A friend prone to both travel and hyperbole is wont to proclaim that there are only four truly beautiful cities in the world: Sydney, Vancouver, San Francisco and Cape Town. This thought was in my head, though not for long, as I drove in from the airport past the euphemistically nicknamed ‘Cape Flats’, a huge ...
TravelSunday’s crowning glory was the feast at the Hotel Dieu, the medieval almshouse otherwise known as the Hospices, a thrilling masterpiece of late Gothic architecture with its distinctive polychromatic Burgundian tiled roof. The Hospices de Beaune is a charity founded by Nicolas Rolin, chancellor of Burgundy, in 1443, a man famed far and wide for ...
TravelI promised the full story of my trip to Burgundy for the Auction at The Hospice de Beaune. Here it is… Why all the fuss? A question I asked myself as the TGV sped southward. Size wise it’s insignificant, comprising as it does a mere 02% of the earth’s surface that’s covered by vines. What’s ...
TravelWent to London last week (16th July). Fell asleep on the plane so missed the great Irish breakfast (did I miss much?). Still, noblesse oblige and Club Class Row 3 meant I could get off the aircraft at the speed of light and whizz down to the Underground station and emerge at Leicester Sq less ...
Travelhave my own version of Robert Louis Stevenson’s nostrum. It goes: better to arrive than to travel at all. Low spots of the journey: confiscation of my cigar cutter by Aer Rianta’s bully boys; the ludicrous Shannon stopover; airline food, compounded by the cock-up that had me labelled as vegetarian – moi, king of carvivores!; ...
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