In many ways, Marrakesh appears to be caught between the demands of its ancient soul and the modernity that the professional middle classes aspire to. While parts of Marrakesh and, even more so, the countryside around it look as though little had changed over the past 100 years, … … the modernisers seem to be…
No visit of Newcastle would be complete without a trip to the famously dark rocks of the Northumberland coast … … and the historic castles that proudly stand at the North Sea’s edge – as well as the ice cream vans that are parked underneath their walls. Rocks, castles and ice cream vans are all…
Let’s play a game! Please think of famous British sights that you can name off the top of your head – three or four will do. And now please think: how many of these sights are located outside of London? I bet that for most of you the answer will be zero. That, in a…
La Spezia is that rare kind of thing: a tourist town without tourist attractions. The town is full of visitors who have travelled there halfway across Europe – some of them halfway across the world – not to visit and experience La Spezia but to use the town as a base for explorations of the…
I have always held that every town, no matter how frumpy and dull it may appear, can give you one day of good entertainment. After that, the metropolitan wheat is divided from the Palookaville chaff, but for a single day, day trippers should not struggle too hard to find what they are looking for: a…
Some countries do city tourism well, others badly or not at all. At one end of the scale, you have France, Spain and Italy. Their great cities are firm fixtures on the global tourism itinerary, and most of these countries’ regional capitals have become popular destinations in their own right. Toulouse and Strasbourg, Seville and…
Visitors who come to the UK from abroad may think that all of modern London has been cast from the same expensive mould: and up to a point, they would be right. In the centre of London, it is rare indeed to find even a small flat for under one million pounds, while houses fetch…
Every major city in the world has iconic street furniture – Paris has the riverbank boxes of the bouqinistes, Berlin its Litfasssäule advertising columns, Venice the splashback pissotte that are designed to prevent men from urinating in street corners – … … but no city in the world is as blessed in this respect as…
Malaga has one of the busiest airports in Spain – outclassed only by Madrid and Barcelona – but Malaga airport was not primarily built to serve visitors of the city. In fact, most people who get off the plane are heading straight for the resorts on the near-by Costa del Sol, and the airport will…
For many years, Malaga was something like the Ugly Duckling among Western Europe’s large cities with a Mediterranean coastline: while places like Barcelona, Naples and Palermo became popular hotspots on the international tourism itinerary, Malaga on the southern tip of Andalusia – despite its attractive jumble of harbour vibes, grand fin-de-siècle architecture and subtropical fauna…