Spectator Life

Have you ever heard of Gorizia? Probably not, and yet it is decidedly pretty. It sits in the far north-eastern corner of Italy, where the Latin map frays into the Slavic. The centre is all pink arcades, pistachio green shutters, and palazzi painted in faded yellow. Beyond everything is the great pale wall of the Julian Alps.  The town has had at least three names - Gorizia, Görz, Gorica - because for centuries it was Habsburg, then Austro-Hungarian. That is to say: it was a quintessentially multilingual city, full of Italians, Slovenes, Friulians, Germans and Jews, halfway between Trieste and Vienna. Some called it the ‘Austrian Nice’. Imperial officials came here to die of tranquil old age.

Amid the myriad conspiracy theories swirling around last month when Harry and Meghan withdrew their children from an Oxfordshire prep school after a mere two days, there is one that has not been sufficiently priced in. If the school itself was based in North Oxford – as has been rumoured – then Hal ‘n’ Megs would have first fallen foul of the congestion charge that has been half-heartedly implemented in the city, and, as of 28 September, the deadly traffic filters. These have been rumoured for years but, only now have they finally reared their ugly heads. Their advent was delayed because of a similar piece of appalling town planning – the years-long closure of the Botley Road, Oxford’s main artery to the west – but now they have finally arrived.

The listing had not mentioned what turned out to be the unique attribute of our holiday digs. 'This cosy, charming two room apartment is located in a house right in the middle of Viscri,' it simply stated. This was factually correct: it was cosy and charming, if in an extremely rustic, antique style. And it is in the middle of Viscri, the historic Transylvanian village which has developed an international profile since King Charles bought a property there in 2006. But what the Airbnb page had neglected to highlight was that we were actually staying right next door to the King - which seemed a curious detail to omit.

When I want a reminder of gentler, slower times I find them next to a motorway. In a world of haste, of apps and hustle, service stations are a soothing throwback to childhood trips, when I’d get a rush of excitement as Dad turned the car off the motorway and into the slip road leading to one of these temples of capitalism. As I returned to the back seat I would be chomping triumphantly on the chocolate bar I got from the shop or sucking the lollipop I was handed at the end of the Little Chef meal.   Perhaps we never entirely grow out of that feeling.

This year, I had a hybrid holiday. I had booked to go to Catalonia, to Saint Antoni de Calonge, a gorgeous little town on the rocky coastline of northern Spain. Four of us had booked a villa, set back from the seaside promenade, which was perfect for people watching – anyone who knows Spain knows about el paseo – where people of all generations put on something smart and embark on a leisurely stroll, through streets, along the sea front, or across squares as a prelude to dinner.   Everything was perfect, from the morning swim in the almost still sea, weaving around groups of older women enjoying animated gossip sessions, to the coffee and tiny custard doughnuts served by smiling waiters.

Copenhagen’s obsession with cycling is evident from the moment you arrive. Walking out of the cavernous Central Station, on my first visit to the Danish capital a couple of weeks ago, the first thing I saw was bikes - hundreds of the things parked in a tangled mass of metal and rubber. The closer to the centre I got, two-wheelers started appearing with greater frequency, driven at high speed alongside roads largely denuded of four-wheelers. Clearly, this was a city designed for and ruled over by cyclists. I couldn’t wait to get out and join them.   The statistics about Copenhagen’s cycling culture are insane.

‘Assisi – best spiritual vibrations anywhere I’ve been, along with India,’ enthused the mustached British man next to me on the bus to Florence. Pleased to find a fellow anglophone, he chatted away happily, telling me how he’d retired, sold his house in London and moved to Assisi. He hadn’t yet learnt Italian but could manage enough Sanskrit to read the Upanishads. A spiritual dilettante. Wonderful. It was 7:30 a.m., I’d missed coffee, breakfast and a train, and my feet, after walking for eight days and 115 miles to commemorate the 800th anniversary of the death of St. Francis, hurt. Yet when my companion gave his verdict on how Francis had transformed his world, my cranky heart warmed to him.

