A two week driving tour of the Alps, touring different cities, towns and villages. The trip started in Nice and ended in Munich.

Aosta feels nestled in the mountains, and the peaks rise above it in a very prominent way. At dinner, I watched the moon move sideways across the peaks before disappearing behind the buildings. Being here, you can understand in some way why the Romans were so progressive in their approach. The mountains reach the stars, and you can climb a mountain.

A two week driving tour of the Alps, touring different cities, towns and villages. The trip started in Nice and ended in Munich.The road was actually a highway all the way up to Fenis but it cut through beautiful landscapes.

A two week driving tour of the Alps, touring different cities, towns and villages. The trip started in Nice and ended in Munich. In a relatively small town like Turin many places are still shut on Sundays.

A two week driving tour of the Alps, touring different cities, towns and villages. The trip started in Nice and ended in Munich. Whilst we had a drink in Monaco, we figured out our next stop, we wanted to be in Turin the following evening and didn’t want a long drive that afternoon.

A two-week driving tour of the Alps, touring different cities, towns and villages. The trip started in Nice and ended in Munich.. Monaco is only 9 kilometres from Nice, but they are a windy, slow kind of kilometre. They run along the coast road and give some great views of the incredibly wealthy,.

The next morning, we got up early to check-out and collected the car; an Alfa-Romeo Giulia. We’d confirmed we could leave it in the parking garage for a few hours while we explored a bit of Nice.

Tiny winding streets with old buildings, hugely driven by city break tourism rather than the more sedate options are part of the character of Split. The small tight streets in the old town have lead to the adoption of motorised cards, like you may see in a warehouse for moving goods around.

Days are identified by Roman numerals. The city has a strong resonance with Rom, the history of repeated attempts to align with the Hapsbergs and the Pope have given Vilnius an affinity from Italy as well as this there is a stronger Russian influence than I have seen in the other Baltic states, they have a soviet influence, but less of the historic Russian.

Friends of mine were in Copenhagen and suggested we meet for the day in Malmö. Having never been to the city and having not seen them for quite a while I was keen.  The first stop was an outside bar whilst i waited for them, as their bus was delayed due to a person thinking their VISA card was enough ID to pass the Danish/Swedish border.

On Swedish National Day, I decided to dust off my bike, which had sat unused through the winter and spring to cycle down to Lerkil, about 70-75km south of Gothenburg. I loaded up my panniers with my camera, a rain jacket, two liters of water, a phone charger, batteries, Pringles, a mini camping stove with packaged chilli con carne and a few other non-essentials and set off.

A beautiful city with some stunning architecture, sprawling does not do this city justice, it is in fact two cities, Buda and Pest, separated by the Danube, facing each other over the river.

“Quaint” it is both quite small and very old, storybook streets of cobblestones and brightly painted houses. Tall towers of stone topped with red tiles. The old town is a lot like the outdoor museum in Oslo, a place of history. Toompea is this even more distilled.

Sprawling across islands, inlets, it is a big place. Architecture has a lot in common with Sweden. Moomins are everywhere, they are a prized cultural thing here. There is a level of indifference to the snow and Ice that Gothenburg cannot match.

Branäs is a picturesque ski resort located in the heart of Sweden's snowy wonderland, offering an unforgettable winter sports experience for both beginners and advanced skiers.

Architecture is varied, but there is not much of the extremely modern glass around. Brickwork dominates and it feels that even new buildings are trying to fit in. The main exception is the area around the Rhine Towner, a needle standing tall and alone on the riverside and the various modernist buildings nearby.

There is a huge amount of new building work complete, or ongoing in Oslo, so the city is losing some of its charm and certain areas like the ferry terminal are very ‘Canary Wharf’ in the impression.

Rome has the strong distinction of being home to two of the world’s most dominant religions/cultures; the Ancient Romans and the Catholics. Much of its beauty comes from the fact that for once the Christians repurposed rather than destroyed the architecture of the ‘pagans’.

Gaudi’s influence can be felt throughout the city, even though there are in truth only a small number of his buildings in a large sprawling city the influence of colour and shape make Barcelona an interesting city. Whilst it has many of the dull square buildings that infest major cities, it also has old churches in immaculate repair and colourful shapes and sculptures scattered through the city.