Europe

Beauty or a blight? Urban art in Lisbon

Where they see squalor and a depressed urban landscape in some raggedy streets and obscure alleys, I see a raw, gritty, honest beauty – a down to earth yin to the yang of the city’s grand architecture. This Jekyll and Hyde character partly makes Lisbon the compelling city it is. […]

Alentejo

It is simply Alentejo, not the new Tuscany

Driving through an endless savanna where mounds rather than hills rolled lazily toward infinity, a travel article I’d read in The Guardian a couple of years ago popped into my head. It was called ‘A foodie tour of Portugal’s Alentejo’ and claimed that Portugal’s largest region was being touted as the new Tuscany. […]

Europe

Being James Bond in Siena, Tuscany

Tables, chairs and parasols line narrow streets and fill small piazzas, their occupants enjoying fat-crusted pizzas whose slices reluctantly pull apart in a cat’s cradle of melted cheese, and plates of pasta topped with rich sauce and drizzled in aromatic olive oil. […]