Spectator Life

There’s cold, then there’s winter-in-Canada cold. The kind where I’m jamming hand-warmers into my ski gloves — yet still somehow my fingers go numb — and snowflakes keep their intricate patterns as they scatter over my clothes (back home in comparatively balmy England, they’d melt instantly). But what did I expect? I’d made it my New Year’s resolution to travel off-season. Think Rajasthan in the summer monsoon, Sicily’s midwinter citrus harvest, Portugal’s Atlantic Coast when the record-breaking waves roll in come November. I’m not the only one with this idea.

Brexit, the gift that keeps on giving: from June 14, 2024 to January 2025, a reduced Eurostar service will run between London and Amsterdam. Why? Part-closure of Amsterdam Centraal leaves no space for the extra bureaucracy now necessary. Passengers returning to London will change at Brussels to go through security and passport checks, adding up to almost two hours of extra journey time. Global travel booking platforms such as OMIO have reported a surge in train travel in recent years. Cheaper prices (compared to flying) and environmental concerns are cited as the main drivers. But Eurostar’s capped passenger numbers and indirect routes will surely increase air travel in 2024, literally flying in the face of Dutch sustainability policies.

Kitted out in black Givenchy, huge sunglasses blocking out the snow glare, Audrey Hepburn is lunching al fresco in the French Alps when a meet-cute with Cary Grant ensues. It’s the opening scene of Charade, filmed just over sixty years ago in Megève — the chichi winter resort for both Hollywood royalty and true bluebloods during the 1960s. Back then, Brigitte Bardot, Yves Montand and Jean Cocteau were often seen swooping down its pistes. Imagine a snow-dusted Saint-Tropez and you’re on the right track. This medieval market town was hardly destined to become a darling of the beau monde. Megève was something of a backwater (the name even translates to “village in the middle of the waters”) until 1920, when Baroness Noémie de Rothschild spotted its potential.

At first, the sleepy little town of Mirleft looks like all the others on the 600-mile trek through the sands of the Sahara: half-gravel, half-concrete sidewalks, faded paint, brightly painted schools and the minaret of a new mosque jutting up toward the sky. But a mile past Mirleft’s dusty high street lie cliffs of California proportions — with swells to match. The cliffs arch down at a near forty-five-degree angle and into meaty waves rolling toward a point break. It’s here that a group of ten French and German surfers have joined up with Issam Surf School, heading down to Plage Sauvage, the beach below, in a 4x4.

The city of Edinburgh, Scotland’s capital, really comes into its own twice a year. Firstly is August, when its streets are thronged with revelers and amateur PR types (“four stars in the Scotsman!”) promoting their wares at the world-famous performing arts festival. And then the second comes at the end of the year, during the New Year’s Eve period of Hogmanay, which sees anyone claiming long-distant Scots ancestry taking part in the revels for a day or two, just as it seems anyone in Boston on St. Patrick’s Day suddenly remembers their long-lost Uncle Padraig or Great-Aunt Shelagh. In any case, Hogmanay in Edinburgh is a marvelous experience, freezing cold aside, and best experienced from the surroundings of somewhere comfortable.

You just can’t beat London at Christmas. Unless you’re lining up to get into the Tube station (never mind onto a train) at Oxford Circus, in the pissing rain. Then you’re better off in one of those glass igloos in Finland.  When I’m in town for the holidays, I find myself returning to a few old faithfuls, with a few old faithfuls. The Zetter Marylebone Keep this gem up your sleeve for when the crowds become a little too much. A warren of sumptuous suites and a lavish, candlelit parlor awaits at dinky Zetter Marylebone hotel, just a couple of streets back from shopping mecca Selfridges. Divide and conquer last-minute shopping with Mom, then meet here at lunchtime for a swift recovery.

Rebecca Illing’s résumé doesn’t read like your typical hotelier’s: circus school graduate, free diver, marine conservation advocate and certified death doula. So when the thirty-seven-year-old Londoner inherited a rundown guest house in Portugal’s northerly Minho region, the property was destined to be reimagined as something more than a straightforward B&B. Illing had spent childhood summers at Paço da Glória, roaming its cork oak woodlands and swimming in the nearby Lima River. But the circumstances of her return in 2020 were less idyllic. Europe was entering lockdown, and she was grieving the sudden death of her brother.

