Niagara-on-the-Lake is one of the most picturesque towns I’ve had the good fortune to visit. But there’s also something a bit odd about it. After a couple of days exploring, I couldn’t help but feel a bit spooked. It’s just a bit too perfect, and its population just a little too nice. It brought to…
Author: Stephen
The vineyards of Niagara-on-the-Lake
I had no idea that Canada had a wine industry. As far as I was concerned it was too far north and far too cold. But as we discovered, Ontario is positively Mediterranean in its latitudes and its summers are hot and sunny. Planning our Canadian trip, we read that the Niagara Peninsula is one…
Niagara Falls: A natural wonder scarred by greed
Niagara Falls is a spectacle of epic proportions. Niagara Falls the town is grim, an example of how greed and tourism at its worst can come close to destroying its reason for being. I spent our day and night there trying to ignore the ugly buildings and brazen commercialism, to focus instead on the waterfalls….
Toronto: Cabbagetown and the CN Tower
Wherever we went in Toronto, the soaring CN Tower haunted us. The city’s trademark building dominates the skyline by day and by night, when it’s illuminated in a rainbow of colours. I loved it. But before we took our inevitable trip to the top, we had a few other stops to make on the city’s…
Cycling the Toronto Islands and a stop at the beach
Toronto residents are a lucky bunch for a number of reasons but up there near the top are the beaches. There are plenty to choose from – not least a district called The Beaches – but we opted to visit the Toronto Islands, which lurk just offshore in Lake Ontario and offer plenty of cycle…
Toronto: Historic homes and a cider festival
After a day of rain, we woke in Toronto to sunshine ready to visit some great houses and explore the city’s history. But late-night revellers and the sirens of a city weekend had meant for a broken night of sleep so it wasn’t easy dragging ourselves away from the duvet to grand Casa Loma. Still,…
Toronto: A museum, a distillery and a market
There was no mistaking that we were staying slap bang in the middle of Toronto’s Entertainment district. Throughout our first night we were woken by police sirens and Friday night drunks shouting their way home from the bars and clubs. I somehow managed to get some sleep despite the racket but a disturbed night and…
Bateman’s and a walk through Sussex
A sweltering weekend offered the chance to escape the urban streets of London for a hike in the glorious heart of rural Sussex. We opted for a 9-mile walk from Stonegate to Robertsbridge, taking in the manorial home of author Rudyard Kipling – Bateman’s. And it was a walk that rekindled a few memories too. The…
Whitstable: Food, beer and sunshine
Our day out in Whitstable was accompanied by wall-to-wall sunshine and scorching temperatures. If only all our visits to the English seaside were in such glorious weather… On the north Kent coast and long popular with the bucket and spade brigade, Whitstable’s now become a trendy destination for Londoners seeking fine food. The town’s famous…
The memorials of Berlin
From the top of the Panoramapunkt viewing platform at Potsdamer Platz, it’s easy to see the grey slabs of Berlin’s Holocaust memorial on Ebertstrasse far below. The memorial was something I’d put on my ‘to see’ list for our 2016 visit because it was still being put together when we were last in the German capital…
Berlin: Prenzlauer Berg and Friedrichshain
In the district of Prenzlauer Berg, in what was once Communist East Berlin, is the undistinguished open space of Mauerpark. You get the feeling that it’s a bit of a disappointment on six days of the week but it comes into its own on a Sunday, when it hosts a famous flea market. It gave…
Berlin: Palaces and Pride
In 2004 we went on our first holiday together, to Berlin. It was January, bitingly cold and snow fell periodically on a city that looked grey from morning to night. But I fell in love with it. We finally got round to returning to the German capital in July 2016, when we found a very different…
To the bottom of Italy’s heel
Italy looks like a boot on the map and during our stay in the south we drove to the bottom of its heel, which goes by the name of the Salento peninsula, to the town of Santa Maria di Leuca. It’s a peninsula of solar farms, polytunnels, olive groves and vineyards, orchards and fields of vegetables,…
A week in Gallipoli on the coast of Puglia
The Puglian seaside town of Gallipoli looked historic, elegant and characterful in the photos I found on Google ahead of our stay. But as a seasoned traveller, I should’ve known that marketing was at play. Lonely Planet had warned me that it was a working town, where fishing is still a mainstay of the local…
The extravagant baroque of Lecce, Puglia
Puglia is poor. Driving from north to south, we witnessed grim estates on the outskirts of Brindisi, derelict buildings by the score and lots of litter. But the sun was shining and bushes bursting with colourful flowers lined the pot-holed motorway. The city of Lecce’s suburbs were as ropey as Brindisi’s but it was the…