Cultural Curiosities

Happy 200th birthday to the bicycle! While today we rely on bikes for exercise, commuting and touring the wine country, the bicycle originated in difficult time...

It's the second winter that I'm spending in Copenhagen, the city that also happens to be the destination of Backroads' Stockholm to Copenhagen cycling voyage. U...

When I first visited Porto on a backpacking trip nearly 20 years ago, my primary interest was to explore the charming neighborhood bars of the Ribeira quarter, ...

I don't think that I fully understood Vincent van Gogh's paintings until I stood in an olive grove in St-Rémy de Provence, France. This particular olive grove s...

The best known town in Tuscany is surely Florence, but have you been to Arezzo? The city center itself is gorgeous, the people are still genuine and the town lo...

There's a place in Turkey where I descended into the bowels of the earth, terrified I'd never resurface, then flew to the highest reaches of the heavens, afraid...

Take a deep breath in. That's the literal definition of 'inspire.' And it's what The Banff Centre does best. Their mandate is 'Inspiring Creativity' and they do...

You might think of coffee as just a hot beverage you drink from a paper cup in the car on the way to work. Here in Italy, coffee is not simply a drink, it's a k...

Like many first-time travelers to Ireland, I had a vision of what lay ahead as my flight cruised towards the Emerald Isle. Lush hills and the rugged coastline, ...

In Vietnam, coffee culture is as deep and rich as just about anything else. On old brick sidewalks and in old colonial shops adorned with art deco tiles, old me...

Famous for its natural health and healing culture, Spanish architecture and spectacular surroundings, Ojai offers a unique blend of modern spirituality and rus...

Nutella is the mass-produced version of something much more sophisticated: gianduia chocolate hazelnut spread from Piedmont, Italy. Yes, the land of Langhe and ...