The Flâneuse Diaries – Getting Lost in the City

October 12, 2024October 12, 2024

Island Girl

I’m chasing the coat tails of the season in the Cyclades and escaping the biblical rain. This trip to the Greek Islands is replacing the three I cancelled during the pandemic. Am I ever going to set eyes on a white sugar cube house again or see an octopus strung up to dry? Such first world problems.

Avoiding Santorini

The last time I was in Santorini was 2011 when it was on the cusp of being the blowsy tart it’s now become. I was staying in Oia, beloved of young American girls escaping their sorority houses or honeymooning couples sitting smugly in hot tubs. Many tourists make the trip primarily to pose for Instagram sunsets on the edge of the caldera, their hashtag screaming #IAMHERE as they brace themselves against the meltemi winds. I’ve decided I’m going to use this showy beast as a jumping off point to exploring quieter, more unfamiliar islands and am staying one night only at Hotel Galini in Firostefani before catching the early boat to sleepy Folegandros, just a 50-minute ride away.

Despite the rampant tourism, my first night begins in authentic Greek style. I’m startled by the sound of shards of glass clattering down the steps to my room and realise I’m being serenaded by loud clapping and stomping from a raucous family celebrating in Café Galini just above me. I awake at 3.30 am and peek upstairs to see what Santorini looks like when everyone is finally asleep. It’s disappointingly dark and starless and I abandon the rest of the night as high winds mean my boat has been rescheduled for 8.35 am and I’m worried my alarm won’t penetrate my earplugs.

No one does hospitality like the Greeks and the receptionist – who must surely have end of season fatigue – has delivered a complimentary breakfast bag for me. I clutch it bleary eyed as I await my driver who will take me down the treacherous road that snakes down to the port. The buses here are in the Sicilian vein of being infrequent and eccentric and, as a non-driver, expect to have to ride around in overpriced, air-conditioned vans with blacked out windows. It’s all part of the Cycladic experience.

Normally I prefer the big ships from Piraeus where you can sunbathe on deck and watch the islands rise majestically around you, but options today are limited. The windows of my Seajets ferry look like the inside of a car wash and there are only safety demonstrations and euro trash fashionista TV rolling on the monitors. I train my eye on the horizon and am grateful it’s only a short haul. There’s a reason the symbol for the Cyclades is a windmill.

Avoiding Sleazebags in Folegandros

I will be in Chora for five nights, which is the main hub of Folegandros, a Cycladic village so perfect, it could be a film set. Overlooked by the church of Panagia, which is accessible by a zigzag stone path and a fifteen-minute climb, there’s a definite Mamma Mia feel and the sense that at any moment Pierce Brosnan might jump out at you and sing off key. Unlike Santorini, Folegandros hasn’t acquiesced to mass tourism, and has a winter population of 500, plus goats. Electricity and roads finally arrived in the late 1970s, and the local mayor is both progressive and a cat lover, ensuring that the many strays you find littered across Greece are not only castrated, but also well fed. So well-fed one of them even turns her nose up at the sardine head I drop on the floor at Araxe, a restaurant so welcoming I keep going back.

For a small island, Folegandros is full of characters. On my first afternoon, I encounter Andreas, a flamboyant blow in who runs a vintage shop an olive stone’s throw from Kallisti Hotel where I’m staying. He hard sells me a bracelet in a matter of moments, before informing me that he performs songs in French and English every night at 10 pm. Imagine a gay Athenian Marguerita Pracatan and you get the picture. He invites me to return later to ‘enjoy his energy’ but after less than four hours’ sleep, I barely have any of my own.

After a comfortable night, I’m ready to get up and at it. Sunday morning is always so atmospheric in Greece. I’m sitting in one of the five piazzas of Chora, listening to the slow intoning of the Orthodox priest and the peal of bells and watching the men flick their worry beads. Bang opposite me is a lothario scribbling a post card. He is as brown as a leather handbag and I wonder if the novel sitting beside him isn’t a well-thumbed copy of Lolita. His oily smile reveals his delight I am in his field of vision and frankly it is disturbing my feta omelette experience. I glower at him and move tables.

A couple of days later I am enroute to meet the Diapolous tour that sails around the island and provides five stop off points to jump into the Aegean, including the tamarisk lined Agios Nikolaos and remote Livadaki beaches. Folegandros has gravity defying cliffs that have historically kept out the pirates and the best, and sometimes only, way to access its coves is by sea. I find a café on the pretty harbour of Karavostasi and Sunday’s lothario has not only been on my bus but is now sitting several tables away. As someone in his late sixties, I am far too old for him when there is younger flesh available, and having complimented the waitress on the length of her dress, the conversation that follows goes like this:

Ageing Lothario (who’s French just to complete the Humbert Humbert vibe): ‘I’ve just filmed you serving my coffee’

Waitress: *nervous laugh*

Ageing Lothario: ‘Stand out there in the sunlight and let me take a photo of you’.

Waitress: *stunned silence*

Me (weighing in): ‘No, she will not pose for a photo. Her job is to serve the food, not titillate you’.

Ageing Lothario: *stunned silence*

Me: (silently) If he’s on my boat trip and that phone gets pointed at me, it’s going straight in the effing Aegean.

Ageing Lotherio: ‘Why not?’

Me: ‘Er? Because it’s creepy?’.

Ageing Lothario (incredulous): ‘But I’ve known the café owner here for more than twenty years!’

And just like that, another privileged white man receives the staggering news that he can’t do exactly what he likes without consequences. Five minutes later he shuffles up to the waitress and offers an embarrassed apology. A small victory for feminism, although the moment is diluted when another perma-tanned creep tries to hit on me whilst I’m eating my baguette. Aren’t middle-aged women supposed to be in invisible?

Avoiding Reality in Sifnos

I’m spending the last three nights of the holiday on glamorous Sifnos, just two hours away by boat and a very different terrain. Like a Grecian California, with more greenery on the mountains than the biblically beautiful Folegrandos, it’s known as a foodie island and Platis Yialos on its southern coast is where the best restaurants can be found. I’m staying at the glorious Miles Away Luxury Apartments which are twenty metres from the horseshoe beach with its views of neighbouring Paros. A favourite with Tom Hanks and other Hollywood stars, Platis Yialos is so ridiculously pleasurable, I decide I’m going to fully commit to being a beach bum and gourmand. All the restaurants are accessible from the sand and after dark the night really is a starry dome, so just take your shoes off and walk along the bay until you find something that appeals. For restaurant recommendations, I would pre-book the famous Omega 3 where they serve inventive seafood tapas and ceviche on long benches on the beach, and then chance your arm at Yallos and Maiolica where cuisine is also a serious business. Finish off your meal with mastika, the local earthy digestif and then think about where you’re pitching your sunbed tomorrow. Rinse and repeat.

Greece is one of the best places in Europe to be a solo female traveller. It doesn’t have to be Shirley Valentine (‘hiya rock’) avoiding Jeanette and Dougie from Manchester. The Cyclades are a combination of authentically local and defiantly cosmopolitan, and it’s never difficult to find someone (non-slimy) to have dinner with if you are in the mood for company. The lack of a language barrier is a real plus which is just as well because I really can’t grapple with that alphabet.

Any journey back from a remote Greek island, however, does tend to be epic. Not Odysseus epic, but enough to make you feel like you need a lie down the next day. If you’re flying out of Santorini, you will need to change boats at Milos, a moonscape island now overrun by Gen-Z clubbers. Unless you want to feel like an ancient hag, I wouldn’t advise a stopover longer than the time it takes to cross the harbour tarmac. Foolishly, I book the 11 pm flight from Thira with the Jet2.com crowd and arrive at Stansted at 4.30 am Greek time. I wave down my taxi driver in the howling rain and wondering what alternative universe I’ve just been dropped into. I have blonde hair and a tan. But oh my god. It’s autumn.

May 26, 2024May 26, 2024

If You’re Fond of Sand Dunes and Salty Air

So, how do you get from East End to the Arcachon Basin by train in a single day? Encouraged by my continued love of the French rail network – plus the threat of an air traffic control strike at Bordeaux – I decided to give it a whirl. If you wish to emanate this Barbra Streisand in Funny Girl style endeavour (see film for iconic details) it will require a taxi, a tube, a Eurostar, a metro, a high-speed train, a local train, followed by a bewildered walk to the hotel swearing at google maps.

