Good Food and Views are Worth the Journey
Given Tuscany’s medieval and renaissance jewels, visitors often overlook Italy’s other wine region Piedmont. But with its delicious Barolo and Barbaresco wines, super restaurants and sculpted vine covered hillsides, Piedmont is a worthy culinary and scenic destination especially since it’s within easy reach of Milan. Best of all, you can get a great meal and a fantastic room at prices well below that of comparable establishments in Milan and much of Tuscany.
I discovered...
For a Michelin one-star establishment, La Ciau del Tornavento packs a punch. The restaurant sits on a hilltop in the town of Treiso in Piedmont with the dining room opening up onto a fantastic view of the vine laden slopes and valley below. The cuisine takes Piedmont’s traditional dishes up a notch - largely recognisable, nothing foamy here. But best of all it has the most impressive wine collection I’ve ever seen with its cellar holding more than 38,000 bottles.
We came here on...
Yosemite National Park is one of those places where I wish I had accomplished more on my visit. There is so much I want to do and I leave thinking I could have organized myself a bit better. If you’re like me and can only allocate a short visit for your first trip, here are some tips that I think may help you make more of a limited time there.
Do’s:
Here are some photos from my walk in Kanazawa’s Kenroku-en, known as one of Japan’s three great gardens. I was there in December when there was a light dusting of snow on the ground. It must also be beautiful now in May with the flowers in bloom.
This itinerary accompanies the narrative in the blog Kanazawa - Little Kyoto, Big Garden, Great Seafood. Read the blog for more detail.
Access: Kanazawa sits on the west coast of Central Honshu. The nearest airport is Komatsu - around 40 minutes drive from the town centre or one hour by airport bus. If you’ve flown into Tokyo, however, do try the bullet train to Kanazawa, which takes around two and a half hours. As with other cities in Japan, Kanazawa is well connected...