Who could resist the opportunity to visit a women’s island? Four years ago, I read an article in the New York Times travel section about an Estonian island called Kihnu, which the Times dubbed an “Isle of Women.” Its subhead asked “What would life be like without men?” and I wanted to find out, making a mental note to visit this peculiar island — “run by women” — someday, and my opportunity came last summer as part of a trip with my wife, Jen, and our teenage sons to Finland and the Baltic countries. But Kihnu, we discovered, isn’t a women’s island, or anything close to it. Before our trip, I reread the Times piece plus similar ones before combing YouTube for Kihnu videos.

Boston Harbor Hotel, 6:42 a.m. I tossed on a robe, had a fight with an unfamiliar coffee machine, then threw back my bedroom curtains to soak up the best part of chronic jet lag. Fuschia skies intensified before a beautifully fat, gold sun peeped above the horizon. Some hours later, a three-tier stand stacked with PB&J sandwiches, smoked salmon, vanilla bean scones and fig jam obscured the same uninterrupted view, from the Rowes Wharf Sea Grille downstairs. Proffered a frankly overwhelming selection of colorful loose leaf teas, the irony wasn’t lost on me, a Brit, as I raised a pinky. “Green Sparkling… Tropical Oolong… Organic Big Ben English Breakfast… Chai Imperial? How about L’Herboriste?

“There is too much Nutella in the cornetto.” Not the words you hope to hear while trudging up the craggy slope of the most active volcano in Europe, in the wrong footwear. Clouds of black dust kicked up into my nostrils. A white butterfly posed starkly against dried black lava.  “Come, ragas, I want to show you something. These are lava bombs. I am standing on thiiiiiiick liquid. The lava! It went splat-ta! Like pizza dough!” Our guide Vincenzio gesticulated at his bedraggled group, inwardly asking themselves why they’d volunteered to tackle Mount Etna in a heatwave. “A big mama. She-” A robotic siren interrupted Vincenzio mid-flow, screeching from a startled septuagenarian’s Nokia. A teenager patted down his jean pocket, confused.

In Pilley’s Island, Canada, a tiny fishing town of barely 290 people along the northeast Newfoundland Great Whale Tour route, there’s a memorial to the area’s dead. It sits on a hillside, with a view of the rocky and wooded bay on the left, and a direct line of sight to the historic church on the right. These aren’t any generic old dead people honored at the memorial, though. Nor is it a memorial for local war casualties (that’s up a small trail nearby) or to fallen firefighters (that’s in the next town over). No — this is a memorial to the people who have died in other terrible ways. The top of the memorial says only “TRAGIC DEATHS,” with small plaques naming each person with possibly a date and a single letter in parentheses to denote the manner of death.

Halloween traditions might hail from All Hallows’ Eve, the Christian celebration preceding All Saints’ Day, but that has roots in Samhain — a Celtic pagan festival. Long before Westerners carved pumpkins come fall, the Scots were sticking knives into "neeps" (turnips). Disguised children ("guisers") warded off evil spirits on the streets of Scotland centuries before brats in Gryffindor scarves demanded Twinkies.  There could hardly be a better place to spend the spookiest time of the year than Edinburgh, with its reliably moody weather and litany of imposing buildings. Those seeking to be truly disturbed need simply research the capital’s very real history of witch hunts, public executions and plague.

“For the bravest in the group. Exit Flow from the back.” “We’ve found it. It is insane.” “This is the best thing I’ve ever done.” The WhatsApp messages came through thick and fast. Then, a video of pitch darkness, rising steam just visible, festoon lights swaying in the wind. The unmistakable trill of “Bohemian Rhapsody” bleated out by drunken strangers. Separated on the last night of “The Flow,” Helsinki’s biggest music and arts festival, I’d lost my comrades to Sompasauna, a twenty-four-hour lakeside guerilla sauna-cum-DIY community space where anyone is welcome, and (almost) anything goes. For the uninitiated (me), getting naked and jumping in freezing waters seems a bizarre end to an urban music festival.

