Sod it I'm off

BARCELONA SPAIN 2012

BARCELONA DECEMBER 2012

It’s an easy one-hour-and-forty-minute flight to Barcelona. “Please remember to take your children with you, if you don’t pick them up from lost and found we will sell them on Ebay,” says the flight attendant on arrival. “If you enjoyed the flight, please recommend us to your friends. If you didn’t, then recommend us to your enemies.” EasyJet have obviously relaxed their announcement guidelines.

We are met with a pleasant evening sun and a temperature that is ten degrees higher than London. A twenty minute cab ride brings us in past the docks and to the Montecarlo Hotel on La Rambla. It’s a recently converted old bank with modern rooms off grand hallways.

An evening stroll takes us past the cathedral and through the Christmas market full of tacky nativity scenes. The streets narrow in this old part of town, the Barri Gotic. Here in a tiny side street we find an old Catalan restaurant Pla de la Garsa. It has a rustic feel with tiled walls and a circular wrought-iron staircase. The menu translation leaves a little to be desired, offering prickled partridge, strongtastly pate, and veal meetballs (sic) in fermented juice of the drilled variety. But it’s tasty stuff – particularly the Catalan cheese selection.

The hotel jacuzzi instructions “kindly requests us not to switch on the engine until the water covers the six holes in order to avoid the entrance of wind.” I opt for a shower instead. Then it’s onto the bus to visit Gaudi’s Sagrada Familia. Some progress has been made since last seeing it over a decade ago, but not all of it is good. It is no longer possible to view it without cranes in view, and the building remains unfinished, despite significant private donations and entrance money. Some new features clash nastily with the old. The queue to go inside is untenable, so we settle for an outside view. The details are great, but you can’t help thinking they’d be better pulling out now and leaving it as it is.

We move on to the outstanding Park Guell. The famous tiled lizard greets us on the entrance steps, and every view is a multi-coloured tessellation, or a wonky pillar. Hypostyle columns contrast with dripping concrete. The sun comes out as the parakeets chatter overhead, affording a great view over the city.

The mime artists are superb on the streets leading up the hill.

Past the Pedralbes monastery, the university, the Neu Camp football stadium, along the Avenue Diagonal, and back to La Rambla. In the evening we dine at the renowned Siete Portes (seven doors) restaurant, established in 1836 and since frequented by Orson Welles and Winston Churchill. It’s a classic, well-established venue with worn tiled floors and, for  the second time on this trip, ferociously bright lightning. Huge portions of paella dominate proceedings.

The next day is Christmas Day, and we head north of town for 25 minutes to a superb 17^th century farmhouse called Can Travi Nou. Arriving at 1.30 we are pretty much the first there, but it fills up around us over the next hour or so, until two floors are filled with 300 people. The doors have been removed from the upstairs rooms to create huge niches, each booked by large family groups spanning all generations. The food comes fast and furious so we have to slow them down. Traditional broth with pasta shells, followed by cannelloni, then steak and a caramel sweet. Red and white wine and cava. It’s enough, and we roll home at 5pm, with a late stroll past the cathedral.

It’s Boxing Day and we’re back on the bus, but this time in blazing sunshine, and taking a westerly route from the Placa de Catalunya. The Estacio de Sants is a lakeside park with curious lighthouse buildings and a giant metal sculpture that doubles a waterslide. Joan Miro’s enormous multi-coloured tile statue is impressive, as is the enormous Place d’Espanya with its Venetian towers, bullring and Jujol monument. This leads uphill to the palatial Museo Nacional d’Art de Catalunya, and its great views over the city from Montjuic Park. The 1992 Olympic area remains impressive, and here you can take the Teleferic to the highest view.

Then it’s all downhill to the harbour, past the World Trade Center, and the Colum-Museu Maritim, where Columbus points authoritatively out to sea from on high. We hop off outside the History museum, which is housed in a renovated harbour warehouse. It’s time to sit in the sun outside the Emperador restaurant, eat seafood, drink the local Estrella Damm, and watch the promenaders – a mix of old women in fur coats, skateboarders, joggers, and dogs in bicycle baskets. We round off with a charming stroll through the tight streets of the old town, contrasting bright sun streaming through shady corners and the shadows cast by street musicians.

That evening we are fortunate to find the magnificent Catedral de Barcelona open. A walk inside reveals hundreds of people, some attending mass in the side chapels devoted to various saints. Here I witness for the first time electronic candles in presentation boxes. The more you pay, the more light up. One saint, Santa Maria, has one lonely light – clearly not that popular. It’s a grand ceiling, all set in a pleasantly clean square, populated by street artists blowing enormous bubbles and hurling fluorescent helicopters high into the night sky. We round off with excellent tapas in the Taverna del Bisbe, stroll round an art gallery, and retire for the night.

Barcelona is a top city. In the summer, one gravitates more to the waterline, but on this trip we have explored deep inland. Highlights include the farmhouse setting of Can Travi Nou, the madness of Gaudi architecture dotted around, Guell Park with its commanding views over the city, wandering around Barri Gotic, and eating seafood on the waterfront in the winter sun. A strong contender for one of the best cities in Europe.

 

HELSINKI DECEMBER 2012

Helsinki December 2012

London is cold but Helsinki is colder. A few degrees above freezing versus a few below makes a big difference, but in recent weeks it has been minus 13. Early signs begin on the flight over. After the cloud begins to clear on the two-and-a-half-hour flight, the snow covered coast of Denmark appears in the bright sunlight, and everything is white from now on around the Baltic Sea.

We land in a snowstorm but it disrupts little here. The snowploughs are out every day and mountains of the stuff line every road, but everything is working fine. Thirty minutes after landing we have arrived at the Hotel Arthur near the Central railway Station. It doesn’t sound glamorous, but it’s a perfectly good hotel – around 100 years old – with a reconditioned ‘art deco’ floor at the top. The lifts are unusual, with the doors appearing to be the all-steel type on a morgue or cold storage unit. We repair to the bar-cum-dining area for a well-earned Karhu ale, with its distinctive bear logo on it, and ignore the whooping from the works do that appears top feature an act wearing lederhosen.

Helsinki doesn’t have scores of ‘must do’ landmarks, but there’s plenty to investigate nevertheless. Immediately apparent is the cultural collision of Russia and the Nordics. This place has variously been run over the years by Swedes, Danes, Russians, Finns – all fighting over its strategic position on the Baltic. A quick glance at the map shows that St Petersburg is a short hop east, and Estonia just south. You could almost swim to Stockholm.

Stepping out to the Central station reveals an art deco tour de force, apparently representing the transition from National Romanticism to a new Functional style, whatever that means. We take the bus out to Korkeasaari zoo, about 20 minutes away on a secluded island where no cars are allowed. The river is frozen over and fishermen are using metre-long drills to bore through the ice. Cold climate big cats are particularly dramatic in this snowy setting. Amur tigers – the biggest in the world – sit calmly as the snow drifts down. An Amur leopard strides purposefully out at feeding time, grabs its lunch form a branch, and promptly returns inside. A lynx blesses us with a short tour of her pen, and a lone otter comes out for a roll in the snow.

“Find the house of the elves and there are free pancakes,” said the local woman secretively as we came into the zoo. We did, and it was as shed full of children and what appeared to be a closet barbeque. The snow leopard had produced three cubs in June, but quite rightly none came out today. Back in town we scoff a warming lunch at the Lasipalasti (literally “glass palace’, but it’s just a building with a fair number of windows). The food is excellent: salmon soup with generous chunks and potato, ultra tender reindeer steaks, and a fine selection of Finnish cheeses.

The days are short here and the sun doesn’t appear to come up much. It’s murky at 9 or 10am, people are having lunch by 11, and the sun is diminishing by 3pm. We seek out the Sokos Torni – a 12-storey ‘skyscraper’ with a bar at the top accessed by a narrow iron spiral staircase. Being so flat, this gives a great view of the whole city by night, washed down with a pint of Lapin Kulta – golden Lapp beer. We then wander down the sweeping boulevard that is the near-unpronounceable Pohjoisesplanadi to enjoy the Christmas market spread out around the City Hall where the kids are tobogganing down the steps. We round the day off with a visit to the Belge – a glorified upstairs library – where we eat mussels and duck washed down by Bad Elf beer.

Blackout curtains and general quiet leads to a late start the next day. An early idea to take the ferry to Tallinn is dropped when we see the icy conditions and the timetable. We opt instead for a rather more sedate ferry to the nearby island of Suomenlinna, a sea fortress founded in 1748. What must be a popular venue in the summer is almost deserted, with the restaurants and most of the cafes shut for the season. The onshore breeze is biting, but the hot chocolate is welcome. The historical information narrates, as everywhere in the world, a litany of nations beating the crap out of each other for a sustained period, with little or no discernible progress.

