2025 – For the past few years I have been well and truly grounded by an unlucky combination of a global pandemic, redundancies and illness. Montenegro was my last trip in 2021 and nothing new is planned. To be honest, I don’t even think about it as there are so many other things to deal with first. But it has been very rewarding to go through my old notebooks and photographs and write up about the amazing places I have already been to. I was inspired by an article by Alain de Botton who, during the pandemic, wrote about tapping into your stored memories of places you visited, and reliving them in your mind.
I hope this isn’t the end of travelling for me. There are places I really want to go to like West Africa and Indonesia, and the ones I want to revisit like India and Chile, plus so much of Europe: Zeeland, Crete, Delft, Sicily, Marseilles. When it happens I will most definitely have a different outlook and hopefully better appreciate what an enormous privilege it is to be able to travel. LO
We had only a few days in Bilbao and it wasn’t enough. The city itself is lovely, with so much history and good food and the coastline is stunning. We hired a car to drive to the Biscay coast. The little 10th century hermitage perched on this rock is called Gaztelugatxeco Doniene (scrabble scores must be high in the Basque country). We walked up the winding path to the top and rang the bell three times to make a wish. As we were coming down we noticed lots of buses of tourists arriving – this place was used in Game of Thrones as Dragonstone and since then there has been a huge increase in visitor numbers. I feel sorry for that poor bell.
One of the best things I have ever eaten. Gratinado de Txangurro is a speciality pintxo of Bar El Globo, and is a cheesy crab mixture on delicious bread. It’s almost impossible to eat standing up with a drink in your other hand, but it was so delicious I ate a couple anyway. It was the first stop of our excellent food tour in Bilbao with Patrizia Vitelli from Bilbao Food Tour. Apart from the tedious craft beer stop which seems to be on every food tour I’ve done around the world, everything we ate and drank was outstanding.
The ‘Gilda’ is the city’s most famous pintxo. It’s peppers, anchovies and olives on a cocktail stick and named after the Rita Hayworth character.
I love the coast of northern Spain. We spent an afternoon wandering around Mundaka, a really interesting town on the coast. It’s famous for its occasional giant waves and there were lots of surfers patiently waiting in the water. We wandered inland a bit and found this sea creek surrounded by woodland.
There’s lots of good art in the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, but I love the building more than anything. Frank Gehry’s nautical shapes pay tribute to the history of this old port city, and the titanium has a slight golden glow which stops it being too cold and unfriendly.
Córdoba Semana Santa 2018. I had booked an evening food tour that was suppose to culminate with food overlooking the procession of the penitents as they carried the Paso out of the cathedral. We ended up on someone’s roof terrace and we felt like intruders, there were a few snacks laid on but nothing special. The food on this lazy tour, and in Córdoba generally, was massively disappointing. I know that Spanish cuisine is usually excellent, so I suspect part of the problem may have been being in a city with thousands of others during its most important week.
We did have one reasonable meal at the Sociedad Plateros following a recommendation. We had salmorejo, an Andalusian version of gazpacho, and bread and jamón ibérico which was very good but not local. I have no photos of any of the food that I’m happy to share, so I am shamelessly posting a photo of gazpacho I made myself that summer. Chilled soups are the most refreshing thing on a hot day, here served with a drizzle of oil and some sprinkles of sherry vinegar.
The highlight for me was visiting Madinat al-Zahra, an Ummayyad city built in the 10th century that was intended to be the palaces of the Córdoba Caliphate. A huge amount of effort went into building it, but not long after it was destroyed in a civil war that brought an end to the caliphate. The ruins were forgotten about for nearly 1000 years until their rediscovery last century.
I spent a long birthday weekend in Bologna. It wasn’t long enough to take it all in but I did climb up the Asinelli Tower for spectacular views of the city.
While I was there, I did a food tour with Taste Bologna. Our guide was telling us that they had taken Rick Stein round when he was doing a programme about the city, and showed him all the great places to eat or buy food. But when the programme aired, they had been edited out and it made it look like he had just stumbled across all these places on his own. What a fraud.
The food highlight was buying a range of cold meats – different prosciutti, salami and the yummy mortadella from Salumeria Simoni, plus some good bread, and taking them to Osteria del Sole where you can eat your own food if you buy some of their wine.
Croatia 2016. The Stradun, Dubrovnik’s main street. The polished marble gleams majestically in the setting sun. Dubrovnik is undoubtedly beautiful and lively, but I preferred Split which was slightly less touristy and historically very interesting. It also home to the fantastic Kruščić bakery.
I spent a few days on the island of Brač. I can understand why people want to sail around here and spent some time on the quays watching yachts come in and out. I loved the Wes Anderson symmetrical quality of these fuel stations. Brač is home to Zlatni Rat, one of the most unusual beaches I’ve ever been to. It looks like a beautiful sandy beach, but it’s actually made of tiny pebbles and quite hard to walk along.
