culture
Get the authentic cultural experience on your next foreign jaunt. Wander like a local; here, there, and everywhere.
Milan: Italy’s lost city of canals
Just before Italy’s second lockdown in November 2020, the banks of Milan's Grand Canal were busy with people. Bargain hunters picked their way through market stalls, browsing tables of retro telephones, haphazard rows of art deco furniture and racks of vintage clothing. Others sat in the cafes, sipping aperitivi or coffee, gazing out at the shoppers. The clear water of the canal reflected the dazzling autumn sunshine.
By Seamons Mahall3 years ago in Wander
Turf houses: Iceland's original 'green' buildings
With its lonely lava fields, sheer bluffs and stark boulder-strewn plains, Iceland is one of Europe's most barren countries. Across much of the island, the utter remoteness is striking, and that's especially true in the far-flung Northwestern Region, where I had come to learn about how Icelanders were able to settle one of the least hospitable and most volcanically active places on Earth.
By Turnell Feliu3 years ago in Wander
The untranslatable word that connects Wales
A small harbour I know well appears on an Instagram story, catching me by surprise with its flash of familiar cobbled streets and blue skies. It's Wales: the land I grew up in and home to memories of afternoons spent fishing for crabs on that very harbourside in Porthmadog, long sand-dune walks along the north-west coastline and the inescapable smell of the sea.
By Copperchaleu3 years ago in Wander
Frances Mayes on the enduring allure of Italy
In the last 24 years, no other writer has likely lured more travellers to Italy than Frances Mayes. Her 1996 memoir Under the Tuscan Sun tells the story of how she fell in love with a rundown 200-year-old villa outside Cortona, and how she painstakingly restored it alongside her Italian neighbours. The book remained on the New York Times bestseller list for two and a half years, was made into a feature film starring Diane Lane and has led Mayes to write a series of subsequent love letters to Italy that have inspired many of her readers to dream of relocating to the bel paese.
By Turnell Feliu3 years ago in Wander
'Ghillies': Scotland's little-known Highlanders
On Scotland’s formidably wild Isle of Skye, there were hoof trails everywhere at first light. Trails in the mud, trails curving across the moorland, trails on the far side of the burn where they vanished into the murk of the pine forest. To the east, the land swooped uphill onto the ruggedly beautiful shoulder of Sgùrr a' Mhadaidh Ruaidh, with a vantage point over the Trotternish peninsula. West, and downhill from where Mitchell Partridge was standing, the loose contours of Glenhinnisdal valley dropped to Loch Snizort and the Isle of Skye’s coastline. There was a feeling of waiting for the stag rut to begin.
By Copperchaleu3 years ago in Wander
Quilting: An Irish tradition fit for pandemic times
When Sarah Harris moved from her home of 20 years in Ireland back to her native Colorado, she brought the quilting business she’d started in County Wicklow with her, making commissions of "memory quilts", patchwork designs composed of baby blankets, graduation gowns or old clothes from deceased loved ones. Before she’d turned it into a business, quilting was something she did for herself – a way of connecting with her mother and grandmother, both quilters in the US, in spirit and in practice.
By Turnell Feliu3 years ago in Wander
