Mist hung around the hills and valleys north of Zagreb as we flew into the city’s modest but modern airport. The sun was shining, the temperature crisp. We were in town for a December weekend break in 2018, to visit the award-winning Christmas markets and experience one of Europe’s lesser-known capitals. We found a city…
Zagreb, war and broken relationships
Zagreb and its residents may have been full of Christmas cheer during our weekend in the city but we spent a day wallowing in break-ups – the violent collapse of the old Yugoslavia and the more personal stories of lost love. Image of War: The Museum of War Photography opened in 2018 – the same…
Lebanon: Jeita Grotto and Byblos
Lebanon is big enough to pack a punch, but small enough that we could do the trips without having to switch hotels. In one busy morning we got to see a majestic grotto and an ancient city on the coast. But with the country’s roads making a fairground bumper car ride look polite, there was no…
Exploring Beirut’s celebrated nightlife
Beirut has had a reputation for being party central for generations, and decades of civil war and instability hasn’t dented the desire of locals to have a good time. From the district of Hamra, to Gemmayzeh and Mar Mikhael, there are great bars, cafes and restaurants to enjoy, but it isn’t a cheap city to…
Beit Beirut and the buildings of war
The speed with which Beirut is being rebuilt suggests that some Lebanese want to wipe out the memory of civil war. Others see the blanking out of the past as a mistake and are fighting to keep it alive. But as the experience of Beit Beirut shows, it’s an uphill struggle. Beit Beirut is the…
Beirut: The old and the new
In the 70s and 80s Beirut was a city of war, religious violence and death. As a child I watched grainy TV news film of snipers firing indiscriminately at distant targets, of buildings being blasted by missiles, of peoples’ lives being destroyed. Talk was of the murderous green line that separated east Beirut from west,…
Lebanon and the shadows of Rome
“You can’t drill a hole in Lebanon without finding Roman remains,” our guide explained as we waited to explore the extraordinary temples at Baalbek. He may have been exaggerating for the benefit of his assembled band of tourists but there’s no denying that the country is rich in the remains of empire. From the rooftop…
The towers of San Gimignano
God knows what it’s like living in a village like San Gimignano. Every day residents have to cope with a tidal wave of tourists flocking in from Tuscany’s big cities and ports to visit its trademark towers. Yes, they bring business to the shops and cafes and keep people in work but the daily influx…
Cardiff’s castle and shopping arcades
Cardiff lacks tourist attractions. At the top of the minimal list is the much-restored castle, just a few minutes’ walk from our hotel. But it was raining, and raining heavily, so whatever we were going to do on such a drab day was going to involve umbrellas and getting wet. No wonder the streets were…
From Cardiff to Caerphilly, and back again
My family went to Wales for a summer holiday many years ago and a photo from the time shows them clad in waterproofs, enveloped by mist, looking frozen and damp. So is it any wonder it took me years to visit the principality? We made it in 2018, spending a bank holiday weekend in Cardiff….
Pisa: A one-trick pony?
Some cities are easy to define. Bilbao is the Guggenheim Museum, Jerez is sherry and Pisa is the leaning tower. Ask Mr or Mrs Average to name another reason for visiting any one of them and they’d struggle. That doesn’t mean they don’t have other attractions but while Pisa throbs with tourists, most of them…
The trick fountains of Schloss Hellbrunn in Austria
The Prince-Archbishops of Salzburg were a wealthy bunch. They ruled over their dinky city state, part of the Holy Roman Empire, for centuries before it was absorbed into Austria. And they built grand palaces and fortresses to prove to everyone just how important they were. Schloss Hellbrunn became their summer playground, a yellow jewel in…
Zell am See: Lake and mountains
Zell am See has masses of appeal. It’s a typical Alpine town with cuckoo clock chalets, a magical lake and glorious mountains. In winter the slopes are the preserve of skiers and boarders, in summer they’re the playground of hikers and bikers. We arrived in town for five days after a sunny July weekend in…
Heat and cold: Salzburg in summer
The irony about a city that celebrates Mozart with such uncontained commercial hysteria is that the young composer hated Salzburg. He couldn’t wait to escape the clutches of its Prince-Archbishop and find fame and freedom elsewhere. Wherever you look in Salzburg, Mozart’s ghost lurks. We landed at Mozart airport in our BA A319, we could…
Brussels and its bonkers Atomium
We could see the Atomium from our hotel room, far out to the north in the Brussels suburbs. Its stainless steel globes sparkled in the May sunshine, much as they have done since this bizarre symbol of the 1958 World’s Fair first opened. My late grandparents owned a souvenir model of one of Belgium’s more…