What’s in My Photo Bag

Cortina d’Ampezzo lies nestled in the heart of the Dolomites — best known for hosting the 1956 Winter Olympics, and later, James Bond in For Your Eyes Only (1981).

I first came here with my parents in the early 1970s. I had memories of a quaint South Tyrolean village that I longed to revisit. That’s why the second stop on my journey took me to Cortina.

This year, I set myself a quiet challenge: return to the country of my grandfather. To make it simple — and meaningful — I decided to travel there by motorcycle. Nearly 2,500 km across Bavaria, the Tyrol, the Dolomites and Friuli on my Triumph Bonneville, retracing my childhood memories and reaching the house where my grandfather was born.

San Daniele is the small town next to the village where my grandfather was born.
Just 100 years ago, he was 13 years old, working there to learn the craft of cabinetmaking. Three years later, he left the town to travel through Europe — a journey that eventually brought him to Belgium, where he met my grandmother, settled down, and started a family.

A century later, I’ve come back — following his footsteps.

To the Adriatic coast we went — to Grado, a timeless seaside and thermal town built on an island. Its lagoon offers calm waters and the soothing scent of salt and pine. We used to go every summer with my parents. Forty years later, not much has changed. Except that, as a child, I had ice cream there — and this time, I tasted wine.

Trieste has always felt to me like a gateway — the last breath of Italy before the Balkans begin. An Adriatic city shaped by trade and faded empires, industrial yet poetic, caught between the Latin elegance of the South and the austere grace of the East. Its heavy buildings whisper of once-great ambitions. Among them, perched above the sea, the Castle of Miramare still stands — a silent witness to the tragedy of a Belgian princess and a would-be Mexican queen.