Category — Travel

It’s a commonplace on this site that one should “defend” the BBC from unceasing, unsubtle and rather tiresome attacks from trenchant right-wingers. Very little written about the organization by either the Daily Mail, or any of its apers on the Web, has any merit. That’s true. The Beeb is worth defending: there’s something enriching about our ad-free broadcaster. Something that serves the public, that stands above the commercial white noise of modern television. Of course, the organization isn’t entirely non-commercial: BBC Worldwide makes decent profits that, at least nominally, feed back into UK public service broadcasting. So far, so uncontroversial. However, BBC Worldwide’s 2007 acquisition of travel guidebook publisher Lonely Planet did raise objections, [Read more →]

It costs me about £25–30 in petrol to drive the 55 miles from my home in Hackney to Brighton, and the same 55 back again. First Capital Connect is asking north of £90 for a return ticket for our family this weekend, starting from London Bridge. So if there’s a traffic jam on the northbound M23 this Sunday evening (inevitable), you can blame me.

If I lived in Florence, a family return trip of similar length to Livorno (birthplace of the PCI, home of the cacciucco) comes to about €33. From Brussels, a weekend rail trip to Bruges, 90km away, would cost us just over €49. A slightly longer journey in France, from Lyon to Chambery and back, comes to €59. [Read more →]

So, you’re heading to the eurozone with sterling at a historic low; to Italy, where inflation is at a 12-year high; and to the country’s priciest region. Are you in for a cashflow nightmare? Not necessarily.

Booking value summer accommodation for families can be tricky [Read more →]

Here’s a lesson for guidebook writers: never, ever make predictions about football.

What we wrote in the book, p. 142:

They might not be a household name, but AS Livorno are a team on the up. In 2004 the team returned to Italy’s elite Serie A after a 55-year wait…

It was the kiss of death, clearly. Yesterday, the team were relegated after a 1-0 home defeat by Torino. [Read more →]

No, not Slovenia: Slovakia. I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve said those exact words. I’ve even confused myself once or twice. Just to be clear: I’m talking about the bit that came after Czech in Czechoslovakia. The bit that we’ve all forgotten in the crush for the Baroque and beer halls of Prague.

It’s unlikely this nearby gem will stay unloved for long, though. Bratislava is surely, depressingly, about to become the next big eastern European stag destination. But to see the country’s best, you need to head into the wilderness.

About the size of Switzerland, with the population of Scotland, Slovakia has nine national parks. From the rock climbing and skiing of the High Tatras to the hiking and caving of the Slovensky Raj or the cycling and canoeing of the Dunajec gorge, your outdoor predilections are probably catered for somewhere. [Read more →]

The monastery of Poblet sits on a ridge above the village of L’Espluga de Francol, Catalonia, in the hills of the Conca de Barbera.

As I arrive, its fantastical towers and fruit groves are shrouded in soupy morning mist. Opposite the main gate, a grim stone cross is flanked by seven squat firs and the crows huddle together on telegraph wires against the chill north wind.

From the 12th century the Cistercian monastery was the final resting place of the kings and queens of Catalonia and Aragon. It was built on the site of a miracle. A holy hermit named Poblet was captured and imprisoned by the Moors, but angels appeared three times in the night and broke his chains.

His captors, impressed, granted him freedom. After the re-conquest of the area in 1149, Ramon Berenguer IV ordered that a monastery be built on the sacred ground. That, anyway, was how Richard Ford told the story in his 1845 Handbook for Travellers in Spain. [Read more →]

The seasons switch rapidly in northern Italy. In spring, the dirty white of melting snow and parched brown of desiccated foliage turns to emerald green with staccato bursts of pink fruit blossom, yellow cowslips and violet alpine flowers. Over the summer, the greens will pale, before autumn’s mustards and russets erupt, a last riot before the long winter. It is a cycle played out in Italy’s hills from the Val di Susa to Udine, but nowhere is it more marked than in the Parco Nazionale del Gran Paradiso. [Read more →]

Whether you’re into German rieslings or Spanish bubbly, there are some great day-trips for wine lovers, writes Donald Strachan.

Alsace, France

The lowdown: The place names sound German, the wine bottles look German, the local dialect, Elsassisch, has a definite Germanic twang to it. But this is France, and the wines are distinctively French.

Highlights of this 200-kilometre route, tracking the Vosges mountains from Thann in the south to the border of the Palatinate in the north, are bunched up in the central stretch around Colmar and Selestat. The favourite tour bus stop is Riquewihr, which would normally be good reason in itself to avoid it, but this uniquely Alsatian walled village stays (just) the right side of kitsch. And, anyway, it’s home to Hugel and Dopff au Moulin, the best exponents of local white wines.

Alternatively, the co-operatives at Turckheim and Beblenheim make great stops to try gewurztraminer in its natural home. And while you’re at it, the region is one of Old Europe’s best for gastro-tourism – Michelin-starred restaurants are scattered like hundreds and thousands, and Alsace onion tart is unmatchable.

Base yourself in: Everyone else heads to Colmar for chocolate-box holiday snaps, but to avoid high-season crowds try Selestat. [Read more →]

Two minutes and twenty-seven seconds. I’m sitting by the pool, legs dangling in the water, timing how long it takes the current to carry a drowned fly’s corpse around one lap and return it to a spot in front of me. Every time I kick my feet, the late-afternoon sun refracts patterns that slither like electric eels across the bottom of the pool. The only sound is water caressing stone, as the hotel’s fountain babbles away in the background. There’s hardly a whisper of wind to disturb the protea.

It doesn’t seem feasible that I’m sitting less than two miles away from the stretch of rock with such a fearsome reputation among sailors: the Cape of Good Hope. [Read more →]

For me, Brittany will always be the place where, aged nine and a half, I had my first taste of foreign food. Just hearing the name conjures up a crowded campsite, queues for the showers, the staccato drone of rain battering canvas and my dad reversing our new Citroen into a bollard at Portsmouth harbour.

But for the French, Brittany is renowned for salt – specifically, for Breton fleur du sel. It is somehow appropriate that a place where authentic local dishes (and pizzas) come with crab and cockles, or lobster and langoustines, should have made its name from the sea. [Read more →]