Spectator Life

Spectator Life

An intelligent mix of culture, style, travel, food and property, as well as where to go and what to see.

Ice and identity in Lublin, Poland’s forgotten city

A Real Pain was one of my favorite films of recent years, a tragicomic exploration of family, history, place and identity featuring two Americans in Poland – specifically in Warsaw and Lublin. My wife was also quite smitten – with Lublin as much as the film – and on the back of this began planning a weekend in the eastern Polish

Le Sirenuse: the loveliest hotel in the world

Look out from the balcony of your room at Le Sirenuse and you’ll see the trio of rocks jutting out of the Tyrrhenian Sea that gave the hotel, one of the last true greats in the world, its name. The three jagged islets form an archipelago, which is said by the Greeks to have been

Don’t bother visiting Rome

As a general rule, once a city erects turnstiles to tourist attractions which were once free to visit, it is time to go elsewhere. Never more so than in the case of Rome. Last week the Italian capital introduced a €2 charge to visit the Trevi Fountain. Tight-fisted tourists like me will still be able to

Live-translation AirPods are the future

I have arrived in Naples, Italy, after an arduous flight from a chaotic London Gatwick Airport. I’m settled in a glamorous top floor apartment in the Quartieri Spagnoli – the romantic old “Spanish Quarter” – where Vespas fizz over cobbles and laundry hangs across alleys like flags of endless surrender. Most importantly, I’m clutching my