Omar Sheriff will not be waiting for you at the end. Instead, there will be oyster beds, vast sandy beaches with wooden boardwalks, and a plate of the plumpest, sweetest moules you’ve ever had. Welcome to the French Atlantic coast. It’s chic, slightly shabby and, if you like the heady combination of salt and mimosa, smells like a perfumista’s dream.

This trip is not what I originally planned. I am not supposed to be on my own in Arcachon. I am supposed to be with lots of people at a writing retreat in Castillon. This has been cancelled due to an array of bad luck, causing most of the participants to drop out due to ill health and bereavement, but I am still staying for a couple of nights to see how I like the place. I learn later that Castillon is resolutely NOT Dordogne(shire), but in fact, Gironde. The 60% of people in the Dordogne that hail from the environs of Chelsea and Somerset are not popular in these parts, with their red jeans and smug pashminas.

If you like it bracing, you’ll like it here

The journey down is remarkably smooth until Bordeaux Saint Jean, where the local train is abruptly evacuated before we’ve left the station. The Olympic year is making the French even jumpier than usual about security and, after a stilted consultation with a fellow traveller, I learn it’s something to do with ‘le baggage’. Later someone is taken ill, and we stop on a desolate platform for nearly three quarters of an hour whilst a paramedic is called and most of the passengers get out to smoke and look nonchalant. I am so happy to be en France.

Arcachon is divided into the four seasons, with the oldest and grandest district being Ville D’Hiver, the main commercial hub Ville D’Ete, the biggest, surfiest beaches Ville de Printemps and the port area Ville D’Automne. So, there’s a bit of orienteering for you. You know I have no sense of direction.

No French Town is complete without a ferris wheel and a carousel

The week ahead is looking unpredictable, so on the first morning I make the most of the brilliant sunshine and take the half hour boat trip to Cap Ferret which is like a Frenchified Nantucket. Not that I’ve ever been. Elegant boutiques, a light house, oyster shacks, tanned Ralph Lauren doppelgangers in deck shoes; it all adds to the overall vibe of Gallic privilege.

To get there you need to catch one of ferries from Jetée Thiers, buying your tickets at one of the beach huts or in advance online, so you can ensure more time over there to gorge on prawns. Bizarrely, the Arcachon Basin has the largest sand dune in Europe, and you can see the Dune of Pilat from one of the Cap Ferret beaches or from the boat. It’s like a distant North African mirage and if you’re into channelling Lawrence of Arabia, you can climb it. I did not.

Architecturally, this area is unique and many of the colourful houses, known as the Arcachonnaise, were built in the belle epoque style and are a visible homage to Arcachon’s 19^th century boom time. After a lull in popularity, the town is now heavily frequented by well-heeled Parisians, so one thing you won’t find much of here is anyone speaking English. This is extremely pleasing. A respite from Brits moaning about sewage, immigrants and low traffic neighbourhoods is welcome, and the pleasant hum of a language I don’t understand is good for my decompression.

No Flâneuse Diaries would be complete without a dive into the food scene, and it is wonderful here. Expect to be nine parts seafood by the time you leave and for the only vitamin C to have passed your lips to be lettuce and freshly squeezed oranges. Despite the incredible fruit and vegetables available at the covered market on Places Des Marquises, it does not seem to translate onto restaurant plates, but just embrace the protein and take supplements.

I thought I better eat it before it ate me

My top two recommendations are Le Commerce in Summer Town for mussels (or anything – it’s all excellent) and Club Plage Pereire near Winter Town. The latter sits directly on the beach and for 22 euros you can ditch the cutlery and have eight outrageous langoustines, a homemade mayonnaise, and fries, whilst watching the windsurfers. The Brasserie des Marquises also became a favourite, not least of all for the Archachon spritz as an aperitif. Limoncello spritz? You’re so last year. This is my new favourite, and if you like the aromatic taste of pink grapefruit, this one’s for you.

I give you the Arcachon Spritz – de rigeur cocktail shot

By day five I am ludicrously relaxed and it’s time to swap the seaside for the vineyards. The last time I was anywhere near this part of France was twenty years ago, staying in the summer home of a theatrical agent whose idea of closing night party trick was diving into his swimming pool clutching two lit fireworks. He had a house boy who served drinks to the guests wearing a T-Shirt that said, ‘Do Not Feed or Tease the Straight People’ and took us out in a 1960s blue Thunderbird that Ewan McGregor had used for his wedding. It was a completely normal kind of weekend.

I’m always happy to find my people. Chez Castillon is a creative retreat run by Janie and Mickey, two British actors who thirteen years ago bought a run down ten-bedroom house and turned it into a place for writers and artists. Janie is also a novelist whose debut book could be described as Lovejoy meets Tales from the City with sequins. It’s about how the two worlds of a rural Suffolk annual drag queen competition and an ailing drag club in San Francisco collide. Anyone who can describe a character as ‘pure Ivy League from the neck up and pure unrestrained Liberace from the neck down’ is alright with me. They cannot be more welcoming or fun, and I will be returning.

I will need to as I still haven’t finished the first three chapters of my book…..

March 6, 2024March 6, 2024

Unsung Spanish Hero

Perhaps this is controversial, but I’ve never really understood what the fuss is about Barcelona. The Gaudi buildings are undeniably stunning and there is always the beach, but in Iberian terms, it’s not the only game in town. Maybe I didn’t have the best experience there one distant New Year’s Eve. We ended up in an Irish bar followed by a Chinese buffet under florescent lights, but that’s what happens when you wing a national holiday in a city brimming with eager tourists. Madrid still gets overlooked which is odd considering it’s both the capital and situated bang in the middle of Spain, but right now it feels like its star is finally in the ascendant.

We are staying in an Airbnb in La Latina, one of the oldest barrios in Madrid. I am here for a birthday, so let me begin with a truism. Turning 51 is not as exciting as turning 50. To elevate it would require flamenco and sherry and although we failed on the last count (this is not Andalucia), we absolutely smashed it on the first.

Madrid is old-world, grown-up grandeur. Franco may have bombed the bejesus out of it, but it remains a low-rise city of wrought iron balconies, domes, and turrets. It’s true it doesn’t have the earthiness of Granada or Seville, but it feels affluent, as if it’s been quietly building itself up whilst everyone else was on Las Ramblas avoiding the pickpockets. Whilst there are certainly foreign tourists here, overwhelmingly what you hear around you are the lilt of Spanish voices.

A good starting point to Madrid is the glamourous El Retiro Park. One of the great civic spaces of Europe and a UNESCO world heritage site, it has everything I want in a public garden. A glittering glass house, other worldly topiary and resident peacocks that strut their iridescent tails around for passing admirers. At its heart is a vast lake dotted with a flotilla of boats and offset with colonnades and empire defining statues. This is a park that’s not messing around.

Look down on the edge of the lake and you will see actual live turtles sunbathing. I thought they were strangely positioned statues….

As most cities are experienced through the tastebuds as well as the feet, the food markets of Madrid are worth lingering on because they are abundant and spectacularly good. Its most upmarket jewel is Mercado de San Miguel, best visited on a weekday (and when it’s not raining) as it will be straining at the sides with ravenous people. On Sunday whole families arrive early and stake out the much-prized seats, sending each other off to top up on pintxos, fried seafood and tacos. If you don’t mind the crowds, you can wander the stalls with a glass of wine in your hand and simply graze like a gourmand.

One place you probably won’t feel like a gourmand is the café at the entry to Mercado de la Paz in Salamanca. I wish I could remember its name, but I do like to judge the cleanliness of a restaurant’s kitchen on the state of its bathrooms. After a brief visit, my travelling companion, Mary-Alice said ‘Well, it’s not Trainspotting….’, making me instantly regret the complimentary seafood paella I’d been given with my wine. Fortunately, I won that game of Russian Roulette, but do swerve the place that serves chips with everything and has the dirtiest bar you’ve ever seen.

If you’ve got a sweet tooth, you’ve hit the jackpot in Madrid. There are light and crispy churros with cups of thick chocolate and patisseries galore. On my birthday, we went to El Riojano which is over a hundred years old and full of old-world charm. The staff however are not, so just factor in a ‘Paris in the 1990s’ style of brusqueness and enjoy the cake. It’s all part of the service. For the best twist on a cinnamon roll this side of Stockholm, do not miss Salt in Cake in Calle de Toledo where you can get takeout. The mango and passionfruit incarnation was the best breakfast a newly turned fifty one year old could have wished for.

