Travel

Standing on a cliff edge looking at where the Blue Nile is just a trickle, watched by a gelada baboon on a distant rock and staring over miles upon miles of some of the most beautiful countryside I’d ever seen, one thought struck me: why is there hardly anyone else here? Ethiopia is stunning to look at, once you get out of the capital, Addis Ababa. It offers history, culture, architecture, religion and everything in between. Yet when you tell anyone you’re going there the most common response is: ‘Really? Why?

I love Amsterdam. I go every year for the galleries, the opera, the beer, the genever, the rijsttaffel, the brown cafés and, well, the fun. I’ve had many a fine time there, sometimes with and sometimes without dear Mrs Ray. It’s a top place.  I was cut to the quick, then, on hearing recently that the good burghers of Amsterdam had asked any British tourists in search of a ‘messy night’ to stay away. Admittedly, this controversial campaign is aimed chiefly at 18- to 35-year-olds on stag parties, rather than senior railcard-holders like me.

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.

‘You really ought to read more books – you know, those things that look like blocks but come apart on one side.’ Perhaps F. Scott Fitzgerald was aiming for a motivational tone – literature was his livelihood, after all. He was also a seminal figure in the writers' movement that began in 1920s New York and, over the following decades, took root in hotels across the city. Hot on the heels of Spectator Life's guide to London's literary hotels, here are five New York hotels with their own tales to tell. The Algonquin Hotel [iStock] The Algonquin’s association with the infamous Round Table of the 1920s has provided it with more connections to literature and the arts than perhaps any other hotel in New York.

Whenever it is suggested travelling south or north of the Thames to visit an ‘amazing’ restaurant I usually start conjuring up excuses. Across London seems a journey too far for food – but going across an ocean for it can be worthwhile. In NYC last year, I found myself with an evening off and, staying in the Lower East Side, made my way to the Bowery Meat Company. The menu was perfect: steak and seafood, excellent cocktails, and sides which included sublime creamed spinach and whipped potato that threatened to float off the plate. I usually eat oysters naked, but Bowery’s version – baked under a parmesan crust – was irresistible. The steak was thick, juicy and cooked to perfection, the fries hot and crunchy.

It’s approaching 6 p.m. at the Datai on Langkawi island, the tropical sun is still warm but no longer burny, and through my binoculars from my poolside lounger I’m watching the hornbills swooping down from the tall tree opposite and the sunbirds delving their long curved beaks in to some sort of exotic, colourful flora. By my side is a barely read copy of a classic work of literature and a half-drunk cocktail. I’m not sure that life gets much better than this. And that’s perhaps the main problem with staying in arguably Malaysia’s loveliest hotel.

Much is said, chiefly by Americans used to Amtrak, about continental Europe’s wonderful train system, though just how wonderful depends on where you want to go. On a recent journey from Southampton, where we had disembarked early morning from the Queen Mary, to The Hague where we missed our evening dinner reservations at the Hotel des Indes, I made certain discoveries. One was that The Hague, seat of the Dutch government, home to the king and queen, venue of the World Court and other august institutions of world government, is now off-line: i.e. it is not on the high-speed rail network that links up London, Paris, Brussels and Amsterdam. This seems curious and, in a way, charming.