We visited the Italian island of Sardegna (Sardinia) in the summer of 2013. We combined our stay there with a roadtrip from our home in Belgium to the island (and back), passing through France, Switzerland, and Italy. Along the way, we visited a number of world heritage sites and every evening we stayed with a …
Despite its rather isolated position in the Mediterranean (together with Corsica), Sardinia (Sardegna in Italian) has a long history of human presence. First settlement occurred somewhere between 450000-150000 years ago, by people from Tuscany, by a landstrip via Corsica. The first significant Sardinian civilisation was the Nuragic civilisation, which existed between 1700 BC and 500BC …
If there is one thing we learned from our visit to Trier last year, it is that the Romans have been doing some serious construction and city-building in once-Germania. A considerable number of German cities still contain original and well-preserved Roman architecture. The Romans’ never-ending thirst for conquering new tribes and annexing new lands eventually …
A young, happy me in the temple complex of Karnak. You can see the Hypostyle hall in the back (left). Back in 1999 I was in my senior year of high school. We could choose our senior trip ourselves. It had to be something educational, and the whole class needed to attend the trip. After some brainstorming, …
When you arrive in Canterbury, you will find the Cathedral in the middle of the city centre, behind a small entrance. It hides behind some buildings and you can only really view it when you pay the entrance fee. Which is something you really should do, because it is one of the most impressive cathedrals …
The famous Loreley rock. To be completely honest, our experience with the Rhine valley consisted of two separate visits. We visited Koblenz on a sunny afternoon and enjoyed every bit of it: taking some time at highlights such as the Vier Turme, Alte Burg, Florinskirche and St.-Kastor Basilica, eating delicious ice cream on the Am …
The Dom of Cologne, a gothic masterpiece, took 6 (!) centuries to be completed. During all this time, the builders stuck to the original plans. The place where the cathedral was built has been a place for catholic worship since the 4th century. The Dom is the first building you see when coming out of …
OK, so it did take me several days to come up with a good title for this blog post. I wanted it to rhyme, but I always came up with lame titles such as “We were here… in Trier”, “No beer… in Trier”, “No fear… in Trier” and even “Wir liebten das hier… in Trier”. …
Our tent at Gastätte Asel Sud. During our German stay this summer, we headed out for 3 days to the center of Germany. We wanted to visit two Unesco sites there: Kellerwald, which is actually named “Primeval Beech Forests of the Carpathians and the Ancient Beech Forests of Germany” and Bergpark Wilhelmshöhe. We had also …
To start of our summer holidays in 2012, we headed to Amsterdam for 4 days. It was a memorable trip for multiple reasons. First of all – we went couchsurfing. For the very first time. A friend of mine got us all enthousiastic about this way of travelling, and it has given us numerous travel …