An hour or two is enough, and after the 15-minute return trip we are back in the Market Square. Pretty much everything is a short walk away. A little Christmas shopping followed by a high quality pizza at Raffaello on Aleksanterinkatu, and we have a completed a good day’s work, as ever, in about six hours of daylight.

On our final day we potter around a few other areas. The National Museum on Mannerheimintie is shut on Mondays, but we doff our hats to the stone bear at the entrance. He looks a little sad covered in snow. The Finlandia concert hall must be an impressive sight in summer, overlooking the charming Toolonlahti lake. It’s completely frozen over, just like the river – the first time I have seen a permanently frozen body of water since my childhood in Norway.

We grab a warming cappuccino in a café behind the impressively huge Parliament building. The temperature is down to minus 4 degrees and it’s not wise to be out for extended periods. The food was so good at the Lasipalasti that we return and are lucky to get in – it’s rammed with Christmas lunch parties whooping it up, and all in full flow at 12.30. The return 30-minute run to the airport at 3.30 takes a little longer because it’s rush hour, but we are pre-checked in and only have hand luggage so all is well.

Impressions of the Finns on this visit are highly favourable. Everyone we met was charming – really helpful and frequently volunteering ideas and advice. Most speak impeccable English. In snowy conditions that most Brits would bellyache about, everything works, and everyone goes about their business. The cultural collision is fascinating, and should make most visitors want to investigate Sweden, Denmark, Russia and Estonia. The contrast in summer must be extraordinary too. Highly recommended.

ICELAND OCTOBER 2012

The Iceland Air 3-hour flight from Heathrow is functional enough, but a little clinical. A drinks trolley eventually arrives, and it all needs paying for. Local time on arrival in Reykjavik is midnight, and that means ice on the hire car and a first trip in the dark. It’s route 41 out of Keflavik airport on the Southwestern tip of the island, and then a sharp right on the 43 to our hotel for the first night.

This is the very specifically named Northern Light Inn, which is determined to clarify that there may be only one light. It is in a location unlike any other I have seen – smack bang in the middle of a lava field, next door to a geothermal power station. Ghostly plumes of white smoke drift across an illuminated black lunar landscape. I go to bed wondering if it’s a dream. Waking the next day verifies that it isn’t. A red and blue haze clears to reveal the power station in all its glory. This is the home of the famous Blue Lagoon, where people bathe in the heated water.

After breakfast strangely in earshot of the former Labour MP Clare Short, it’s time to hit the road. Our first hour is a bit of a cock-up, as we head south to Grindavik, intending to hug the coast all the way to the east of the island. It’s a lousy plan, and there are no signs, so we opt for the main 41 in to Reykjavik, with a supposedly cunning detour on the 417 to avoid the town centre. It’s another mistake, as we soon hit a dirt track and we might as well be traversing Mars. It’s desolate here – volcanic charred lava for miles, and not a tree or animal in site.

Regaining route 1 gives us a clear run through the picturesque Selfoss, Hella, Hvolsvollur, through low-lying farmland populated by hardy Icelandic ponies, cattle, and very woolly sheep. As we regain the shoreline, the island of Vestmannaeyjar swings into view on the horizon – one of sixteen smashed out, jagged volcanic crags. The latest – Sertsey – emerged from the sea in the sixties. We stop for a breather at the impressive Seljalandfoss waterfall – 180 feet tumbling off the end of the escarpment. Typical of Iceland, it’s barely labeled, and there’s hardly anyone here. The source of the water is Eyjafjallajokull, the unpronounceable volcano that erupted for six weeks in 2010. In a roadside display, the farm just below it is shown in a range of photos with the sky sometimes pitch black.

We move on, skirting round the vast Myrdalsjokull glacier, through the small town of Vik, and on to our destination for the night, Kirkjubaejarklaustur, more usually and easily called Klaustur. None of the names here come easily, but it really just means church farm. The terrain between Vik and Klaustur is utterly extraordinary. It’s a lava field called Skaftareldahraun, which flowed from the Lakagigar volcano in 1783. It is believed to be the largest lava flow ever in one single eruption in the history of the world. It became known as the Skafta Fires, and it covers 16 square kilometres. It goes on for 30 minutes of driving, and looks like blobs or bubbles covered in peppermint green moss and lichen – soft to the touch if you fancy braving the sub-zero temperatures to have a feel.

Klaustur only has 120 people -  a frontier town with a petrol station, a hotel, and not much else. But there is a hidden gem. Up a turning signposted Hunkubakkar, there is a stunning gorge called Fjardrargljufur, cut by a river flowing out of a retreating glacier. A bracing walk to the top is rewarded with other-worldly views – towers of black lava with green and yellow moss on top, periodic waterfalls cascading off the ridge, the monumental peppermint lava field dropping away to black rivers, and eventually, the sea. To cap it all, there’s nobody else there at all. It’s time to retire for a hot bath.

The next day we rise to iced-up cars and a low, golden sun. This is the prelude to a staggeringly beautiful drive along the coast, across the vast boulder field of Skeidavarsandur (approximate translation ‘Sky your arse under’, or ‘asunder’ – details unclear), and in front of the snouts of the Skeidavarjokull, Skaftafellsjokull, and Svinafellsjokull glaciers. They all fan out from the largest ice field in Europe – the huge Vatnajokull glacier that gives its name to the national park. Black sand spills down to the foaming sea. Blue sky frames white glaciers. Green moss covers ancient lava balls in seemingly never-ending fields. And at the end is a pile of rubble.

Or so it seems. Peeping over the top is the ultimate surprise - a huge lagoon full of icebergs. This is Jokulsarlon. As the Breidamerkurjokull glacier receded from the sea, a lake formed. It’s full of icebergs of all shapes, sizes and colours – blue, grey, white and black. An amphibious craft takes us round for a closer look and some history. The beach beyond the bridge is surreal – black, but covered in white and blue icebergs. The onshore breeze is bracing.

http://youtu.be/5U_YCx6li2k

On the way back we make a good decision to climb Skaftafell. This is a charming 40 minute climb to a superb waterfall called Svartifoss. It has a bizarre backdrop of basalt columns – each one almost perfectly hexagonal, just like those of the Giant’s Causeway, and looking like those in a Roman temple. On such a clear day the view is breathtaking – all the way out to sea from the plateau, down into the black plain strewn with lava, and all backed by snowcaps. We arrive back to find that alcohol can only be purchased for a limited period on Saturdays, and not at all on Sundays  - except in hotels, which is where we retreat for well-earned baths and dinner.

Day three. Apparently it’s our wedding anniversary, which neither of us remember until lunchtime, when we are standing on a  glacier, which is one way to do it. We have driven back west to the Solheimajokull glacier, an extending tongue of the mighty Myrdalsjokull, which has one of the world’s biggest volcanoes, Katla, underneath. Most are aware of its mini-sister Eyjafjallajokull which erupted in 2010. Katla usually follows 2 to 3 years later, and so is now due, if geological time can be relied upon. When it goes, the flash flood will come out with more water force than the Amazon. Glacier walking is great fun. Strap on the crampons, grab an ice pick, wrap a harness round your midriff, and you’re off. It’s crunchy work. Three hours later, and we have done some successful ice wall climbing. You have a pick for each hand, and ram your cramponed toes into the ice wall, one step and pick at a time. Great stuff. Crevasses. Moulins – holes drilled by ash rock and water action. Changing colours. And then we’re back down on the black gravel and finished. Tired and keen for a shower, there’s just enough time to pick up a 37,500 Krone (£200) speeding fine on the way to Fludir, where the next stage of our adventure continues.

A decent dinner of steak and chicken sets us up for the next day. We strike out north to visit Geysir and Gullfoss. Geysir is, unsurprisingly, where hot springs bubble, smoke and sulphur billow, and every three minutes Strokkur sends a decent spurt of superheated water into the air. The guidebooks claim its 98 feet high, but we see fitful bursts much smaller. The main geyser has given up completely, and the whole thing is a bit of a damp squib. The mighty Gulfoss (“golden falls”) is thoroughly worth it. A many-layered gorge provides huge steps and the volume of water is tremendous. On a cold, bright day like today, foot-long ice spikes create a crystal garden effect on the banks. We manage to enjoy the scene before the school coaches and Korean tour buses wheel in.

