Sarah Jane O’Neill – The Flâneuse Diaries

July 6, 2025July 6, 2025

Porto – the Main Event

I’m in the back of a Bolt being driven through what the driver tells me is the most dangerous housing estate in Portugal. ‘Do I need to wind up my window?’ I say, looking dubiously at the two shabbily dressed men who are queuing up to get something through a small hatch. (Methadone? Food parcels? A Cornetto?) The apartments around us look partially derelict, tattered Porto FC banners up at some of the windows. ‘No,’ he replies, ‘we’ll be through it quickly. And you won’t believe what’s round the corner. Some of the richest people in the city’. He rolls his eyes in the rear view mirror and in no time, we are sweeping past a French Lycée bustling with parents and chattering children, and vast, palatial homes lining the wide avenue. Hackney to Holland Park in a moment. As much as I love Porto, it would be wrong to close my eyes to all that doesn’t work here.

It’s officially holiday time. My laptop is packed away and whilst I would have preferred to be reclining on a lounger with a dirty Pina Colada, the weather is not co-operating. Instead, I am indulging my interest in art deco architecture at the Foundation Serralves which sits on the other side of the estate. Porto is full of art deco and art nouveau buildings that continued to be built well into the 1940s, as the rest of Europe was being bombed and occupied. A few days earlier, I’d been on a guided tour of the city’s highlights, expertly led by a resident Russian named Olga who’d described this pink, iconic building as a must see. As ever here, the weather turns on a sixpence, and blue skies seep through from behind the grey, making the architecture pop. I can’t keep my camera off it. Porto is a game of two halves.

Foundation Serralves – better when the sun is out

The city has been gearing up for the Festival of Sao Joao, which takes place on the night of 23 June and throughout the following day, since I arrived at the end of May. Everywhere there are brightly coloured lanterns, small plastic hammers (more on this later), bunting and sound stages, upon which young people in black Professor Yaffle suits are rehearsing their fado. Fado seems to have a cache with the youth over here in the way that Morris Men dancing does not and, whilst I want to appreciate it, it’s too mournful for my liking. Give me clicking castanets any day.

Instead, I tune into my audiobook of Anthony Bourdain’s Kitchen Confidential, which is apt because I’m in exactly the kind of no-nonsense place that Anthony would love. The kind of place where diminutive old ladies in black pop socks glare at you and where your meal has been plucked straight out of the sea. Afurada is a fishing village in Gaia, across the river from Porto. It’s catering to the tourists now, but traditional Portuguese life has been going on here for centuries and it’s a riot of colourful tiles and religious icons, with nautical themed illuminations waiting to be switched on for the festival.

In the early evening, the smell of woodsmoke is already in the air as proprietors fire up their outdoor barbecues for the evening’s trade. I find one by the harbour side, with chequered paper cloths and a smorgasbord of seafood arranged in ice. Portions are enormous – four fresh, salt encrusted sardines, chips, salad and a carafe of questionable wine that could be Lambrusco from the 80s, (I won’t complain – they’ve got to make a profit somewhere), all for less than 15 euros. I walk back along the boardwalk that lines both sides of the river and watch the light changing as the day tips towards sunset. This is living.

I have made a plan for the festival and will be returning to the terrace at Casa Camelia with a couple of people who are also new to Porto. The party is made up largely of hotel residents and we arrive clutching our plastic hammers which squeak when you hit someone on the head with them, the tradition on this night. It springs from the original version of using a long purple allium and I can see how it might get old by 11pm. I meet more Americans, although I suspect one couple might not be dashing from Donald when the man asks me, ‘Isn’t London really dangerous now? I hear it’s been overrun with…..’ He stops speaking and looks at me expectantly. It’s not the first time I’ve heard this out here and I attempt to disabuse him, but he doesn’t seem convinced.

Alongside the fireworks, the other tradition is lighting a sky lantern and releasing it with a wish. Unlike the Portuguese, we are unschooled in this and grapple valiantly with our fragile vessels, until they fill with hot air and sail majestically up into the atmosphere. I know my new friends – self declared refugees – are wishing for real estate, and for different reasons, so am I. By ten thirty, the night sky is full of pin pricks of light.

Like so much in life, joy and tragedy live along side each other. As we watch the festivities unfold, a thick dark cloud is beginning to billow from one of the houses below the terrace. It has caught alight from one of the lanterns – not ours thank god – and there is a panic sweeping through the guests. By the time I leave the party, the fire engines are wailing and I’m walking back through streets that are erupting with an oblivious, bacchanalian energy. It’s the weirdest ending ever to a night out.

My first trip outside of the city is to Pinhao, a tiny village on a sweeping bend of the Douro about two and a half hours inland. I’m visiting a vineyard called Quinta de la Rosa and have booked a wine tasting. I’ve been warned not to sail there because it is mind numbingly boring to look at banks of grapes for six hours, so I choose the train from the azulejos covered Sao Bento station, clambering onto something that looks like it hails from the 1950s when Portugal was still in the thick of a dictatorship. Devoid of comfort or air conditioning, it’s a rackety ride, punctuated by loud blasts of the horn, but within an hour we are out of the urban sprawl and hugging the banks of the river. We try with limited success to film glimpses of it as we whizz past and the heat begins to climb.

At Pinhao, I flag down a passing taxi driver who gleefully takes seven euros off me for a four minute ride. In Portugal this is extortion, but I allow her to rip me off because it’s now a balmy thirty eight degrees and I don’t know where I’m going. I make it just in time for the start of the tour, comprising of four Brits, who have made it out of the Algarve, and two Americans. ‘Oh, it’s just one is it?’ says the receptionist as I try not to sweat on the desk. Ah. The unmistakable soundtrack for the solo female traveller. That look of pity and disappointment that you allow to either make you contract or expand. Throughout the tasting I dominate the conversation, feeling as ever compelled to crack jokes about my shortcomings. I narrowly avoid referring to my tawny port as ‘Christmas in a glass’, an embarrassingly parvenu observation when you are seated next to someone who is doing a masters in wine management. To be fair, you could argue that in life I have already achieved this qualification. I really need to find some food to mop all this up.

Nobody puts SJ in a corner, so I chose a table in the middle of the restaurant upstairs and watch as people on the terrace are elegantly spritzed with mist. In the far outside corner, a patrician looking man in fine linen, also dines alone, but I reckon from his aristocratic bearing that maybe he owns the joint. From his position outside, he is unable to hear the cacophony in the kitchen, as angry Portuguese comes out of the chef’s mouth like bullets. The staff sail like swans through the swinging doors, and plates appear as canvases for finely curated works of art. Everything Anthony Bourdain says about restaurants is truth.

June 11, 2025June 11, 2025

Porto – The Opening Act

‘The Portuguese have a mournful soul’. This is what a guest tells me at my first Meet Up in Porto and it’s not the first time I’ve heard it. This may be a Latin country, but it is not the joyfulness of the Spanish or the high-octane exuberance of the Italians that sweeps you along, but something gentler and more ancient. Something that speaks of a life lived on the outside. Here, in this cocktail of the raw and the gentrified, Porto is having its moment. A fashionable enclave for people who don’t care about fashion and, as I’m discovering, a hub for the political waifs and strays of the Western World.

I’ve been here for less than 48 hours and am already signed up to four social events. There are so many weird and wonderful things you can do in Porto. Perspectives on Polyamory, anyone? How to heal your anxious avoidant attachments? Cuddle Parties? Seriously. Can’t I just paint a tile or something? Sticking to the purely vanilla, I join a group called ‘I Don’t Hate Mondays’ which takes me down a shabby cul-de-sac where no tourist would ever venture. I press hesitantly on a brass buzzer and hope for the best.

Casa Camelia is a hidden, boutique hotel with bougainvillea filled terraces that open out onto the kind of panoramic view of the Douro that makes your jaw drop. Owned by a Swiss architect with a penchant for motorbikes, he hosts monthly drinks for the international community that gravitate here, and speaks five languages, effortlessly moving from German to English to Portuguese and back again.

Porto is packed with Donald Dashers – people considering their options, wrestling with golden visas and trying to decompress from the shock of recent history. I meet my first Donald Dashers of the trip at the social, she an artist and he an exporter of Tibetan singing bowls and bracelets, both delightful. We have a lengthy discussion about the sheer awfulness of it all, until he pauses and gesturing towards the river says, ‘And then. There’s this’. It’s a sentiment I completely understand.