A word here about Spain and vegetarianism. I haven’t been since before the pandemic, and they still just don’t get it. Mary-Alice was faced with an entire wheel of Manchego at the excellent La Taberna de Ramales plus an alarming amount of patatas bravas (although thank god for the Padron peppers supplying some greenery). I’m not saying there weren’t other good things for her eat, but the variety isn’t there and the Spanish do like to add tuna flakes ‘for flavour’. This is really a country you go to eat pork. Special shout out here to the jet lagged Australian guy who told me how excited he was about his plate of jamon. This is how I feel about a Broadway matinee and a martini, so fair dinkum.

I will move away from food in a moment, but the prize for the second greatest meal of 2024 has to go to Corral de la Moreria, Madrid’s most famous flamenco venue. Other options are available, but it was beloved of Ava Gardner when she was in her shagging matadors’ phase, so this is the one I plumped for. You can dine at 6.30 pm in time for the show an hour later, which I realise is a bit un-Spanish being so early, but it is a glorious experience. As for the dancing, it’s another level of artistry.

The two big cultural hitters in Madrid are The Prado and The Royal Palace and you need to see both. The Prado is a monster of a museum along the lines of the Louvre (which shoot me, I’ve never been in) so it needs taking in bitesize chunks or you will just exhaust yourself. I was expecting endless rooms of chubby babies and Madonna’s and whilst there’s plenty of that, there are some real showstoppers. I was not expecting another Mona Lisa or the intricate beauty of Fra Angelico’s The Annunciation. The famous Valezquez painting Las Meninas is also here, and you’ll spot it by the size of the congregation.

I’ve been inside a lot of European royal palaces, but the one in Madrid is an explosion of opulence. Followers of my travels will know I am a fan of the chandelier, and this place delivers on an epic scale. It is also chinoiserie on steroids. I had no idea that walls could be made of porcelain before I visited here. Book your tickets in advance and avoid the line of tourists snaking across the courtyard. Ditto the Prado. When we came out at 4.30 pm, they were queuing around the block which looked frankly miserable.

Madrid has really whetted the whistle for more Hispanic jaunts. It’s well-connected for high-speed rail and you can get to Cordoba in under two hours which has long been on my wish list. Next up, the Dordogne in May for a writing retreat (if writing a blog about writing isn’t too meta…..)

January 7, 2024March 6, 2024

Nice – Where Wintering is a Verb

In life, timing is everything. Twenty-four hours earlier and thanks to a flooded tunnel in Kent, I could have been staring down the barrel of another New Year’s Eve in my flat. Instead, I am sitting at my favourite café in Rue Mouffetard, one of the oldest streets in Paris, and there is no one around except a few locals, vaping and cuddling small dogs for warmth. I’m less bothered by the expectant midnight chimes now, but I do want to know that what happens around that moment is memorable. For me, the train journey through France on New Year’s Day – at a price that wouldn’t get you from Waterloo to Winnersh Triangle – was the true start of 2024.

My kind of NYE – me and my notebook plus vino

Vive La SNCF! I’ve trumpeted its virtues on here before but everything from the ease of purchase on the app to lounging in its double-decker comfort is a joy. Gare du Lyon is the jumping off point for the South and I finally manage to locate Le Train Bleu on the main concourse, with its gloriously over the top, baroque dining room. My schedule is too tight for a formal breakfast, so Pret it is and a jambon beurre. There is no buffet service on this train, so stock up on everything before you alight or, in the words of Victoria Wood, you will be snatching chocolate buttons off small children.

In terms of speed, this is a game of two halves. In three hours, I am already in the Le Pen heartland of Aix-en-Provence, an antiseptic place I didn’t care for when I visited. From here there is a much slower tour of the coastal towns – the graffitied outskirts of Marseilles, Toulon, St Raphaël, Antibes and the monied golf resorts around Cannes. The landscape becomes more mountainous, the soil redder and the trees more resinous and, if you’re me, you begin to come over a little Jean de Florette. Book the right-hand side of the carriage so you can see the Mediterranean as the train sporadically hugs the coast. On a five-and-a-half-hour journey, use the loos earlier rather than later as you may wish you had packed waders.

That’s the practical stuff out the way. Now let’s talk about Nice in the Winter. Basically, it’s a really good idea. Why be a package holiday arriviste, grappling with crowds, frizzy hair, and over inflated hotel rates, when you can channel your inner 19^th century aristocrat wintering on the Riviera? True, you are not going to get a tan and not every shop or restaurant is open, but Nice is still buzzing and retains the unique luminosity for which its famed. Arriving before Epiphany also means the lights of Christmas are still on display and, even if you’ve had enough of it by then (always), it feels glamorous and cheering in the early dark month of the year.

Place Massena still giving its festive best

My first stop is a sunset wander along the Promenade des Anglaise, so named after the British ex-pats who funded its construction in 1822, employing cheap labour from the vagrants flocking to the city to escape the cold weather. Plus ca change. From this elegant sweep of bay, you can navigate much of the city, starting from the Cours Saleya Market – which changes its offer daily with flowers, edible produce and brocante – and leads you into the labyrinth of Vieux Nice.

Promenades des Anglaise on New Year’s Day – worth five and a half hours on a train

It takes me a while to hit my culinary stride here. This is largely because by 4 pm on New Years Day the only solids that have passed my lips in over twenty-four hours are three packets of sandwiches and a bag of salt and vinegar crisps. I am hangry and gratefully settle for a touristy galette. Vieux Nice, however, is the place for a gastronomic experience, and I find it accidentally the following day at a restaurant and olive oil shop called Oliviera at Bis Rue Du Collet.

I’m greeted by the charming Palestinian owner who acts as maître d’, speaks five languages, and personally farms and makes all the olive oil sold in the restaurant. The oils go on everything – even on the side of your tiramisu if you want it. And you really should. Today he is distressed because his usual boulanger is ‘en vacances’ for three weeks – the equivalent of a gallic catastrophe. He looks a little crestfallen when I politely turn down the rabbit (I struggle with the cooked bunny thing in France) but cheers up immeasurably when I order his mother’s small, stuffed aubergines with spiced mincemeat and pinenuts. It’s a triumph.

A cautionary tale if you do go to this fantastic restaurant, the staircase up to the toilet is dark and rickety and the door back into the dining room is very stiff. Once you’ve visited the loo, which is helpfully decorated with a poster of the human digestive system in case you need to know what your meal is doing, don’t do what I do and start shouting ‘how do I get out of here?’ when you eventually find the bottom of the stairs. When the door creaks open and my genial host hands me out like an 18-century dowager duchess descending from a carriage, every single pair of bemused eyes in the dining room is on me. I style it out, but the truth is I’m scared of the dark and have an innate horror of being trapped behind a door. There is a light switch, so do use it.

More on food shortly, but no trip to Nice is complete without a visit to the Musée National Marc Chagall and its huge, dreamlike canvases. By 3 January, there is a distinct ‘back to work’ feel – as far as that ever goes in France – and the galleries are beginning to open. I walk via the Basilique Notre Dame de l’Assumption located in a neighbourhood where all the Nicoise who aren’t completely loaded live. I can tell this as I’m greeted by a seagull standing cavalierly on the corner with a dirty chicken bone recently scavenged from a pile of uncleared refuge in its beak. Here, no-one is swathed in mink and wearing dark glasses and designer trainers, the uniform of the out of season local who’s just popped out to get some bits.

For a museum so steeped in romanticism, it is ironic that it’s accessed via a traffic-choked fly-over, but on arrival it does not disappoint, and I am greeted with the kind of images I could happily climb into. For more art, keep walking further up the hill, past ridiculous apartments, and Gatsby sized villas, and you’ll find Musée Matisse. It’s a thirty-minute walk to Vieux Nice from here, but I zigzag my way down the hill, buoyed up by the promise of my first taste of socca at Chez Theresa. This is a traditional crispy pancake made of chickpea flour that looks and tastes nothing like the Findus we had in the 80s. It is likely to have originated from neighbouring Italy and may have begun life as something cooked on a Roman soldier’s shield.