By noon we have located our intrepid guide, and we’re off to the Langjokull glacier for a spot of snowmobiling. Through the usual rocky moonscape we rise to snowy wastes and don very necessary all-in-one luminous body warmers, balaclavas, and crash helmets. The snowmobiles are big enough for two. I’ve never ridden a motorbike before but the principles appear roughly the same – lean into a bend and accelerate uphill. Our guide falls off, which doesn’t inspire confidence, but the scenery is staggering. We thunder up and down the slopes – it’s a loud, petrol-fumed experience until we cut the engines to admire the mountains and listen to the silence. A snapped off crevasse fronting an ice lake is dramatic stuff. Sitting astride is John Wayne-like, and handling the hammering vibration of the snowmobile is a bit like drilling a road. Finally it’s time to return to our unfeasibly high 4x4 with its massive wheels, and return whence we came. Highly recommended.

It’s a misty start the next day, dodging the chain-smoking orientals parading outside the hotel to de-ice the car. Driving through the Hvita valley takes in the now familiar scene of golden hillsides populated by Icelandic ponies, sheep and cattle. Formidable rock structures are all around, bathed in green moss, with bursts of black and red. We stop at Thingvellir, the place where parallel columns of rock reveal how Iceland is being pulled apart by the mid-Atlantic Ridge. A beautiful waterfall intersects a long tunnel-like passage that could almost be man made.

We head directly west towards Reykjavik, and then turn north, pay the toll for the 6km tunnel at Akranes, on to Borgarnes, and onto the Snaefellsjokull peninsula. Grundarfjordur is a less-than-one-horse town and nothing is open. A 30-minute drive to Stykkisholmur yields similar results, and the best we can do is gather a few provisions as the weather closes in.

The restaurant is closed in the Framnes hotel, so we walk past the fish factory in the harbour to the only place in town – Kaffi 59, which is a pub serving as the town social centre. It’s a crèche, a restaurant, sweet shop, and gathering place to watch the football on TV. There is a strong sense of community here. In the hotel they are dismantling an entire sheep and making goulash for the whole town. Kids as young as ten are out riding the dustcarts and helping to collect rubbish. And even after dark a guy with a forklift truck from the harbour is delivering palettes of materials house to house. We stroll home after a pint and a pizza. The beers here are fine: Egils and Viking lager, Thule (which is pleasantly pokey), and the Danish Faxe.

The next day is so overcast it doesn’t look like the sun has come up at all, so we sleep in till nine. On the way to Olafsvik we encounter a young Arctic fox. He’s slate grey and about to moult into his winter white. He tentatively skips across the road, and potters off into the fields to harass a pair of ravens. It’s the main wildlife encounter of the day, as we circuit the peninsula – through Rif, Hellisandur, Hellmar and Arnastapi. There’s nobody anywhere, and the Snaefellsjokull volcano is completely obscured in cloud. All we can do is imagine it from a hint of snowline and admire the moss-covered lava flows that spew out in all directions. The day ends with a long distance experience, watching a pod of orcas eating off a headland. It’s good to see them doing their thing without a soul around.

It’s time to go, and it’s only with a change of weather we get to see Snaefellsjokull in all her glory – in the rear view mirror as we leave the peninsula. It’s so enormous it can still be seen from Reykjavik, and even from Keflavik airport – quite a contrast to the previous day when we couldn’t see it even though we were right underneath it.

Iceland has been excellent. Snow and ice events provided the highlights, with glacier walking, snowmobiling, and the ice lagoon at Jokulsarlon. The scenery was always great – volcanos, waterfalls, lava fields, escarpments, and rivers. The people were great and everything worked. On the downside is the price of everything – certainly 50% more than UK residents would be used to, and sometimes double. The built up area around the capital could be anywhere, and was so unappealing we chose not to go to Reykjavik on the way back to the airport. That can wait for another day, when a return trip beckons, it will probably be round the north coast.

 

 

 

 

CANADA 2012

Quebec City

It was all going smoothly – a prompt cab, an easy run to Heathrow, the fastest of check-ins on Air Canada, and an on-time flight that found us on the southern tip of Greenland – until the Phillipino electrician a few rows from us had what appeared to be a coronary. After much toing and froing, complete with the traditional captain’s request “Is there a doctor on board?”, we diverted to Rekyavik’s Keflavik airport. As one of the comedians on the way to Montreal’s comedy festival observed: “He wasn’t that ill. He walked off the bloody plane.”

4,000 miles later we arrive in Montreal, tired and emotional, but rewarded by an amazing redirected flight over Greenland, with staggering views of merging glaciers and enormous icebergs. We had comprehensively missed our 7pm connection and caught the last-ditch 11pm to Quebec City, arriving in the old town after midnight, around 6am UK time. There are advantages to waking up in a new town, assuming you are in the right bit, and we were – the old part.

The tiny enclave that is old Quebec sits in Basse-Ville at the base of the mountain. A short stroll from Auberge Saint-Pierre takes us to the idyllic Place Royale, frozen in aspic from colonial France. The Quebecois are ferociously partisan, but their forebears weren’t so smart when they sat in wait for the English on the huge St. Lawrence River. General Woolfe and his troops hid round the corner and attacked from behind over the hill. Despite Quebec being bigger than France and arguably more French, it remains a part of the British Commonwealth.

 

Beyond the old town Quebec City is not that exciting. A trip out to the promising falls at Parc de la Chute Montmorency – 30 minutes through the suburbs on the bus – yields a dammed river surrounded by reservoir-like constraints – hardly the “100 feet higher than Niagara spectacle” that was promised. Lunch in the sun at the Manoir Montmorency high over the river and the bridge to the Ile D’Orleans provides ample compensation as a buzzard wheels below and we down a pint or two of Boreale beer.

Striding out along the Governor’s Walkway to the citadel is barely worth it, with the unchanging views of the waterway with an oil refinery in the distance and sprawling harbour below. The Chateau Frontenac, now a 600-room hotel, offers some visual relief but in the main Quebec old town is a bijou delight hemmed in by an industrial port on all sides. After a classic French dinner at Café St. Malo on Rue Sainte Paul, it’s time to turn in.

The following morning we experience the rather eccentric delights of the Musee de la Civilisation  - seemingly only interested in saying how brilliant the French are, and how crap the British are – before taking the train to Montreal. Business class helps, as does one of the world’s neatest stations, where we down a pint of Cheval Blanc and a Molson Export before boarding. The countryside is fairly unremarkable in an American mid-west kind of way, but interspersed by the loud party attitude of the progressively-pissed Mexicans with kids sitting next to us. Initially heading away from our destination with the St. Lawrence on our right, we switch back after Sainte-Roy to speed through the increasingly-thinning farmsteads.

 

Montreal

The city was named in 1535 when a guy called Jacques Cartier was led to the top of a hill by the local Hochelaga people. He decided the view was fit for a king and so named it Mount Royal – Mont Real. We enjoy this view on a beautiful summer day which offers a panorama for miles. Reaching the spot is medium-easy, using a combination of metro and bus, plus a brisk walk. The locals are out in force, incessantly biking and jogging, and even skiing uphill on strange skis with wheels on them.

Next it’s time to investigate the Olympic village, relic of 1976, and locally referred to as the Big Owe, since it left the city $1.6bn in debt. It’s big and now fairly tatty, but it’s worth going up the sloping viewing tower by funicular, which at 575 feet claims to be the world’s tallest inclined tower. People will do anything to hold a record it seems.

The Velodrome, cunningly designed in the style of a cyclist’s helmet, is the subject of significant repairs, and is now a Biodome containing a range of interesting habitats. It’s heaving with summer camp outings, but observing the lynx family is a delight, particularly the live video feed of the cub born just two months ago, still in isolation but playing boisterously with its mother.

Back in the Place-des-Arts, the Musee d’Art Contemporain is downright obscure, so we cut our losses and opt for a cold pint of Blanche de Chambly in the sun, before walking back to our hotel, the Nelligan, in the old town of Rue St. Paul. Dinner at Le Club Chasse et Peche is a high class affair – one of those apparently secret restaurants with almost no exterior branding, tucked away off the main drag in Rue Saint-Claude.

Montreal is patchy, perhaps 4 out of 10. The old town is charming enough, but much of it merely echoes the commerciality of Covent Garden. The pricing, their ‘tarification’ policy, is usually fairly lumpy for what’s on offer, and there are effectively no ‘must see’ landmarks of note, despite the publicity guff.

 

Toronto

We arrive at central station and make the short walk to the Soho Metropolitan Hotel, enjoying our first view of the 575-foot CN Tower on the way. Upgrading to a suite for three nights is a bonus, and in the evening we head out for a rather average meal at Shoeless Joe’s, but the Rickards Red slips down nicely.

