Written by My sister and I are lying on slabs like flounders in a fishmonger’s. Instead of a bed of ice, though, we’re stretched out on heated marble. We move between three hot rooms, each resembling little chapels with vaulted ceilings, chatting quietly in the cooler one, applying face and hair masks in the middle one, and simply lying still, […]
For 20 years, the raft bar Zappa Barka sat on a bend of the River Danube in central Belgrade. Revellers walked a gangplank to board the boat, then danced to live music and DJs on wooden floors, or stayed on deck all night to see the sun rise over the water. But in June 2024 […]
If you walk along the south banks of the Douro River in Vila Nova de Gaia, opposite Porto city, towards the sea, the scene will be classic Portugal for a while: a lot of waterside restaurants, a lot of grilled chicken, some stalls selling unlikely items made of cork (aprons?). A little further back are […]
‘Joyce and Hemingway loved lingering here. I can see why’: readers’ favourite small cities in Europe
Winning tip: Trieste, Italy I got off the train to Venice last summer in Trieste, planning to spend a few hours there, but was so knocked over by its beauty that I stayed for a few days. Tucked away in the north-east of Italy, it’s a crosscultural cocktail of Hapsburg, baroque and Slavic views and […]
I still remember the excitement of buying my first vinyl aged 11, Duane Eddy’s great 1962 single (Dance With the) Guitar Man, and that bug has been with me ever since. There’s nothing quite like the thrill of digging through the racks and finding that elusive wishlist record. When I retired, I made it my […]
Ports, rivers, canals, railways, pilgrims’ pathways: these oft-overlooked, deeply engaging towns grew around transport and, as they expanded, created local networks. We usually think of leisure travel in terms of long-distance trains, cars on open roads, coaches from A to B and country walks. But suburban bus trips, urban hikes and commuter trains offer rich […]
Ligurian charm, Italy The town of San Remo on the Ligurian coast, between Genoa and Nice, has the air of a faded grand old lady, a little bit down on her luck but with plenty of dash still on offer. Blessed with the most enticing and charming streets of a medieval old town that meanders […]