What a different kind of lark it is, this slow travel business. I am amazed at how you can lift a life, place it 1,280 miles away and have it feel familiar, yet profoundly altered. I sleep well in the apartment and wake up early to the sound of seagulls and the shifting tides of the weather which seem to change on an hourly basis. When I finish work at 4, I head straight out and wander without a plan, other than maybe to find some seafood, visit one of the brightly coloured churches or sit by the river and watch the show.

Everywhere you look in Porto there is transport and forward motion. Early 20^th century trams, trains, pleasure boats, cable cars, funicular railways, Rabelos that were once used to transport barrels of port wine from the Douro Valley, even a helicopter service for the more boujee traveller. When you come to Porto, you get the benefit of two cities. The craziness of the one you expected and the one on the other side of the river – Vila Nova da Gaia, still fizzing with life, but home to sedate, aristocratic port houses and rose gardens. Connecting the two worlds are six bridges, with the grand dame being Dom Luis I, the only bridge in the world with two levels that can be crossed by train and on foot. At weekends, it becomes a stage for fearless teenage boys, who vape cavalierly and gee up the crowds to cheer as they dive into the water. Twenty years ago, the tall, multi coloured houses along the river at Ribeiro were inhabited by locals, but now it’s full of shops and restaurants and the fruit and vegetable stalls are gone. I wouldn’t say the Portuenses hate tourists, but they are bemused by the way in which their city has been monetised.

On Wednesday evening I join a writer’s group and spend an hour and a half scribbling a stream of consciousness and grappling with plot themes. Amongst the group, I find more sheltering Americans, an embarrassed Israeli, a South African and a smattering of Portuguese writing science fiction and poetry. I have not at the time of writing met a single Brit at a meet up. I’m assuming they’re all in the Algarve channelling their inner Judith Chalmers. What is it about the south of this country and my fellow compatriots? It’s pretty enough, but it doesn’t have the history (fun fact – Porto is older than Portugal itself) and even the beaches, with all their salty drama and winding boardwalks, are superior. Of course, you can’t actually swim here. No one ventures into the Atlantic unless they’re clutching a surfboard, but there’s not a better coastline in the whole of Europe than Praia de Miramar, just a 15-minute train ride outside Porto.

Praia Da Miramar – keep walking along and it just gets better

On a non-working day, I’m averaging 25K steps and when my calf-muscles have had enough, I jump into a Bolt – cheaper than an Uber and far more popular over here. They are mostly spotless, electric cars driven by Portuguese women who are fitting it around childcare and whilst it’s something I never do in London, I won’t pretend it’s not convenient. In the spirit of other things I wouldn’t normally do, there is a walking group on Saturday mornings which is allegedly 10K steps, but according to my phone is at least double. Walking along the upmarket Foz Do Douro shoreline it’s easy to recover in a sun lounger and a cocktail, which over here is a Porta Tonica or a White Sangria.

Roll on 17 June and I’ll officially be on a staycation and awaiting the biggest festival of the year – the Festival of Sao Joao. Plans are already afoot….

January 8, 2025January 8, 2025

Lots of Carbs, No Marbs

It’s taken me until New Year’s Eve to find the Cordoba I’ve been looking for and it’s only two minutes from the hotel. Los Mosquitos is everything I want in a Spanish bar. Azure tiles, large hams hanging up on iron hooks and black and white photos of matadors staring out triumphantly under garish strip lighting. The clientele is mostly elderly so they know what it’s like to live under a dictatorship. There’s a lot of Iberian banter flying around which seems to step up a gear when a man shuffles in, orders an espresso and adds a shot of sambuca. He is closely followed by the Lotto Seller, a potential walking jackpot with three long strips of tickets attached to his coat by bulldog clips. One of the diners springs out of his chair to purchase one, hoping, like all of us, that his luck will be in for 2025. It is 9.22 am and for me, this is when New Year begins. Scoffing bread and cheese in a humble bar that has no website, tucked away in an Andalusian back street. I don’t know anyone. I don’t understand anything that’s happening around me, but one thing I know for sure. I am over it in the UK.

Southern Spain is awash with British tourists, flying in from airports I’ve never even heard of (Prestwick anyone?) and whilst not many venture this far inland, there is a lovely moment of Schadenfreude at Malaga airport where I scoot through on my Irish passport, leaving a snake like trail of compatriots looking perplexed and thunderstruck. Oh well. It’s what so many of them voted for. They’ve already been delayed for five hours due to the fog and now they are being treated like second class citizens from a different country. I wonder when we will ever have a grown-up conversation about this bungled catastrophe, this right-wing stitch-up? Judging by the gutlessness of so many of our politicians, probably not in this generation.

I want to write about Malaga as it is the place that spoke to me most, but if you do decide to visit Cordoba – and you should – stay at Patio De Posadero, a north African inspired boutique hotel of six guest rooms built around an actual Roman wall. Run by Lisa, Jose and a team of women who really get hospitality, it is one of the best hotels I’ve ever stayed in, and that is no hyperbole. Do have a candlelight Hamman, do get to the Mezquita first thing in the morning so you can take photos of the eternal arches without too much human obstruction and do pre-book your ticket up to the Bell Tower because it sells out fast and these are views not to be missed. The best restaurants can be found dotted along the river and the best wanderings are north of the centre, particularly around Barrio San Lorenzo. You will feel lost and bewildered amongst the whitewashed houses with their black grilled windows and red poinsettias, but this is all part of the fun. Cordoba is famous for its patios, so whilst peeking into people’s private gardens is encouraged, the twelve formal Spanish gardens of Palacio de Viana are the height of Andalucian romance and a must see.

The high-speed train between Malaga and Cordoba takes just under an hour and travels through epic mountainous terrain and olive groves. I’ve heard mixed reports on Malaga but on arriving I feel instantly more buoyant. New Year’s Day is always an odd time to arrive in a new town and by 6 pm, exhausted waiters are already looking to close the kitchens. Ravenous, I manage to find a small restaurant still willing to serve me behind the Plaza de la Constitución in an area once regularly frequented by Lorca called Pasaje de Chinitas. A glass of decent rioja and a braised beef cheek stew with fried potatoes costs me a laughable twelve quid. I eat it whilst finishing off Stanley Tucci’s new book ‘What I Ate in A Year’ and am happy. (The last chapter sees Stanley and his brother-in-law visiting Guy Ritchie’s estate for a shooting weekend. As a culinary experience, it’s the most decadent thing you’ve ever read – Guy’s films are like his life – or perhaps it’s the other way round).

No one stints on the Christmas lights in Malaga. These are the Dolly Parton of festive decorations – gaudy, over the top and instantly lovable. I wander back dazzled towards the hotel and discover enroute the other thing Malaga is good at, surprisingly, is gelato. Luccianos uses Argentinian dairy to make flavours you didn’t think existed, and the passionfruit cheesecake is like a party in my mouth. I will, of course, be discussing food more shortly, but first let’s talk about aesthetic.

You do need to angle your camera sometimes in Malaga. It’s not all pretty. For someone who is navigationally challenged, I find having a sea on one side of me reassuring and would recommend a long walk via the glitzy port, through La Malagueta, up to the fishing village of Pedregalejo and finally onto El Palo. You will pass JCB diggers and red and white tape that looks like a crime incident in the sand (it isn’t) but then there will be palm trees, and much quieter, more attractive stretches where local people are exercising in the sun and generally living their best lives (sigh). The draw in this area are the chiringuitos which are beach side restaurants serving fresh fish barbecued over hot coals, with the barbecue makeshift and created out old rowing boats. My two favourites were Gabi Restaurante up at El Palo and Oasis Playa between La Malageuta and Pedregalejo. At both you can eat like a queen and enjoy the best sardines in town for less than 20 euros and at Oasis you also get free cava (if you’re me).

Malaga had a cultural renaissance at the turn of the century and is now seen as a city of museums. Seduced by the lure of twenty degrees in January, I manage to visit only one this time, but am disappointed by Picasso’s birthplace, which gives a sanitised account of everyone’s favourite misogynistic genius. Although I appreciate its maverick brilliance, I do find looking at a lot of Picasso’s art deeply uncomfortable and having listened to a podcast on him recently, I’m now seriously turned off. Give me a Chagall any day. At least he loved his wife.

