Postcards from Europe 🖼🏞🇪🇺

Since I started this new blog I launched a successful series of blog posts featuring travel notes from my favourite travels. This is an opportunity to recall some of these popular posts with postcards from European destinations for you to enjoy.

It is only relatively recently that I spent a week in Budapest and I discovered one of the most beautiful cities in Europe, steeped in history and glowing with architectural gems nestled all along the Danube. I was particularly fascinated by the glorious beauty of the Parliament reflecting in the Danube at sunset time.

Berlin is a very vibrant place to be discovered and appreciated for its multi-cultural aspects, intersting role in history and freshness of its artistic life. Overbuilt in the city center, the German capital offers some very pleasant green spaces, like the Tiergarten, that cuts across the North-South divide and provides a much needed natural lung and opportunity for exploration and excursions. within its urban context.

The site of Cardiff Castle has been for a very long time the main centre for human settlement and trade on the Cardiff Bay. The current heritage of the Norman castle and the preceding Roman fort remains are witness for a strategic military and civilian presence that goes back for almost two millennia. Now Cardiff is a modern and vibrant city with a high level of quality of life for its inhabitants and an interesting tourist destination that competes well with other European capitals, with an offer of cultural life and history that is very attractive,

Copenhagen has an irresistible Nordic charme with its special relationship with the sea and overseas trade. The city has always been a commercial and cultural hub and its beautiful buildings bear witness to a subdued richness of history and progressive thinking. Surely a European capital not to be missed in this grand tour.

England is the country where I have been living for 30 years because I felt an irresistible attraction to London and decided this was the place I wanted to develop my career and live my adult life. Despite overall conditions have changed since my initial passion for this amazing and bubbling metropolis, I am still in love with the place and feel amazed by the opportunities London can offer, whether one decides to take them on or not. Surely London is the European capital I feel most comfortable in, even in spite of all the Brexit nonsense and the challenges to its very multicultural make up. Sometimes, but not too frequently, I do venture also outside London and explore the coastline seeking a refreshed connection with the ocean.

Italy has a unique collection of geographic and cultural aspects that historically have not been always considered as a coherent nation. This is probably the reason why we have been battling each other, since the beginning of time, more than against outside enemies, and can hardly express a strong sense of cultural unity, apart when we are under external threats.

A trip to Istanbul is not complete without enjoying the timeless splendour and captivating magic of Hagia Sophia. Built on the orders of Byzantine emperor Justinian I in 537, it remained for nearly a thousand years the world’s largest cathedral. Turned into a mosque after the conquest of the city by the Ottomans and into a museum in 1934, it is now being turned again into a mosque with consequent controversies about this decision. The timeless splendour and captivating magic of this temple transcends religious differences and has been transpiring spirituality for almost two millenia to people of all creeds.

Paris is undoubtedly one of the most fascinating cities in the world, an inspiring and romantic place where it is pleasant to walk around and discover beauty spots and significant locations for art and history. The most iconic landmark is surely the Eiffel Tower, which weirdly was supposed to stand just for the duration of the World Fair of 1889 but has since become the cultural symbol of this beautiful city.

Travel ✈️🚄🚇