The mountain range rises 1,236 metres above the Catalan lowlands, 50 km northwest of Barcelona. Montserrat means “serrated mountain” and the shape is unmistakable: a jagged ridge of grey conglomerate rock that looks like a saw blade against the sky. The Benedictine monastery, Santa Maria de Montserrat, has been here since 1025. The mountain holds […]
Categories: Nature, Sights, Spain, Wellness, Relax & Sports
The Canal Grande curves through Venice in a reverse-S shape for 3.8 km, from the Santa Lucia railway station to the Bacino di San Marco. It is the city’s main thoroughfare and its most theatrical stage. The canal is lined with 170 palaces built between the 13th and 18th centuries. No road runs alongside it. […]
The spire of Salisbury Cathedral rises 123 metres above the Wiltshire plain. It is the tallest church spire in the United Kingdom and the fourth tallest in Europe. The cathedral was built in a single architectural period, Early English Gothic, between 1220 and 1258. Most English cathedrals are palimpsests of styles layered over centuries. Salisbury […]
Categories: Religious Monuments, Sights, Sights, United Kingdom
The village clings to a limestone cliff 250 metres above the Coulon Valley. The houses are honey-coloured stone, stacked so tightly that one rooftop serves as the terrace for the house above. Gordes has been a Provence postcard since the 1950s, when artists and writers, including Marc Chagall and Victor Vasarely, settled here. The village […]
The ferry from Doolin takes 40 minutes across Galway Bay. The Atlantic swell is constant. The Cliffs of Moher slide past on the left, 214 metres of vertical sandstone, and then the three islands appear: Inishmore, Inishmaan, and Inisheer. The Aran Islands spread across 47 square kilometres and contain the highest concentration of archaeological sites […]
Transylvania occupies 100,293 square kilometres of central Romania, surrounded by the Carpathian Mountains on three sides. The name means “the land beyond the forest” and the forest is the first thing you notice: beech and oak in the lower valleys, spruce and fir on the higher slopes, covering 60 percent of the land. The region […]
The Tatra Mountains rise behind the glass dome of the main pool building. The peaks hit 2,655 metres at Gerlachovsky Stit and the snow line is visible from the whirlpool. AquaCity Poprad, opened in 2008, is a thermal aquapark built on geothermal springs that feed water at 49 degrees Celsius into the pools. The complex […]
Categories: Mountains, Nature, Slovakia, Wellness, Relax & Sports, Wellness, Relax & Sports
The walk from the London Eye to Tower Bridge takes 30 minutes if you walk straight. Nobody walks straight. The South Bank is 2.3 km of continuous public space along the River Thames, built on the site of the 1951 Festival of Britain, and it is London’s most democratic stretch of urban land. Street performers, […]
Categories: Cities, Sights, Sights, United Kingdom, Virtual Travel
The church sits in a small town 85 km northwest of Savonlinna, surrounded by birch forest and lake country. From the outside it looks like a traditional Finnish wooden church, white with an ocher cross. Then you see the scale. The spire reaches 37 metres. The nave is 27 metres high inside. The building can […]
Nine hundred years of history is a long time for a building to stay relevant. The Tower of London has managed it by being everything at once: a fortress, a prison, a palace, a mint, a zoo, an armoury, and a tourist attraction. The White Tower, the central keep, was built by William the Conqueror […]
Categories: Castles and Palaces, Cities, Sights, Sights, United Kingdom, Virtual Travel