I decide not to go to the Picasso Museum, supposedly the jewel in Malaga’s artistic crown, and instead take the long hike up to Castillo Gibalfro via the Alcazarba. It’s a brutal climb, but the views are extraordinary and there is a café at the top that looks out to sea and across to North Africa. I sit there for a good long time and think about Morocco and how I haven’t got the balls to do it solo. I do a lot of sitting around thinking about things, mostly from rooftops because Malaguenos are obsessed with drinking free pour gin and tonics on them. Where do I want to be? Do I even know anymore?

On my way back to the airport, my taxi driver says he wouldn’t live anywhere else ‘except here between the mountains and the sea’ and is bewildered as to why the British only go to Torremolinos or Marbella. The city, he says, is best out of season. When I ask what it’s like in June, he tells me the heat that comes in from the Sahara is too much even for the Spaniards, instantly scotching my fledgling plans to rent an apartment here for that month. Perhaps this is a winter retreat after all (although I would go to Marbs for the craic and the hope I would bump into someone fun, like Rylan Clark and his Mum). It leaves some answered questions for this Euro Bird. What about the summer and beyond? There is surely a life on the other side of Zone Five?

I go home and download Duolingo…..

October 12, 2024October 12, 2024

Island Girl

I’m chasing the coat tails of the season in the Cyclades and escaping the biblical rain. This trip to the Greek Islands is replacing the three I cancelled during the pandemic. Am I ever going to set eyes on a white sugar cube house again or see an octopus strung up to dry? Such first world problems.

Avoiding Santorini

The last time I was in Santorini was 2011 when it was on the cusp of being the blowsy tart it’s now become. I was staying in Oia, beloved of young American girls escaping their sorority houses or honeymooning couples sitting smugly in hot tubs. Many tourists make the trip primarily to pose for Instagram sunsets on the edge of the caldera, their hashtag screaming #IAMHERE as they brace themselves against the meltemi winds. I’ve decided I’m going to use this showy beast as a jumping off point to exploring quieter, more unfamiliar islands and am staying one night only at Hotel Galini in Firostefani before catching the early boat to sleepy Folegandros, just a 50-minute ride away.

Despite the rampant tourism, my first night begins in authentic Greek style. I’m startled by the sound of shards of glass clattering down the steps to my room and realise I’m being serenaded by loud clapping and stomping from a raucous family celebrating in Café Galini just above me. I awake at 3.30 am and peek upstairs to see what Santorini looks like when everyone is finally asleep. It’s disappointingly dark and starless and I abandon the rest of the night as high winds mean my boat has been rescheduled for 8.35 am and I’m worried my alarm won’t penetrate my earplugs.

No one does hospitality like the Greeks and the receptionist – who must surely have end of season fatigue – has delivered a complimentary breakfast bag for me. I clutch it bleary eyed as I await my driver who will take me down the treacherous road that snakes down to the port. The buses here are in the Sicilian vein of being infrequent and eccentric and, as a non-driver, expect to have to ride around in overpriced, air-conditioned vans with blacked out windows. It’s all part of the Cycladic experience.

Normally I prefer the big ships from Piraeus where you can sunbathe on deck and watch the islands rise majestically around you, but options today are limited. The windows of my Seajets ferry look like the inside of a car wash and there are only safety demonstrations and euro trash fashionista TV rolling on the monitors. I train my eye on the horizon and am grateful it’s only a short haul. There’s a reason the symbol for the Cyclades is a windmill.

Avoiding Sleazebags in Folegandros

I will be in Chora for five nights, which is the main hub of Folegandros, a Cycladic village so perfect, it could be a film set. Overlooked by the church of Panagia, which is accessible by a zigzag stone path and a fifteen-minute climb, there’s a definite Mamma Mia feel and the sense that at any moment Pierce Brosnan might jump out at you and sing off key. Unlike Santorini, Folegandros hasn’t acquiesced to mass tourism, and has a winter population of 500, plus goats. Electricity and roads finally arrived in the late 1970s, and the local mayor is both progressive and a cat lover, ensuring that the many strays you find littered across Greece are not only castrated, but also well fed. So well-fed one of them even turns her nose up at the sardine head I drop on the floor at Araxe, a restaurant so welcoming I keep going back.

For a small island, Folegandros is full of characters. On my first afternoon, I encounter Andreas, a flamboyant blow in who runs a vintage shop an olive stone’s throw from Kallisti Hotel where I’m staying. He hard sells me a bracelet in a matter of moments, before informing me that he performs songs in French and English every night at 10 pm. Imagine a gay Athenian Marguerita Pracatan and you get the picture. He invites me to return later to ‘enjoy his energy’ but after less than four hours’ sleep, I barely have any of my own.

After a comfortable night, I’m ready to get up and at it. Sunday morning is always so atmospheric in Greece. I’m sitting in one of the five piazzas of Chora, listening to the slow intoning of the Orthodox priest and the peal of bells and watching the men flick their worry beads. Bang opposite me is a lothario scribbling a post card. He is as brown as a leather handbag and I wonder if the novel sitting beside him isn’t a well-thumbed copy of Lolita. His oily smile reveals his delight I am in his field of vision and frankly it is disturbing my feta omelette experience. I glower at him and move tables.

A couple of days later I am enroute to meet the Diapolous tour that sails around the island and provides five stop off points to jump into the Aegean, including the tamarisk lined Agios Nikolaos and remote Livadaki beaches. Folegandros has gravity defying cliffs that have historically kept out the pirates and the best, and sometimes only, way to access its coves is by sea. I find a café on the pretty harbour of Karavostasi and Sunday’s lothario has not only been on my bus but is now sitting several tables away. As someone in his late sixties, I am far too old for him when there is younger flesh available, and having complimented the waitress on the length of her dress, the conversation that follows goes like this:

Ageing Lothario (who’s French just to complete the Humbert Humbert vibe): ‘I’ve just filmed you serving my coffee’

Waitress: *nervous laugh*

Ageing Lothario: ‘Stand out there in the sunlight and let me take a photo of you’.

Waitress: *stunned silence*

Me (weighing in): ‘No, she will not pose for a photo. Her job is to serve the food, not titillate you’.

Ageing Lothario: *stunned silence*

Me: (silently) If he’s on my boat trip and that phone gets pointed at me, it’s going straight in the effing Aegean.

Ageing Lotherio: ‘Why not?’

Me: ‘Er? Because it’s creepy?’.

Ageing Lothario (incredulous): ‘But I’ve known the café owner here for more than twenty years!’

And just like that, another privileged white man receives the staggering news that he can’t do exactly what he likes without consequences. Five minutes later he shuffles up to the waitress and offers an embarrassed apology. A small victory for feminism, although the moment is diluted when another perma-tanned creep tries to hit on me whilst I’m eating my baguette. Aren’t middle-aged women supposed to be in invisible?

Avoiding Reality in Sifnos

I’m spending the last three nights of the holiday on glamorous Sifnos, just two hours away by boat and a very different terrain. Like a Grecian California, with more greenery on the mountains than the biblically beautiful Folegrandos, it’s known as a foodie island and Platis Yialos on its southern coast is where the best restaurants can be found. I’m staying at the glorious Miles Away Luxury Apartments which are twenty metres from the horseshoe beach with its views of neighbouring Paros. A favourite with Tom Hanks and other Hollywood stars, Platis Yialos is so ridiculously pleasurable, I decide I’m going to fully commit to being a beach bum and gourmand. All the restaurants are accessible from the sand and after dark the night really is a starry dome, so just take your shoes off and walk along the bay until you find something that appeals. For restaurant recommendations, I would pre-book the famous Omega 3 where they serve inventive seafood tapas and ceviche on long benches on the beach, and then chance your arm at Yallos and Maiolica where cuisine is also a serious business. Finish off your meal with mastika, the local earthy digestif and then think about where you’re pitching your sunbed tomorrow. Rinse and repeat.

Greece is one of the best places in Europe to be a solo female traveller. It doesn’t have to be Shirley Valentine (‘hiya rock’) avoiding Jeanette and Dougie from Manchester. The Cyclades are a combination of authentically local and defiantly cosmopolitan, and it’s never difficult to find someone (non-slimy) to have dinner with if you are in the mood for company. The lack of a language barrier is a real plus which is just as well because I really can’t grapple with that alphabet.