In the morning we have breakfast with the famous local Jimmy Dorenzo, who treats us to the peameal bacon special at Senators on Victoria Street, a classic art deco diner. The Art gallery of Ontario (AGO) has a Picasso exhibition on Dundas St, which we follow with some well-deserved beers in the sun at the Friar & Firkin: Creemore Springs, and the superbly named Mr. Huff – “Persuasion Pilsner” from the Hop City Brewing Company. Meanwhile the construction sign in the street announces “No heavy trucks on Stephanie East of John,” which makes the mind boggle somewhat. The session continues at Wayne Gretzky’s on Blue Jays Way - a shrine to all things ice hockey related  - and despite an apparently deserted street level bar there is a thriving party taking place in the sun on the roof. The day finishes with a catch-up on the Olympics on the TV, interspersed with superb ads: “Single Christian? Good news! Find God’s match for you at christianmingle.com.”

The next day is Saturday, and the famous Toronto Blue Jays are playing lunchtime baseball in the mighty Rogers Stadium. Tonight we decide to view the evening game – from the top of the vast CN Tower. Fixing a dinner reservation in the revolving restaurant gets you to the front of the queue and up nearly 600 feet in two minutes. The views are staggering – looking out over Lake Ontario, watching aircraft take off below on the Toronto Islands, and leaning right over to get a bird’s-eye view of the ballgame – with a superb meal thrown in for good measure.

The next morning we visit the Toronto Dominion Gallery of Inuit Art – a small free exhibition in what appears to be a corporate office on Wellington St. There’s no one else there and the stone carvings from Baffin Island are great. Now it’s time for a pre-game lunch at Jack Astor’s on Front St. “Jacked up” bigger glasses of Canadian lager, and our first experience of poutine – soggy chips in drippy gravy with bacon and chicken trimmings. This tees us up nicely for the lunchtime game against Detroit Tigers, which the Jays win 5-1. It’s great fun working out what the hell is going on.

 

Niagara Falls

We grab a hire car and take the one-and-a-half-hour drive round Lake Ontario to Niagara-on-the-Lake. This wine country and the vineyards produce 80% of Canada’s wine. The whole area is twee – immaculately manicured everywhere, until the carnage of the falls themselves. We opt for a 12-minute helicopter trip to get a proper view of the whole thing, and what a way to do it, just as with Victoria Falls. It’s a beautiful sunny day and everything is in clear view: the river and gorge, the American Falls, the classic Horseshoe Falls with what appears to be a ship at the top that didn’t make it, and the rather non-descript Whirlpool, which doesn’t look much like one.

All well and good, albeit nothing on the scale of Iguazu or Victoria, nor of course Venezuela’s staggering Angel Falls. But the shame of it all is the built-up crap around it: shamelessly crass Sheraton and Marriott hotels, enormous hydro-electric set-ups with dams and power stations, every ugly building imaginable, and some functional bridges with endless border control queues and bus parks. Back on terra firma we brave a short run to the falls for an upfront view, and get the hell out of there as fast as possible.

Returning to the relative calm of Niagara-on-the-Lake, we take a short stroll down to the water’s edge where the CN Tower can be seen in the distance on the far shore. Most of the coastline here is owned by wealthy private houses. A few beers in the sun on the main street allow for people watching and observation of all the bikes and classic cars that break the bucolic calm with all their revving. Then it’s dinner at the Shaw Club Hotel before retiring for an early night in preparation for a 7am rise. Off to Toronto’s Pearson airport after a slightly hairy navigation of the freeway system which isn’t the best signposted. We’re off to Calgary in the Rockies, albeit with a one hour delay. The prairies recede and we cross the chunky Lake Huron on the way to the mountains.

 

Banff

The pilot of our 767 is officially an idiot. On arrival in Calgary there is no one else around and he overshoots his gate marker. We laugh hilariously as the ground crew desperately attempt to direct him to the stand. He fails, and then has the temerity to announce that “due to overcrowding it is required we be towed to the stand.” This takes another half an hour on top of the original delay so over 200 passengers are none too amused.

Our car hire pick up is straightforward enough, but navigating out of the city onto Highway 1 West is anything but. We find it eventually and head out past the Olympic village towards the Rockies. They grow larger and larger in layers on the horizon until we enter Banff National Park, buying an annual pass that will get us in everywhere. Directions to the Buffalo Mountain Lodge work well and we are soon installed with a couple of local beers – Big Wheel Amber and Kokanee – before tucking into an excellent dinner featuring buffalo carpaccio and elk salami.

A fairly decent night’s sleep follows once I have had to tell the teenagers next door to stop their party, particularly since the two-chord guitarist was out of tune. Sunrise is greeted with the thunderous whistle of a lonesome train, and we are off to explore. First, it’s up Sulphur Mountain on the Banff gondola, which yields brilliant views of the 10,000-foot Mount Cascade, the Bow River and Mount Rundle. The air was thin enough in Banff at 4,500 feet, and at 7,500 feet it’s significantly tougher.

You have to get used to some strange names in these parts, as we discovered when driving through the Calgary suburb of Shaganappi. Banff takes this to a new level with the excellently named Lake Minnewanka. It’s charming enough, but not as perfect as the smaller Lake Two Jack. After a short hike to observe the Bow River from on high along with a stand of hoodoos – ancient rock pillars – we repair to Wild Bill’s emporium in the high street for bison burgers and a well-earned pint of Big Rock Grasshopper.

Two waterfalls feature today: the charming low-slung Bow Falls, and the taller Lower Falls in Johnston Canyon. This departure from the main drag brings our first wildlife encounters - a pair of bighorn sheep quite content by the side of the road, and a pair of elk doing their thing whilst a variety of tourists pour in to take photos.

The following day we head northwest along the Bow River past the stunning and moody Castle Mountain on the Trans Canadian Highway 1. Initially bypassing Lake Louise, we head via a town called Field along the enormous Kicking Horse River to an outpost called Golden. Here is the home of the Northern Lights Wolf Centre, buried deep in the woods. At present there are seven wolves in residence, including two pups. One set are due for reintroduction into the wild, another two are too habituated to humans after being rescued from daft owners who failed to realize that cute pups would turn into the real thing.

We round off with lunch at the Moberly pub – an establishment run by a chain-smoking matriarch in the middle of nowhere – and get back on the road. We had hoped to see hoodoos at the eponymous Hoodoo Creek but there are no decent signs so we decide not to plunge into the forest and settle instead for staring at a few elk. Emerald Lake provides a pleasant detour, and it is indeed that colour, being full of the glacial milk that locals call rock flour. Nearby is lovely feature called Natural Bridge Arch, in which a river-cum-waterfall has blasted its way through the rock to create a powerful torrent through an arch.

We attempted to visit Takakkaw Falls but never made it. The park ranger informed us that a coach had managed to get stuck on a hairpin bend (a “switchback”), and blocked the road. We returned to the main road, and chased a train from Field that was 2-3km long. A long run in both directions through the Yoho National Park saw us eventually arrive at the delightful Moraine Lake Mountain Lodge. The lake is approached by a superb rising drive up to the Ten Peaks, ending in a beautiful lake blocked by terminal moraine.

Rising early the next day at 6 intending to go for a hike, it is pouring with rain. It has relented by 8 so we climb the rock pile for a peaceful early morning view of the lake. This lasts all of five minutes before the coach load of Japanese arrive to shatter the peace. What would happen if all Japanese had their cameras confiscated? Instead we hike to the far end of the lake to some charming falls, and enjoy watching the day’s first canoeist on the lake.

We suspected Lake Louise might be a significant tourist trap and we weren’t wrong. Thousands have descended on the place, much like many of the spots in Canada. In theory it’s a massive country with no one around. In practice everybody piles into the same tight spaces. This is a beautiful lake, but not as much as Moraine Lake, and it is dominated by an utterly vast hotel and an even bigger car park. We take a couple of photos just like everyone else and get out in five minutes.

 

Jasper

Driving north to Jasper is a 200km+ affair on a single lane ‘highway’, the Icefields Parkway. This takes time and patience, so we stop to admire the Crowfoot Glacier, which looks just like a painting, as does much of the landscape round here. Bow Lake offers stunning views of a glacial backdrop to a toothpaste-coloured lake, and we climb Bow Summit to oversee the massive Peyto Lake. It’s cold up here, but worth it. On past Weeping Wall, a serious avalanche zone, and on to the Columbia Icefield.

