Travel

Today

Robert Hardman

Prince Harry’s vacation from hell

Has grace-and-favor accommodation now fallen from grace – and favor, too? In recent days, we have learned that both our head of state and our (likely) head of government are giving up the free homes that come with the job. The King has said he will not live at Buckingham Palace once major refurbishment works are completed next year. His heir has let it be known that he won’t live there either. The monarch is very happy living at Clarence House, just as his mother was when she became Queen in 1952. Back then, Winston Churchill formally advised the Sovereign that she had to move into the Palace. No modern prime minister would dream of telling the Sovereign where to sleep, least of all one who plans to follow his example. Andy Burnham has said that he will not live at No.

Harry

Wednesday

Ysenda Maxtone Graham

Long holidays are the worst

‘Is there ever a holiday so heavenly that one is not counting down the days?’ a friend texted me last summer, homesick in the Loire valley. Another French friend messaged me last week from Montreal on day five of a holiday which, she was now regretting, she’d booked to last for nine days. She too was counting down. Having recently returned from a fortnight in Cambodia with four extra days in Hanoi tacked on at the end, I counted down in sympathy. Those final four days, from Saturday morning till her flight back home on Tuesday night, seemed to drag on for ever, over a desolate weekend – and I wasn’t even there in the characterless Airbnb flat among the skyscrapers and crack addicts. ‘I’m longing to see that tray of food in the plane,’ she texted.

Tuesday

Sara Wheeler

The clear and present danger of exploring the Gulag

On 21 February 2022, 35-year-old Charlie Walker flew into Yakutsk in the Russian Far East, ready to ski hundreds of miles up the frozen River Lena, pulling his gear on a sledge. He was heading to the Laptev Sea, a large peripheral bay of the Arctic Ocean. A neighbour at home in London had wished him luck. ‘Frostbite I can handle,’ Walker replied. ‘Let’s just hope Russia doesn’t start a war while I’m there.’ But it did. Walker writes: ‘That Special Military Operation changed everything: for me, for Ukraine and for the world.’ Obliged to change plans, he flew north-east to Batagay over the Verkhoyansk Mountains, and from there set out over the Yana and Omoloy rivers.

Friday

Melissa Kite

Once we Brexiteers get our Irish passports, we can go anywhere

“There’s a flat rat under the mat!” I shrieked, and wondered whether that was the sort of jaunty phrase that could be used for elocution lessons. I had lifted this mat by the main staircase to hoover the floor beneath it and there it was, a perfectly flat rat in the shape of a cartoon dead beast beneath this mat. I began laughing uncontrollably, because if you’ve ever seen a flat rat under a mat you will know that it is intrinsically funny, whatever your views on rats. You will laugh even if you don’t like rodents, or indeed if you like them way too much. Even if you are a member of the Rat Preservation Society, when you see one flattened paper-thin, stuck to your floorboards, I challenge you not to burst out laughing, while jumping up and down.

Wednesday

Melissa Kite

Once we Brexiteers get our Irish passports, we can go anywhere 

‘There’s a flat rat under the mat!’ I shrieked, and wondered whether that was the sort of jaunty phrase that could be used for elocution lessons. I had lifted this mat by the main staircase to hoover the floor beneath it and there it was, a perfectly flat rat in the shape of a cartoon dead rat beneath this mat. I began laughing uncontrollably, because if you’ve ever seen a flat rat under a mat you will know that it is intrinsically funny, whatever your views on rats. You will laugh even if you don’t like rodents, of indeed if you like them way too much. Even if you are a member of the Rat Preservation Society, when you see one flattened paper thin, stuck to your floorboards, I challenge you not to burst out laughing, while jumping up and down.

Thursday

Melissa Kite

All good holidays start with a border checkpoint

What a treat it was to escape to Cyprus for some sun and a last-minute mini-break. I left the builder boyfriend and the cleaner with strict instructions about a booking for a honeymooning couple, and they promised to put flowers in the room. ‘Go, get some sun,’ said the BB, for I was becoming peevish in the Irish rain. I chose Northern Cyprus because it was cheap and because all good holidays surely start with a border checkpoint. It was an hour’s drive from Larnaca, but I sailed into the Turkish republic no problem, in a taxi with disco lights on the ceiling. The hotel was just my thing, not too luxurious because luxury makes me nervous.

