Walking in the sunset light the other day I suddenly realised how quiet and empty my busy neighbourhood has become. Like every year, most Parisians are leaving for their Summer Holidays and quite a melancholic ambiance has fallen over the city.
I will be visiting Ireland in August for the first time and am a little anxious about having to pack my rain boots and cashmere sweaters for the moody weather. It is a beautiful place, however, and has become known for its myriad of castles, many of them are abandoned or in ruins, while others were restored and worth a visit.
And it's no wonder: the city, which has been one of Europe's major centres of finance, commerce, fashion, science, music and art since the 17th century, has continued to capture the imaginations of travellers around the world despite travel trends.
There are days when inspiration is at every corner and in every detail, but during busy weeks (like a big week of sales) when so many things are happening at the same time, inspiration is absent...
"Have you ever thought that you would be living in Spain?" It's a question that P asks often, and my answer is always the same: no, never in a million years had I ever imagined that we would, on a whim, move here, having never visited before, and to this particular city, as opposed to the more predictable choices of Barcelona or Madrid. Not because it's not a wonderful place to live, to be sure, but because I (like many others, it would seem) had never even heard of Valencia before.
Maybe it’s just more Instagram fever or maybe it’s just my desire to visit more of this beautiful country, but lately I have a coup de coeur for the South of France.
TRAVEL recently became the world's biggest industry according to World Trade Organisation. Statistics claim that millennials would rather save for travel than anything else, and Instagram has created a certain wanderlust that influences decisions about how they spend their money. The instagrammability of a destination is now the number one motivation among millennials for booking a holiday, creating an important discussion of expectation and reality.