Any journey back from a remote Greek island, however, does tend to be epic. Not Odysseus epic, but enough to make you feel like you need a lie down the next day. If you’re flying out of Santorini, you will need to change boats at Milos, a moonscape island now overrun by Gen-Z clubbers. Unless you want to feel like an ancient hag, I wouldn’t advise a stopover longer than the time it takes to cross the harbour tarmac. Foolishly, I book the 11 pm flight from Thira with the Jet2.com crowd and arrive at Stansted at 4.30 am Greek time. I wave down my taxi driver in the howling rain and wondering what alternative universe I’ve just been dropped into. I have blonde hair and a tan. But oh my god. It’s autumn.

May 26, 2024May 26, 2024

If You’re Fond of Sand Dunes and Salty Air

So, how do you get from East End to the Arcachon Basin by train in a single day? Encouraged by my continued love of the French rail network – plus the threat of an air traffic control strike at Bordeaux – I decided to give it a whirl. If you wish to emanate this Barbra Streisand in Funny Girl style endeavour (see film for iconic details) it will require a taxi, a tube, a Eurostar, a metro, a high-speed train, a local train, followed by a bewildered walk to the hotel swearing at google maps.

Omar Sheriff will not be waiting for you at the end. Instead, there will be oyster beds, vast sandy beaches with wooden boardwalks, and a plate of the plumpest, sweetest moules you’ve ever had. Welcome to the French Atlantic coast. It’s chic, slightly shabby and, if you like the heady combination of salt and mimosa, smells like a perfumista’s dream.

This trip is not what I originally planned. I am not supposed to be on my own in Arcachon. I am supposed to be with lots of people at a writing retreat in Castillon. This has been cancelled due to an array of bad luck, causing most of the participants to drop out due to ill health and bereavement, but I am still staying for a couple of nights to see how I like the place. I learn later that Castillon is resolutely NOT Dordogne(shire), but in fact, Gironde. The 60% of people in the Dordogne that hail from the environs of Chelsea and Somerset are not popular in these parts, with their red jeans and smug pashminas.

If you like it bracing, you’ll like it here

The journey down is remarkably smooth until Bordeaux Saint Jean, where the local train is abruptly evacuated before we’ve left the station. The Olympic year is making the French even jumpier than usual about security and, after a stilted consultation with a fellow traveller, I learn it’s something to do with ‘le baggage’. Later someone is taken ill, and we stop on a desolate platform for nearly three quarters of an hour whilst a paramedic is called and most of the passengers get out to smoke and look nonchalant. I am so happy to be en France.

Arcachon is divided into the four seasons, with the oldest and grandest district being Ville D’Hiver, the main commercial hub Ville D’Ete, the biggest, surfiest beaches Ville de Printemps and the port area Ville D’Automne. So, there’s a bit of orienteering for you. You know I have no sense of direction.

No French Town is complete without a ferris wheel and a carousel

The week ahead is looking unpredictable, so on the first morning I make the most of the brilliant sunshine and take the half hour boat trip to Cap Ferret which is like a Frenchified Nantucket. Not that I’ve ever been. Elegant boutiques, a light house, oyster shacks, tanned Ralph Lauren doppelgangers in deck shoes; it all adds to the overall vibe of Gallic privilege.

To get there you need to catch one of ferries from Jetée Thiers, buying your tickets at one of the beach huts or in advance online, so you can ensure more time over there to gorge on prawns. Bizarrely, the Arcachon Basin has the largest sand dune in Europe, and you can see the Dune of Pilat from one of the Cap Ferret beaches or from the boat. It’s like a distant North African mirage and if you’re into channelling Lawrence of Arabia, you can climb it. I did not.

Architecturally, this area is unique and many of the colourful houses, known as the Arcachonnaise, were built in the belle epoque style and are a visible homage to Arcachon’s 19^th century boom time. After a lull in popularity, the town is now heavily frequented by well-heeled Parisians, so one thing you won’t find much of here is anyone speaking English. This is extremely pleasing. A respite from Brits moaning about sewage, immigrants and low traffic neighbourhoods is welcome, and the pleasant hum of a language I don’t understand is good for my decompression.

No Flâneuse Diaries would be complete without a dive into the food scene, and it is wonderful here. Expect to be nine parts seafood by the time you leave and for the only vitamin C to have passed your lips to be lettuce and freshly squeezed oranges. Despite the incredible fruit and vegetables available at the covered market on Places Des Marquises, it does not seem to translate onto restaurant plates, but just embrace the protein and take supplements.

I thought I better eat it before it ate me

My top two recommendations are Le Commerce in Summer Town for mussels (or anything – it’s all excellent) and Club Plage Pereire near Winter Town. The latter sits directly on the beach and for 22 euros you can ditch the cutlery and have eight outrageous langoustines, a homemade mayonnaise, and fries, whilst watching the windsurfers. The Brasserie des Marquises also became a favourite, not least of all for the Archachon spritz as an aperitif. Limoncello spritz? You’re so last year. This is my new favourite, and if you like the aromatic taste of pink grapefruit, this one’s for you.

I give you the Arcachon Spritz – de rigeur cocktail shot

By day five I am ludicrously relaxed and it’s time to swap the seaside for the vineyards. The last time I was anywhere near this part of France was twenty years ago, staying in the summer home of a theatrical agent whose idea of closing night party trick was diving into his swimming pool clutching two lit fireworks. He had a house boy who served drinks to the guests wearing a T-Shirt that said, ‘Do Not Feed or Tease the Straight People’ and took us out in a 1960s blue Thunderbird that Ewan McGregor had used for his wedding. It was a completely normal kind of weekend.

I’m always happy to find my people. Chez Castillon is a creative retreat run by Janie and Mickey, two British actors who thirteen years ago bought a run down ten-bedroom house and turned it into a place for writers and artists. Janie is also a novelist whose debut book could be described as Lovejoy meets Tales from the City with sequins. It’s about how the two worlds of a rural Suffolk annual drag queen competition and an ailing drag club in San Francisco collide. Anyone who can describe a character as ‘pure Ivy League from the neck up and pure unrestrained Liberace from the neck down’ is alright with me. They cannot be more welcoming or fun, and I will be returning.

I will need to as I still haven’t finished the first three chapters of my book…..

March 6, 2024March 6, 2024

Unsung Spanish Hero

Perhaps this is controversial, but I’ve never really understood what the fuss is about Barcelona. The Gaudi buildings are undeniably stunning and there is always the beach, but in Iberian terms, it’s not the only game in town. Maybe I didn’t have the best experience there one distant New Year’s Eve. We ended up in an Irish bar followed by a Chinese buffet under florescent lights, but that’s what happens when you wing a national holiday in a city brimming with eager tourists. Madrid still gets overlooked which is odd considering it’s both the capital and situated bang in the middle of Spain, but right now it feels like its star is finally in the ascendant.

We are staying in an Airbnb in La Latina, one of the oldest barrios in Madrid. I am here for a birthday, so let me begin with a truism. Turning 51 is not as exciting as turning 50. To elevate it would require flamenco and sherry and although we failed on the last count (this is not Andalucia), we absolutely smashed it on the first.

Madrid is old-world, grown-up grandeur. Franco may have bombed the bejesus out of it, but it remains a low-rise city of wrought iron balconies, domes, and turrets. It’s true it doesn’t have the earthiness of Granada or Seville, but it feels affluent, as if it’s been quietly building itself up whilst everyone else was on Las Ramblas avoiding the pickpockets. Whilst there are certainly foreign tourists here, overwhelmingly what you hear around you are the lilt of Spanish voices.

A good starting point to Madrid is the glamourous El Retiro Park. One of the great civic spaces of Europe and a UNESCO world heritage site, it has everything I want in a public garden. A glittering glass house, other worldly topiary and resident peacocks that strut their iridescent tails around for passing admirers. At its heart is a vast lake dotted with a flotilla of boats and offset with colonnades and empire defining statues. This is a park that’s not messing around.

Look down on the edge of the lake and you will see actual live turtles sunbathing. I thought they were strangely positioned statues….

