New Year’s Eve 2017 found us in Melbourne, Australia, at the top of the Eureka Tower watching fireworks exploding around us. Eight years and a few months later we were back in the city we both fell in love with, to visit family and find explore anew. Our 2026 Australian adventure began with a three-leg…
Daylesford, Victorian spa town
Daylesford in Britain has a reputation for being posh and exclusive. Its namesake in the Australian state of Victoria may be a bit more egalitarian, but it still has the air of being a cut above the average. It’s got a wealth of beautiful traditional homes, quiet streets with manicured gardens, fancy restaurants, boutiques, galleries…
Rottnest Island and Perth, Western Australia
When it’s hotto, go to Rotto. It’s the slogan that’s hard to escape in many of Perth’s popular tourist spots – an invitation to escape the heat of the city for the cooler air of Rottnest Island, 11 miles offshore. With temperatures around 40c while we were staying in the capital of Western Australia, we…
Busselton and Geographe Bay, Western Australia
A couple of hours drive south from Perth, lying on the shores of Geographe Bay, stands the beautiful seaside town of Busselton. We spent three nights there, right on the seafront at the modern Hilton Garden Inn, after a relentless drive south from the big-city vibes and sweltering heat of Perth and Fremantle. There was…
The Christmas markets of Wiesbaden
Combine a historic spa with the festive pleasures of a Christmas market and you get the German city of Wiesbaden, capital of the state of Hesse. It’s one of the oldest spa towns on the continent, famed for its waters since Roman times. On a cold December day, while many were drawn to the market…
Yamanaka – a walk through a gorge and a dip at the onsen
A visit to the onsen is a way of life for many Japanese but can amount to torture for the rest of us. It’s like being boiled alive with no clothes on and we’re just not used to it. With thousands of hot springs across the county, it’s no surprise that locals regularly take a…
Kanazawa – a captivating garden and historic streets
Located in the north-western Ishikawa Prefecture on the island of Honshu in Japan, Kanazawa is a modest city of exceptional gardens, historic geisha and samurai districts and buzzing nightlife. It was my favourite stop on our 2025 Japanese tour. It had long been my plan to visit – even as far back as our first…
Nara – a mind-blowing temple and too many deer
Nara has many claims to fame. It was Japan’s first permanent capital, has one of the largest wooden buildings in the world, boasts a world-class collection of temples and shrines, and is home to large numbers of semi-tame deer. It’s an easy day trip from Osaka by train and a popular stop on the tourist…
Osaka – crowds, colour and an epic castle
Brash, high-rise, colourful and often chaotic, Osaka is a serious rival to Tokyo in the big city stakes and the third largest in Japan. And like the capital, it has some distinctive neighbourhoods with character all their own. The district we called home during our stay, Umeda, is a tangled web of soaring office blocks,…
Miyajima, an island of temples and shrines
Less than an hour across the bay from Hiroshima lies the island of Itsukushima, better known to tourists as Miyajima. The star attraction is a giant red torii gate at the entrance to the Itsukushima Shrine, both of which appear to float on the sea at high tide. It’s an easy, 45-minute journey from the…
Hiroshima and its legacy
The reason so many of us travel to Hiroshima is obvious – to witness the site where the world’s first atomic bomb was exploded in anger. Around 70,000 people died instantly when it was dropped on 6 August 1945, many thousands more followed in the years after. On our first night in the city after…
Tokyo – a return to Japan
It was in 2015 that we first visited Japan, and both of us fell in love with the country and its people, its weird contradictions, beautiful temples and fantastic food. We knew we’d return one day but our plans fell through in 2020 thanks to Covid-19 and lockdown. We finally made it back in the…
On the Adriatic at Split and Sutivan, Croatia
Visit most ancient Roman sites and you’ll invariably be greeted with ‘keep off’ signs, barriers and staff who say ‘no’ whenever you deviate from a well-trodden path. But Split in Croatia is different because the famed Diocletian’s Palace remains in use today as a home for some, a place to stay for others and as…
Providence, the modest capital of Rhode Island
After spending a few days in big, bold Boston, Providence in Rhode Island comes as a bit of a relief. The capital of the USA’s smallest state has a population of fewer than 200,000 souls and is pleasant and walkable, full of street art and history. It’s also an example of urban regeneration done well….
Madeira – island of gardens and mountains
You’ve got to be fit to live in Funchal, the capital of Madeira. Befitting an island that’s actually the peak of massive summit volcano, it’s all hills and challenging terrain. The setting is spectacular but going for a walk can be tough. For every stretch downhill there’s a climb back up. We stayed in the…