Bear viewing in Finland can be a cloak-and-dagger affair. We were told to meet our guide, Pekka Veteläinen, at 5:45 on a Monday afternoon — not at a landmark, but at a set of GPS coordinates deep in the woods, fifty minutes outside a town called Kuusamo, just one kilometer short of the Russian border on logging road number 8691. Here are some of the instructions we received. Wear dark clothing. Take ready-made food with you. Bring cash because credit cards don’t work in this wilderness. We had an early dinner at a “wild food” certified restaurant in the Karelian town of Kuusamo — it’s Finland’s seventy-fifth biggest town, a distinction that means the place still has more reindeer than people.

“You are Kevin?” “Pardon?” Embarking on a solo week driving around Mallorca, then losing my drivers license in transit? Not my finest hour. A fairytale wedding near the citrus grove-laden seaside town of Sollér brought me to the largest island of the Baleriacs. A chest infection, some big deadlines and three hotels to review an hour’s drive south of the venue inspired me to hire a car, so I could pootle around at my own pace. I realized my problem in Barcelona, waiting for my connecting flight. Paying for a coffee, I spotted my license was missing. I’d booked via OMIO (a journey planning site that pulls together trains, planes, ferries and coaches — I love that thing), which I quickly consulted to confirm the dearth of public transport on the island.

On Joe Biden’s first day in Lithuania, he skipped the opening dinner of world leaders at the NATO summit and made a beeline from the airport to his suite at the opulent Kempinski Hotel for a plate of spaghetti bolognese and some quality sack time. My introduction to the country a couple of weeks later involved no fanfare, but was far more memorable. I woke up in the 700-year-old Jaunpils Castle, in a fantastic, out-of-the-way place, lost to my teenage son in an archery competition there and then drove south on winding country roads to northern Lithuania’s Hill of Crosses, a place that better symbolizes the victory of faith over communism than any other. The Baltic countries — Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia — are often lumped together.

Brussels is the source of all evil to many of those who supported Brexit, and even for Americans. “What’s a good Christian boy like you doing in Satan’s den?” was the question of an Austin friend when I told him work had brought me to the capital city of the European Union. To its critics, Brussels is the bastion of the worst sort of Big Government, with the European Commission and Parliament issuing diktats to more than 500 million people across twenty-seven nations. But while the city is “full of nets” with which to trap you, as described by another friend who worked here on human rights legislation, it’s also a city of “hope.” Brussels has a rich comic book culture. There are the intrepid reporter Tintin and his sidekick Snowy.

Planning a foreign trip is a bit like watching a trailer for a film. The research is a preview of coming attractions. I almost never made it to San Antonio de Areco, a charming country town about seventy miles northwest of Buenos Aires, because it seemed extravagantly expensive and complicated to visit. But trailers can be misleading, perseverance is a virtue, and Areco, as the locals call it, turned out to be the highlight of my visit to Argentina last summer. With just a week to spend in the world’s eighth largest country by land area, my plan was to spend four days in Buenos Aires and three in a small town, a place I hoped would give us an idea of what the country’s gaucho heartland is about.

Forget Barcelona. Say sayonara to San Fran. And so long, London. Post-Covid, Lisbon has become a hub for the creative, hungry and cosmopolitan. A throng of new restaurants, wine bars and buzzy co-working spots has formed a playground for the young and ambitious.  They’re squeezing every last drop out of their free time, too, joining the tourists in thumping nightclubs before escaping to beautiful  beaches. But plenty of weekend visitors don’t know (or have time to discover) that the city is flanked by bucolic countryside, dotted with world-class hotels and agriturismos. A forty-minute drive can take you to pristine white sands, enchanting pine forests, retro beachfronts and sprawling national parks. Next time you’re in town, tack a road trip onto your city break.

Sunrise in Johannesburg, blazing a brighter red than I can recall seeing before. The orb seems unnaturally huge; burning my retina as it flashes through the thick canopy of leaves covering the largest manmade park in the world.  I’m looking out over the Koppies (“small hill” in Afrikaans) at one of Joburg’s most spectacular views, from Melville suburb’s highest point. Albeit, from behind a laptop. I’ve got a second coffee on the go at Pablo Guest House while attempting to carve out an itinerary for this last-minute jaunt. I’d jumped on a plane from Cape Town with Ashlee, a friend who grew up here. Her father lives in a looming school house stuffed with antiques, which she has the grand job of sorting through and selling on.