Victor and I joined his parents for a six-day journey through the Catalan Pyrenees, splitting our time between high mountain landscapes and stone villages that seem suspended somewhere between history and habit. We based…

I had been to Valencia once before, back in 2019, but that trip barely scratched the surface. It was a work visit, rushed and contained, and I left with the sense that I had…

I didn’t go to Santiago for a holiday. Like my first visit to Dubai, it was a work trip, the kind where days are structured around meetings and meals are squeezed in where they…

After a wonderful first day in Girona, we woke early on our second day, keen to see the city before it fully came to life. The streets were noticeably quieter, and when we reached…

I first visited Girona in September 2016. I remember thinking how beautiful it was, how good the food was, and how hot it felt wandering through the old town at the tail end of…

We arrived in Tarragona by train from Barcelona, a journey that already sets the tone for the day. The tracks run close to the Mediterranean for long stretches, the sea appearing and disappearing between…

The idea for this weekend began weeks earlier, during a visit to Ensérune in southern France. Standing on that exposed hilltop, I learned how places like Ensérune functioned not as isolated settlements, but as…

Once the workdays and museum visits were behind us, Madrid began to feel different. Less like a place to be understood and more like a place to move through without intention. We spent hours…

Madrid was never meant to be Spain’s most beautiful city. It became its most important one almost by accident. Chosen as the capital in the sixteenth century largely for its geographic position, the town…

From Carcassonne, the transition into Cathar country is subtle at first. Vineyards still line the road, and villages appear familiar in scale and colour. But as we headed south, the land began to tighten.…