Tom Royce 
I start in Colmar where the Lauch narrows between half-timbered houses and flower boxes lean over the water. Petite Venise is the name on every map, but the stretch itself is quieter if you arrive before the boat queues form: a working canal that once fed tanners and fishmongers, still lined with shutters and laundry … Read more
Montefalco sits on a low ridge in the middle of Umbria, high enough that the valley opens every way and small enough that you can walk the whole centro without turning it into a project. Locals still call it the balcony of Umbria. The name makes more sense once you’ve been inside San Francesco and … Read more
Berliners clock Cottbus as a stop on the way to the Spreewald, or skip it for Dresden. I get off at the Hauptbahnhof and walk toward the Spree instead. Cottbus — Chóśebuz in Lower Sorbian — sits in Lower Lusatia with bilingual street signs, a compact old town, and Branitz Park, where Prince Hermann von … Read more
People arrive in Porto-Vecchio already pointed at white sand. Palombaggia, Santa Giulia, pine shade, the turquoise shelf that looks invented for a magazine cover. Fair. Those beaches earn their reputation. The version of town I keep starts lower and stranger: old salt pans under the granite haute ville, pink birds on still water when the … Read more
Most people meet Capri at Marina Grande, then get funneled up to the Piazzetta like luggage on a belt. The square is pretty. It is also a holding pen. I do better when I leave the lower town’s shop circuit early and ride the bus up the switchbacks to Anacapri. Ordinary doors up there. And … Read more
Travemünde is Lübeck’s Baltic mouth, not Lübeck’s Altstadt. The brick-Gothic skyline sits twenty kilometres inland. Out here the Trave opens into Lübeck Bay, freighters and Scandinavia ferries slide past the promenade, and a small foot ferry still stitches the town side to the Priwall peninsula. Most day-trippers treat the place as beach plus ice cream. … Read more