Travel

Many things about Belgium are impenetrably mysterious to the incoming foreigner: the commune system, which language to use, how to politely eat moules. But few are as cryptic as the menu of sauces that accompany Belgian frites. Ketchup, tartare, barbecue and mayonnaise seem fine. But what is Samourai? Andalouse? Mega?  Unlike many great Belgian things that have successfully been exported (Trappist beer, chocolate, Tintin, speculoos biscuits, Audrey Hepburn), frites can only be experienced on home turf. And my, aren’t they so Belgian. First, the friteries or fritkots in Dutch – chip shop kiosks found wedged on to street corners and in city squares – are totally egalitarian and the service

As we all know, the Swiss love their clocks, their cheese and their chocolate. They also adore their railway. The trains are clean, comfortable, convenient and you can set your (Swiss) watch by them.  The system is 175 years old this year, a fact recently celebrated by the running of the world’s longest train through the Swiss Alps. It was quite a feat and took years to plan. The 1.2 mile-long train comprised 100 carriages and passed over 48 bridges and through 22 tunnels during its 15-mile journey, setting a new Guinness World Record as it did so. If you’re exasperated by British trains with the constant strikes, delays, cancellations,

If you’re going to visit Costa Rica, my advice is to steer clear of all the stuff that looks most exciting in the brochure: the zip-wires, the thermal springs and the white-water rafting. I’m not saying you won’t enjoy it. Nor realistically – especially if you’ve kids in tow – are you likely to be able to avoid it. Just be aware, though, that the best bits, as always, are the ones most tourists don’t see. Corcovado National Park in the remote south-west, for example. Well, I say ‘remote’. But actually, oddly enough for a country swathed in rainforest, hardly anywhere is truly inaccessible because of the remarkably good roads

I wanted to hate it. In the weeks leading up to my trip to Paris, I was told incessantly about how much of a dump it was, about how I’d be faced with overflowing bins and skilled pickpockets. I was even warned against drinking the tap water.  According to some, to be properly British means hating the French. And there’s plenty to take against: rude waiters, deliberate incompetence in maintaining their side of the Channel crossing, awkward double-cheek kissing, obsessiveness about cheese, astounding corruption in farming subsidies. My trip to France had one rule: do not enjoy it. Do not let them win. But I have a confession to make. It

In a sleepy side street around the corner from Centraal Station, there’s a restaurant I return to whenever I’m in Antwerp. From the outside it doesn’t look like much – a perfunctory shopfront, more like a takeaway café – but inside it’s charming, like eating in someone’s home. Welcome to Hoffy’s, a cosy Yiddish enclave renowned for comforting, nourishing cuisine in the centre of this flamboyant, unruly city. For me, this kosher restaurant sums up the spirit of Antwerp, a cultural crossroads since the Middle Ages, a refuge for outsiders of every sort. It’s run by the Hoffman brothers, three big amiable men with long grey beards, and it was founded

It’s hard to beat escaping into a book – but for bookworms looking for an escape that jumps off the page, there are plenty of hotels that cater to a love of all things literary. From a Cornish coastal retreat that’s been immortalised in fiction to a book-strewn adults-only resort on a South Pacific island, here are eight of the best hotels in the world for book-lovers. The only question that remains is what holiday reading to take with you. Carbis Bay Hotel, Cornwall A luxury beachfront resort just outside St Ives, Carbis Bay Hotel appears as The Sands Hotel in two of Rosamunde Pilcher’s novels, The Shell Seekers and

Whenever I take a train journey, I am filled with dread. Despite always booking assistance, I am terrified there won’t be someone at my destination with a ramp to help me and my powered wheelchair on to the platform. Many a time has my travel companion – or a complete stranger – had to straddle the train and the platform to stop the train doors closing with me stuck inside. I have frequently arrived at my destination late and stressed, left with the impression that my time doesn’t matter. What on earth could I be late for – surely nothing important? So I have read with horror, but not surprise,

When Thailand’s tourist board mistakenly used a photo of West Beach on the Isle of Berneray in Scotland to promote the tropical paradise of Kai Bae Beach, it took a British expat with a keen eye to spot the error.  But perhaps the confusion shouldn’t come as a surprise. With ivory dunes tumbling down to turquoise waters and the occasional chatter of a faraway pod of dolphins, the beaches of Uist, a collection of islands in the Outer Hebrides, could easily be mistaken for some of the most popular bays in the Seychelles or Caribbean. The only giveaways are the brisk breeze that nips your ears and the dearth of other visitors.

