Europe

What’s so good about Ljubljana

Sitting in a riverside bar in Ljubljana and the movie Logan’s Run pops into my head; I instinctively close my fist around what would be a black-for-an-aeon palm flower embedded into my palm. Ljubljana is a young city, possibly the youngest-feeling city we’ve visited. Young and vibrant. […]

Europe

Is food in Britain boring?

Food in Britain is boring. I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve heard a variation of this statement in online travel discussions. When I hear the evidence generally provided to back it up, I tend to wonder about the travel habits of those who make it. […]

Alentejo

Rock and Soul in Beja

I didn’t expect this. Covering almost all of the gable end of a house is a huge blue and red rooster made from discarded pieces of metal. Portugal seems to have a thing at the moment for oversized ‘rubbish’ animals. The rooster’s tail feathers block part of a window whilst a stray metal breast feather juts out over a door […]

Food & drink

Going local with gastronomy or doing a Mumford

What’s available locally has a strong bearing on gastronomic specialities in an area. And what those local specialities are tends to be what restaurants do best. In the hills and mountains these dishes are usually meat based; at the coast they’re whatever salty gifts the sea offers. […]

Europe

Beauty or a blight? Urban art in Lisbon

Where they see squalor and a depressed urban landscape in some raggedy streets and obscure alleys, I see a raw, gritty, honest beauty – a down to earth yin to the yang of the city’s grand architecture. This Jekyll and Hyde character partly makes Lisbon the compelling city it is. […]

Alentejo

It is simply Alentejo, not the new Tuscany

Driving through an endless savanna where mounds rather than hills rolled lazily toward infinity, a travel article I’d read in The Guardian a couple of years ago popped into my head. It was called ‘A foodie tour of Portugal’s Alentejo’ and claimed that Portugal’s largest region was being touted as the new Tuscany. […]