Mount Giona is the fifth tallest mountain in Greece at 2,510 metres and the least known of the country’s major peaks. It sits in central Greece, between the regions of Phocis and Phthiotis, roughly 200 km northwest of Athens. The ski resort that operates on its northern slopes is small, local, and empty even in […]
The Diros Caves are a network of limestone caverns on the western coast of the Mani Peninsula in the Peloponnese, and they contain one of the longest underground rivers in Europe. The caves were formed over millions of years by water dissolving the limestone bedrock. They extend for at least 14 km, of which roughly […]
Forty kilometres south of Berlin, inside a former Soviet aircraft hangar that is the largest free-standing hall in the world, you will find a tropical rainforest. The hangar was built in the 1930s as a construction facility for airships. It is 360 metres long, 210 metres wide, and 107 metres high. Today it contains a […]
Categories: Cities, Germany, Sights, Wellness, Relax & Sports
Mount Etna is the largest active volcano in Europe and the most frequently erupting volcano on Earth. It has been erupting for at least 500,000 years. In 2021 alone it erupted more than 50 times. The locals call it Mungibeddu in Sicilian, and they have learned to live with a mountain that could, at any […]
Categories: Islands, Italy, Nature, Nature, Sicily, Volcanoes
Filicudi is the third smallest of the seven Aeolian Islands and the least visited after Alicudi. The permanent population hovers around 250 people. There is one bank, one pharmacy, one school with a single teacher, and a handful of restaurants that close for lunch. The island has no airport, no ferry from the mainland, and […]
Neuschwanstein Castle is the most photographed building in Germany, and the reason is not the architecture. It is the location. The castle sits on a rugged hill above the Pollat Gorge, surrounded by the Bavarian Alps, with lakes and forests stretching in every direction. King Ludwig II built it as a private refuge, not a […]
A thousand years of rain and frost, and the glacier that once covered the Ritten plateau melted 10,000 years ago. What it left behind is a forest of earth pillars capped by boulders that look as though a giant dropped them from a great height. The pillars cluster in a ravine above the village of […]
The Cascate del Serio is the tallest waterfall in Italy at 315 metres, and it is only visible for a few hours each week. The water is regulated by a hydroelectric dam upstream, and the valve that releases the water into the natural falls is opened on a fixed schedule. The rest of the time […]
Categories: Italy, Nature, Nature, Waterfalls
The Grande Cascade de Gavarnie is the highest waterfall in France at 422 metres, and it falls in three stages from the Cirque de Gavarnie, a natural amphitheatre in the Pyrenees carved by glaciers. The waterfall is not a thin stream. It is a broad curtain of water, fed by the meltwater of the Gavarnie […]
Categories: France, Nature, Nature, Waterfalls
Lake Bled is the most photographed place in Slovenia, and the photograph never lies. The lake is a glacial lake in the Julian Alps, 2 km long and 1.4 km wide. In the middle of the lake is a small island with a 17th-century church. On a cliff above the eastern shore is a medieval […]