As most cities are experienced through the tastebuds as well as the feet, the food markets of Madrid are worth lingering on because they are abundant and spectacularly good. Its most upmarket jewel is Mercado de San Miguel, best visited on a weekday (and when it’s not raining) as it will be straining at the sides with ravenous people. On Sunday whole families arrive early and stake out the much-prized seats, sending each other off to top up on pintxos, fried seafood and tacos. If you don’t mind the crowds, you can wander the stalls with a glass of wine in your hand and simply graze like a gourmand.

One place you probably won’t feel like a gourmand is the café at the entry to Mercado de la Paz in Salamanca. I wish I could remember its name, but I do like to judge the cleanliness of a restaurant’s kitchen on the state of its bathrooms. After a brief visit, my travelling companion, Mary-Alice said ‘Well, it’s not Trainspotting….’, making me instantly regret the complimentary seafood paella I’d been given with my wine. Fortunately, I won that game of Russian Roulette, but do swerve the place that serves chips with everything and has the dirtiest bar you’ve ever seen.

If you’ve got a sweet tooth, you’ve hit the jackpot in Madrid. There are light and crispy churros with cups of thick chocolate and patisseries galore. On my birthday, we went to El Riojano which is over a hundred years old and full of old-world charm. The staff however are not, so just factor in a ‘Paris in the 1990s’ style of brusqueness and enjoy the cake. It’s all part of the service. For the best twist on a cinnamon roll this side of Stockholm, do not miss Salt in Cake in Calle de Toledo where you can get takeout. The mango and passionfruit incarnation was the best breakfast a newly turned fifty one year old could have wished for.

A word here about Spain and vegetarianism. I haven’t been since before the pandemic, and they still just don’t get it. Mary-Alice was faced with an entire wheel of Manchego at the excellent La Taberna de Ramales plus an alarming amount of patatas bravas (although thank god for the Padron peppers supplying some greenery). I’m not saying there weren’t other good things for her eat, but the variety isn’t there and the Spanish do like to add tuna flakes ‘for flavour’. This is really a country you go to eat pork. Special shout out here to the jet lagged Australian guy who told me how excited he was about his plate of jamon. This is how I feel about a Broadway matinee and a martini, so fair dinkum.

I will move away from food in a moment, but the prize for the second greatest meal of 2024 has to go to Corral de la Moreria, Madrid’s most famous flamenco venue. Other options are available, but it was beloved of Ava Gardner when she was in her shagging matadors’ phase, so this is the one I plumped for. You can dine at 6.30 pm in time for the show an hour later, which I realise is a bit un-Spanish being so early, but it is a glorious experience. As for the dancing, it’s another level of artistry.

The two big cultural hitters in Madrid are The Prado and The Royal Palace and you need to see both. The Prado is a monster of a museum along the lines of the Louvre (which shoot me, I’ve never been in) so it needs taking in bitesize chunks or you will just exhaust yourself. I was expecting endless rooms of chubby babies and Madonna’s and whilst there’s plenty of that, there are some real showstoppers. I was not expecting another Mona Lisa or the intricate beauty of Fra Angelico’s The Annunciation. The famous Valezquez painting Las Meninas is also here, and you’ll spot it by the size of the congregation.

I’ve been inside a lot of European royal palaces, but the one in Madrid is an explosion of opulence. Followers of my travels will know I am a fan of the chandelier, and this place delivers on an epic scale. It is also chinoiserie on steroids. I had no idea that walls could be made of porcelain before I visited here. Book your tickets in advance and avoid the line of tourists snaking across the courtyard. Ditto the Prado. When we came out at 4.30 pm, they were queuing around the block which looked frankly miserable.

Madrid has really whetted the whistle for more Hispanic jaunts. It’s well-connected for high-speed rail and you can get to Cordoba in under two hours which has long been on my wish list. Next up, the Dordogne in May for a writing retreat (if writing a blog about writing isn’t too meta…..)

January 7, 2024March 6, 2024

Nice – Where Wintering is a Verb

In life, timing is everything. Twenty-four hours earlier and thanks to a flooded tunnel in Kent, I could have been staring down the barrel of another New Year’s Eve in my flat. Instead, I am sitting at my favourite café in Rue Mouffetard, one of the oldest streets in Paris, and there is no one around except a few locals, vaping and cuddling small dogs for warmth. I’m less bothered by the expectant midnight chimes now, but I do want to know that what happens around that moment is memorable. For me, the train journey through France on New Year’s Day – at a price that wouldn’t get you from Waterloo to Winnersh Triangle – was the true start of 2024.

My kind of NYE – me and my notebook plus vino

Vive La SNCF! I’ve trumpeted its virtues on here before but everything from the ease of purchase on the app to lounging in its double-decker comfort is a joy. Gare du Lyon is the jumping off point for the South and I finally manage to locate Le Train Bleu on the main concourse, with its gloriously over the top, baroque dining room. My schedule is too tight for a formal breakfast, so Pret it is and a jambon beurre. There is no buffet service on this train, so stock up on everything before you alight or, in the words of Victoria Wood, you will be snatching chocolate buttons off small children.

In terms of speed, this is a game of two halves. In three hours, I am already in the Le Pen heartland of Aix-en-Provence, an antiseptic place I didn’t care for when I visited. From here there is a much slower tour of the coastal towns – the graffitied outskirts of Marseilles, Toulon, St Raphaël, Antibes and the monied golf resorts around Cannes. The landscape becomes more mountainous, the soil redder and the trees more resinous and, if you’re me, you begin to come over a little Jean de Florette. Book the right-hand side of the carriage so you can see the Mediterranean as the train sporadically hugs the coast. On a five-and-a-half-hour journey, use the loos earlier rather than later as you may wish you had packed waders.

That’s the practical stuff out the way. Now let’s talk about Nice in the Winter. Basically, it’s a really good idea. Why be a package holiday arriviste, grappling with crowds, frizzy hair, and over inflated hotel rates, when you can channel your inner 19^th century aristocrat wintering on the Riviera? True, you are not going to get a tan and not every shop or restaurant is open, but Nice is still buzzing and retains the unique luminosity for which its famed. Arriving before Epiphany also means the lights of Christmas are still on display and, even if you’ve had enough of it by then (always), it feels glamorous and cheering in the early dark month of the year.

Place Massena still giving its festive best

My first stop is a sunset wander along the Promenade des Anglaise, so named after the British ex-pats who funded its construction in 1822, employing cheap labour from the vagrants flocking to the city to escape the cold weather. Plus ca change. From this elegant sweep of bay, you can navigate much of the city, starting from the Cours Saleya Market – which changes its offer daily with flowers, edible produce and brocante – and leads you into the labyrinth of Vieux Nice.

Promenades des Anglaise on New Year’s Day – worth five and a half hours on a train

It takes me a while to hit my culinary stride here. This is largely because by 4 pm on New Years Day the only solids that have passed my lips in over twenty-four hours are three packets of sandwiches and a bag of salt and vinegar crisps. I am hangry and gratefully settle for a touristy galette. Vieux Nice, however, is the place for a gastronomic experience, and I find it accidentally the following day at a restaurant and olive oil shop called Oliviera at Bis Rue Du Collet.

I’m greeted by the charming Palestinian owner who acts as maître d’, speaks five languages, and personally farms and makes all the olive oil sold in the restaurant. The oils go on everything – even on the side of your tiramisu if you want it. And you really should. Today he is distressed because his usual boulanger is ‘en vacances’ for three weeks – the equivalent of a gallic catastrophe. He looks a little crestfallen when I politely turn down the rabbit (I struggle with the cooked bunny thing in France) but cheers up immeasurably when I order his mother’s small, stuffed aubergines with spiced mincemeat and pinenuts. It’s a triumph.

A cautionary tale if you do go to this fantastic restaurant, the staircase up to the toilet is dark and rickety and the door back into the dining room is very stiff. Once you’ve visited the loo, which is helpfully decorated with a poster of the human digestive system in case you need to know what your meal is doing, don’t do what I do and start shouting ‘how do I get out of here?’ when you eventually find the bottom of the stairs. When the door creaks open and my genial host hands me out like an 18-century dowager duchess descending from a carriage, every single pair of bemused eyes in the dining room is on me. I style it out, but the truth is I’m scared of the dark and have an innate horror of being trapped behind a door. There is a light switch, so do use it.

