The Hotel of Childhood Memories: An Old Italian Schoolhouse turned Charming B&B

Perhaps the last thing you want to do on holiday is “go back to school”, but I can assure you, this little schoolhouse nestled in the picturesque province of Vicenza, a 90 minute drive from Venice, is nothing like the school days you remember. No grumpy Maths teachers, no caféteria slop for lunch and certainly…

Time Travel to a 1930s Dance School in Paris

“Forget your troubles and dance” were the wonderful lyrics once sang by Bob Marley and he wasn’t far wrong as we stepped into an old dance school that sits quietly at the bottom of a paved courtyard in Saint Germain. (7th arr) Not to be fooled though as the seemingly quiet exterior says nothing about…

In the Midst of a Warzone there’s an Afghani Skateboarding School for Girls

Today I learned there’s a skateboarding school in Afghanistan where 40% of its students are female. In a part of the world where little girls are getting shot at for promoting women’s education, that’s a pretty impressive statistic. In a part of the world where little girls aren’t even allowed to ride a bicycle, that’s…

Classrooms without Walls: A Forgotten Age of Open-air Schools

This old black and white photograph pops out at me every now and again on the internet, and it just about sums up my feelings on what my education should have looked like. The photograph was taken in 1957 in the Netherlands where open air schools were quite popular at the time. The idea of an al fresco classroom should…

Back to School Fashion circa 1939

No matter how many years have past since I graduated, when September 1st rolls around, it always feels like the first day back to school again. Today has been a struggle settling back into the office so I thought I’d ease myself back in, stick to my comfort zone and dive into the good old…

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Lunch at the Forgotten Rothschild Party Palace

I stood looking up at the gates, hands on my hips, wondering what forgotten chateau I’d stumbled upon this time. We’d taken a detour to avoid the traffic back into Paris and suddenly pulled over into the ditch by the side of the road at my absolute insistence. What I didn’t know then, peeping through…

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The Most Exclusive US College that You’ve Probably Never Heard Of

What if I told you there was an elite college as exclusive as Harvard and as remote as the North Pole? That it consistently tops Harvard’s yield rate and evades suspicions of being a cult, that it requires its students to engage in 20 hours of manual labor per week and doesn’t let them leave…

A Janitor’s View of La Sorbonne University

I imagine that the school janitor of La Sorbonne University doesn’t have it so bad. When school is out and all the students and teachers have left, imagine roaming these halls and polishing the blackboards in classrooms that taught Voltaire, Balzac, Jean Paul Sartre, Marie Curie and T.S Eliot. Parisian photographer Ludwig Favre is not the janitor, nor was…

Learning to be a Stewardess in the Sixties

Before airline passenger service was making headlines for all the wrong reasons, it was bright, white smiles all round, feminine perfection was the goal and the word “stewardess” was not offensive (nowadays, the correct term is flight attendant). The women in these photographs we recently dug up from the Life archives reveal the everyday training for…

The Tin Can School ‘Buses’ of India

You may be used to seeing the big yellow buses that bring kids back and forth before & after school everyday, but in India the daily commute to school has its own unique little mode of transport. Each day primary school children, from as young 4 years old cram into these makeshift school buses composed of not much…