My Holidays Photoblog

admin July 5th, 2007

Pontremoli is a nice old town in the “Lunigiana”, a zone of Tuscany. It is not far from the famous “Cinque Terre” national park, and also near many other interesting places like Lucca, Viareggio, and so on.

It is also close to where we live now, so a sunday of december we decided to take a short trip there. We arrived and the feeble winter sun was lighting the town in a wonderful way. We walked up to a hill where you can see the whole town, and someone had hang up some clothes to dry them. I decided to take a picture of it, the one you can see above.

I like the result very much. It has a sort of “old feeling” on it, typical of the 1960-70 years. Old houses, the climate of desperation and poverty after the world war, where everyone had to restart their lives from zero.

• cultural photos , misc photos , old places photos , village photos
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admin June 20th, 2007

The area around the town of “Rimini” is rich of medieval villages, located on hills full of vineyards and fruit trees that during the spring are decorated with wonderful white and rose flowers. So in the month of April of a couple of years ago we decided to take the car and do a short trip there.

Near the border of the region “Romagna” and “Marche” you can find th town of Montegridolfo, a nice town surrounded by ancient walls that once were the defense of the local lords, the Malatesta, in their war against the Montefeltro of the town of Urbino.

As I said the village, completely renovated, is completely surrounded by walls and you can enter only from a single gate that still has an original massive wooden door. In the small town center you can find all sort of little shops that sells local products, like honeys or wines. In some restaurants you can eat on open terraces and admire the surrounding landscape, which is very romantic.

A few km away lies Saludecio, famous for his churchtowers, the towers and walls. Even here, you can find lot of local shops and seasonal markets, full of local specialities. A particular event that takes place here every year is called SalusErbe, and focuses on natural products, from herbs to plants, and local artisans.

Another great place to visit is Verucchio. Located on a top of a hill, it was once a very important strategic location for the Malatesta family.

Walking around the town you can still feel the atmosphere of those times, and the churches still keep precious treasures.

It was originally an Etruscan possession, and you can find tangible traces of its origins in the local museums.
If we can suggest you one of the best restaurants to taste the local dishes, we recommend “ Al Mastin Vecchio” which is located in the town center (you can’t miss it) and was really great!

• castles photos , cultural photos , nature photos , tips and tricks , village photos
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admin June 13th, 2007

One of the first places we went to visit was Feldkirk, because we were curious to see it, since our guide book was promoting it as “very nice old town with a castle on top of a hill”. On the road to get there we stopped in “Damuls” one of the several typical mountain villages you can find in Austria. It was a pleasant stop, and we could relax there in the afternoon.

The wonderful landscape you see in the photo below was taken from a small path nearby…

resuming our trip, more great landscapes like the mountains below were absolutely normal. We would have liked to stop behind every road turn to take pictures of those places from every possible angle!

at last, we reached Feldkirk, and I must admit that our guide book was right. The town is magnificent, rich of renovated old buildings like the one below. If only all the towns were like that!

A very funny place was a local wine-shop (photo below) , that had a giant barrel framed in the outside wall! it was a funny but at same time majestic view.

In the photo below instead you can see the Feldkirk’s Castle, not so great like the others I’ve seen in Bavary, but surely not bad either.

Of course there were plenty of interesting things to see, like churches or squares. However we wasted too much time in the morning exploring Damuls surroundings, so we had only the time to take a quick look. From what I could see, Feldkirk is a town worth checking out for sure.

• castles photos , cultural photos , mountain photos , tips and tricks , village photos
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