More on food shortly, but no trip to Nice is complete without a visit to the Musée National Marc Chagall and its huge, dreamlike canvases. By 3 January, there is a distinct ‘back to work’ feel – as far as that ever goes in France – and the galleries are beginning to open. I walk via the Basilique Notre Dame de l’Assumption located in a neighbourhood where all the Nicoise who aren’t completely loaded live. I can tell this as I’m greeted by a seagull standing cavalierly on the corner with a dirty chicken bone recently scavenged from a pile of uncleared refuge in its beak. Here, no-one is swathed in mink and wearing dark glasses and designer trainers, the uniform of the out of season local who’s just popped out to get some bits.

For a museum so steeped in romanticism, it is ironic that it’s accessed via a traffic-choked fly-over, but on arrival it does not disappoint, and I am greeted with the kind of images I could happily climb into. For more art, keep walking further up the hill, past ridiculous apartments, and Gatsby sized villas, and you’ll find Musée Matisse. It’s a thirty-minute walk to Vieux Nice from here, but I zigzag my way down the hill, buoyed up by the promise of my first taste of socca at Chez Theresa. This is a traditional crispy pancake made of chickpea flour that looks and tastes nothing like the Findus we had in the 80s. It is likely to have originated from neighbouring Italy and may have begun life as something cooked on a Roman soldier’s shield.

At Chez Theresa, I am brusquely told there is a half hour wait at the hatch, as a man labours over a wood fired oven and a huge iron platter. If you also have a hatred of walking whilst eating, there is a humble seating area that you can frequent on the understanding you buy a drink. The wine’s a bit rough and beer is a better, traditional match, but the verdict on the socca is I’ve never eaten anything like it. Slightly soggy, slightly crispy, slightly charred, slightly salty – it looks hellishly un-Instagramable, but tastes great and is probably addictive.

On my penultimate day, I finally get the weather the BBC promised and take the crowded commuter train early to Villefranche-Sur-Mer. If you want a stunning, sandy beach that’s only two stops away from Nice Ville, you’ll find it here, although it may well be a seething mass of humanity in July. Today, however, there is hardly anyone around and at 9 am, watching bags of mussels being unloaded into the kitchens of harbour restaurants and drinking coffee in the sun, I’m grateful not to be at home amongst the ravages of the ridiculously named Storm Henk. Tomorrow, il pleut, but today I will bask like it’s 4 January on the Riviera. I sit on the beach in my biker boots, whilst around me some are whipping out their bikinis. Jeez, it’s not THAT warm, people.

If you come here in the winter, it’s just beach walking and eating, as many of the shops in the tiny old town are closed, but with food and views this good, it shouldn’t matter. It may be early doors, but the lunch I have at Lou Bantry could be one of the stellar meals of ’24. Sea bass, provencal vegetables, sauce vierge, parmesan crisp, extra chips, glass of rose, table by the water. The waiting staff are all in Breton tops and gilets and really care about the details, so you get the vibe. Don’t go anywhere else on the harbour front, although there is plenty of choice. Just sit back and watch it all happen around you.

I fly back from Nice in the driving rain and attempt to dry my socks underneath the hand dryer in the deserted airport loo. Le glamour! Le trench-foot! Increasingly, I am wanting to reduce air travel as I find the end-to-end experience stressful and unedifying, let alone environmentally questionable. From the small bottle situation at check in (which always trips me up no matter how much I pair back the liquids) to the turbulence onboard, if other modes of travel are practical, I’d much prefer them.

Having said this, I am getting on another plane in about seven weeks’ time. Clue: capital city where they like flamenco and are allergic to early nights.

A Bientôt!

October 2, 2023October 2, 2023

Mangiare, Mangiare

I don’t normally travel in September. I’m more of a June girl which for me is the perfect month to get away. It’s not too hot, all the little darlings are safely in school, and you can get a head start on a really smug tan. It’s like the opening act to the summer and everyone is still pleased to see you.

This year, however, is different as I’ve spent it enslaved to a dissertation that needed submitting by 12 September. For this reason, I’m selfishly grateful the weather has been lousy this year, meaning no FOMO and no sitting behind closed blinds in a state of sweaty disarray trying to think of clever things to say. Instead, I’m getting to enjoy the final curtain of the season, which on the plus side means a bearable climate and no kids, but on the downside, guarantees tetchy service from exhausted waiters.

I’d originally organised a solo trip to Puglia to mark the end of my Masters but am being joined for the first five days by Chris, the best compass, translator and companion you can have. I fly into Bari, he comes cross country by train from Rome and somehow, miraculously, we manage to time our arrival at Bari Centrale station within minutes of each other.

Chris helpfully stands in front of the bin

Anyone who has used public transport in Southern Italy will know it is a haphazard experience. The driver will be a character and will probably be wearing a gold identity bracelet, but he will get you there eventually. Chris and I are on the last bus to Matera and have half an hour to locate the (unmarked) stop and knock back a celebratory prosecco. We triumph with both, arriving in Matera just as it is getting dark and cosily atmospheric. (Disconcertingly, it also reeks of wildfire from the forests that were alight 15km away but let’s gloss over that for now).

Much has been written about Matera as ‘the shame of Italy’ when the poverty was biblical, and the inhabitants were moved out of their cave-dwellings. This was in the 1950s and it is now a bougee place, attracting the Boden crowd and a lot of Australians who seem to have been released en masse across the boot of Italy.

Like many Italian cities, it has an old and a new town that are markedly different. You might remember the old quarter, or Sassi as it’s known, as one of the backdrops in the last James Bond film, and whilst it is panoramically cinematic, most of all it is primordial. Matera is reputed to be the oldest inhabited city on earth dating back to palaeolithic times and you can feel this ancient heartbeat in every stone slab. Incidentally these stone slabs are like glass in places, so do not do what I did and try and navigate it in flip flops, unless you want a slalom type experience.

I will be discussing food at length here so let’s talk for a moment about cucina povera, the local style of cuisine. I realise I have been spoilt by Sicily where even a garage forecourt will serve you up a decent arancini, but I was disappointed by the food in Matera which ranged from dismal to middling. Our first night brings us one of the worst meals I’ve ever had in Italy (or anywhere else for that matter – and I eat anything apart from organs). The regional pasta is called orecchiette which means ‘little ears’ but I get something different served up on the wrong side of al dente with chickpeas and chunks of dried-up truffle, doused in olive oil. As a dish – and a restaurant – it’s all fur coat and no knickers, and I end up leaving most of it and gorging on breadsticks. Chris, who is a vegetarian, is captive to the questionable delights of pasta with turnip-tops which isn’t even fur coat but is ubiquitous in Puglia and Basilicata.

Taking Cucina Povera to unacceptable limits

If you are staying in Matera, do take the advice of whomever is running your hotel on where best to eat and don’t be seduced by the twinkly lights in the seating area. It doesn’t guarantee quality or value for money. For the reasons above I won’t be making restaurant recommendations, but I will say stay at Il Belvedere where the staff are fantastically accommodating and the terrace views over (the delicious and expansive) breakfast are jaw-dropping.

Our next stop is Polignano a Mare which I chose firstly because it was accessible by train from Bari, but more importantly because I have a photograph of Sophia Loren sitting on the iconic Lama Monachile beach (and where Sophia goes, I must follow). The reality is that whilst there are plenty of Instagram opportunities here, Polignano is really part Southwold, part Southend-on-Sea and, although wandering around the old town is delightful, the best thing about the famous beach is looking down on it.

Lama Monochile – Better stay up here – the beach is hell

I say beach, it’s important to say you do not come to Polignano if you want a sandy stretch of coastline or a ritzy resort because it is really a collection of rocks. The water and the swimming, however, are wonderful and if you a sewage-swerving Brit, you’ll love the chance to get up early and sit with all the Nonnas who are taking their morning dip. Cross the bridge and turn left along the coast past the outstretched statue of Domenico Modugno – native of the town and writer of Italian earworm anthem Volare – and you’ll get to Lido Calla Paura. This is as good as it gets, and you can rent sunbeds and umbrellas and buy bottles of beer from cool boxes. We feel deathly pale against the deeply entrenched mahogany skin around us – another reminder that this is the end of the season – but one of the many great things about Italy is the lack of body shaming going on. Just eat your pasta and let it all hang out, tanned or not.