At Chez Theresa, I am brusquely told there is a half hour wait at the hatch, as a man labours over a wood fired oven and a huge iron platter. If you also have a hatred of walking whilst eating, there is a humble seating area that you can frequent on the understanding you buy a drink. The wine’s a bit rough and beer is a better, traditional match, but the verdict on the socca is I’ve never eaten anything like it. Slightly soggy, slightly crispy, slightly charred, slightly salty – it looks hellishly un-Instagramable, but tastes great and is probably addictive.

On my penultimate day, I finally get the weather the BBC promised and take the crowded commuter train early to Villefranche-Sur-Mer. If you want a stunning, sandy beach that’s only two stops away from Nice Ville, you’ll find it here, although it may well be a seething mass of humanity in July. Today, however, there is hardly anyone around and at 9 am, watching bags of mussels being unloaded into the kitchens of harbour restaurants and drinking coffee in the sun, I’m grateful not to be at home amongst the ravages of the ridiculously named Storm Henk. Tomorrow, il pleut, but today I will bask like it’s 4 January on the Riviera. I sit on the beach in my biker boots, whilst around me some are whipping out their bikinis. Jeez, it’s not THAT warm, people.

If you come here in the winter, it’s just beach walking and eating, as many of the shops in the tiny old town are closed, but with food and views this good, it shouldn’t matter. It may be early doors, but the lunch I have at Lou Bantry could be one of the stellar meals of ’24. Sea bass, provencal vegetables, sauce vierge, parmesan crisp, extra chips, glass of rose, table by the water. The waiting staff are all in Breton tops and gilets and really care about the details, so you get the vibe. Don’t go anywhere else on the harbour front, although there is plenty of choice. Just sit back and watch it all happen around you.

I fly back from Nice in the driving rain and attempt to dry my socks underneath the hand dryer in the deserted airport loo. Le glamour! Le trench-foot! Increasingly, I am wanting to reduce air travel as I find the end-to-end experience stressful and unedifying, let alone environmentally questionable. From the small bottle situation at check in (which always trips me up no matter how much I pair back the liquids) to the turbulence onboard, if other modes of travel are practical, I’d much prefer them.

Having said this, I am getting on another plane in about seven weeks’ time. Clue: capital city where they like flamenco and are allergic to early nights.

A Bientôt!

October 2, 2023October 2, 2023

Mangiare, Mangiare

I don’t normally travel in September. I’m more of a June girl which for me is the perfect month to get away. It’s not too hot, all the little darlings are safely in school, and you can get a head start on a really smug tan. It’s like the opening act to the summer and everyone is still pleased to see you.

This year, however, is different as I’ve spent it enslaved to a dissertation that needed submitting by 12 September. For this reason, I’m selfishly grateful the weather has been lousy this year, meaning no FOMO and no sitting behind closed blinds in a state of sweaty disarray trying to think of clever things to say. Instead, I’m getting to enjoy the final curtain of the season, which on the plus side means a bearable climate and no kids, but on the downside, guarantees tetchy service from exhausted waiters.

I’d originally organised a solo trip to Puglia to mark the end of my Masters but am being joined for the first five days by Chris, the best compass, translator and companion you can have. I fly into Bari, he comes cross country by train from Rome and somehow, miraculously, we manage to time our arrival at Bari Centrale station within minutes of each other.

Chris helpfully stands in front of the bin

Anyone who has used public transport in Southern Italy will know it is a haphazard experience. The driver will be a character and will probably be wearing a gold identity bracelet, but he will get you there eventually. Chris and I are on the last bus to Matera and have half an hour to locate the (unmarked) stop and knock back a celebratory prosecco. We triumph with both, arriving in Matera just as it is getting dark and cosily atmospheric. (Disconcertingly, it also reeks of wildfire from the forests that were alight 15km away but let’s gloss over that for now).

Much has been written about Matera as ‘the shame of Italy’ when the poverty was biblical, and the inhabitants were moved out of their cave-dwellings. This was in the 1950s and it is now a bougee place, attracting the Boden crowd and a lot of Australians who seem to have been released en masse across the boot of Italy.

Like many Italian cities, it has an old and a new town that are markedly different. You might remember the old quarter, or Sassi as it’s known, as one of the backdrops in the last James Bond film, and whilst it is panoramically cinematic, most of all it is primordial. Matera is reputed to be the oldest inhabited city on earth dating back to palaeolithic times and you can feel this ancient heartbeat in every stone slab. Incidentally these stone slabs are like glass in places, so do not do what I did and try and navigate it in flip flops, unless you want a slalom type experience.

I will be discussing food at length here so let’s talk for a moment about cucina povera, the local style of cuisine. I realise I have been spoilt by Sicily where even a garage forecourt will serve you up a decent arancini, but I was disappointed by the food in Matera which ranged from dismal to middling. Our first night brings us one of the worst meals I’ve ever had in Italy (or anywhere else for that matter – and I eat anything apart from organs). The regional pasta is called orecchiette which means ‘little ears’ but I get something different served up on the wrong side of al dente with chickpeas and chunks of dried-up truffle, doused in olive oil. As a dish – and a restaurant – it’s all fur coat and no knickers, and I end up leaving most of it and gorging on breadsticks. Chris, who is a vegetarian, is captive to the questionable delights of pasta with turnip-tops which isn’t even fur coat but is ubiquitous in Puglia and Basilicata.

Taking Cucina Povera to unacceptable limits

If you are staying in Matera, do take the advice of whomever is running your hotel on where best to eat and don’t be seduced by the twinkly lights in the seating area. It doesn’t guarantee quality or value for money. For the reasons above I won’t be making restaurant recommendations, but I will say stay at Il Belvedere where the staff are fantastically accommodating and the terrace views over (the delicious and expansive) breakfast are jaw-dropping.

Our next stop is Polignano a Mare which I chose firstly because it was accessible by train from Bari, but more importantly because I have a photograph of Sophia Loren sitting on the iconic Lama Monachile beach (and where Sophia goes, I must follow). The reality is that whilst there are plenty of Instagram opportunities here, Polignano is really part Southwold, part Southend-on-Sea and, although wandering around the old town is delightful, the best thing about the famous beach is looking down on it.

Lama Monochile – Better stay up here – the beach is hell

I say beach, it’s important to say you do not come to Polignano if you want a sandy stretch of coastline or a ritzy resort because it is really a collection of rocks. The water and the swimming, however, are wonderful and if you a sewage-swerving Brit, you’ll love the chance to get up early and sit with all the Nonnas who are taking their morning dip. Cross the bridge and turn left along the coast past the outstretched statue of Domenico Modugno – native of the town and writer of Italian earworm anthem Volare – and you’ll get to Lido Calla Paura. This is as good as it gets, and you can rent sunbeds and umbrellas and buy bottles of beer from cool boxes. We feel deathly pale against the deeply entrenched mahogany skin around us – another reminder that this is the end of the season – but one of the many great things about Italy is the lack of body shaming going on. Just eat your pasta and let it all hang out, tanned or not.

Lido Calle Paura – excellent swimming but take flip flops, it’s rocky

Back on the subject of food and the catering has mercifully improved. Caffe Dei Serfini in Piazza San Benedetto is great for breakfasts or an aperitivo and for an additional 5 euros per head you can sit with a friend on a tiny private balcony overlooking the sea. The best meal of the holiday is at pescatarian restaurant Mint Cucina Fresca in Via San Benedetto – the tenderest tuna steak and a pistachio parfait made by their pastry chef. The maître-de taps her finger to her head and signals the international gesture for crazy, as the Italian government cocks up the roll-out of the national emergency alerts by not co-ordinating the networks. This results in ear splitting sirens going off throughout the day on different phones, which could be heralding potential doom but isn’t. Love the Italians, but they are not renowned for their logistics.

Chris needs to get back to London for work and I am heading further down the heel to Lecce in the Salento region. I’ve pre-booked my ticket on the TrenItalia App which is cheap and straightforward, and the journey is an easy hour and a half through miles of olive groves. I always love arriving in a baroque town just after lunch when everything is slightly sleepy and deserted. Lecce is reminiscent of towns in Southeast Sicily, and I’m staying in Azzurretta Guest House which is a 500-year-old palazzo in the heart of the historic centre, run by the effervescent Tullio, a former high-flyer, who decided to downsize and take on the home that had been in his family for over a century.

