Antwerp is a feast for the eyes if, like me, you’re a fan of great architecture. And its bars and restaurants are pretty good too. The Belgian city lies on the River Scheldt, remains a bustling port and has long been at the heart of the diamond trade. It’s a great place to spend a…
Tag: History
The industrial relics of the Ruhr
The Ruhr was Germany’s economic powerhouse for years but with heavy industry in decline, the big question has been what to do with all those old coal mines and steel and iron works. While many have been cleared, several sites have been saved as a reminder of the region’s importance to the nation. Intriguingly, nature…
Uxmal and the cenotes of the Yucatán
Mexico’s Yucatán Peninsula boasts some of the finest remains of the Maya, a Mesoamerican civilisaton who mastered architecture and astronomy and dominated Central America before the Spanish conquest. Uxmal, south of the city of Mérida, was our destination on a day that also included a visit to a derelict hacienda and two swimmable sinkholes known…
The mystical city of Teotihuacán in Mexico
The ancient Mesoamerican city of Teotihuacán has striking pyramids and grand avenues, yet little or nothing is known of the civilisation responsible for its construction. But whoever they were, you can’t fault the scale of their ambition. The city contains the third largest pyramid ever built – the mighty Pyramid of the Sun – and…
The city of Salta and its Inca children
Salta in the north west of Argentina is a jumping off point for adventures in the Andes, but there’s more to the city than tour operators competing for tourist pesos and coaches heading west. True, we used it as a base for a trip to the Salinas Grandes salt flats but we also found interesting…
A week in Buenos Aires, capital of Argentina
I expected many things of Buenos Aires, Argentina’s sprawling capital, but I didn’t expect it to be quite so grand. It’s a city of epic public buildings, grand mansions, wide boulevards and generous public squares. Perhaps I’d been put off the scent by all the economic traumas, dictatorships, persecutions and politically-motivated murders that Argentina has…
History and waterfalls in Quebec City
If Montreal is the brazen youth of the French-Canadian province of Quebec, the capital Quebec City is the maiden aunt. Staid, proper and well turned out, it’s also packed with history and great architecture. At times it’s got the look and feel of an ancient French village. But this is also where the indigenous people…
The historic wool towns of Suffolk
Many of our most historic towns survived intact not because of the efforts of worthy and wealthy citizens, but because their inhabitants were so poor. The argument goes that without the money to improve their properties or to demolish and rebuild in the latest styles, residents effectively left their towns in a kind of architectural…
A stormy weekend in Norwich
Norwich was England’s second city in the distant past, back when East Anglia’s wool and agriculture powered the medieval economy. It may not play such a crucial role in the nation these days but Norwich makes up for it in character, history and charm. I imagine it would’ve been low down on our list of staycation destinations were it not for the…
24 hours in Malaga
Malaga has a reputation for being a jumping off point for holidays elsewhere in Andalusia rather than a destination in itself. But it was bonkers when we visited, full of tourists who’d decided it was worth a day or two of their precious vacations. And while it doesn’t have a wealth of things to see,…
Granada: Beyond the Alhambra
The Emirate of Granada was the last bastion of the Arabs who ruled much of the Iberian Peninsula from the 8th century until 1492. In January that year the sultan surrendered to the Christian forces and the Alhambra fell. It may have been the end of the Moorish rulers but much of what they built,…
The Alhambra, Granada
The guidebooks tell us that the Alhambra in Granada is one of those sights that just has to be seen at least once. But is it worth the aggravation, worth putting up with the crowds? Is it worth the hype? During our week in Andalusia we had the chance to find out. A mix of…
Cordoba’s Mezquita, an architectural masterpiece
The magnificent Mezquita in Cordoba is without doubt one of the world’s great buildings, once a mosque and now a cathedral. It’s also somewhere to shelter from the city’s oven-like heat, for even at the end of September the thermometer was recording late 30s centigrade. I really struggle with the heat and spent much of…
Discovering Krakow’s war
Krakow is synonymous with the Second World War. It’s the city of Oskar Schindler, of the horrors of the ghetto and the death camps. Some miles out of town lies that most infamous of concentration camps, Auschwitz, where up to one-sixth of the Jewish victims of the Holocaust were killed. It’s a museum now and…
Art and history in Nantes
Tomatoes of all shapes and sizes bulging and bursting with flavour, heads of broccoli larger than any I’ve seen and oysters from all points along the French coast. This can’t be a British supermarket… In fact it’s the Marche de Talensac, one of Nantes’ oldest and biggest markets on a typical Saturday morning. Browsing the…