Arto's Blog

Year 2020 has been a difficult one to make travel plans. Several of ours got cancelled, but we did get out of our familiar surroundings a few times. As the end of the year approaches and I haven't been active in writing earlier, here's a summary of our of our travels during the last 12 months.… more »

We descended from the Alps to Longarone, a small town near Belluno, in North-Eastern Italy. The high peaks of the Dolomites gave way to lower, grass-covered mountains, then hills, and finally to the flatlands of the Veneto region. The route followed… more »

The Dolomites looked quite different from the German and Austrian Alps. The rocks had sharper shapes, slopes were steeper and overall there was much less vegetation. Different layers of stone and rock often had their own colors — "European Arizona" as… more »

One of Sandra's dreams was to go for a long walk one day. Like her, I had been on many short hiking trips, lasting up to one week, but never longer than that. So we decided to spend four weeks of our summer holiday by walking over the Alps. Our route… more »

I, my mother and two brothers had been walking along the streets of Murano island for a couple of hours, looking at pretty glass objects. We had also recently finished a three course lunch and shopped some fruit and wine in a supermarket to bring back… more »