I went to the gambling mecca of Las Vegas expecting to hate the place but ended up falling for it, despite the tackiness and materialism gone mad. We’d chosen it as the first stop of our American adventure because we love a gamble, but we’d also booked a trip to the Grand Canyon and Vegas is…
Tag: City breaks
An Easter city break in Stockholm, Sweden
Easter isn’t the best time to visit Stockholm. The trees are bare and it can be drab and chilly, but the weather couldn’t dampen our enthusiasm for the Swedish capital. I actually had very few preconceptions about it. I knew it as a city of water, islands and ludicrously priced alcohol. I knew it as home to…
A few days in Naples, Italy
Naples is the gateway to southern Italy but my first experience of it back at the turn of the millennium had been pretty negative. It was dirty, the roads were appalling, the driving worse and there was an undercurrent of menace to the place. In some respects, it felt more like a Third World city…
Istanbul: A long weekend in Sultanahmet
Sultanahmet is the historic heart of Istanbul, the most famous of Turkey’s cities. It may not be the capital but it’s the only city in the world that sits astride Europe and Asia. Just a few months after we visited Istanbul in 2013, it was gripped by the worst riots in years. Historic Sultanahmet escaped…
A few days in Quimper, Brittany
Colourful Quimper is the oldest city in Brittany and many of its handsome medieval buildings remain intact, making it an attractive stop on the tourist trail. But it wasn’t exactly throbbing with life when we arrived at the start of our week-long holiday in the north-west of France. In fact, much of Quimper had shut…
San Francisco: A walk to the Ferry Building
On a sweltering September day we discovered the beautiful Filbert Steps and other San Francisco landmarks on a walk to the famous Ferry Building. Our stay coincided with a rare late summer heatwave, with temperatures on some days hitting the 90s, but we weren’t going to let the weather put us off exploring the city….
A return to the Cutty Sark, London
The Cutty Sark is one of the most famous ships in the world. I first visited her as a boy on an outing to London and although I’d lived not far from her over the years, it wasn’t until the ship had undergone a multi-million pound restoration that I returned. The famous tea cutter has been…
Ljubljana, capital of Slovenia, in winter
We’re a pair of old romantics. We visit cities in the middle of winter in the hope of finding snow that’s knee-deep on the ground, of discovering cosy bars with roaring fires and great beer. It’s why we went to Ljubljana, the modest capital of Slovenia. The old Communist bloc country was indeed dressed in…
The Vasa – Stockholm’s star attraction
As a teenager I watched on TV as the battered remains of the Tudor warship Mary Rose was rescued from the muddy depths of the Solent. Some years later we visited Portsmouth to see her skeletal remains, now preserved and the centrepiece of a museum. Hers was a remarkable story of survival beneath the seabed,…