Category Archives: Travel

Lost in Lisbon

05/19/2011 By in Travel Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , 7 Comments

A fading imperial city on the westernmost fringes of Europe can proudly boast of beautiful cheekbones and ageing skin. Lisbon is a secretive and romantic place. Portugal’s largest city suffered a devastating earthquake in 1755 but survived the wars of the twentieth century largely unscathed. Instead of war monuments or plaques to our glorious dead, Lisbon boasts grandiose statues of ancient explorers and outlandish works of modern art. Elegantly designed by architect Santiago Calatrava and inspired by Gaudí’s love of trees, Oriente Station’s dynamic white arches and double decker flashing tubes make for a truly marvellous spectacle.

Overlooking the River Tagus, the de facto Portuguese capital offers a fairytale vision of Europe. Although the stylish regeneration of Parque das Nações ensures any visit to Lisbon is not just confined to an open air museum or a monolith but somewhere vibrant, secretive and highly sophisticated. Subject to enormous EU investment throughout the 1990s, New Lisbon is home to one of Europe’s largest and most popular aquariums. Oceanário de Lisboa inspires children, tourists and adults alike with its stunning exhibitions of sea life from the blue planet.

Portugal’s capital is a romantic throwback with its ornate piazzas, lush fountains and a street plan that ranges from serenely rational to bewilderingly crooked and steep. From the triumphal arch at Praça do Comércio to Rossio Square everything feels so meticulously planned that you feel every footstep has been accounted for on a map. There are beautiful inter-linking grids, which are all connected by flash yellow buses and rickety wooden trams emblazoned with fifties style Coca-Cola logos. Arguably the best way to see the city is by tram and the iron tracks slice deliciously across some of Lisbon’s steepest gradients – where standing like so many other forms of public transport is the norm.

Down at sea level and incessantly noisy at peak periods, the Restauradores district is home to swarms of tables with napkins, menus and diminutive waiters. It is an intense and deeply pressurized environment, especially at night, where the area is like walking through a lake of food straddled by purple faced managers thrusting menus instead of oars. Elsewhere the city is exceedingly romantic and carries a feminine and luxurious charm full of civic delights.

Although this doesn’t stop pathetic little men offering Class A drugs to every man under the age of forty on every street corner. Portugal became the first European nation to officially abolish all criminal penalties for possession of drugs in 2001, including marijuana, cocaine, heroin and amphetamines. According to reports this radical policy has been remarkably successful in reducing drug addiction, but it does mean you will get verbally pestered by sinister looking men on holiday.

Luckily these shady forces hover around the Rossio Square and are nowhere to be seen on the ascent to Bairro Alto. The hilly ascent towards Lisbon’s vibrant clubbing and shopping district is home to one of the few areas unaffected by the earthquake of 1755. Effortlessly youthful and lively in the evening, the cobbled streets are laden with housewives hanging their washing over ornate iron balconies and Mediterranean birdsong throughout the day.

The city’s architectural splendour ranges from 18th century buildings, crooked hilly streets and dilapidated baroque squares with flaking ceramic tiles. Although there is a creeping sadness in the dying of the streets – pigeons can be seen flying out of broken windows and beautiful skin that once sparkled is often seen withering in neglect. Visitors should look beyond the grandiose monuments in the historic centre and wander along the side streets for a glimpse of the city’s soul. Like the decrepit side streets, the city is often overlooked in an era of cheap air travel, which is a shame for Lisbon remains the essence of cool. With its fading glamour and effortless style, the Portuguese capital is one of the most understated and romantic cities in Europe.

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A View from a Bridge

05/10/2011 By in Travel Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , 1 Comment

Dream Collapsing

On flying over Northern Spain on route to Oporto, I remarked to a Portuguese nurse sitting next to me about how wonderfully green the landscape appeared from above. With evergreen forests and misty pockets of silver trailing in my wake, the descent upon Portugal’s second city had already begun to take shape. Any assumption that Portugal is a geographical extension of Spain is woefully misleading on a number of levels. Unlike the Iberian aridity of the south, the Douro region is predominately Celtic and Germanic in stock. Situated in the corn, cabbage and port region of Portugal, the northern green fields could easily pass of as Ireland to an unknowing visitor. For there are more flowers and bushes in Portugal and there are more trees, including the sprawling eucalyptus, which are noticeably absent on the neighbouring Castilian plateau.