Lido Calle Paura – excellent swimming but take flip flops, it’s rocky

Back on the subject of food and the catering has mercifully improved. Caffe Dei Serfini in Piazza San Benedetto is great for breakfasts or an aperitivo and for an additional 5 euros per head you can sit with a friend on a tiny private balcony overlooking the sea. The best meal of the holiday is at pescatarian restaurant Mint Cucina Fresca in Via San Benedetto – the tenderest tuna steak and a pistachio parfait made by their pastry chef. The maître-de taps her finger to her head and signals the international gesture for crazy, as the Italian government cocks up the roll-out of the national emergency alerts by not co-ordinating the networks. This results in ear splitting sirens going off throughout the day on different phones, which could be heralding potential doom but isn’t. Love the Italians, but they are not renowned for their logistics.

Chris needs to get back to London for work and I am heading further down the heel to Lecce in the Salento region. I’ve pre-booked my ticket on the TrenItalia App which is cheap and straightforward, and the journey is an easy hour and a half through miles of olive groves. I always love arriving in a baroque town just after lunch when everything is slightly sleepy and deserted. Lecce is reminiscent of towns in Southeast Sicily, and I’m staying in Azzurretta Guest House which is a 500-year-old palazzo in the heart of the historic centre, run by the effervescent Tullio, a former high-flyer, who decided to downsize and take on the home that had been in his family for over a century.

My first real understanding of just how old the place is, occurs when a makeshift winch comes down to take my case up to the second floor. If you stay here, book one of the vaulted rooms which are spacious and comfortable – the ensuites are a bit dated but everything works well, and you’re given a carafe of local wine on arrival which suits me as a welcome. There are four keys to get in and out of the various doors (‘this lock, it is 300 years old, you need to treat it gently’) but you’ll soon get your head around it. Most of all, Lecce feels safe with CCTV everywhere, so you can wander around at all hours without worrying about much, least of all getting lost which around here is a pleasure.

The best thing to do in Lecce first thing is to head to one of the cafes at any of the stunning city gates and watch the locals gesticulating wildly to each other. They’re probably just talking about what they’re buying at the supermarket later, but it looks like they’re telling elaborate tales designed to out-shock each other. Teenage couples cling to each other on vespas and men, who wouldn’t look out of place in a Scorsese movie, puff on small cigars and drink espresso. A boy turns up with his school bag and is immediately smothered with kisses on his chubby cheeks by everyone around the table, as if they’ve not seen him in months. It’s obvious one of them is his mother. The cliché it seems is real.

Porte Napoli – one of the best gates in Lecce for people watching

Like any baroque town, Lecce is awash with gloriously over the top churches, their towering facades carved with gargoyles and other mythical creatures. There are forty in total, and it’s worth paying 21 euros for entrance into the four most famous – Lecce Duomo Cathedral which sits on a piazza that might make you gasp for breath, Chiesa di Santa Chiara, Chiesa di San Matteo and the particularly frilly Basilica di Santa Croce. This ticket will also get you to the top of the campanile for incredible views across the city. No Saturday afternoon in Southern Italy is complete without a spangly wedding and I get to see mine sitting outside the Jewish Museum next to Basilica di Santa Croce, sipping on a spritz and blinded by sequins. And this is just the guests, who congregate and pose like movie stars for the tourists’ eager photographs.

The floral Primitivos have so far outshone the food, but in Lecce everything I eat is amazing and I am now mainlining wheat and diary. Pizza and Co in Via Guiseppe Libertini sells the best pizza slices I’ve had anywhere (sorry Naples) and just across the street La Bottega Del Corso does delicious platters of local cheeses, olives and charcuterie if you’re into deli food. I particularly like Enogastronomia Povero which makes me vow to never eat our rubbery UK mozzarella again and as for the caramelised fig ice cream at Sensi Gelataria….it is outrageous. It’s hard to go wrong here. I order a basic bitch lasagne at local institution La Cucina Mamma Elvira and even this is masterly. I am rolling home to the rain.

As an intro to this part of Italy, it’s whetted the appetite of this gourmand, but next time it’s a car and some sand for me. Looking at the map, train journeys are eccentric here and it can take three times longer to get somewhere that looks three times nearer. I did a day trip to Ostuni – a white pearl of a hillside town and must see – in just under 40 minutes on a fast intercity train bound for Bologna. However, getting to the closer coastal resort of Gallipoli remains something of a mission. Italy doesn’t always make sense, but I can’t stop coming back for more.

June 11, 2023June 12, 2023

In Napoli….

Unless it’s New York, which keeps opening like a kaleidoscope and reinventing, I’m not usually a fan of visiting the same place twice. For Ischia, one of three islands in the bay of Naples, I have made an exception, if only to rewrite history.

My first experience of it nearly twenty years ago went down as the worst holiday of all time – a joyless cocktail of deranged travelling companion, subsequent high drama and ankles so swollen with infected mosquito bites, I couldn’t get my shoes on at Heathrow airport. The only saving grace was meeting a lovely American woman called Lisa who offered me the respite of an empathetic ear and plenty of prosecco. We reconnected later on social media and have stayed in touch ever since, so when she invited me to join her and her friend Ann again in the magical Castello Aragonese, I decided to abandon my usual travelling rule and see what else the island had to offer.

I arrive at Naples airport – a notoriously treacherous city to land a plane in – and am greeted by the reassuring sight of Bruno who is holding a sign with my name on. Naples is the gateway to the islands and if you can stretch to a car to get you to the port, I’d recommend it because this place, and its honking traffic, is insane. Ischia, about an hour on the fast boat, is a much sleepier sister to the glitzy and overrated Capri and remains unspoilt by tourism. Its big moment was as backdrop to The Talented Mr Ripley in 1999, where a white and pasty Tom Ripley first spies Dickie Greenleaf glistening on the beach. During my last visit in 2005, the Ishcitans were still dining out on its cinematic spoils.

As hardly anyone reads this blog, I can safely disclose the secret of Il Monastero without fear of a stampede. Situated half-way up the castle, it’s changed a lot in twenty years and is now far more Chi-Chi (with far less purgatorial beds). There are ridiculous sea views from the terrace and you can watch people and scooters make their way up the castle’s cobbled causeway like ants. Another happy new addition is the ‘secret garden’, a place which frankly you may wish to revisit in a meditation, with its allotments, citrus trees, olive groves, and small vineyard. Weeks of uncharacteristic rain have finally stopped, and everything is verdant green and blooming. The air is heavy with white jasmine and sea salt. Am I selling it to you yet? Ommmmmmm.

Ischia Porte is the pretty main town and only a 20-minute walk from the castle. There is good shopping along Via Roma and if you want an authentic and unpretentious dining experience where you can be serenaded al-fresco with traditional live music, head to Il Giardino degli Aranci on a Friday evening. Here you will witness what is effectively the island’s date night. Dressed up couples eating copious courses and banging the table to ‘Volare’, it’s got that Louis Prima 1950s vibe with black and white photographs of celebrities adorning the walls. This is old school Italy.

Back at Ischia Ponte, and it seems incapable of serving up a bad meal for this glutton. I can recommend Il Pontile for the coniglio all’ischitana, Ischia’s most famous rabbit dish, and nearby Auras for seafood and stuffed zucchini flowers. For a laugh-out-loud beautiful view, to be enjoyed with a limoncello spritz (Aperol, I bid you a fond farewell) and homemade canapes, the terrace at Hotel Don Felipe is the only place to be at the golden hour.

Expect to spend a lot of time on boats here, so much so that you may feel like you’re slightly rocking whilst stationary. We head to Capri as I feel it’s something I need to experience and, whilst its shoreline is undeniably breathtaking, up close its disappointingly low rent. Fortunately, Lisa knows what she’s doing because without her insight we would have spent the day sweating amongst teeming crowds of Japanese tourists and the badly dressed. (I’m not sure where Capri gets its reputation for glamour from, but they love a crocheted mid riff top here. Jackie Onassis has long gone). We heave our way up to the funicular railway because the taxi lines are snaking around the block and find an oasis of tranquility at Hotel Luna. Tucked away in perfectly manicured gardens, it has a view of the Faraglione Rocks and the flotillas of yachts that flock around them. Just gaze out and smell the oligarchs. Then go back to Ischia.