Wednesday

Rachel Johnson

True freedom is wearing someone else’s pants

Kyrgyzstan Forget the detailed itinerary – a 12-day trip that included the vertiginous 2,446-metre Kotorma pass on horseback – the packing list alone ran to a dizzying several pages. Sleeping bag, sleeping bag liner, three pairs of jodhpurs, chaps, riding boots, waterproof riding coat… I hadn’t seen anything like it since I went to prep school aged ten as the first girl at Ashdown House. My mother took me from Brussels to Harrods uniform department with an extensive list. I left with a St Trinian’s trousseau of navy kilts and Aertex shirts, tuck box and trunk. As D-Day approached last week, I managed to source most items for the riding safari.

Thursday

Melissa Kite

What really killed off the traditional B&B

To B&B or not to B&B? That is the question. Whether it’s nobler to offer breakfast to a guest is not in question, but whether it’s possible has been my dilemma since I started my guest house. After reading Ross Clark on The Spectator website saying that he longs for the traditional B&B, all I can say is I’ve really tried to be that landlady he describes, in pink fluffy slippers, frying bacon in a house with Artex walls. I’ve tried to take people who roll up late at night, I’ve tried to put the second B back into the enterprise, and I’ve tried to cope with customers who, like Ross, want the option of a cooked breakfast but not a fry-up – porridge, made just the way they want it, which is different for every single customer.

Tuesday

David Profumo

Alone on a vast fjord, surrounded by whales, beneath the midnight sun

As an angler in pursuit of fish across some 45 countries, I have travelled in a variety of precarious watercraft, from a Tahitian va’a to a coracle in Coorg, and remain convinced that all buoyant vessels are merely looking for somewhere to sink. In his study of the cultural history of small boats around the north Atlantic, David Gange, an academic historian and devotee of the kayak, argues that they are in fact transports of delight, and a key component in the survival of precious maritime communities.

Saturday

Mark Palmer

Farewell to the final phone-free haven

Shortly before Christmas, I visited Australia for the first time. It’s quite some journey but I was fortunate enough to fly business class with Cathay Pacific – and very plush it was, too. On the first leg to Hong Kong (a mere 12 hours or so), I was just settling into my pod (they don’t call them seats) and was about to nod off when there was something of an altercation across the aisle. ‘I understood that wi-fi would be available for the entire journey,’ said a grumpy middle-aged man, who looked like he was from the Middle East. He might well have owned much of the Middle East for all I knew. ‘We’re sorry, sir,’ said the air hostess. ‘It should be up and running shortly. One of the crew is looking into it.

Friday

Aidan McLaughlin

Le Sirenuse: the loveliest hotel in the world

From our US edition

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 the home of sirens whose enchanting songs lured sailors to their deaths. Le Sirenuse, a scarlet palazzo wedged into the cliff-face of Positano, boasts similar powers of attraction. In a place known around the world for its beauty, Le Sirenuse stands out. It has developed a reputation as the loveliest hotel in the world; somehow, it exceeds that billing.

Tuesday

Christopher Harding

The two faces of modern Japan

Japanophiles, look away now. A country renowned for inspiring fascination, warm feelings and not a little envy in its rapidly rising numbers of visitors – from crime-free streets to clean and plentiful public toilets – is in the grip of problems deeper and darker than you might imagine. The classic Japan itinerary reveals little of those problems. You’ll enjoy hyper-modern Tokyo with its fabulous restaurants, flawless transport and non-stop shopping and entertainment. You’ll jostle tourists and schoolchildren for the perfect view of the Golden Temple in Kyoto without losing your enthusiasm for Japan’s ‘eternal city’. Then you’ll fly home with pretty much only good things to say about Japan and the Japanese.

Sunday

Julie Bindel

A Brit’s guide to Mexican food

I’m in Mexico City and spoilt for choice as to where to go for a lunchtime taco. Taquerias are everywhere, each entrance best described as a hole in the wall: you step in from the street into a dark, cavernous stone vault and go past the bar, stocked with dozens of bottles of spirits and a fridge full of beer. I honestly feel like I’ve never had Mexican food before, except once in San Francisco. On that occasion, I went to a canteen close to the border with a friend, where we were the only two non-Mexican people eating. The salsas were bright as traffic lights and there was charred corn doused with chilli and lime salt, fresh white cheese and lime butter. The tortillas were the soft corn ones, unlike any I’ve seen in UK outlets, with hard, U-shaped shells made of wheat.