Somewhat fittingly Portugal has now followed the Irish Republic to become the third member of the eurozone to be bailed out by the EU and IMF. Economically weak in an uncertain world, the Portuguese frontiers have remained virtually unchanged since 1139. They removed their last dictator, António de Oliveira Salazar, in 1970 and had a democratic revolution in 1974 and like the Portuguese nurse on the plane; they are one of the most congenial of Europeans.

Youth in Revolt

According to my erudite source on the plane, the country’s student population celebrate Queima das Fitas (Burning of the Ribbons) in the first week of May. On arriving in a university town on the verge of a drunken apogee, I checked in at the Porto Spot Hostel, and booked myself a sleepless night inside a white walled dorm. Despite my room having the capacity to host three weary bodies, I fortunately only had to share with a pepper bald German man.

Travelling is a privilege and after exploring the continent in my early twenties, I still have fond memories of budgeting every penny and dining in car parks eating ripped bread and cheese. Despite growing up and finding myself desperate to progress beyond shared accommodation, I all too frequently discover the invisible hand of economics has a far greater influence over my upwardly mobile pretentions.

Fortunately the money you might save on accommodation can be invested elsewhere and on departing the boutique hostel, I began to explore the melancholy splendour of Porto. Most normal cities would consider being labelled ‘workmanlike’ an insult and the commercial district does stir with ordinariness. Deeply atmospheric and exceedingly ramshackle in places, many of the city’s buildings are in a dilapidated state of repair. Most of their finest religious buildings are adorned with blue mosaic tiles, which are the ubiquitous emblems of Portugal, and provide the country with a truly beautiful motif.

Close to the Praça dos Leões lies one of the most outlandish and beautiful bookshops in Europe. Opened in 1906, Livraria Lello is an intricate wooden cathedral with a stunning fairy tale staircase inspired by the Parisian galleries of Lafayette. There are not too many bookshops in the world with a neo-Gothic staircase and a stained glass skylight. With a luscious red carpet leading its readers towards a literary heaven, English speakers may not be able to buy a book in a familiar language but the art nouveau exterior is worth the hike up Rua das Carmelitas on its own.

On arriving at the 18th century quayside, the iconic double-decker bridge, Ponte Dom Luis I, provides a truly magnificent spectacle across the River Douro. This marine blue bridge is one of the wonders of Portugal. Hosting a progressive and modern tram network and providing stunning views of the Cais de Ribeira quayside and Vila Nova de Gaia. Squawking seagulls can be seen following wooden boats full of white-shirted visitors from Germany and the Home Counties. And old ladies and housewives can be seen hanging their washing out to dry.

Porto’s charms lie in its unspoken cracks and idyllic forgetfulness, something no tourist board could ever successfully advertise. More discerning visitors to Porto like to enjoy samples of Portugal’s famous port lodges such as Sandemans or Grahams in the independent municipality of ‘Gaia’. Famous brands advertise their lodges using large Hollywood signs in a bold attempt to seduce tourists over from the Cais de Ribeira to the rickety winding lanes of time forgotten.

Bom Apetite

Vila Nova de Gaia is a romantic throwback to the 1930s and grapes have flown down the river for over three centuries. This historic process helps provide wine lovers across the globe with ruby, tawny and white tipples, which are traditionally enjoyed at the end of a beautiful meal. Fittingly back at the river front, I enjoyed my first evening dish with a regional Porto delicacy – the infamous Francesinhe. Scotland would never have been able to live it down if they had served up this culinary invention. Drenched in saturated fat and quite literally a heart attack on a plate, Francesinhe means “little French girl” in Portuguese. Inspired by the story of a returning emigrant, the sandwich’s composition involves multiple layers of bread, cured ham, sausages and steak, which is outrageously soaked in melted cheese and tomato beer sauce.

Sitting on one of the hundreds of outdoor café tables looking across the river, I instantly regretted not eating one of their freshly caught sardines. The local ‘delicacy’ is so violently nefarious, I personally believe the Francesinhe should made be illegal under European Law. Alas not all southern Mediterranean cuisines are healthy but Porto remains a city with a poetic sensibility. From the lush vegetation of its surrounding countryside to the urban charms of the city centre, rarely if ever will visitors be offered such a rich casket of wonders.

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Runaway Train

04/28/2011 By in Travel Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment

Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts.  Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one’s lifetime.  ~ Mark Twain

As the country basks in Spanish sunshine over the Easter holidays, the temptation to jump on a train and feast your eyes on an unfamiliar town is enormously tempting. Robert Louis Stevenson once said the best way to see a country was by train. With millions of workers receiving four bank holidays in eleven days courtesy of the Royal Wedding, time is now available to pursue those novelty travel plans. Unlike the previous months of being cooped up inside a sterile office, watching the deathly drag of grey clouds pass by the window. There is now time to fully unwind, relax and celebrate the virgin birth of spring. Although the irony of an extended holiday is that time usually accelerates as fast as the trains that take can you to far flung locations.