This proves to be somewhat like Butlins on ice. We may have been spoilt by a previous brilliant experience in Argentina at the Perito Moreno, where we hiked on a glacier. The weather today probably doesn’t help, with regular storms rolling through, and the rangers talking of a wet, miserable summer. We have two bear encounters: the first as a bedraggled black bear crosses the road in a downpour; the second as a grizzly, nastily injured on the rear flank, walks alongside the road, affording a decent video opportunity.

We arrive in Jasper to be greeted by a heavy hailstorm, and sit it out in the car before checking in to the Alpine Village Lodge, which gives us our cabin for the next three nights. The thunder hammers away as we investigate Jasper – another frontier town. As we emerge from the Dead Dog bar after a couple of pints of Elk Lager, we are rewarded with the most perfect double rainbow arc ever seen. Both ends really do hit the ground.

Next day we explore the area, rising early and heading out to the beautiful Medicine Lake, which drains away every year and comes back again because it lies on top of a limestone cave system. Further on Maligne Lake is home to the “world famous” Spirit Island, but no literature or person can really explain what’s there so we enjoy the early peace with a flock of Canada geese before declining the boat trip and barbecue excursion.

Coming back on the same road, Maligne Canyon is wonderful – a huge drop through limestone creating rushing waterfalls and a lot of spray. It’s a nice brisk walk, but several further bridges cannot be attempted because of flooding. The view is spectacular – showing Pyramid Mountain in all its triangular glory, and Pyramid and Patricia Lakes, where we stop later for a snack. Investigating the Jasper Tramway we decide to decline. This is a cable car to the top of the Whistlers mountain chain, but with 30 to a car it’s rammed, so we beat a retreat to the local bar to watch Team GB lose to Canada in the Ladies Olympic football quarter final.

An evening walk down the Athabasca River is charming – low on the water line and fast-flowing – to arrive at the Tekarra Lodge for dinner. Here the river merges with the Miette, and we enjoy watching a female elk take her time crossing over the bridge, taking a straight line down the centre of the road and pausing to lick her arse in the low sunlight. The restaurant was good but snobby – a request for black pepper was met with the traditional “The chef feels it has just the right amount of spice but if you must…” response typical of French restaurants the world over.

The next day is a belter – all the clouds have gone and it’s a perfect rocky mountain view in every direction. We rise early and head back down Highway 1, first to Sunwapta falls, and then to Athabasca Falls. Both are worth a look but generally tarnished by coaches full of Japanese, Chinese and Koreans. It’s an art nipping in before them to have a more peaceful experience.

The undisputed prize of the day, and probably the trip so far, is a visit to the little-mentioned Mount Edith Cavell. From a distance it looks like a slice of chocolate pudding with intermittent cream layers. Climbing for 14km, we reach the hike point and set off. The stunning Angel glacier empties, via repeated avalanches, into a totally still lake, with icebergs calving off periodically. It’s something of a climb and the road is too narrow for coaches, which makes it all the more peaceful. Staring at the glacier is charming – sheer power. Waterfall melt water tumbles into the lake, which is a mix of azure and green, with various chunks of ice – blue, white, brown, and grey – sitting ominously. Nearby, a quick hike into the Tonquin Valley reveals the beautifully blue Cavell Lake set against this perfect mountain. This we enjoy with our new friend the golden striped ground squirrel, who cunningly nips in to steal the carrot I have brought for lunch. There is little mention of this in the guidebooks, but on a fair weather day it’s fantastic – mountain, glacier, river, lake – all rolled into one.

Rocky Mountains

From Jasper to Vancouver we board the Rocky Mountaineer in Goldleaf posh class, which offers an upper deck observation car with silver service dining below. Over two days, this snakes through the Yellowhead Pass, out of Alberta and into British Columbia, via the massive 13,000 foot Mount Robson – so high it operates its own microclimate and is almost always shrouded in cloud.

In amongst pleasant sights such as Moose Lake, the Albreda glacier and Pyramid Falls, the guide cheerfully notifies us of the 1950 site of a major collision between two trains in which 21 people died. A salutary lesson is told at the town of Barriere – scene of a 26,000 hectare forest fire in 1993, ironically started by a distraught firefighter when he failed to stub his cigarette out properly. Some stretches of hillside show all brown pine trees that have been blighted by the pine beetle. It needs to be minus 40 degrees for two weeks in a row to kill them off, and this hasn’t happened for several years.

Seven hours later we arrive in Kamloops, where three Thompson rivers merge. This is an unexciting border town where we are herded into the Hotel 540, essentially the local Novotel. Our stuffy room provides a slightly depressing view of a car park flanked by unimaginative stores called London Drugs and Senor Froggy, among others. We head immediately to the local pub called Frick and Frack, to enjoy several pints of Granville Island Cypress Honey Lager, and Okanaga Springs 1516 Bavarian. Few beer names here are short. We respectfully pass on the Crannog Gael’s Blood Organic Potato Ale and the Tree Raspberry Porter.

After a pretty good night’s sleep, slightly interrupted by some twats shouting and hammering on doors at 3am, we are back on the coach at 7.20am. The train extravaganza has taken on a new scale with two being joined together to create a 500-person traveling jamboree. Ten coaches disgorge their contents on the platform for a journey to the station that we could have walked. Then we are off for day two, initially skirting Kamloops Lake and moving through the Black Canyon flanking the Thompson and Fraser rivers. It’s a beautiful day, and we have regular sightings of bald eagles and ospreys, some on the wing and some on the nest.

The landscape evolves over the several hundred miles of the trip. The Jaws of Death Gorge and Hell’s Gate show the darker side with their raging torrents. As the Fraser and Thompson rivers merge, their different colours take a mile or so to blend – one clear blue, the other a muddy brown. Train lengths here are extraordinary – some with over 200 coaches and more than three miles long. Only the First Nations people are allowed to fish these waters, and the sockeye salmon produce 4,000 eggs every year, but only 2-6 return after all that effort.

A train journey is a fine thing and the service on the Rocky Mountaineer is impeccable. Approaching Vancouver we move from semi-arid desert – most people don’t know Canada has any – through to cloudy Pacific West Coast. The Fraser valley is fertile farmland littered with fruit pickers and high corn. Two days in the observation car is just enough, and it’s time to disembark and move on to the Listel Hotel on Robson Street.

 

Vancouver

Vancouver is peculiar. I had it down as a small city in an idyllic setting on the Pacific. The reality is a little harsher. The education begins as we enter town on the train via the mini-me city of Chilliwack, and the endless suburban sprawl. Downtown is a bit of a mess and the waterfront suffers once again  from the flaw we have seen many times in Canada – scant regard for urban planning control. The main bay is a heavily industrialized container port, and the buildings lack the character of San Francisco or Chicago

The Listel Hotel purports to be an art hotel but is as functional as a Novotel. We promenade on the bay but it’s another close cousin to Canary Wharf. It’s not until the old Gastown area that some character emerges, and we nestle in for a curry at Sitar. Next day we grab the bus out to the University of British Columbia Anthropological Museum, which is a chance to find out all about the First Nations people, and particularly the iconography associated with the making of totem poles. The display is vast to accommodate their size, and we see more later when walking through the famous Stanley Park. Here it’s a bit of a freak show with a range of weirdos and promenading gays strutting their stuff on bikes, boards, blades, you name it.

We cap the day off with dinner on top of the Vancouver Lookout, a 580-foot tower in the Harbour Centre. It turns out to be the first lightning storm in ten years, and we are rewarded with spectacular sights as the thunder hammers around us and the lightning plays astounding patterns across the night sky. A cab home is obligatory as the rain tips down.

 

Vancouver Island

The next day it’s off to Vancouver Island, apparently the home of “smoking and weaving shit.” We head out of town heading south and a lorry has thoughtlessly broken down in the George Massey tunnel crossing our old friend the mighty Fraser River. We eventually grab the ferry at Tsawwassen for the smooth  90 minute trip across to Swartz Bay, through the picturesque Gulf Islands National Park reserve. The drive down to Victoria is ugly, and could be anywhere in sprawling North America. Thirty minutes of this is enough, and we arrive at what appears to be Eastbourne with a floatplane terminal, and a small version of St. Paul’s Cathedral. It’s nice enough but rather twee. We grab a couple of beers in the sun after checking into Abigail’s Hotel, and book up a couple of interesting activities for the next day – whale watching and a trip in a floatplane. This area is right on the border with the USA. We actually cross it on the ferry over, and then the line winds through Cadboro and Oak Bay, past the San Juan Islands, and then between Victoria and the Olympic Peninsula of Washington USA.

