Troyes (pronounce trwa), has Gothic churches and museums galore, the greatest collection of half-timbered houses in the country, more than its fair share of world-class stained-glass, a dynamic, well-maintained and agreeable city centre, the largest factory outlet in Europe, and three huge lakes within less than an hour’s drive which offer everything a seaside resort would with the added advantage of millions of birds who stop here for a bit of rest and recuperation on their migration routes.
Artists, musicians and writers have long been attracted to the villages that cluster along the Seine and its tributary, the Loing, downstream from Paris around Fontainebleau. With their ancient houses made of warm beige stones clustered around shady squares overlooked by a church tower, these picturesque villages have managed to maintain much of their charm… once you’ve got past the hideous modern housing developments that ruin their outskirts!
If you’re looking for a maritime weekend escapade from Paris with some art, architecture and good food thrown in for good measure and not more than an hour and a quarter train ride away then Rouen is where you should head.“But wait a minute,” I hear you say, “Rouen is not by the sea so how can it be a maritime escapade?” And you’re right of course, Rouen is not a coastal town. But the sharp cries of seagulls will quickly remind you that it is a maritime one thanks to its position along the Seine which, although 80kms from the sea, is still tidal and wide and deep enough to allow big ships to anchor.
Although Aberdeen is Scotland's third largest city (230,000 inhabitants), capital of the European offshore oil industry, a university town, and used to be one of the richest cities in the United Kingdom, it is ignored by many visitors to Scotland. But I can assure you that it’s well worth a detour to visit Granite City, thus named by its inhabitants because most of its buildings are built with this quartz-rich rock which sparkles in the sun. So if you’re planing a short visit to Aberdeen between 19th-22nd July 2025 for the Tall Ships Race which returns to Aberdeen after a 28-year break, or because you’re going to be playing golf on one of the innumerable golf courses in Aberdeenshire, then read on...
Many years ago I found myself aboard a small Dutch cargo ship, the Van Riebeck, travelling from Nairobi to Kuwait with my 4-yr old brother and our parents(...(When we reached Muscat, the capital of Oman, it was closed to foreigners so the few passengers on the ship had to stay on board(…) This “almost visit” of Muscat rankled a bit, so recently when an opportunity arose for me to spend a few days there, I phoned my brother and asked if he and his wife would like to join me to right this wrong.
This year, 2022, marks the 70th anniversary of the disappearance of Tignes. “But wait a minute! Tignes is a world-famous ski resort,” you may retort. Yes, but before it was a ski resort, it was a village in a different valley and its tragic story remains a painful collective memory in the Tarentaise region of Savoie, France.
In March the Eiffel Tower is going to grow six metres rising to 333 metres from ground to top of antenna from its current 324. This will be thanks to its new antenna which will be put into place by helicopter sometime in March. So if you see the numbers 330 on the Eiffel Tower in the next few weeks, that’s what they are referring to!
I have to confess that if I’d been asked a couple of months ago to name the Czech Republic’s second city I would have drawn a blank. It is, of course, the somewhat hard to pronounce, Brno (and you must roll the -r), a charming town that I was able to visit all too briefly in December 2021 thanks to the French Association of Journalists in Tourism (AJT) which held its 2021 Annual General Meeting in the city, an event organised with the help of the Czech Tourist Board. Thank you to both!
On this long weekend in Lisbon at the end of October 2021 it was hard to believe that we’re still in the midst of the Covid-19 pandemic. The streets were heaving with youngsters. Average age? Say, 24? This was probably because they were amongst the 42,000 visitors attending the world’s most important tech conference, the Web Summit, which opened on the Monday.