Anyone familiar with the British transport system knows that buying a train ticket for a destination more than twenty miles away is ludicrously expensive. Spontaneous day trips are virtually impossible when tickets for a two hour journey can cost over a hundred pounds. With an unregulated privatised transport system, the only affordable way to travel is to book six weeks in advance and naturally it is not always possible to know what you will be doing in the forthcoming weeks and months ahead.

Walking along Kings Cross or Euston’s northbound platforms and seeing the trappings of wealth inside the first class carriages is incredibly seductive. No one should under-estimate the silent power of aspiration and it is extremely hard to resist the calling of privilege. However, on grounds of fairness and equality, first class travel has no place in the 21st century. Millions of ordinary travellers lose out and end up paying ridiculous prices to cram into cheap seats or stand for hours in rattling cattle cans. Worse still the majority of the first class carriages lie empty and remain reserved for businessmen and ladies of leisure.

First class travel is completely elitist, immoral and the vast majority of people lose out to benefit a privileged few. It should be scrapped! There is absolutely no justification for first class travel at all. Then again most people have to accept the horrible contradiction of secretly wanting to travel in luxury and being a lip-service Marxist with two sticks and a balloon to spend.

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The Madness of Bom-Banes

04/15/2011 By in Travel Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , 5 Comments

There is something undeniably satisfying about being ‘in the know’. Almost everyone loves the feeling of being in possession of secret information, and whether its office gossip, pop trivia or breaking shocking news. There is a journalist within all of us that wants to reveal our latest exclusive to malnourished audiences. More discerning visitors will look to avoid mediocre chain restaurants on holiday, especially when they can surprise their partner with an independent gem hidden only a few streets away. Knowledge is power and newspapers are always offering tips on where to find hidden nooks and fairy tales in any given city.

With hints on where to go plastered all over the internet, I followed a tip off on a recent trip to East Sussex and attended a hitherto undiscovered café in a typically offbeat location. Situated in an unremarkable side street in Kemp Town, this marvellous Belgian café is unlikely to be bought out by Zizzi anytime soon. Even by Brighton’s famously bohemian standards, the madness of Bom-Banes has led to previous visitors describing the place as ‘wacky’ or the loathsome ‘quirky’.

Bom-Banes is run by Jane Bom-Bane and her partner Nick Pynn and their eccentric vision follows in the British music hall tradition. The upstairs dining area is liberally sprinkled with children’s drawings, spring flowers and Aesop’s tables playing 1920’s cartoons. One of the charms of the venue is how young children turn up to do their homework and are treated with the same respect as the musicians rehearsing in the Moroccan parlour downstairs. Indeed the café possesses so many surrealist twists you would be forgiven for thinking the venue had originally been conceived in a dreamy child’s mind.

With its crazy mechanical tables, Belgian dishes and beautiful white beers, Bom-Banes is certainly not the place to go for egg and chips. In this mad bohemian café one of their most endearing qualities is how the owners and staff actually talk to you. On living in a transaction based society that revolves around chip and pin relationships with a robotic sounding woman informing us about an unexpected item in the bagging area. It can come as quite a shock to receive such a friendly and personable service from Jane Bom-Bane and her musical friends.

Anyone expecting a quiet romantic dinner is advised to avoid Bom-Banes on musical nights because it requires the right sort of character to attend. Quiet, shy or diffident people might find Bon-Banes a bit too much when the eccentricities are in full flow. This is the price you pay for wanting to be different though. Otherwise their homemade food is absolutely lovely with ostrich, salads and Mediterranean tapas available at very reasonable prices.

Even if you love the cuisine some people may well find Bom-Banes too garish for their tastes. However anyone walking along the fabled road less travelled should be prepared for the unexpected. With my untapped niche firmly in my pocket, I now possess a secret unknown to the majority. Self-satisfaction is never far away in this respect. If it’s off the beaten track, then I want to be on it.