‘You can never be too rich or too thin’: so said Wallis Simpson. Or perhaps Dorothy Parker. Or perhaps Joan Rivers. No one really knows. But whoever said it, Japan appears to have had it engraved on its national escutcheon. Japan is officially the world’s thinnest rich country, with an obesity rate of just 4.3 per cent of the population. By comparison, it’s 28 per cent in the UK and 40 per cent in the USA. A close comparison to Japan is Bangladesh, where the rate is 4.5 per cent - but where one in ten people is dangerously undernourished. These are extraordinary statistics. What on earth is going on?  The most reached-for reason is diet. Japanese food, so it is thought, is healthy and lean.

In the 1953 classic Roman Holiday, Gregory Peck takes Audrey Hepburn on a tour of the Italian capital on his Vespa. They scooter past the Colosseum, stop for gelato by the Spanish Steps, and sip champagne and iced coffee in front of the Pantheon. But Peck, that rake, sold Hepburn short. No Roman holiday is truly complete without checking out Ponza, a tiny island off the Lazio coast.  Ponza is to the Romans what the Hamptons are to New Yorkers: a safe haven in the muggy summer months. Plus, they can escape all those yokel English-speaking tourists who stalk the Eternal City. Ponza still feels like the Italy of La Dolce Vita. (Federico Fellini shot parts of Satyricon on its beaches.

Until recently, I viewed Málaga’s growing movement against ‘overtourism’ with scepticism and detachment. During the eleven years that I’ve lived in Andalucia, this gorgeous city has always been a tourist hub - which is good, because tourism drives Spain’s economy, accounting for 13 per cent of GDP and around the same proportion of jobs. The Costa del Sol, as Málaga’s coast is called, welcomed a record 15 million visitors in 2025, generating €22 billion (£18.8 billion) in revenue. Spain clearly needs its tourists, so should be careful about putting them off.

‘Quiet luxury’ is all the rage these days, the social media algorithms tell me. On Instagram and TikTok, Americans inform their followers that clothing with no visible branding is a true status signifier, before extolling the virtues of Barbour jackets and Loro Piana shoes. Aspirational people shouldn’t drive flashy new cars, they argue; instead, they should drive a 30-year-old Range Rover – as if the inevitable engine rebuild wouldn’t cost more than most people would spend on a car. When decorating, millennial grey is wrong, garish, and uninteresting; everything must be sage green with brass accents. There is nothing more quiet and luxurious than the B&Q colour-matching desk.

There are those Spectator readers who are fortunate enough to own their own luxurious villas in some suitably picturesque European locale. For the rather less well-heeled remainder of us, the closest that we are going to get to these places is either putting hand in pocket and hiring an Airbnb or, if we are extremely fortunate, being invited to stay with our affluent chums. On paper, at least, it’s a mutually beneficent arrangement. The villa-owners get to be entertained (and entertaining), offering their largesse in exchange for suitable gratitude. Their guests, meanwhile, get a free holiday somewhere wonderful, away from cares and responsibilities, and spending time with dear friends into the bargain. What could possibly go wrong?

Are you a ‘recliner’ or a ‘refrainer’? Do you ease your seat back on an aeroplane as soon as you can, or remain bolt upright and swallow your fury as the headrest in front is lowered a few inches from your nose? Or are you to be found in the slender oval on the Venn diagram; the waiting room between recliner and refrainer, hanging on until the food service has finished before caressing the recline button? Whose armrest is it? Nobody cares anymore. All anyone wants to know is will the person in front of them recline their seat?

I am in the 70th minute of my two-hour Balinese rubdown when that John Milton line swims into my head. You know: ‘Man can make a heaven of hell, and totes the opposite too’ (I may be misquoting slightly). More than three centuries on, the Paradise Lost epigram remains apt. I’m in a sun-drenched, five-star, tropical resort – and I’m miserable. It’s my own fault; I always forget how much I hate body massages. The hole in the table is too small for my muppet-sized head. It locks my jaw fiercely open, forcing the muppet to discreetly suck in his drool every half-minute. I’ve desperately needed to pee for the past half-hour, and the masseuse is prodding my taut bladder with the insistence of a Gestapo Oberleutnant whipping a prisoner for information.