The city of Nikko, nestled among the mountains of the Tochigi Prefecture, boasts beautiful natural surroundings and a plethora of UNESCO World Heritage shrines and temples. And being only a couple of hours from Tokyo, a trip out to this city is definitely worth adding to the destination list.
Despite the comfort of our lazy lifestyle sunbathing and spritzing in Gallipoli (see last Friday’s post here), we managed to drag ourselves away from our sun-lounger and take a road trip down the coast to explore more of the delights of Puglia.
The majority of our time in Puglia was spent soaking up the sun in the beautiful town of Gallipoli and its surrounding beaches.
As we drove towards the beach portion of our trip in Puglia we decided to take a significant detour via the Itria Valley to see the trulli houses. These traditional Apulian houses (small white buildings with a conical roof) were really a sight to behold and I’m so glad that we went out of our way to see them. I’d definitely recommend building in a visit to this unique town if you’re heading to Puglia.
Puglia is one of the less usual destinations for Brits in Italy but we decided to try and brush up our very rudimentary Italian and head to the heel of the country to check out the abundance of history, beaches and food it has on offer. First stop Lecce…
There are so many things to see in Tokyo that you can spend months there and feel that you have barely scratched the surface. I by no means pronounce this a definitive list, but based on my experience to date the below are the top five traditional cultural sights that you should definitely try to fit in on a trip to Tokyo.
A couple of years ago I was lucky enough to have the opportunity to live in Japan and it’s safe to say that this wonderful country, its people, its sights (both natural and cultural) and its food seriously got under my skin. So it seems only natural that I would introduce a regular feature which harks back to all the amazing places I visited and ate at while I was living there (and on the return trips I have made since)…so welcome to Tokyo Tuesdays.
After our amazing meal at Akelare (more here), we arrived into San Sebastian late in the afternoon conveniently in time for sunset and walked out to the Comb of the Winds sculpture by Eduardo Chillida which is embedded in the rocks at the end of the beach.
As you might have gleaned from the short history of this blog so far, one of the boy’s favourite things to do is eat (and I’m not exactly averse to the idea!) So for the first weekend break we took together last year, we opted for the Basque region of Spain which is known for its gourmet food (both cheap and high-range),. We started off in the city Bilbao – renown for its art and food alike.
Being a history geek, I couldn’t leave the Yucatan Peninsula without visiting its most famous archaeological site – especially as it was on the way to our final destination. I was pretty blown away by the scale of the site and the beautiful carvings and buildings to be found all around Chichen Itza but there were definite downsides as compared to the ruins we had seen the day before.