Guides to lesser-known towns — markets, rivers, neighborhoods, food, and where to stay — written for travelers who skip the template itinerary.
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Antica Dolceria Bonajuto, Modica and/or Ragusa
The chocolate here does not melt the way you expect. It stays gritty, almost sandy on the tongue, because the cocoa never gets cooked into a smooth European bar. At Antica Dolceria Bonajuto on Corso Umberto I, they still cold-work the paste the way the town learned it centuries ago. Sugar crystals stay whole. Each bite cracks a little. I come for that texture more than for the baroque skyline, though the skyline is hard to ignore once you start climbing. Modica sits in a deep stone cut in the…
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Saturday stalls circle Kollwitzplatz in Prenzlauer Berg
Tour buses still dump people at the Brandenburg Gate and call it a day. I take the U2 north until the train climbs onto the elevated tracks over Schönhauser Allee, get off at Eberswalder Straße, and walk toward Kollwitzplatz while the neighborhood is still buying bread. Prenzlauer Berg does not need another street-art checklist. What it rewards is a Saturday when the market rings the square, currywurst under the viaduct, and an evening under the chestnuts at Prater when the light goes soft. This used to be East Berlin working-class…
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Queen Eleanor’s Cross still stands on London Road above Delapré in Northampton
Queen Eleanor’s Cross still stands on London Road above Delapré in Northampton Northampton gets billed as a motorway town between London and the Midlands, a shoe label on a boot box, and a station you clear before Silverstone or the next train north. Fair enough if you only need the M1 and a multi-storey. I keep coming back to the short ridge of London Road south of the centre, where Queen Eleanor’s Cross still stands above the park line at Delapré — one of the few surviving memorial crosses Edward…
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Rheingasse still drops to the old Rhine gate in Niederburg, Konstanz
Rheingasse still drops to the old Rhine gate in Niederburg, Konstanz Konstanz sells itself with water. Bodensee on the postcard, Swiss border on the map, a steeple that still owns the skyline. Fair enough. The town I come back for sits lower than the Münster roof, in a pocket of bent lanes where the lake has already narrowed into the Seerhein and the houses still feel closer to fishermen than resort buses. That pocket is Niederburg. Rheingasse is the plainest way in: a short street that tips downhill toward Rheintorturm…
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Graffiti in the Donjon of Loches
I came into Loches from the Indre side, not the fortress road. The river was low and green, the public garden paths empty enough that I could hear my shoes on the gravel. Above the trees, the keep rose like a blunt stone tooth, tuffeau in late morning light, slate roofs stacked under the citadel spur. Most visitors aim straight for Porte Royale. I walked the bank first, then climbed when I was ready for the cool dark of the donjon. Loches sits in southern Touraine, Centre-Val de Loire, south…
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Steam Rising at Terme dei Papi, Viterbo
Most people who leave Rome for Lazio chase lakes, gardens, or a hillside villa with a famous name on the ticket. Viterbo rarely makes that shortlist. It sits northwest of the capital in the Tuscia hills, a provincial city that once held popes when Rome felt too dangerous, and still holds water hot enough to fog a winter morning. I come for the steam first, then the stone. Outside the walls, Terme dei Papi spreads a big thermal pool fed by springs the Romans already knew. Inside the walls, San…