Manara's VirtualTourist Home Page

I travel quite often for work and sometimes I use for my holidays the knowledge I have got on business trips. If you are curious about my job, I work for an international medical association, and most of my time is devoted to planning and organising its large congresses, that are held in a different country every year. That's how I happen to know so many hotels.

With time I have become tired of packing and unpacking too often, so I now prefer holidays in which I stay in a place and make one-day trips in the region.

I am also a bit tired of hotels. They are great for a short stay, but for a longer holiday (one week or more) the privacy and the larger space of an apartment or a cottage is much better. For this reason I am a happy share-holder in a big, well established company of shared properties, so from 1999 until now I have spent holidays in "my" apartments in Munich, Amsterdam, Vienna, London, the Alps (Swiss and Austrian), and by Lake Maggiore. It is essential, of course, to have a travel companion who is willing to share equally the house chores, but I am lucky with this regard.

I am not photogenic, so I never liked being in front of a camera. This means I do not have many recent pictures of me. The one I have posted here was taken in 2006.

Some people say that the contents of a woman's bag can tell a lot about her personality. I am not sure, but I don't have a problem with disclosing the contents of my bag to you, in case it helps you to know me better.
For your information: I don't always carry an umbrella and sunglasses, but the weather was very changeable when I emptied my bag for you.