My first real understanding of just how old the place is, occurs when a makeshift winch comes down to take my case up to the second floor. If you stay here, book one of the vaulted rooms which are spacious and comfortable – the ensuites are a bit dated but everything works well, and you’re given a carafe of local wine on arrival which suits me as a welcome. There are four keys to get in and out of the various doors (‘this lock, it is 300 years old, you need to treat it gently’) but you’ll soon get your head around it. Most of all, Lecce feels safe with CCTV everywhere, so you can wander around at all hours without worrying about much, least of all getting lost which around here is a pleasure.

The best thing to do in Lecce first thing is to head to one of the cafes at any of the stunning city gates and watch the locals gesticulating wildly to each other. They’re probably just talking about what they’re buying at the supermarket later, but it looks like they’re telling elaborate tales designed to out-shock each other. Teenage couples cling to each other on vespas and men, who wouldn’t look out of place in a Scorsese movie, puff on small cigars and drink espresso. A boy turns up with his school bag and is immediately smothered with kisses on his chubby cheeks by everyone around the table, as if they’ve not seen him in months. It’s obvious one of them is his mother. The cliché it seems is real.

Porte Napoli – one of the best gates in Lecce for people watching

Like any baroque town, Lecce is awash with gloriously over the top churches, their towering facades carved with gargoyles and other mythical creatures. There are forty in total, and it’s worth paying 21 euros for entrance into the four most famous – Lecce Duomo Cathedral which sits on a piazza that might make you gasp for breath, Chiesa di Santa Chiara, Chiesa di San Matteo and the particularly frilly Basilica di Santa Croce. This ticket will also get you to the top of the campanile for incredible views across the city. No Saturday afternoon in Southern Italy is complete without a spangly wedding and I get to see mine sitting outside the Jewish Museum next to Basilica di Santa Croce, sipping on a spritz and blinded by sequins. And this is just the guests, who congregate and pose like movie stars for the tourists’ eager photographs.

The floral Primitivos have so far outshone the food, but in Lecce everything I eat is amazing and I am now mainlining wheat and diary. Pizza and Co in Via Guiseppe Libertini sells the best pizza slices I’ve had anywhere (sorry Naples) and just across the street La Bottega Del Corso does delicious platters of local cheeses, olives and charcuterie if you’re into deli food. I particularly like Enogastronomia Povero which makes me vow to never eat our rubbery UK mozzarella again and as for the caramelised fig ice cream at Sensi Gelataria….it is outrageous. It’s hard to go wrong here. I order a basic bitch lasagne at local institution La Cucina Mamma Elvira and even this is masterly. I am rolling home to the rain.

As an intro to this part of Italy, it’s whetted the appetite of this gourmand, but next time it’s a car and some sand for me. Looking at the map, train journeys are eccentric here and it can take three times longer to get somewhere that looks three times nearer. I did a day trip to Ostuni – a white pearl of a hillside town and must see – in just under 40 minutes on a fast intercity train bound for Bologna. However, getting to the closer coastal resort of Gallipoli remains something of a mission. Italy doesn’t always make sense, but I can’t stop coming back for more.

June 11, 2023June 12, 2023

In Napoli….

Unless it’s New York, which keeps opening like a kaleidoscope and reinventing, I’m not usually a fan of visiting the same place twice. For Ischia, one of three islands in the bay of Naples, I have made an exception, if only to rewrite history.

My first experience of it nearly twenty years ago went down as the worst holiday of all time – a joyless cocktail of deranged travelling companion, subsequent high drama and ankles so swollen with infected mosquito bites, I couldn’t get my shoes on at Heathrow airport. The only saving grace was meeting a lovely American woman called Lisa who offered me the respite of an empathetic ear and plenty of prosecco. We reconnected later on social media and have stayed in touch ever since, so when she invited me to join her and her friend Ann again in the magical Castello Aragonese, I decided to abandon my usual travelling rule and see what else the island had to offer.

I arrive at Naples airport – a notoriously treacherous city to land a plane in – and am greeted by the reassuring sight of Bruno who is holding a sign with my name on. Naples is the gateway to the islands and if you can stretch to a car to get you to the port, I’d recommend it because this place, and its honking traffic, is insane. Ischia, about an hour on the fast boat, is a much sleepier sister to the glitzy and overrated Capri and remains unspoilt by tourism. Its big moment was as backdrop to The Talented Mr Ripley in 1999, where a white and pasty Tom Ripley first spies Dickie Greenleaf glistening on the beach. During my last visit in 2005, the Ishcitans were still dining out on its cinematic spoils.

As hardly anyone reads this blog, I can safely disclose the secret of Il Monastero without fear of a stampede. Situated half-way up the castle, it’s changed a lot in twenty years and is now far more Chi-Chi (with far less purgatorial beds). There are ridiculous sea views from the terrace and you can watch people and scooters make their way up the castle’s cobbled causeway like ants. Another happy new addition is the ‘secret garden’, a place which frankly you may wish to revisit in a meditation, with its allotments, citrus trees, olive groves, and small vineyard. Weeks of uncharacteristic rain have finally stopped, and everything is verdant green and blooming. The air is heavy with white jasmine and sea salt. Am I selling it to you yet? Ommmmmmm.

Ischia Porte is the pretty main town and only a 20-minute walk from the castle. There is good shopping along Via Roma and if you want an authentic and unpretentious dining experience where you can be serenaded al-fresco with traditional live music, head to Il Giardino degli Aranci on a Friday evening. Here you will witness what is effectively the island’s date night. Dressed up couples eating copious courses and banging the table to ‘Volare’, it’s got that Louis Prima 1950s vibe with black and white photographs of celebrities adorning the walls. This is old school Italy.

Back at Ischia Ponte, and it seems incapable of serving up a bad meal for this glutton. I can recommend Il Pontile for the coniglio all’ischitana, Ischia’s most famous rabbit dish, and nearby Auras for seafood and stuffed zucchini flowers. For a laugh-out-loud beautiful view, to be enjoyed with a limoncello spritz (Aperol, I bid you a fond farewell) and homemade canapes, the terrace at Hotel Don Felipe is the only place to be at the golden hour.

Expect to spend a lot of time on boats here, so much so that you may feel like you’re slightly rocking whilst stationary. We head to Capri as I feel it’s something I need to experience and, whilst its shoreline is undeniably breathtaking, up close its disappointingly low rent. Fortunately, Lisa knows what she’s doing because without her insight we would have spent the day sweating amongst teeming crowds of Japanese tourists and the badly dressed. (I’m not sure where Capri gets its reputation for glamour from, but they love a crocheted mid riff top here. Jackie Onassis has long gone). We heave our way up to the funicular railway because the taxi lines are snaking around the block and find an oasis of tranquility at Hotel Luna. Tucked away in perfectly manicured gardens, it has a view of the Faraglione Rocks and the flotillas of yachts that flock around them. Just gaze out and smell the oligarchs. Then go back to Ischia.

Just as I’m starting to feel relaxed, it’s time to go to crazy Napoli. Frenetic at the best of times, I am arriving on the night they officially win the football, so this is going to be a double whammy. My friend Caroline – whom I am meeting for dinner – texts me during the boat over and says, ‘are you ready for this?’ I feel my wobbly inner compass failing. How am I even going to find the hotel?

The first thing to say about Naples is they have an entirely different relationship with risk than say, someone from Nuneaton. Why bother with health and safety when you live on the edge of a volcano? I see an entire family – two parents and two kids – all bare-headed on the back of a scooter. The father is nonchalantly smoking a cigarette whilst weaving his way through the traffic, which is full of people flying flags out of the back of Cinquecento’s. The din of vuvuzelas is headachingly deafening, but the energy of everyone coalescing around this one team is joyful.

The only glamourous people around are the handsome Carabinieri with their immaculate black and red uniforms and their equally immaculate hair. If you want to channel your inner Sophia Loren, maybe save it for Puglia. This is a street-smart city that needs the right attire and demands comfortable footwear to navigate the hills. There is real poverty here, but I feel perfectly safe wandering the backstreets solo and peering into the tiny, industrious shops. Everything is graffiti coated and strewn with blue and white bunting in honour of the national game, and I pass a shrine that includes Christ on the cross and a photograph of Maradona, who remains a demi-god here.

