t know what you are looking for, you would more than likely walk by this place without giving it a second look. The place is just outside the main part of the old town in the middle of a residential neighbourhood, off on a side street in the middle of nowhere really. This, however, […]
We went out to Arezzo one more time. First because there is a great pizza place we wanted to check out and second because we really wanted to have another go at Paradiso Gelato – some shopping seemed in order as well. Arezzo being one of the more affluent cities in Tuscany has a lot […]
It is hard to describe this place, everyday it looks different, more beautiful, more enchanting. The clouds rolled in today and I think it might have cooled off down to 34C – unbelievable. This is a paradise we are calling home this week.
We drive by this place every time we go up or down from Buccia Nera Agriturismo where we are staying. Today we decided to stop by for dinner. The place is a short drive, about 2km, from where we are staying, down the crazy road, it always looks busy and it has some spectacular views […]
It is not like we have strained ourselves yesterday but it is early days on our Italian adventure so we are taking it easy. We never got up early enough to get to the bakery so we had fruit for breakfast. After breakfast – the pool from 10 am to 7:15 pm with an occasional […]
We started off in this place and I finished the day off in this place. I think we have crowed the new best gelato place on this trip. Paradiso I think will permanently unseat the great gelato we had in San Gimignano Italy and Cacao in Ljubljana Slovenia. It is that unbelievably good. Paradise as […]
Today we are spending the afternoon in the beautiful Arezzo. Arezzo is very very old, it dates back, or portions of the city do, to 5th century BC. It is a small city but the old town is quite large with at least 20 churches, some medieval, some Tuscan Ghotic and some even dating back […]
We found a great little restaurant in Arezzo called Luck, the actual Italian name is Osteria da Luchino. Off the main street, no English menu, small and charming and just perfect. We decided to try the Italian way of eating dinner. You start off with a small pasta dish, then have the main course with […]
Arezzo Cathedral is perhaps one of the largest buildings in the old city. Perhaps it is not as ornate as the Public Library or some other churches here but it is quite impressive. Inside there are some beautiful fresco covering the entrée ceiling of the cathedral as well as a couple burial monuments dedicated to […]
We are heading down to Arezzo for dinner and here are some shots from the way down to town. We are about 7km away from the old town so it is not a long drive. Behind the lens are my lovely wife and Evelina while I try to focus on what Italians call a road […]
Today, we are proud to say, we have done nothing at all. We drove down to the village to have breakfast the local bakery. We stopped by a shop to get some milk, cheese and salami and on the way back up we also stopped at a fruit stand and bought half a trunk of […]
All that you can hear right now in the middle of the night at Buccia Nera are crickets. It is almost midnight and it is still 25C outside, there are no bugs and it is absolutely fantastic.
Unlike our last trip to the middle of nowhere in Italy where we got lost on a deserted gravel country road in the middle of night with bats flying around – and no cell signal today the expedition went a lot better. We are still in the middle of nowhere, high up on the mountain […]
We are determined to still get some pool time in Arezzo today so we have left early – just a bit after 7am. We have about 900km to drive which should take about 8 hours. Austria is slow to drive through it is basically all dug out with massive construction everywhere plus on the best […]
We are off for another road trip. This time we are going down south – Italy, Arezzo and beyond. Boris and Evelina have two weeks of Spring holidays so we are going to explore a bit more of the enchanting Tuscany that we all love and see where else the road takes us. We are […]
Girls’s day out today is in Pottenstein. Evelina’s best friends Lisa is at our house for a sleepover. These two girls really hit it off at school and have been great friends. Today is Lisa’s turn to stay at our house. As a little treat and for a bit of a break we drove to a […]
If I don’t hear Embassy and Munich in the same sentence ever again it will not be a moment too soon. Today we set off to pick up kids’ passports at the Polish Embassy. Munich is about 180km away – door to door, from our house to the embassy and this we can usually manage […]
Today we had 3 entertainment options on the table. City Park which we still have not been to, inside tour of the Imperial Castle or the Nuremberg Zoo, overwhelmingly the kids decided on the Zoo. The Zoo is located in Nuremberg Reichswald, which is an old imperial oak forest, southeast of the old town. With an area […]
Sandy beach and a 5 start hotel in Abu Dhabi! Check Tickets and transfers – Check Suitcases, swim shorts and sun block packed – Check Train tickets to Munich and back – Check No line up at the business class check in at Etihad Airlines – check …but the computer says NO to the passport requirements ! […]
Fearless exploration comes at a price. This is a simple account of the last 7 days of our trips starting with Wurzburg. Seven days of aimless wondering around different cities and Nuremberg of course – fueled largely by gelato twice a day and a few sausages here and there!
