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Beautiful Places #8: Elba
The large house you can see on the headland in the picture above is reputed to be the site of Napoleon’s exile to Elba. When you think of exile, you might imagine imprisonment, but, in his case, Napoleon had the freedom of this beautiful island and lived in opulent luxury in this castle with a view. You might reflect that being in enforced exile on an island like Elba is an awful lot better than the last twelve months have been for many people. Even getting to Elba was special, flying in to Pisa and then taking the train out to the ferry port at Piombino from where the “Moby”…
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Island Hopping Croatia: Brač
Some of the inter island ferry services have been scaled back due to an expected drop in visitor numbers during COVID, so to hop from Šolta to Brač we have to go back to Split and on again from there. So it’s an early alarm, the 7:20 bus from Maslinica and the 8am ferry, breakfast in Split harbour and then a second ferry over to Supetar on the island of Brač. Brač a much bigger and more mountainous island than Šolta, in fact the third largest Adriatic island; our next billet means travelling some distance to the south of the island, and we’ve been recommended that the best option for…
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Laos: Nong Khiaw
Nong Khiaw is an absolutely spectacular and beautiful place, just simply one of those places which really does take your breath away. It wows everyone: every other traveller we meet uses phrases like “most beautiful place I’ve ever seen”. It is for us too, it is beyond stunning. More description in a minute. First, it seems the storm on our last day back in Luang Prabang was actually the outer reaches of a typhoon, and as we leave, our minivan has to pull around fallen trees and other debris, and we hear stories of one of the Mekong riverboats being turned over into its murky depths. Hopefully with no one…