There’s a plethora of churches – hey, it’s an Italian city – but my big recommendation would be Palazzo Reale which is a jewel box capturing a time when Naples was part of the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies. It can be found on Piazza del Plebiscito, Naples’ most elegant square (less so for me – it was covered in scaffolding from the football) and is all lacquered doors, chandeliers and sweeping marble staircases. I love walking around the interior, but The Hotel Transatlantico provides a harbourside escape from the heat and fumes and the best swordfish and tiramisu I’ve ever had. By 6 pm, I’m back in my room tapping into someone else’s Netflix account (always feels weirdly voyeuristic) and unable to move much until morning. It’s a lot, but it’s worth it and the Neapolitans are only too happy to welcome you to their city where somehow things work amongst the chaos.

Thank you to all my delightful travelling companions – especially Lisa with her encyclopaedic knowledge of Ischia and perfect taste. I came home without a single mosquito bite. What a result.

March 6, 2023March 6, 2023

Marrakech, Sweetie?

Marrakech is the shortest distance you can fly from the UK to feel like you’re in another world. Part boujee glamour, part squalor, it’s a fragrant city that’s on the hustle and isn’t going to give you an easy ride. As we leave the airport at night, a group of local men are shouting and gesticulating wildly over a taxi and everything smells like woodsmoke. ‘This is Africa’ grins our driver, as we pass the red, illuminated city walls and women in hijabs speed by on the backs of scooters.

I’m with my friend Paul to celebrate my 50^th birthday in this very 90s of destinations and if you’re going to do it, you may as well do it in a Riad. We’re staying in the beautiful Riad Tizwa owned by PR legend Daniel Bee and his brother, Richard. Whilst it has graced the pages of Harpers’ Bazaar and other glossy magazines, it’s unpretentious and deeply comforting. I have my own scarlet four poster bed fit for a sultana, sheets of a sky-high thread count and a bathroom that’s bigger than my bedroom at home. It’s supplied with generous, spice-scented products, including the local black soap which goes on like slime, but leaves you feeling baby soft. Breakfast on the roof terrace is expansive and delicious and is shyly served by Mouad who thinks I look like the Moroccan princess Lalla Salma (I do a smidge). Not much to complain about so far.

Paul and I have holidayed together before and have a rule of only doing one specific thing a day. If you are visiting this frenetic city and don’t want to return home exhausted, I would recommend this advice. A good way to kick off is a tour using With Locals to get you orientated to the chaos. We did a 2-and-a-half-hour walkabout with the exuberant Adil who showed us the souks and introduced us to some local artisans. It’s worth noting that Morocco is the land of the tall story. Six-hundred-year-old antiques you could pick up on e-bay, creams to banish psoriasis forever and tinctures to miraculously clear diseased lungs. We bought an exorbitant amount of saffron and two bars of soap for 70 quid. I then haggled successfully for some jewelled slippers and got a great deal. Financially, Marrakech doesn’t make a lot of sense.

Apparently they get 80% and the shop owner gets 20%. Likely the other way round judging by the size of his gold watch.

Jemaa-El-Fnaa is the main square in Marrakech and was a visual beacon throughout our trip, known simply as ‘crazy square’ due to the cacophony of drum beats and bustle. We tried our best to navigate by it using visual aids – ‘turn left by the tagines, past the lamb and onto kaftan alley until you get to crazy square’. It didn’t always work. A warning that if you’re an animal lover or of a squeamish disposition, you may need to look away here. Cobras sitting up pertly on the pavements, uniformed monkeys on chains, caged birds, marauding, skinny cats….and I won’t even go into the guy who looked like he had advanced leprosy.

Unfortunately, the Yves Saint Laurent Museum was closed for an exhibition fitout, but we saw the adjoining Le Jardin Majorelle which is Instagram heaven and you can channel your inner Patsy and Edina wafting around the palms and succulents. The Maison De La Photographie De Marrakech is also worth seeing if you love vintage black and white photography and there’s a lovely roof terrace café with views across the city. We sat there happily listening to the call to prayer and counting the mosques.

Maison de la Photographie. Beautifully curated with spelling mistakes on nearly every panel!

Two unmissable experiences fortuitously happened on my 50^th and if you want to feel like a birthday princess too, start off with an Oriental hammam and massage at the Hamman de la Rose. Led around in paper pants, we were steamed, scrubbed and daubed with unctuous potions. This was followed by sweetened mint tea and the best massage I’ve ever had. I was so relaxed I started laughing through the hole.

In the evening we went to Le Tobsil for dinner, a real Arabian Night’s dream. If you book, you will be met on the main street by a towering man in a fez who’ll lead you down a labyrinth of back streets. (Worry not, you are safe). Inside the candlelit Riad, there is hypnotic live music, strewn rose petals, the scent of sandalwood and orange flower, and endless plates of colourful mezze. By the time you get to the tagine you won’t be able to move. It is one of the great dining experiences.

You’ll be begging for mercy by the third course

Continuing in the glamorous theme and being a doyen of style, Paul insisted we went to the legendary La Mamounia for our last evening. Beloved of Churchill who has a bar named after him, it is awash with billionaire’s daughters comparing facelifts. If you’re not a guest you won’t be allowed onto the terrace, but the sumptuous Bar Majorelle serves up perfect cocktails and I recommend the Martinez (‘Gin and It’ as my Great Aunt would have called it during the war). We pushed the boat out and split a £30 hamburger which even Bill Gates would have been happy with, and had a lobster roll chaser. It was divinely decadent.

Morocco is a lot, but I’m definitely going back. I never got to ride a camel…..

Some Practical Tips

Get to Marrakech airport early. Even if you have carry-on, you still need to get your boarding pass validated and will have to queue. We counted six different security checks between the Ryan Air desk and actually being allowed out of the country. I use the word ‘checks’ lightly – they were pretty cursory, but still involved lots of pointless who-ha.

You can’t take local currency in or out of Morocco so will need to exchange your money at the airport. There’s a Bureau de Change and a few ATMs in Arrivals.

Your phone will cost you a fortune, so either get a SIM card or just stick to using Wi-Fi and downloading maps before you head out into the mayhem.

Err on the side of caution about brushing your teeth in the tap-water and use bottled.

Whilst I assumed the biggest bugbear would be the hot-eyed salesmen in the souk, it is in fact the scooters. Be prepared to swerve on a moment-by-moment basis as they ruthlessly cut you up in the narrow medina streets. And please, if you have a Germanic attitude to the green man flashing, don’t visit Marrakech. Other than watching to see which local is prepared to risk it first, often there is no indicator at all when you might make a death-defying dash across the road.

There’s a big Carrefour just outside the city walls where you can buy alcohol. Lots of good French wines available (although the Moroccan wine we had was also good). The bonus of being in a Riad is you can drink there.

Be firm with anyone trying to get you lost in the souk. They’re not giving you directions out of the goodness of their hearts.

I didn’t see many solo women on the trip and whilst it’s probably OK, I wouldn’t recommend it. Moroccans don’t understand the concept of men and women being friends, so if you’re travelling in a platonic relationship and they call them your husband/wife, just roll with it.

July 16, 2022July 16, 2022

Tour de France

These days, travel is a game of chance. An obstacle course of swerving strikes, illness and last-minute cancellation. Will your long-awaited escape from this mad island end in the bitter blow of disappointment at Gatwick airport? Will your bag end up adrift in a carpet of unattended luggage?

In a deviation from earlier plans, I decided to put the Aegean on hold and take the train to France, travelling from Paris to Bordeaux and onto Ille de Re. The last time I did anything like this I was 19, clueless and skint, lurching from disaster to disaster as is the rite of passage of all interrailers. This time there will be taxis, boutique hotels and not a whiff of a rucksack. Please. I’m fifty next year.

(A quick note on logistics. As anyone who has experienced them will concur, the French know how to do trains. Sleek, inexpensive and when they’re not striking, Mussolini could have set his watch by them. If you’re considering touring France by train like this, download the brilliant SNCF Connect app and plan your route in advance. The best site to consult for the latest status on all aspects of French travel can be found here)

The day I travel to Bordeaux from Paris, it is the midst of a blistering heatwave in south-western France. I awake from a sleep littered with anxiety dreams having dozed off in front of TF1 News, helpfully showing pictures of a train derailment that was finally having its day in court. It’s rumoured to be in the late thirties by midday and I have visions of melting tracks and rogue bush fires.