Know as the little Venice, Bamberg has its share of bridges and canals. There are quite a number of cities in Europe that try to make that claim but we all know there is only one Venice and everything else is just a town with a bunch of canals and bridges. Bamberg is a nice and […]
We are back to Altenburg Castle in Bamberg. It is such a beautiful and secluded site that offers phenomenal vistas of Bavarian countryside. This time for the first time we decided to climb the watch tower. There are two places where you can get some spectacular views. One of them is mid way through the tower […]
After the castle we hastily headed down to the restaurant as some storm clouds started rolling in. We did not have to walk far and in all honestly the rain did not last very long. But while it was raining we were sitting down enjoying a nice dinner and coffee. Good times, Prague never disappoints […]
Going to Prague and not going to the Prague Castle and the St. Vitus Cathedral is hard. Once you get on Charles Bridge those two massive buildings are like a huge magnet that pulls you up. We lucked out because the last 3 times we were in Prague the river side part of St. […]
We love this city. We love the sites and the atmosphere, we love the food and the architecture. Having seen most of the big sites on the previous trips today we are wondering around at a gingerly pace trying to take it all in one more time. I am not sure if we will be coming […]
One of the great places in Prague is the top of the City Hall Tower in the Old Town on the main square. Weather permitting you get phenomenal views of the city and some of its great landmarks. The Prague Castle, the Tyn Church, Vyšehrad Castle, The opera house, the many churches, and turrets and building […]
We are back in Prague – starting with breakfast at Cafe Imperial. This place is on the list of top 10 Cafés in the world you should to visit.
Today we did a tour of Nuremberg starting in the morning with a visit to the Imperial Castle and the lookout tower, then we worked our way down through the Old Town and in the evening we took off to see the sunset over the Colosseum and the Zeppelin Field.
And now for something completely different. The Walhalla is a hall of fame that honors laudable and distinguished people, famous personalities in German history – politicians, sovereigns, scientists and artists of the German tongue. The hall is housed in a neo-classical building above the Danube River, east of Regensburg and is based on the Pantheon […]
This is the last church on the agenda for today. Although, on the way to the car, we did try to see another monastery which was closed. The Church of the Holy Trinity, located on the Gesandtenstrasse, was built in the midst of the Thirty Years War. This was one of the first evangelical churches […]
A few hundred meters down the road from the Monastery is The Neupfarr Church which is a Protestant parish church on Neupfarrplatz in the Old Town of Regensburg. This church was built on the foundation of the old Synagogue which with the rest of the Jewish quarter was demolished to make room for a new Protestant […]
Right in front of the Cathedral, no more than 50 meters from the front door and slightly to the left is St. Johann Monastery. The Monastery of St. John in Regensburg is dedicated to St. John the Baptist and St. John the Evangelist and was founded in 1127 by bishop Konrad I of Regensburg.
The Regensburg Cathedral dedicated to St Peter, is the most important church and landmark in Regensburg. It is the seat of the Catholic diocese of Regensburg. The Cathedral is an example of pure German Gothic and counts as the main work of Gothic architecture in Bavaria. It was founded in 1275 and completed in 1634, with […]
We continue our holy week and with it the required visits to as many churches as happen to be on our way from point A to point B. Niedermünster Abbey was built and rebuilt on the foundation of the first church which was built in the year 700. At the height of its power it […]
Today we are travelling about 100km south east to Regensburg. This small city is nothing like Nurember or Wurzburg which we visited a couple of days ago. The city dates back to the Stone Age. The Celtic name Radasbona was the oldest name given to a settlement near the present city. Around AD 90, the […]
First stop, after we pared the car, is Scots Monastery from 1070. The full official name of the actual church, the most prominent building within the abbey complex, is The Irish Benedictine Abbey Church of St. James and St. Gertrude. Like many other churches and abbey this one too was burnt down, demolished, rebuilt and […]
Wurzburg is a wonderful town. We did not quite know what to expect and we were nicely surprised. Wurzburg is a small city of 135,000 and dates back to the bronze age. It has a vibrant university and over 100 churches. Wurzburg is home to the oldest pizzeria in Germany, the oldest printing press manufacturer […]
Eleventh Century Romanesque Basilica Constructed over the stone coffin Of St Kilian, The Irish Missionary murdered here in 689. The Baroque facade was added between 1710-1716. This church is not huge but it is very interestingly decorated with vibrant way of the cross paintings which are very modern as well what appears to be a four Blade […]
The present cathedral, built from 1040 onwards by Bishop Bruno of Würzburg, reckoned to be the fourth largest Romanesque basilica in Germany, is the third church on the site: the previous two, built in about 787 and 855, were respectively destroyed and severely damaged by fire. After Bruno’s accidental death in 1045, his successor Adalbero […]
When we finished at the Wurzburg Residence it was 33.5 C in the car. There were a few lucky people who had the right car for this kind of weather.
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