Posing as a marine biologist and with Soviet agent Anya Amasova posing as his wife, James Bond checked into Hotel Cala di Volpe in the The Spy Who Loved Me (1977). Their mission: to gather intelligence aboard super-villain Karl Stromberg’s secret underwater lair, somewhere in the Tyrrhenian Sea between Sardinia and the Italian mainland. In the meantime, they stay in a spacious suite with exposed wooden beams and open ocean views (where Amasova also vows to kill Bond when the mission is over). When I stayed at Cala di Volpe this year, I saw no villainous marine lair, just Tommy Hilfiger’s super yacht. The hotel has retained its Bond glamour through

It was starting to feel rather spooky on the pathway to Finisterre. Only two days before I’d been in the celebratory environs of Santiago de Compostela with its endless arrivals of jubilant pilgrims. Now dark clouds were scudding across the Galician hills in the distance and the only sound I could hear was the wind blowing – in an accusatory manner, it seemed – through the trees beside me. While Santiago de Compostela marks the official end of the famous Camino de Santiago pilgrimage, with the purported remains of St James the apostle in the basement of its cathedral, a minority of hardy souls continue for another 86 kilometres to

In Ratslaukums, Riga’s central square, there is an ugly brutalist building which encapsulates the contested history of Latvia’s beautiful, battered capital. This modernist eyesore was erected in 1970, when Latvia was part of the Soviet Union. It was built as a museum dedicated to Lenin’s crack troops, the Red Latvian Riflemen, who helped him overthrow the Tsar and win the resultant civil war. Without them, the Russian Revolution might have been stillborn. Today the content of this museum is completely different. The only relic of the Latvian Riflemen is the Soviet statue in the street outside. Now this building houses the Occupation Museum, which tells the story of Latvia’s Nazi

‘I hope you’re hungry,’ crows a fisherman, setting down a plate piled high with freshly shucked oysters. They say you should face your worst fears head on. Well, here I am addressing mine – but I never thought it would be done in quite so idyllic a spot. I’m in Mali Ston, a small, picturesque town on Croatia’s Pelješac peninsula, about an hour’s drive from Dubrovnik. It’s 9.30 a.m. and many shops are still shuttered, but already Game of Thrones fans are out in force, taking selfies along the hillside’s 14th-century network of towers and fortresses. (The three-and-a-half-mile walls doubled as King’s Landing and the Eyrie in the fantasy drama.)

I’m pretty certain that what I’m about to say is essentially unsayable. So here goes: we need to have a frank conversation about boobs. Bare boobs. Because on my recent holiday to Majorca, I have to confess to being a little astonished to see quite so many topless women on the beach. But what a simple joy it was; old, young, lithe, voluminous, ponderous – there they were in all their glory, glistening or wilting in the sun, or simply splashing about in the sparkling water. Boobs. I know, I know… as a straight, white, privately educated man in the raw good health of middle age this is not territory that

‘It is ridiculous to set a detective story in New York City. New York City is itself a detective story,’ said Agatha Christie. More than 60 years later, the Queen of Crime’s words still hold true. The Big Apple is a constantly changing beast: an enigma that, just as you think you’ve cracked it, coils itself into a new form for you to get your head around once more. That is what makes it the ideal return city break. Each time you travel there’s a new restaurant, hotel or show to try. And with many launches delayed by Covid-19, this year has brought an even greater glut of openings –

In the early 2000s my husband, a diplomat for the EU, was posted to Kazakhstan, a vast empty steppeland next to Siberia. It was winter and the place was covered with thick snow. My family were in England, my husband was mostly in the office; I was 61 and I didn’t know a soul. Our previous posting had been to Damascus and I had occupied myself by writing a book about the old palaces there, but here there were no old buildings as the Kazakhs had been nomads. I had nothing to do. Everyone spoke Russian – I didn’t. As my husband was a senior diplomat we qualified for a

Recently, Spectator writers shared their all-time favourite summer holiday reads. In response, Spectator readers have been offering their own recommendations for what books to take to the beach… ‘You might try Helen Thompson’s Disorder: Hard Times in the 21st Century, a history of oil politics. It starts with the simple fact that in evolving from the steam to petroleum age, the old western powers no longer had direct access to fuel and faced a growing dependency on oil from Russia, initially, and then the Middle East. The US, of course, is an exception as it has domestic resources – but foreign policy errors led to it being the guarantor of