The best thing about train travel is you can see the country and your suitcase at the same time. I’m on a double decker train and it feels luxurious for forty quid. By the time I get to Bordeaux, it is a ridiculous 41 degrees, which if you need a translation is nearly 106 Fahrenheit. The last time I have known heat like this I was in a canoe on the Orange River in Namibia. I look at my phone and wonder if it will spontaneously combust.

I’m staying in what’s known as the Golden Triangle of Bordeaux at the Hotel Konti which truth be told is a bit fur coat and no knickers. They’ve upgraded me to a bigger room with an adjoining suite which I’m inexplicably not meant to use, but nobody would know if I did. I arrive with a snapped off suitcase handle after my taxi driver yanks it out of the boot with too much vigour. I really need to learn to travel lighter and decant my toiletries. It is my voyaging downfall.

Bordeaux

Sheltering under an awning near the hotel with an Aperol Spritz I watch my sweat-clad waiter stare up at the sky like the apocalypse is coming. The forecast is thunder and lightning at 8 pm followed by brilliant sunshine an hour later. I decide to escape to the Miroir D’Eau on the bank of the Garonne to cool off. It’s really a flâneuse’s dream here as the location of the river means it’s hard to ever get too lost and the Bordelaise are full of character and very watchable.

The city feels like the embodiment of old France. It’s got the classy vibe of Avignon, yet it’s so much grander and has a multi-cultural atmosphere that’s unusual in cities outside of Marseille. The ancient links between Bordeaux and England run deep, as after Eleanor of Aquitaine had finished with Louis V11, she married our Henry Plantagenet, resulting in three centuries of Anglo-French government in the city and a booming wine trade between the two nations.

There’s a smattering of largely empty English pubs and on my wanderings, I count The Charles Dickens, The Sweeney Todd, The Dick Turpin and, to bring things more up to date, Le Brixton. It also seems to be a city that attracts groups of British men in their fifties and sixties on gastronomy tours…. apart from this though we are very much en France.

A neighbourhood not to be missed is St Michel which is Bordeaux’s multi-cultural hub. There’s a big and bustling brocante in Les Puces de St Michel where I stop for coffee and seat myself opposite two grizzled antique dealers who are brazenly counting wads of cash whilst being brought occasional objets d’art for approval. One picks up a freakishly long and ancient hunting rifle and points it at the other, before laughing and camply sparking up a cocktail cigarette. Through the huge sash windows in the surrounding square there are all kinds of life peering out. I get the sense that whilst it looks grand on the outside, the reality within may tell a different story.

My main reason to visit this neighbourhood is for foodie’s haven Les Marché des Capucins and the legendary pintxos that are served on a Sunday lunchtime at La Maison du Pata Negra. It’s too cool to have a website, but get there at midday, grab a seat at the counter and choose from an array of delights which will give anything you may have had in San Sebastian a run for their euros. Just store up the colour coded cocktail sticks from each one and hand into the bar owner when you’ve fully gorged, and they will add up the bill.

Ille de Ré

It’s Tuesday and France is still raking over the coals of Macron not getting a majority. Breakfast television is full of this and of the freak weather. A man is interviewed holding three white hailstones the size of billiard balls and the camera pans to the smashed windscreen of a car. I’ve tried to decipher what the political pundits are saying with their polo necks and their crossed arms, but here finally is a news item I can understand. My taxi driver on the way to Bordeaux St Jean seems concerned about the future of France, although I point out that compared to us, everyone seems completely sane. He’s too polite to disagree.

Other than googling beaches, I have done no research on Ille de Re, so on arrival at a deserted La Rochelle Ville I haven’t a clue where I’m going. I flag down a taxi wildly like I’m on 5^th Avenue and warn the driver to be gentle with my now new suitcase. We cross a long toll bridge onto the island and it is now feeling very rural and is peppered with vineyards. Sometimes it’s good not to have too many expectations because it turns out that Ille de Re is ridiculously beautiful. It’s how I would imagine Nantucket or Martha’s Vineyard – only very Gallic – and it smells incredible. It’s fragrance of salty Atlantic breezes, pine forests and hollyhocks needs to be bottled.

Ille de Re – absolutely no riff raff here

My guesthouse (and you need to stay here – antiques, walled garden, amazing hospitality) is in the centre of a village called Le Bois Plage-en-Ré which is an ideal situation half way down the island. It’s less than ten minutes’ walk from the sandy, sweeping La Plage des Gollandieres and a ten minute bus ride from the main town of Saint Martin-de-Ré (be warned Line 3 turns up when it wants to). If you like laid back luxury this is the place for you. Lots of small dogs, a few Ralph Lauren look-a-likes in Breton tops and as much reasonably priced seafood as you can handle. It’s Midsummer’s Eve and there’s a disco band setting up in the square called Les Biscuit. There are stalls selling huge vats of mussels and there is absolutely no riffraff. I think I’m going to like it here.

I’m not sure you can write a guide to Ille de Ré as it’s simply a place you experience through your senses. As I’m walking back to the guesthouse, I chat to a man who tells me he is the unlikely combination of part time healer and part time local salt miner. I ask him what the residents do when it rains. ‘Nothing’ he shrugs. The island, which is full of cycling paths, is very much an outdoor destination. Its local population is around 20,000, swelling to 250,000 in August. Don’t come in August would be my tip.

If you need an injection of urban life, atmospheric La Rochelle is a one-hour bus ride away. My only knowledge of this city is through the 1980s Tricolore French textbook where sadly I also left my ability to speak the language. Sandrime and Pierre buy a ham baguette and it is good. I would like an Orangina, please. Je suis en rock star. Well, OK, not je suis en rock star, but you get the drift. The only downside of wandering around this lovely city was the sudden downpour that forced me into a insalubrious harbourside restaurant where I made the mistake of ordering ‘un piece du boucher’. It turns out that this is French for lucky dip of mystery meat and, whilst I’m not suggesting that this meal once won a race at The Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe, I did have to send it back.

So, the love affair with France (and trains) continues. On my way back I found myself wandering the concourse at beautiful Gare du Lyon, staring up longingly at departure boards. The continent of Europe is so wide, Mein Herr…..

March 19, 2022March 19, 2022

We’ll Always Have Paris

So, it turned out that Greece wasn’t the word. But then neither was Malaga, Sicily, Nice or the West Coast of Ireland. Yet finally, finally I get to leave the UK, my quest for spontaneity, variety and gratuitous eating only a Eurostar away. Of course, it has to be Paris, the ultimate flâneuse city, where I will endeavour to get my groove back. As someone murders an Adele cover on Elton John’s piano, I look up at Tracey Emin’s neon I Want My Time With You and wonder what has taken me so long.

On the subject of Paris, I reside firmly in the camp of the late and much missed Anthony Bourdain. Eat loads of cheese and don’t make any f***ing plans. The last time I visited was during the bright, optimistic summer of 2006. I’d just ended an ill-advised and torrid affair with a theatrical agent and had decided to resume the recovery position in Paris and get down to the essential business of eating cheese without plans. (Well, this was not strictly true. My only other aim was to visit Versailles, arriving to find a sign draped across the Hall of Mirrors that said: ‘Closed for Refurbishment’).

Nearly two decades on and what is most noticeable is how warm and welcoming everyone is. This is not the Paris I recall. I’m expecting to be here under sufferance with my little backpack and my horrible French. So when did everyone become so charming and hospitable?

Notre Dame still standing. I know how it feels.

During my last visit I stayed at the precarious Hotel Esmeralda opposite Notre Dame, run by a gruff, chain-smoking septuagenarian who was not imbued with charm. She had a black eye patch and exuded the air of a woman who’d spent the Occupation surreptitiously poisoning members of the Gestapo whilst also supplying them with girls. By contrast, the lovely man at the twinkling and highly recommended Hotel Henriette tells me how much he’s missed our accents, shuddering over having spent the past two years with no-one to entertain but French tourists. I sympathise wholeheartedly and secretly wonder how he’d fancy back-to-back seasons with ‘Jeanette and Dougie from Manchester’.