Tuesday

Gary Dexter

The strange economics of Japan’s all-you-can-drink pubs

Imagine going into an English pub and slapping a tenner down on the bar. ‘All I can drink, please,’ you say. ‘Certainly sir,’ says the barman. ‘You’ve got two hours.’ ‘Right then,’ you say. ‘I’ll start with a pint.’ Ten minutes later: ‘Whisky, please, no ice.’ Shortly afterwards: ‘I think I’ll have a Bloody Mary.’ Then: ‘Pint of that there. The green one. Please.’ Shortly afterwards. ‘Large white wine.’ And so the night wears on. You can have absolutely anything you like: cocktails, double G&Ts, rum and coke, Jack Daniels and Jack Daniels. Two hours is enough to render you senseless. You have drunk the equivalent of £100 of booze for £10, and you need a taxi, a chicken fajita and an urgent visit to the toilet.

Saturday

Jonathan Ray

How to drink (and not drive) in Arizona

I was in Scottsdale, Arizona and, to put it mildly, a little squiffy. Most folk go there to play golf (yawn) but I’d gone there to drink and, after a lengthy tequila masterclass in La Hacienda and several cocktails at Platform 18 (‘best US cocktail bar’ in the 2023 Spirited Awards, incidentally) in nearby Phoenix, I was also more than a little disorientated. No, don’t laugh. Firstly, La Hacienda – a fancy bar in the Fairmont Scottsdale Princess resort – has more than 240 different tequilas and mezcals on its list and, thanks to the resort’s resident Tequila Goddess (its term, not mine), they just kept on coming.

Wednesday

Matthew Parris

Lima’s monument to memory

In the pantheon of South America’s great hotels, the Gran Hotel Bolivar’s place is assured. Stand anywhere in the Plaza San Martin, one of Lima’s historic central squares, and the proud art deco 1924 building – all 300 rooms and five storeys of it – glistens dazzling white over the promenaders, tourists and hawkers below. These days it feels almost marooned, an island of elegant, old-fashioned opulence set in a sea of fuming traffic. The rich and sophisticated have deserted the old part of town for the cool condominiums and plate glass of modern Miraflores, but Miraflores has no memory. The Bolivar – every stone, every pane of stained glass, every monogrammed brass doorknob, even the black Model T Ford standing beside the reception desks – remembers its glory days.

Arabella Byrne

Class is melting on the ski slopes

It’s that time of year again. No sooner have you recovered from Christmas than the posh start talking about their skiing jaunts planned for the February half-term. But let’s use the term posh advisedly, because – make no mistake – skiing is now anything but. Where once flinging yourself down the Cresta Run may have been a solid-gold toff signifier or ‘the Sloanest sport’, according to class anthropologist Peter York, now it simply means that you’re rich. No snow cannon pumping out snow on the low slopes can fool anyone. The fact that ski resorts are now melting before our eyes seems to be where this social morality tale ends. Skiing and British class have long been caught in a complicated embrace.

Rob Crossan

It’s all been downhill since Concorde

Half a century ago today, the Duke of Kent, Anthony Hopkins and 97 other diners had a meal of caviar and lobster canapés followed by grilled steak, all washed down with Dom Perignon. There was nothing too unusual about this slightly ostentatious menu, one that was a typical example of 1970s British fine dining. But it was a lunch that cost more than £1 billion to serve up. It was the first meal on board the very first scheduled flight on Concorde – the plane that, for close to three decades, made it possible to have breakfast in Belgravia, a meeting in Manhattan and still be home for supper in Soho.  That’s not a schedule that appeals to me (there’s nowhere decent to eat of a morning in Belgravia).

Sunday

Lukas Degutis

The many faces of Houston

If Greta Thunberg ever docked in Houston, it wouldn’t be for long. Freeways stretch to 26 lanes, flaring oil refineries light the night sky and sports stadiums are sealed against the humidity with year-round refrigeration. At an Astros baseball match, a poster bluntly reminds attendees ‘TODAY’S GAME IS MADE POSSIBLE THANKS TO NATURAL GAS & OIL’. Between quarters at a Texans NFL match, a handful of fans score Chevron gift cards – ‘You’re going home with extra gas money!’ The crowd roars. Welcome to oil country. When fossil fuels enter Britain’s national conversation these days, it’s behind abstractions of net zero.

Friday

Rob Crossan

King’s Lynn is a town fit for a former prince

There’s a trading estate, which might possibly need an envoy. There’s a Pizza Express, whose user ratings online are the equal to the Woking branch. And there’s also a branch of Boots which has a solid range of deodorants. Should Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor ever acknowledge any perspiration issues, desire a pepperoni or feel like taking on a part-time job, he’s moving to a most suitable neighbourhood. At only around seven miles from Sandringham, King’s Lynn will be Andrew’s nearest town when he takes up residence in his new home.