They say you must visit Croatia. They are dead right. Two and a half hours after embarkation of jet on a grey Surrey afternoon at Gatwick, we were in Split, in a cosy bay in the Eastern Adriatic. We were recommended for our first culinary experience of the holiday that evening a small underground mum-and-dad-run restaurant. The lighting was cruel, the music was bad, and the food was amazing. What followed was nine days of seafood risottos, fried sardines, hake, octopus and mussels complimented by crisp, dry and simple local white wines. Thanks to rather brilliantly losing my drivers' licenc [View Full Entry]

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One hour into my African experience I was walking down tiny deserted alleys in a slightly dodgy part of Marrakech being directed by a tall stranger who claimed to know where my riad (guesthouse) was. Having lost the directions I had printed off I really had no choice but to follow this man. It was a crossroads: either, I would be mugged or murdered and I wouldn't have a good holiday, or secondly, he would find my hostel and everything would be OK. And it was. That was a relief. The centre of Marrakach - its heart and soul - is [View Full Entry]

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Ursula and my trip to Naples for New Year's (capo d'anno = 'head of the year') was a feast of experiences, mainly related to actual feasting. Staying in the apartment of Ursula's family friend, Simonetta, we would awake every morning to one of the best views of the city - right down over the harbour from Vomero, Naples' equivalent of Chelsea. The morning experience included being waited on hand on foot, fed enormous quanitites of 'pandoro' which I am now deeply addicted to, and poured continual 'little bombs' of some of the best espresso I've tasted outside my beloved home country, [View Full Entry]

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Champagne. The beverage is sparkling but the location is flat. Both are lovely. I had the great fortune to be part of a band of English retailers and wine merchants to visit Reims at the behest of LVMH (Louis Vuitton Moet Hennessey) to visit Veuve Clicquot and Krug. Our first meal in France after nipping over from London on the Eurostar was at a bistro in Reims. It was a family run business - opulent in a fallen-grandeur, fin de siècle sort of a way. Every table was full with affluent locals who, without exception, were nursing open bottles of champagne [View Full Entry]

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Back in Italy again: golden light, perfect coffee, gelati, tumble-down charm. My first day there - in Romeo and Juliet's hometown Verona - turned out to be the last proper day of summer - a humid, sultry and sunny 31 degrees until a massive storm hit Verona in the early afternoon. At the time I just happened to be standing alone in the highest bell tower in the town - clinging to the wall in an alcove as a gale and the horizontal rain did their best to yank me into oblivion. Wwoofing in Veneto (Willing Workers on Organic Farms, for [View Full Entry]

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Quite a few years ago I spent three days as a telemarketer in what I was convinced would be the shortest career of my life. Not so, actually. As an English Teacher in Korea I lasted only two days. Last April I had the strange experience of throwing in the towel of my career as a posh wine merchant in London, going to South Korea to live and work as an English teacher, changing my mind almost instantaneously once I got there, deciding to go to go back to London and thereby inadvertently circumnavigating the globe. I flew over Greenland, Siberia [View Full Entry]

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