Travel
On 31 October 2013, Rimini celebrated the anniversary of the death of one of its most famous sons, Federico Fellini. Film director Fellini created such masterpieces as La Dolce Vita (winner of the Palme d’Or in 1960), and 8½ (listed by Sight & Sound as the 10th-greatest film of all time). In 2012 I visited Rimini…
TeaSmith’s trip around the world… UPDATE: Sadly, TeaSmith has now closed. Book afternoon tea at Spitalfields’ TeaSmith in London and you’re in for a brisk trip around the world – or at least the tea world. As well as a quick lesson in the art of tea-making, you’ll taste teas from a host of Asian…
August 2012 Gore Vidal died on Tuesday at the grand old age of 86. And what a life he lived. Author, screenwriter, and sometime actor, Vidal never shied away from a hot topic – homosexuality, mental illness, transgender politics, all made it into his books and plays – and he wasn’t short of a good…
In 2012 I visited Bologna as part of the Blogville Project. The idea, developed by the Tourist Board, was to give bloggers a base from which to explore Emilia Romagna. I visited the Ducati Museum, made pasta with the Casa Artusi mariette in Forlimpopoli. I even took part in the world-famous Mille Miglia vintage car race. My…
Cool hotels, stylish bars and endless beaches, Rimini just got its mojo back. Film director, Federico Fellini, and his iconic films, such as Amarcord, La Strada, 8 ½ and La Dolce Vita, are shorthand for cool and sexy, but his birthplace of Rimini was once considered a little down-at-heel; harsher critics described it as the ‘Southend…
June 2012 I’m looking forward to going back to Rimini. The last visit was back in 1970, on a ’round Europe’ caravanning holiday with my parents and three sisters. I was nine years old. Needless to say, with four girls ranging in age from seven to seventeen, there were tensions. The eldest, going through a Garbo…
The Faroes – a group of 18 islands located in the Norwegian Atlantic – are halfway between Scotland and Iceland. I’d heard of them, of course; I’m a Radio 4 listener, fan of the arcane Shipping Forecast
The Mille Miglia is one of the most famous classic car races in the world. As a participant in the Blogville project in Bologna, I got to hang out in the VIP area. It was an opportunity to get close to the sort of cars that I’d recently drooled over in Modena’s Ferrari museum. Some…
The tappity-tappings of fellow bloggers on the way to the Ducati factory meant that they had a connection. So why didn’t I? I could see the Blogville WiFi appear on my phone but I wasn’t able to read tweets or emails… must be something about my phone. Perhaps androids don’t pick up signals as well…