Our seaplane has just ten or so people in it and we taxi out of the harbour past a range of craft from a kayak to a water taxi and an ocean liner. Take off is short and we are off round the peninsula reaching a maximum of 2,500 feet. It’s a mix of land and sea, with views of Elk and Beaver Lakes thrown in for good measure. Kayaks appear as tiny bright dots at sea. We are back 20 minutes later with a landing much steeper than a conventional land-based one, descending rapidly into the bay and slowing down fast with the water resistance.

Next up is a trip in a Zodiac in search of Orcas, or Killer Whales. Everyone has to dress up in cruiser suits – all-in-one life jackets that the Canadian government insists upon. As we taxi out of the harbour our sea dog guide regales us with a range of local facts. It’s the world’s largest seaplane or floatplane airport, handling over 200 flights a day. A couple of months ago they had to suspend flights for the day as a pod of orcas settled in to the bay to hunt salmon. The triumphant ornamental totem pole had to be sawn in half when they realized that many planes were banking steeply to avoid it. We speed off for thirty minutes to the San Juan Islands. There are three resident pods of orcas here, each containing about 20-30 of them. We see lots: male and female, surfacing regularly, and breaching on a few occasions to skyhop – their way of looking around above water level. We glance at a gang of harbour seals on the way back. After a seafaring day, we round off with a superb tapas feast at the Tapa Bar in Trounce Alley, including a large bottle of the brilliantly-named, but lethal at over 7%, Fat Tug beer – described as an IPA but in truth more like a barley wine.

Tofino

 

It’s a 300km and 5-hour drive up Vancouver Island to Tofino. You would have thought that most of this would be scenic but it isn’t. Dreary motorway that could be anywhere from Baltimore to Birmingham does nothing for the eye. A pit stop at the eponymous town of Duncan (“the city of totem poles”) does nothing to improve matters. It’s a bit of a dump, as is Nanaimo. Eventually turning inland at Parksville the scenery improves a little with the large Sproat and Kennedy Lakes to Port Alberni. The west coast is Pacific Ocean National Park, with ominous mists rolling in over the pine trees (technically rain forest) that shield the steep beaches from the heavy onshore winds.

Tofino is a strange place. If you didn’t come to surf or find bears, you wouldn’t bother. Every year a few thousand inhabitants are invaded by over a million visitors. There’s not a great deal to do except stare at the sea or the mountains. We dig in at the Schooner restaurant and watch the tourists stream in. Next day we venture out in a Zodiac to find bears, and this turns out to be one of the highlights of the trip. We spend half an hour observing a female black bear and cub eating berries and indulging in their favourite low tide behaviour -  upending huge rocks to eat whatever is underneath once the water has gone out. It’s beautiful day, and we watch porpoises surfacing for air. Bald eagles are much in abundance, and we observe a pair with their juvenile testing its wings and practicing flying. A great day is rounded off by a superb meal at the Spotted Bear restaurant.

On the final day we take a bracing one-hour walk along the Long Beach at Wickaninnish, a beautiful stretch of unspoiled coast patrolled by bald eagles and frequented by intrepid surfers seemingly unbothered by the ice-cold water. A final crab lunch at the Schooner rounds off proceedings before we finish the day staring at starfish in Cable Cove.

Concluding observations on Canada. We have covered 3-4,000 miles in three and a half weeks, plus another 6,000 there and back, and an unexpected detour to Iceland. The cities are not as remarkable as they are billed. Quebec has a charming old town surrounded by a pervasive ugly port bursting along the banks of the St. Lawrence – worth a visit but not that exciting. Montreal is thoroughly unremarkable – even the view from the original Mont lookout yields little more than a distant cluttered river, a set of skyscrapers, and three bridges. Vancouver is far larger and more messy than advertised, and the waterfront has all the charm of London’s Canary Wharf. Toronto has character and a better blend. The revolving towers in both offer interesting perspectives and great food.

80% of the country lives within a few hundred miles of the US border, and this shows in various ways. In huge parts of Canada one might just as easily be in suburban USA. It’s a nasty sprawl with no character, as evidenced by the featureless train journey from Quebec to Montreal to Toronto. Huge tracts of the interior are bland prairie, as witnessed on a 4-hour plane flight from Toronto to Calgary in which the landscape barely changes.

Neither the Rockies nor Vancouver Island lived up to their pioneering billing. The falls and hikes and lakes were in the main pretty crowded and very much dominated by oriental coach parties. The Rocky Mountaineer train was unremarkable on day one, better on day two. Vancouver Island’s Victoria is twee and Eastbourne-like, and the drive up the east side of the island is dreary, contrary to what one might expect. All in all, if a road trip to the canyons of the USA scores 10 out of 10 for adventure, the Canadian Rockies and islands score a 2 or a 3. It’s all pleasant enough, but not nearly as frontier-like as we were expecting. This may be our fault for succumbing to relatively formulaic advice, but the cost of visiting Hudson’s Bay, Baffin Island, or the Yukon would have pretty much made this trip twice as expensive.

This is not a bleat. It’s been a great trip in many ways. Quebec old town is charming. Watching a baseball game in a city like Toronto is a cultural experience. The Rockies must be seen, by whatever means, and sitting in front of a glacial lake under Mt. Edith Cavell was unforgettable. For wildlife, bear watching, with a few eagles thrown in, ranks as a top 3 animal encounter, and tracking orcas at sea was fun too. Given some of the distances involved, a clear understanding of why one is going to a far-flung place is definitely worth the research - a little more of that and we might have cut out some of the parts. A return isn’t out of the question, but would most probably have to take in the more remote parts to avoid the crowds and generate a greater feeling of adventure. We both resolve to make the next trip more intrepid. I did however manage to try 35 new types of beer.

NETHERLANDS 2012

AMSTERDAM JULY 2012

A whistle-stop tour of Amsterdam to fulfill a business training session.

Flew in to Schipol via Easyjet from Gatwick. Simple Gatwick Express from Victoria and a 40-minute flight. Charming views from the air of the Dutch coast in the evening sun on arrival. Boy is it flat.

The Netherlands has a 16m population squashed into 16,000 square miles – one of the world’s highest population densities. 60% of the country is farmed, and you can really see it from up here. Without the dykes, 65% of the country would be flooded daily, which is why the locals say “God made the earth but the Dutch made Holland.” That’s confidence for you.

We were initially fooled by a seemingly-knowledgeable cab driver who took us to the wrong Haarlemerstraat but we eventually get to this charming area just North-West of the main Centrum and check in to the Art Hotel Dulac http:www.arthoteldulac.nl which is clean and does the trick. Then for a wander around the canals and a pint or two of Trappist lager or the semi-lethal Sint Christoffel –approach with extreme caution.

A meal in Lindengracht at the Capri is a mixed bag which ends poorly. The order comes incorrectly, then their card machine doesn’t work, so we end up paying with our entire reserve fund of Euros. Our subsequent search for a cash machine finds them thinly dispersed in this part of town with the first two out of order. Eventually cashed up we retire to the hotel and sit on the street watching the extraordinary array of people wheeling past on an endless stream of bicycles.

The following day I do my stuff in Van Diemenstraat while Sarah visits the Frank Huis, scene of German atrocities and the famously-revealing teenage diary written by Anne Frank. I grab the bus to Centraal station and walk down Damrak to rendezvous in Dam Square for a well-earned beer in the Nieuwe Kafe, opposite the ubiquitous Madam Tussaud’s, and some guys offering horse and carriage rides.

Walking south down Rokin is a fairly nasty Oxford Street-style experience so we veer off into the side streets and eventually end up at The Hotel De L’Europe, where one can sit for a delightful low-level drink on the canal side and watch all the barges and boats go by, some full of drunk teenagers singing chart hits.

Indonesian meals are hot stuff in Amsterdam so we track down the Tujuh Maret (literally Seventh of March, inspired by their address, number 73) in Utrechtstraat. Firey chilli chicken nicely washed down with a beer or two. We finish on the canal side near Rembrandt Plein with a final bottle of the awkwardly-titled Baldy Sauvignon, which might prove a tad embarrassing for certain follically-challenged customers to order.

Then it’s off to the airport and back to blighty, but only after buying an inappropriate mug advertising the red light district and a pendant with a hash leaf on it. Some cultural elements never change.

 

 

CROATIA, MONTENEGRO & BOSNIA AND HERZEGOVINA 2012

Dubrovnik, “the pearl of the Adriatic”, is an easy 2-hour flight from London. Leaving on a surprisingly pleasant easyJet flight at 7am means you are nestled safely in your hotel by midday local time enjoying a relaxing – or should that be chillaxing – pre-prandial drink.

