Category: International
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Read this book: Edith & I by Elizabeth Gowing
Edith & I is a travelogue which spans time as well as distance. In 1900, an English anthropologist named Edith Durham traversed the Accursed Mountains into Kosovo, shaded from the Balkan sun by her tam o’shanter. She was honoured for her humanitarian work and for championing the unity and independence…
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Pas-de-Calais: a cheat’s holiday
For my birthday in October Steve booked us a week’s holiday in a cottage in a rural French village called Tortefontaine, just over an hour’s drive from the ferry terminal at Calais. Until then, the very name Calais conjured up for me memories of a miserable booze cruise, drizzle, catching…
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Searching for Shuttle: whale-watching in Nova Scotia
As the Mega Nova fishing boat carries me and a dozen other hopeful whale-watchers into the Bay of Fundy, our chance of seeing whales feels slim. Brier Island, where we boarded, has been snarled in fog since the evening before. The narrow stretch of water left visible by the low-hanging…
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Legflaps
I was coming down with a cold. My throat felt raw and my forehead was burning. Determined not to miss out on a single hour in Chengdu, I dragged myself around the city alongside Steve, slurping giant bowls of hot soup noodles and watching street kids playing elaborate games of…
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Up in the air: travels as a Hollywood producer
Thirty-six years of weaving movie magic have taken Boston-born Hollywood producer Ned Dowd all over the world. He’s lived it up in Beijing with Jackie Chan, spent months in Mexico with Mel Gibson and managed New York parking problems on a Gary Oldman film. I talked to Ned about the…
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Under the canopies: a new view of Malta
I’d always thought of Malta as a package-holiday destination; its history and beauty squashed between high-rise hotels. But when I find myself on a quiet patch of the island’s west coast, walking down a gentle slope to the remains of some of the oldest religious sites on earth, I start…
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Mr Steps
The cyclo driver who took us on a late-afternoon tour of Ho Chi Minh City’s back streets had four teeth, wore a ‘STEPS Musicband’ T-shirt, and referred to Steve as Man. Not in a hippy way, like “Hey man”, but as though Man was Steve’s given name. “Hello, Man. Man! Sit here, Man.…
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The Number 65 bus
In Malta, many vehicles have windscreen stickers bearing slogans: boasts about the kind of journey you might expect to take in them, or a statement about the driver. Among others I’ve seen ‘Hardcore Ride’, ‘Daddy’s Taxi’, ‘Baby Think Twice’ and ‘Life In Heaven’. The last two worried me because they…
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A Tuscan remedy
They call it Stendhal Syndrome or Florence Syndrome: a psychosomatic illness featuring dizziness, confusion and even hallucinations as a result of overexposure to art. Add Tuscan sunshine and the heady joy of being newly married, and there was no way I could be trusted to meet Michelangelo’s David without falling…
Indelible Journeys 