I went to Porto briefly in 2016. I did another very good food tour this time with Taste Porto led by André Apolinário (who later took Anthony Bourdain round). Portuguese food is so good – lots of tasty hams, cheeses, pastries and seafood and, of course, the wine. We finished up in the Café Guarany where I had a small, very black coffee or ‘cimbalino’ as it’s called as that’s the Italian machine they use. I don’t much care for coffee, and rarely drink it, but I liked the ambience here, and I didn’t want to be all English and insist on a nice cup of tea. I find espressos like this so strong and weirdly dry, I understand why the Italians serve them with a glass of water.
Brussels 2015. I made a pilgrimage to Brussels to see the Magritte museum but found it confusing and frustrating in terms of layout and space, and much of his art disappointing. It’s amazing how you can change your mind about an artist when you see their work in real life. I much preferred the collection of its mothership, the Musées Royaux des Beaux-Arts de Belgique which houses great works by Bosch, Bruegel and David. I particularly liked this selfie by François-Joseph Navez with his brush tucked under his arm.
Whenever I’m happy, or sad, angry, tired, hungry or not, this is the food I crave most. Chips and mayonnaise à la belge. The best ones I had in Brussels were from Maison Antoine http://www.maisonantoine.be/ and I walked a very long way for this little pocket of joy.
Beautiful Venice, Christmas 2014. We arrived, as everyone should, by train across the Laguna Veneta and into Santa Lucia station where we took a vaporetto to our accommodation in Cannareggio. It’s surprisingly hard to find good food in Venice on a short trip, but we found a little bar where we had small glasses of valpolicella and cicchetti. It was sunny every day we were there apart from the last day when it started snowing. Despite the crowds, it still felt special.
I have no idea if this is a really old Anatolian-style fertility goddess, or someone has recently stuck some lumps of clay on this wall, but I like it anyway.
June 2014. I spent a few days walking in Liguria using the fantastic coastal train to get around. I went to the very touristy Cinque Terre and walked to all five villages even though the official path was closed in parts. My favourite walk, however, was around the Portofino peninsula, from Santa Margherita Ligure to Portofino, then on to the fabulous San Fruttuoso (accessible only by boat or foot), and then down and into Camogli.
It was an exhilarating walk but tough – I walked up and down and in and out of the little coves around the peninsula. At one point the path crossed a 45° sheer rock face with just gripping chains to hold on to. I edged myself across, trying not to look down at waves crashing on rocks a couple of hundred feet below. I saw nobody apart from a gazelle-like girl who was running the same route. She told me that at the end of the day I would have done about 20 miles. At last I made it to San Rocco just above Camogli, dirty, thirsty, hungry and tired. Gazelle girl had told me there was cool wine bar here, but it wasn’t immediately obvious and anyway I was quite happy with Panificio Maccarini where I got some foccacia and some wonderful ginger/lemon drink. When I got back to Genoa it was dark and there was an almighty thunderstorm just starting. I lay in bed buzzing. One of the happiest travel days I’ve ever had.
December 2012. Prague was drizzly and murky. It was pre-Christmas and we didn’t have the snow I’d hoped for as we wandered round the markets and listened to the Czech version of ‘Silent Night’. The food was great though: we bought meat by the kilo to eat just off the Old Town Square, and the whole city smelt of beer. I loved the Café Savoy with its art deco interior and old-fashioned service. Here I ate this delicious apple tart where some genius had worked out how to get cold cream inside the pie. We stayed in a cheap hostel and it wasn’t great. I know I could have done this better, I will go again one day and plan it properly.
Turkey 2012. Somewhere outside Pamukkale I had künefe which is an oozy, rich, baklava-meets-cheesecake dessert. It uses a special pastry called kadayif that turns stringy inside, with local cheese, lots of syrup and cooked in butter (as most of the best things in life are). The sugar-scorched old tin just adds to the experience. So deliciously rich that I didn’t need to eat anything else for the rest of the day.
Turkey September 2012. Tuz Gülü which means salt lake. During the hot summer it gradually dries up and by September there are only pools left. ‘Mud pilgrims’ come here to bathe as do flamingos. Sadly Lake Tuz, which was once the second largest lake in Turkey, is now only a fraction of its original size and in danger of complete dessication.
Home-made version of the best bun in the world: Swedish cardamom buns or kardemummabullar.
Stockholm 2011. We spent a few days in the Gamla Stan part of the city in winter when the temperature went down as low as -18° centigrade. A lot of time spent in lovely coffee shops keeping warm eating delicious pastries. The Canaletto-style view of the old town below was taken on a trip to Skansen which was worth the effort despite the deep snow.