Just as I’m starting to feel relaxed, it’s time to go to crazy Napoli. Frenetic at the best of times, I am arriving on the night they officially win the football, so this is going to be a double whammy. My friend Caroline – whom I am meeting for dinner – texts me during the boat over and says, ‘are you ready for this?’ I feel my wobbly inner compass failing. How am I even going to find the hotel?

The first thing to say about Naples is they have an entirely different relationship with risk than say, someone from Nuneaton. Why bother with health and safety when you live on the edge of a volcano? I see an entire family – two parents and two kids – all bare-headed on the back of a scooter. The father is nonchalantly smoking a cigarette whilst weaving his way through the traffic, which is full of people flying flags out of the back of Cinquecento’s. The din of vuvuzelas is headachingly deafening, but the energy of everyone coalescing around this one team is joyful.

The only glamourous people around are the handsome Carabinieri with their immaculate black and red uniforms and their equally immaculate hair. If you want to channel your inner Sophia Loren, maybe save it for Puglia. This is a street-smart city that needs the right attire and demands comfortable footwear to navigate the hills. There is real poverty here, but I feel perfectly safe wandering the backstreets solo and peering into the tiny, industrious shops. Everything is graffiti coated and strewn with blue and white bunting in honour of the national game, and I pass a shrine that includes Christ on the cross and a photograph of Maradona, who remains a demi-god here.

There’s a plethora of churches – hey, it’s an Italian city – but my big recommendation would be Palazzo Reale which is a jewel box capturing a time when Naples was part of the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies. It can be found on Piazza del Plebiscito, Naples’ most elegant square (less so for me – it was covered in scaffolding from the football) and is all lacquered doors, chandeliers and sweeping marble staircases. I love walking around the interior, but The Hotel Transatlantico provides a harbourside escape from the heat and fumes and the best swordfish and tiramisu I’ve ever had. By 6 pm, I’m back in my room tapping into someone else’s Netflix account (always feels weirdly voyeuristic) and unable to move much until morning. It’s a lot, but it’s worth it and the Neapolitans are only too happy to welcome you to their city where somehow things work amongst the chaos.

Thank you to all my delightful travelling companions – especially Lisa with her encyclopaedic knowledge of Ischia and perfect taste. I came home without a single mosquito bite. What a result.

March 6, 2023March 6, 2023

Marrakech, Sweetie?

Marrakech is the shortest distance you can fly from the UK to feel like you’re in another world. Part boujee glamour, part squalor, it’s a fragrant city that’s on the hustle and isn’t going to give you an easy ride. As we leave the airport at night, a group of local men are shouting and gesticulating wildly over a taxi and everything smells like woodsmoke. ‘This is Africa’ grins our driver, as we pass the red, illuminated city walls and women in hijabs speed by on the backs of scooters.

I’m with my friend Paul to celebrate my 50^th birthday in this very 90s of destinations and if you’re going to do it, you may as well do it in a Riad. We’re staying in the beautiful Riad Tizwa owned by PR legend Daniel Bee and his brother, Richard. Whilst it has graced the pages of Harpers’ Bazaar and other glossy magazines, it’s unpretentious and deeply comforting. I have my own scarlet four poster bed fit for a sultana, sheets of a sky-high thread count and a bathroom that’s bigger than my bedroom at home. It’s supplied with generous, spice-scented products, including the local black soap which goes on like slime, but leaves you feeling baby soft. Breakfast on the roof terrace is expansive and delicious and is shyly served by Mouad who thinks I look like the Moroccan princess Lalla Salma (I do a smidge). Not much to complain about so far.

Paul and I have holidayed together before and have a rule of only doing one specific thing a day. If you are visiting this frenetic city and don’t want to return home exhausted, I would recommend this advice. A good way to kick off is a tour using With Locals to get you orientated to the chaos. We did a 2-and-a-half-hour walkabout with the exuberant Adil who showed us the souks and introduced us to some local artisans. It’s worth noting that Morocco is the land of the tall story. Six-hundred-year-old antiques you could pick up on e-bay, creams to banish psoriasis forever and tinctures to miraculously clear diseased lungs. We bought an exorbitant amount of saffron and two bars of soap for 70 quid. I then haggled successfully for some jewelled slippers and got a great deal. Financially, Marrakech doesn’t make a lot of sense.

Apparently they get 80% and the shop owner gets 20%. Likely the other way round judging by the size of his gold watch.

Jemaa-El-Fnaa is the main square in Marrakech and was a visual beacon throughout our trip, known simply as ‘crazy square’ due to the cacophony of drum beats and bustle. We tried our best to navigate by it using visual aids – ‘turn left by the tagines, past the lamb and onto kaftan alley until you get to crazy square’. It didn’t always work. A warning that if you’re an animal lover or of a squeamish disposition, you may need to look away here. Cobras sitting up pertly on the pavements, uniformed monkeys on chains, caged birds, marauding, skinny cats….and I won’t even go into the guy who looked like he had advanced leprosy.

Unfortunately, the Yves Saint Laurent Museum was closed for an exhibition fitout, but we saw the adjoining Le Jardin Majorelle which is Instagram heaven and you can channel your inner Patsy and Edina wafting around the palms and succulents. The Maison De La Photographie De Marrakech is also worth seeing if you love vintage black and white photography and there’s a lovely roof terrace café with views across the city. We sat there happily listening to the call to prayer and counting the mosques.

Maison de la Photographie. Beautifully curated with spelling mistakes on nearly every panel!

Two unmissable experiences fortuitously happened on my 50^th and if you want to feel like a birthday princess too, start off with an Oriental hammam and massage at the Hamman de la Rose. Led around in paper pants, we were steamed, scrubbed and daubed with unctuous potions. This was followed by sweetened mint tea and the best massage I’ve ever had. I was so relaxed I started laughing through the hole.

In the evening we went to Le Tobsil for dinner, a real Arabian Night’s dream. If you book, you will be met on the main street by a towering man in a fez who’ll lead you down a labyrinth of back streets. (Worry not, you are safe). Inside the candlelit Riad, there is hypnotic live music, strewn rose petals, the scent of sandalwood and orange flower, and endless plates of colourful mezze. By the time you get to the tagine you won’t be able to move. It is one of the great dining experiences.

You’ll be begging for mercy by the third course

Continuing in the glamorous theme and being a doyen of style, Paul insisted we went to the legendary La Mamounia for our last evening. Beloved of Churchill who has a bar named after him, it is awash with billionaire’s daughters comparing facelifts. If you’re not a guest you won’t be allowed onto the terrace, but the sumptuous Bar Majorelle serves up perfect cocktails and I recommend the Martinez (‘Gin and It’ as my Great Aunt would have called it during the war). We pushed the boat out and split a £30 hamburger which even Bill Gates would have been happy with, and had a lobster roll chaser. It was divinely decadent.

Morocco is a lot, but I’m definitely going back. I never got to ride a camel…..

Some Practical Tips

Get to Marrakech airport early. Even if you have carry-on, you still need to get your boarding pass validated and will have to queue. We counted six different security checks between the Ryan Air desk and actually being allowed out of the country. I use the word ‘checks’ lightly – they were pretty cursory, but still involved lots of pointless who-ha.

You can’t take local currency in or out of Morocco so will need to exchange your money at the airport. There’s a Bureau de Change and a few ATMs in Arrivals.

Your phone will cost you a fortune, so either get a SIM card or just stick to using Wi-Fi and downloading maps before you head out into the mayhem.

Err on the side of caution about brushing your teeth in the tap-water and use bottled.

Whilst I assumed the biggest bugbear would be the hot-eyed salesmen in the souk, it is in fact the scooters. Be prepared to swerve on a moment-by-moment basis as they ruthlessly cut you up in the narrow medina streets. And please, if you have a Germanic attitude to the green man flashing, don’t visit Marrakech. Other than watching to see which local is prepared to risk it first, often there is no indicator at all when you might make a death-defying dash across the road.

There’s a big Carrefour just outside the city walls where you can buy alcohol. Lots of good French wines available (although the Moroccan wine we had was also good). The bonus of being in a Riad is you can drink there.

Be firm with anyone trying to get you lost in the souk. They’re not giving you directions out of the goodness of their hearts.

I didn’t see many solo women on the trip and whilst it’s probably OK, I wouldn’t recommend it. Moroccans don’t understand the concept of men and women being friends, so if you’re travelling in a platonic relationship and they call them your husband/wife, just roll with it.