The airport is an easy 20 minute cab ride up the coast, and our hotel is on the beautiful Lapad peninsula which twins with another, Babin Kuk, a touch to the north of the stunning old town that greets you thousands of feet below from the coast road.

After a booking cock-up we take refuge in an apartment in Lapad – compliments of the Hotel More, which is having an admin meltdown but is working overtime on service recovery. This essentially gives us a massive townhouse to ourselves, with a balcony from which to watch the world go by and drink the local wine. Dinner at the hotel is more average than it implies, and there are clearly groups in – Germans and Americans in force – which stretch service levels to the brink.

The following morning we kick off with a cappuccino at the excellently named Slatki Kutak coffee emporium before catching the easy bus into the old town of Dubrovnik. It is Saturday and the cruise ships are in town, creating a packed atmosphere in the tiny space – it’s only 500 metres from end to end. Heavily bombed in 1991, the rebuilt town is a maze of steep alleys running upward off the central street of Stradun Plaza, formerly itself a canal. It’s chaos in here – all walking tours, old people and bottlenecks. We find a promising restaurant called Wanda serving traditional Mediterranean cuisine, but it doesn’t deliver for the price. The Lasko beer is always reliable, but the Croation prosciutto is chewy, the zuccine ripene is unexciting, and the risotto and fettucine are run of the mill for London prices. One curio in the gents adds a hint of redemption – an old faded photo by Federico Fellini of a man seemingly rowing on his own a boat carrying a rhinoceros. This I have to track down on my return to discover the story behind it.

Obligatory but swift souvenir shopping sees us bidding a hasty retreat back to Lapad bay, where the clouds have rolled back to reveal a perfect afternoon on the Dalmatian Coast. This calls for sitting on the wall drinking several pints of the local Ozujsko beer, tucking into a pizza, and washing it down with fantastic tasting mineral water called Jamnica. The bay is now alive with sunbathers and kids mucking about on the rocky shoreline, with a classic sunset accompanied by half-decent jazz drifting out from a nearby hotel. We meander home on the charming coastal path just in time to watch the appalling Eurovision Song Contest from Azerbaijan, with the UK’s Engelbert Humperdinck limping in second to last with a lousy song and barely any points.

With cloud in prospect the next day, we have hired a car to explore. One of the benefits of the admin cock-up on day one is that we have been given a superb sea-facing corner suite high up on the bay, and the car is free. We take full advantage by taking a 100km trip down the coast to the superb Kotor Bay in neighbouring Montenegro. There are ten miles of dirt road undergoing roadworks and some tiresome waiting at border posts, but it’s worth it. Beer and a tuna melt at the Gradska Kafana at a high vantage point in the lovely town of Herceg-Novi provide the setting. The local beer is Toceno, and the classic Stella-style glasses add a continental feel to the brilliantly rocky scene as sailing boats drift by thousands of feet below.

It’s time to head back, but by a different route, through Bosnia & Herzegovina. Climbing high on the road to Trebinje a storm breaks out, but the road is much better and there’s nothing on it. Climbing steeply, it is a wild, totally unspoilt landscape, which we have almost entirely to ourselves. The thunderstorms pass, and we drop back down into Croatia and Dubrovnik via Brgat. The whole thing is easily doable in 4-5 hours, and as the clouds clear we enjoy an invigorating Jacuzzi on our private balcony – decadent, certainly, but with a certain whiff of cabbage as the covers come off and the water circulates for the first time in a few days.

Dinner at the Casa restaurant on Lapad bay yields an excellent steak and mussels, washed down by a bottle of Pinot Krauthacker - a slightly disconcerting name for a wine but not nearly as disconcerting as one of the starters, which was proudly announced as “Local cheese kept in extra vagine olive oil.” We gave that one a miss.

The next day it was time for a proper exploration of the old town. In glorious sunshine we buy tickets to walk the high city walls. The disclaimer on the ticket points out in very small print that the association is not responsible for visitors accidents. This is not surprising given the perilous steps up and the roving gangs of unsteady pensioners spewing out of cruise ships and invading this tiny old town. Thin parapets provide frequent bottlenecks as unaware Japanese students insist on taking endless photos and blocking the way for everyone else. The view out to sea is charming, but it is looking in that is arguably more interesting. In a slightly voyeuristic way, one can look down from on high into gardens and schools. Colourful laundry hangs from lines suspended high on the walls, and significant construction in this tight space shows how difficult it must have been to rebuild after the siege in 1991. 600 shells hit the old town in one day that year.

Breaking free of the hordes we take the ten-minute ferry to Lokrum, a peaceful island just down the coast. This is the scene of a 10^th century Benedictine monastery, and botanical gardens inhabited by peacocks, some of them perched 50 feet high up in the pine trees. I have never seen high altitude peacocks before. There’s nothing much to do here, but a quiet stroll and a sandwich whilst listening to Spanish guitar music provides a welcome interlude from the bustle of the old town. Everyone has to leave the island by 7, and we are long gone by 3.30.

Back in Dubrovnik, we once again run the gauntlet of the endless walking tours for a final ‘Favorit’ beer at the Dubravka café, and at last a glass of decent wine that doesn’t taste like retsina. Here one can observe the sea- kayakers coming and going, and watch the pigeons irreverently nesting on a celebrity gargoyle of Saint Benedictine, whilst the local boys try to chat up the waitresses.

The bus brings us back to Lapad. We are old hands at this now. It’s only £1 a trip and the tickets proudly proclaim the 300^th anniversary of their scientist and polymath Ruder Boskovic. The Kompas hotel on the bay is functional but holds arguably the prime spot for a superb sundowner. I take my chances with a bottle of Leffe Tamno – a fairly lethal 6.5% dark beer made by Belgian monks, who frankly should know better. Throughout these encounters I have been carrying out the “Hvala Test.”. Hvala (roughly pronounced koala with a slight guttural twang) means thank you. It always raises a smile if you take the trouble to learn just the word for hello or thanks in a foreign language. No one else seems to bother, but the effort always leads to a more pleasant encounter and often better service.

Our hotel, Hotel More, is redeeming itself. Going vertically up the steep hill, reception is at the top on level 7, descending to minus 2, which features a stunning Cave bar hewn out of solid rock, and a drinks terrace right at water level. This is the perfect spot to down a Karlovacko beer, and then simply jump into the Adriatic when you get too hot. A gang of a dozen drunk Americans are politely moved on after disturbing the peace. Dinner two levels up sees us indulging in fondu for two – a meal that requires serious concentration lest you fail to remember what you’ve put in the pot and end up with a charred cinder.

The following day – our last – is overcast with intermittent showers, so it’s time to catch up on reading and review the souvenir haul – the odd t-shirt, some jewellery, and an ornamental mask to add to our eclectic collection. Violent thunder and hailstorms change the mood and necessitate a hasty retreat to the Cave bar followed by an afternoon nap, but by 6 o’clock normal service is resumed to reveal a balmy and sunny view over Lapad bay.

We leave at 9am the following day, and the break feels satisfyingly longer than the 5 nights it truly was. Highly recommended.

Prague January 2012

Four nights in the capital of the Czech republic, a country that has changed its constitution frequently. It’s a short two-hour flight to land in a modern airport that works well. No vestiges of communism here. We stay at the Angelo hotel on Radlicka in the Andel district of the city.

We christen the first night with a meal in a traditional Czech pub, the Zlaty Klas. After several pints of Staropramen and Rozel Dark, we feel compelled to try the signature starter: Zabijackova Svetia Tlacenka Octem a Cibili, which the menu translates as “Hogkilling light headcheese with vinegar and onion”. It turns out to be sloppy salami in vinegar – just edible, but not delicious. The chilli gravy however, is superb.

The following day we head into town and it’s a pleasure to wander around the cobbled streets. Wenceslas Square is unremarkable and the old National Museum with its dramatic interior is closed for restoration until 2015. In the Old Town, the Powder Gate provides a gothic entrance from the east for a scenic stroll down Celetna towards the river. The Old Town square is beautiful – art galleries featuring the famous local artist Alfons Mucha, the Hotel U Prince, where we stop for some rather chewy duck, and the town hall clock tower, which we climb for brilliant views. On the hour a guy dressed in a mixture of a harlequin and medieval suit plays a trumpet voluntary at 200 feet, whilst the astronomical clock baffles tourists with its rather pointless range of dials signifying not a great deal.

Tucked away in a little square near the Charles Bridge in Betlemske Namesti is the Naprstek Museum of Asian, African and American cultures, an eclectic collection of obscure ethnic material that provides a peaceful diversion. The bridge itself is superb – low stone over the picturesque Vltava River, framed by gothic buildings and the Royal Palace on the hill. We round off the day in Namesti Republicky with dinner at the Czech-French La Gare, featuring a rather delicious veal stew in a giant pastry Yorkshire pudding.