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Faded Seaside Glamour

04/10/2011 By in Travel Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , 1 Comment

Brighton is the undisputed liberal capital of the UK and a proverbial honeypot for decadent Londoners. The seaside town’s bohemian reputation has seen it become the equivalent of Shoreditch-On-Sea with its massive gay and lesbian scene and an increasingly left-wing population. If you want to buy the Guardian in Brighton on a Saturday then don’t bother. It has already sold out. Brighton’s liberal ascendancy peaked in May 2010 when Caroline Lucas was elected as Britain’s first ever Green MP. The Green Party’s landmark victory only further confirmed the town’s reputation as a fantasy world of boutique hedonism, vegan restaurants and G-string clubbing. More than 30,000 people live in Brighton and travel the 53 miles to work in London every day and many of them are wealthy media types.

However, Brighton hasn’t always been an arty liberal utopia and up until 1997, Brighton Pavilion had consistently voted for the Conservative Party. So what happened to what happened to all the Tories in that blue-rinse retirement home by the sea? Well Brighton might have become a Guardian reading refugee camp since the late 1990s but it remains a shifting city of conflicting values. Britain’s favourite seaside town retains an affiliation with the English working-class and is still affectionately known for serving fish and chips, ice cream and lobster bellied men on the pebbled shore. Protestants of the flesh can be found wearing sunglasses and reading Rupert Murdoch’s finest on deckchairs on Brighton Beach during the long summer months.

Anyone walking along Brighton Pier will marvel at the views at sunset but the structure itself is a bona fide cultural Chernobyl. Somewhere where you go to fall in love and get stabbed simultaneously. Britons of all social classes love the seaside and wealthy playboys echo Brighton’s decadent past by chasing each other on speed boats on sunny afternoons. Trudging back over pebbles and sand, a strange dust will land on your hand as dozens of grand Edwardian hotels stare out towards the English Channel along the Marine Parade.

Such grand emblems of historic wealth are unlikely to be occupied by counter-culture hippies. These luxury hotels remain the spiritual home of Conservative Party MPs, who secretly long for a return to the 1980s, when they didn’t have to go up north to Birmingham or Manchester for their party conference season. Blue rinsed traditions still retain their historic prominence in 21st century Brighton, which remains socially diverse with different groups co-existing in relative harmony.

It appears the demographic shift towards bohemian liberalism has not stopped Brighton from becoming the drug- injecting death capital of the UK. Understandably the Golden Syringe trophy is unlikely to take centre stage on the tourist board’s website but English seaside resorts have always been pretty seedy. A haven for criminality and smuggling for centuries, novelist Peter James has suggested Brighton is one of the top favourite places for criminals to live in the UK.

With seaports on both sides and a nearby airport with no custom post, masses of unguarded coastlines and London only an hour train journey away. Brighton is easy to escape and has a massive drug market with its two universities, booming club scene and arty middle-class residents with experimental tastes. Now one of the most exciting British cities, the seaside resort has been mentally rebuilt in a different order with many of its old Tory characteristics obliterated. Society is always changing and is forever being rebuilt and having its old assumptions challenged. The town, after all, remains the truth, and its residents the shifting fable.

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In Search of England

09/04/2010 By in Travel Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment

Despite having no real affinity for the South East, I have never been shy of visiting its historic market towns. In recent years I have travelled to Canterbury, Dover, Brighton, Eastbourne and more recently Cambridge. On arriving at the Cambridge train station and walking a mile and half towards the city centre, I realised I had been deluded from the outset. Deluded by my own expectations, where I always hope to find an H.V. Morton version of England but leave disappointed every time. Almost immediately on arriving in Cambridge, I was reminded of a previous trip to Canterbury, where I went in search of Geoffrey Chaucer but found myself overwhelmed by the awesome triumph of American consumerism.

Canterbury Cathedral is curtained off by medieval walls but is surrounded by a pedestrianised shopping centre full of New Labour corporate chains. Such is the grim familarity of these stores, I often find myself dangerously nostalgic for a golden era I never knew, and regretting the triumph of motorways and supermarkets. Behind the sparkling windows of discount signs and fairy lights, is the banal realisation that almost every town centre in England looks exactly the same. When visiting the Roman cities of Bath and York, the corporations are still there, but you will find bourgeois gift shops, walking tours and posh delicatessens serving chocolate in sweet plastic bags.

Cambridge offers a similar gift shop experience and on exploring their beautiful university colleges, it is still possible to find a postcard moment from selective angles. While Cambridge has largely maintained its medieval architecture and religious landmarks. Most traditional local stores appear to have disappeared and replaced by the likes of Boots, Clinton Cards, Slug and Lettuce, H&M, Top Shop and Costa Coffee. These stores represent economic growth, jobs and progress. Everybody uses them. It’s just a source of regret that you can now close your eyes in any English city and be virtually anywhere from Newcastle upon Tyne to Southend upon Sea.

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