It seems we’ve all felt claustrophobic.

Saturday Evening

I have no inner compass, but I do have google maps and a vague recollection of the Ille St Louis. I want red checked tablecloths, proper grown-up waiters and beaucoup de produits animaux and I find it all in the Café St Regis. I realise that since 2020, whilst I’ve spent an inordinate amount of time alone, I’ve done it largely in the same two or three places. The stimulation of new sounds, smells, sights and tastes all happening at once is quite the thrill. I order another glass of Bordeaux and the last éclair and stare out the window at a chic woman promenading with a small dog.

Talking of things the size of small dogs, it is worth mentioning here that whilst Paris is the City of Light, it is also the City of Rats. I spot one hurtling towards me in the dark as I walk past Shakespeare and Company and get ready to boot it across the boulevard. Happily, it darts back into the park and this is my only encounter because I am not a fan. Oddly, they are less visible in the ritzier arrondissements.

Sunday

Paris early on a Sunday seems to me like London used to be in the 80s – quiet and taking a moment to reflect. I’m walking towards the Jardin du Luxembourg in the sunshine and there’s hardly anyone around, just a man hanging over a wrought iron balcony on the 6^th floor of a Haussmann block. He stretches and greets the day with a deep intake of (probably) Gauloise and is one of the few defiant smokers I see because Parisians now have better plans for their lungs and the Jardin du Luxembourg is a mecca for well-heeled joggers circling its fountains and manicured avenues. The daffodils are yellow and blousy, and the blossom is just on the cusp of bursting out of bud. I find myself humming April in Paris one month premature. It’s been a while since I’ve seen anything this beautiful.

I’m in the neighbourhood for the Pioneers exhibition at the Musee du Luxembourg which runs until July 2022, so if you like the idea of Paris in the 1920s and you’re interested in female artists, don’t queue up at The Louvre, just come straight here. The starry – but certainly not the only – highlight are three paintings by Tamara de Lempicka; notoriously difficult to acquire as they so often adorn the walls of Hollywood stars.

One giant plateau mixte and quick detour to the hotel later (because NOTHING says ‘glamourous mini break’ like having to return early when you’ve forgotten to take your HRT #middleagedparis) and I’m back flâneuring along the Seine. The department stores here are not to be missed. Forget the shopping, just go and gape in wonder at the Art Nouveau glory of the Galeries Lafayette or at La Samaritaine in the 1^st arrondissement where there is a bar on the top floor that is ideal for cocktails and people watching in a spectacular peacock themed setting.

Dinner in the evening at the literary Les Deux Magots in Saint-Germain-des-Prés. It’s a bit of a cliché but I feel the need to channel my inner Simone de Beauvoir and the food is delicious, if a little pricey. I’m feeling slightly sniffly and start to wonder whether I’m catching Covid before remembering the sheer quantity of red meat, wine and dairy I’ve been consuming in the past 24 hours. Oh, that’ll be it then.

Monday

I walk right across Paris to Montmatre, a place I haven’t seen since I was fourteen. There are lots of Americans in ill-fitting berets and one walks past my café table in the Place du Tertre clutching an obscenely large punnet of frites and talking loudly about Van Go. It’s the most touristy experience I’ve had since I’ve been here, but it is still a charming place and the thought of being lucky enough to sit in a café – in the sun – on a spring day – in Paris – with a glass of rose – well, you can’t complain. The artists, who look like salty old dogs, congregate in the square and try to sell you a portrait or a caricature, but they do take no for an answer and they will leave you to daydream. The air is noticeably fresher here, the backstreets are genteel and the view from the Sacre Coeur is worth knocking yourself out for on the climb.

Au Petite Montmatre opposite the famous Abbesses Metro specialises in Croque Monsieur done right, so I take a pit stop here before meandering down through sordid Pigalle and then onto the drama of the Paris Opera. The self-guided tour doesn’t allow you into the auditorium, but the main reception room more than makes up for it with its jaw-dropping beauty and gives the Hall of Mirrors I never got to see a run for its euros.

There are so many things to see and do in Paris but focus on a few arrondissements and follow the food and you won’t go wrong. By Tuesday I am nine parts dairy and feeling infinitely more relaxed than I have for a long time. The Eurostar gets me home in under three and a half hours and for the first time in two years I feel I’ve finally had that thing that’s been the holy grail of the pandemic – a new experience.

La Flâneuse is back.

February 14, 2021February 14, 2021

Please Say Greece is the Word

With the sap slowly rising, I’m starting to think about rejuvenation and the faint beckoning of foreign lands. It is only a tantalising whisper because hey, who am I kidding? W1 is another country to me right now. Having not opened a travel magazine or gratuitously googled a flight for months, I’m beginning to have thoughts. I blame this reawakened flânerie on an excess of French subtitles having blitzed four seasons of Call My Agent in under a week and revelled in its Gallic glory. I don’t want to be in ‘locked down’ suburbia I heckle at the TV. I want to be on the back of Gabriel’s scooter weaving through the Parisian boulevards.

Small wonder I have cabin fever. It took over six months of pandemic for me to venture out on my one and only staycation, or as I like to call it, holidaying in the UK. We chose Norfolk, the Kirstie Allsopp of the outer home counties (smug, jolly sensible boot room, probably drives a Porsche at weekends), in which to celebrate Mamma Flâneuse’s birthday. My solitary holiday goal had been to emerge reborn on Holkham beach like a radiant Gwyneth Paltrow at the end of Twelfth Night, but even that small dream was thwarted. Instead I looked more like a dying duck in a hurricane as Storm Odette battered us all into submission. Even a visit to Cromer pier to buy a stick of rock seemed ill-advised.

Mamma F, delighted as she was by her gifts of rainbow umbrella, Doris Day DVD and three nights in a luxury B&B run by Andy and Steve, flicked through her BBC weather app on the morning of her birthday trilling ‘London, sunshine, Hampshire, sunshine, Cornwall, sunshine…..’. I began a blog entitled ‘Very Wet, Norfolk’, but abandoned it when I realised that having been confined to our room due to the howling gales, I didn’t actually have anything to say. To be fair, we were just thrilled by the change of scene and the opportunity to eat someone else’s food.

Since then my first foray back into the world of armchair travel began recently when I moved my 6^th flight in a year. Having realised that – quelle domage – I would most definitely not be revelling in the aforementioned Gallic glory of the Cote d’Azur this Easter, it was now time to face the inevitable facts. I would not be visiting the Musée National Marc Chagall nor would I be nibbling on socca from a swarthy street vendor or channelling Leslie Caron at some charming bistro. For god’s sake, can I not make a plan? Can I not even make a plan to make a plan?

With booking holidays now like a craps game, I rolled the dice and came up with Santorini in early autumn. Why not? Weather still good, kids in school (fingers crossed), fewer seasonal crowds (again, fingers crossed), best track record for containing COVID-19 in Europe and odds for middle agers like me being vaccinated, more than fair. This is how we decide our travel for now, through a series of calculations we hope will get us to our destination.

I first went to Santorini ten years ago and stayed in Oia in a tiny studio apartment built into the cliff that was reached by going down nearly 200 enormous stone steps – a nightmare for luggage and heels. It had no air conditioning, only windows that opened straight out into the sea and one night I watched a total eclipse from my bed because the holiday was that kind of magical. Below me, a Susan Sarandon-like dance professor from Texas was staying with her teenage daughter in one of the stunning troglodyte houses for which the island is famed. I don’t remember their names, but I still recall our conversations vividly (‘It’s not ‘get into shape’, it’s ‘get into condition’, let’s get the terminology right!’ and ‘Darling, the only reason I agreed to live in Texas, was so I could save up enough money NOT to be in Texas’). I remember how we clutched our mojitos when volcanic tremors rippled through the bar one night and how the waiter gave us an insouciant shrug as we looked expectantly across the caldera. All these moments are inextricably woven into that glorious trip.

Holidays are like strings of jewels. They are made up of people we’ve met, food we’ve tasted, art we’ve gazed upon, snatches of songs we’ve heard and sunsets we’ve watched. These are the things we are missing and the things we need to get back to when it is safe. Until I can dive into the Aegean again and hear the applause as the sun sets, I can feast on these memories. Just as well because when I looked in my Santorini notebook, I was too busy being awed to write much.

I will remedy that next time.