The next day we grab the tram, which works well, to the Royal Palace on the hill. Changing of the guard is the reward for a hike up the steep cobbled streets. Inside, St, Vitus’ Cathedral dominates with its enormous flying buttresses and staggering stained glass windows. An easier walk down the hill clutching warm mulled wine leads to Malostranska, and the beautiful Na Kampe square on the western side of Charles Bridge. Here you can walk right up to the water’s edge – unusual for a built-up city, and perhaps even more surprising given the major floods of 2002. Kafka’s museum amuses tourists with its dual pissing iron man water fountain – particularly the pensioners it seems. Lunch is an excellent Czech-Italian affair under the bridge at Casanova.

An afternoon stroll over the bridge is a delight despite the cold, but a diversion to the National Theatre is unrewarding – it’s less impressive up close than it appears on the skyline. A welcome Pilsner Urquell (the Czechs invented the stuff after all) at the Restaurace U Supa in Celetna sequels nicely into a pre-jazz dinner at Bily Konicek, the local equivalent of Ronnie Scotts, and just round the corner from the frankly bizarre Sex Machines Museum.

On our final day we strike out north for the zoo, taking the consistently reliable Metro to Nadrazi Holesovice, and a bus over the river again to its high vantage point. Two polar bears frolic hilariously in the water, and a male silverback gorilla stares scarily in defence of his harem, looking for all the world like a human in a gorilla suit. Lunch back on the west bank under Charles Bridge is a disappointment at Patrona – stringy goulash and an average salad – overpriced and marred by smoking guests (smoking bans have yet to reach Prague). We revert to our first-night haunt, the reliable Zlaty Klas, for a final Viener Schnitzel and chilli gravy.

Prague is superb. Everything works, including the people. They are thriving. It’s clean, the transport works, the bars are ubiquitous, the restaurants are clean, and the people are great. Add fascinating history and good architecture, and you have the formula for an excellent city break.

 

 

BALI 2009

Air Malaysia takes you 6700 miles and it takes 12 hours to Kuala Lumpur, then 2 hours to Bali, Denpasar. We stop over in Kuta before driving 1hr 15 minutes to Udud in the nifddle of the island, through Sanur. These are endless roads adorned by carved masonry, gods, baskets, doors and bamboo. Scooters are everywhere, and most of the drivers have no crash helmets.

The sophisticated Hotel Maya provides superb Indonesian cuisine, while the silly currency makes you a millionaire with just a couple of hundred dollars. A walk through the rice fields reveals snakes and spiders, collapsing dykes, carnivorous dragonflies, snails and eels. The local kids dance a lot better than the professionals at the ceremonial show, which is full of monotonous music and overlong scenes.

Our flight to Flores is via Sumba,and we are in search of multi-coloured lakes. It’s a 3 hour drive from Maumere through Thirkaddy-like landscape – steep slopes, endless palms and bamboo, and the occasional glimpse of the coast. We stay at arguably the worst hotel in the world, second only to Chaneral in Chile, with flooded bathrooms and bedbugs, which means no sleep. Up in the morning to 4500 feet to see the triple lakes of the staggeringly beautiful Kelimutu – one brown, one blue, one green. Is this a home to dead spirits? The locals believe so. Discovered by a Dutch geologist in 1914, they change colour all the time (they can be white, red and black). Back across the island to lie on the beach, and as we fly out we can look down again at these amazing lakes.

Lombok is next – the luxurious Sira Beach House on the north west of the island, facing the Gili islands. Much poolside relaxation, with a trip into town for Independence Day – a massive parade and much pageantry. Many of the locals have probably never seen a westerner before, and soon we become the spectacle.

Snorkeling off the reef with turtles, beachcombing for shells. Gili Air, Meno, and Trawangan islands frame a silhouette of the huge Mt. Agung volcano at 3142 feet.

AUSTRIA

VIENNA NOVEMBER 2011

A great BA flight over, only about half full. The sun sets orange on our right as the moon rises the same colour on the left. A military jet screams past in the opposite direction well below as an enthusiastic flight attendant tells us about the changes in their roles.

800 miles later we arrive in Vienna (Wien), a small chunk of former Germany with about 2.3 m people, nestled on the Danube, and hemmed in by the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary, Slovenia and Italy. The airport is in the south east and we are in town within 30 minutes. The Hotel Nestroy is clean and smart, and the city is small with a reliable cheap underground. We head immediately to the 1516 sports bar on Schwarzenbergstrasse to watch England beat Spain 1-0 in a football friendly.

The next day we cover a lot of ground. Having seen the Stephenshof Cathedral by night, we view it by day, and admire the impressive interior, complete with enormous stained glass windows. Walking south west takes us to the huge Hofsburg Palace complex, Albertina Platz, through the Burggarten, across the dangerously named Kunsthistoriches Museum area, and over to Rathaus Park. The mood is festive, and we wander around with a mug of Gluwein amongst the pre-Christmas stalls opposite the opera house. Sarah wasn’t impressed with the dumpling in the soup at the Café Landtmann, and the apple strudel is bigger than your head, but I enjoyed the goulash soup.

A late run takes us out to the surreal Hundertwasserhaus project, named after the inspired Austrian architect Friednsreich Hundertwasser. It’s a brilliant and colourful example of how to make social housing charming.

After a long day we stop for beer at Frauenhuber on Himmelfortgasse, where they claim to have had impromptu performances by Handel, Mozart and Beethoven, but not recently. Austrians do tend to live in the past. Dinner opposite is at the excellent Danieli – pizza and pasta with an old world feel.

The next day we head south to Schonbrun, the massive palace used by a range of kings and queens, and Napoleon, amongst others. Much of the garden is being dug up, the statues are covered, and it is cold, but we can still admire the splendour and see through the mist to the enormous summer house on the hill. The zoo contains some brilliant sights: hippos cavorting indoors at the closest range you would ever wish for, two beautiful jaguars (one normal pelage, one black), tigers, arctic wolves arguing over bones, a recently born elephant, red pandas, a lovely old sleeping cheetah, five calm lions enjoying the peace, and much more. It’s good to see such places on calm days, and we round off with a hot chocolate in the charming neo-classical central teahouse.

Heading north takes us over the Danube (Donau) and we walk through Uno City to the Donauturm, or Danube Tower. This is like a Russian housing project, with a dash of Canary Wharf, to arrive at their equivalent of the BT tower in the middle of a park. It appears to be shut, but it’s fully operational, and we speed up to 500 foot to have lunch in the revolving restaurant, with spectacular views of the river and surroundings. One revolution takes 26 minutes.

Dinner is at the splendidly named Zum Weissen Tiger and tonight is Ganzlzeit – goose time. It’s traditional at this time of year so we have goose pate, followed by roast goose and goulash. The final morning it’s a crisp stroll to Prater Park to stare at the Ferris wheel made famous in Harry Lime’s Third Man. It’s mercifully empty which allows a more pleasant experience than if the funfair were packed.

We like Vienna.

NEW YORK 2008

Here’s a whistle stop tour of New York you can complete in a few days.  Into John F. Kennedy airport and then drive to the centre of New York via the Queensboro Bridge - past Bloomingdales and catching the bottom corner of the famous Central Park.

The Algonquin Hotel is the literary centre of Dorothy Parker and the Round Table. Be greeted by the hotel cat, bad cabaret jazz and cartooned wallpaper. My favourite example: two rich men are burning a pile of dollars, which are floating to the ceiling. “What a delightful surprise,” one observes, “I always assumed it trickled down to the poor…”

Wandering the streets: Times Square, Broadway, Carnegie Hall, Central Park, the Plaza Hotel, Fifth Avenue, Tiffany’s, Saks, the City Library, and Central Station with its astronomical ceiling.

Up the Empire State Building. Buying express passes in advance is essential for  queue jumping, different lighting patterns from each side, and great views of the Chrysler building right nearby.

A little further afield, Battery Park, a trip on the Staten Island Ferry, past the  Statue of Liberty, experience New Jersey hospitality (big portions!), glance at Ground Zero, but don’t get too excited. The Craft Steak restaurant is superb, on this occasion with a lightning backdrop, followed by cocktails and a yellow cab home.

Visiting my friend Rob’s apartment, I get to see his brilliant vantage point for taking photography on the roof - it’s only 44 floors up. Lunch the following day in the meatpacking district at the Soho House club – better than its London counterpart, with a pool on the roof. Then visit Macy’s, the Apple shop, and fly to Cancun via Newark.