On the right track: We take the world’s slowest express train linking the plush ski resorts of Zermatt and St Moritz October 23, 2019 You could almost feel our compartment teeter over the edge of the crossing as the whole carriage readied cameras and phones to capture the iconic photograph. The Landwasser Viaduct on the Swiss rail network’s Glacier Express is the pièce de résistance of the journey between swish alpine resort towns of Zermatt and St Moritz. And [...]
Farnborough Airport sales soar to £80m ahead of Macquarie buyout October 15, 2019 Farnborough Airport has revealed that its revenue rose 23.2 per cent to a record £80m last year fuelled by a boost in business travel which saw nearly 4,000 more flights take off and land there than in 2017. According to its accounts for the year ending 31 December 2018, there were 30,729 take offs and [...]
Bruce Springsteen turned 70 this year. We visit the downbeat seaside town in New Jersey made famous by the Boss… October 4, 2019 On the boardwalk of the small seaside town of Asbury Park is a fortune-telling booth, which has been owned by the same family of psychics since 1932. When I visit at ten in the morning, it’s shut, with a phone number pinned to the window instead. Surely they should have known I was coming. This [...]
The Vintage Hotel & Spa, Lisbon review: A slice of mid-century modern luxury living in the heart of Portugal’s capital October 2, 2019 The five star Vintage Hotel & Spa in Lisbon underwent a dramatic renovation earlier in the year, and has emerged as a monument to mid-century interior design, the kind of place you’d expect to spot Don Draper nursing a whisky. The striking vintage aesthetic was achieved by Quiet Studios and begins the moment you step [...]
The story of the world’s best beef: How Kobe conquered the globe October 2, 2019 Wedged between the Rokko mountain range and Osaka Bay, Kobe is the sixth largest city in Japan with more than a million and a half people. Its namesake beef doesn’t come from the city itself but from the surrounding farmland of Hyogo Prefecture where Kobe is the capital and the key port. As the story [...]
From sunken sculptures to rusting Soviet planes, Grenada is an island brimming with mystery October 2, 2019 There’s a human silhouette looming out of the depths. The waves above have churned up the sand below, and now the sediment coils above the seabed like a strange mist, like something out of a Stephen King novel. I pop my head above the surface to fill my lungs with as much air as they [...]
Silversands Grenada review: The longest pool in the Caribbean, the most luxurious hotel in Grenada September 30, 2019 The one hundred metre long infinity pool that joins Silversands Grenada’s atrium style lobby to the pristine sands of Grand Anse Beach is the longest in the Caribbean. But that’s not the first clue that this modern hotel is a unique proposition on this historic island. That would be the moment you’re collected from the [...]
Why did the US Navy sink its own vessel off the coast of the Cayman Islands? September 27, 2019 The sound of whirring rotor blades carries across the bay. I’m staring at a framed photo of Tom Selleck inside the office of Cayman Island Helicopters, while its proprietor, Jerome Begot, readies the chopper. Jerome is a Frenchman who, inexplicably, flew in the US Air Force decades ago, and Magnum PI is his hero. After [...]
How a tea estate is helping to conserve Rwanda’s rich biodiversity September 27, 2019 There are only two things that most people think about when they hear “Rwanda”: the country’s unfathomable genocide, the 25th anniversary of which is in 2019; and, to a lesser extent, the critically endangered mountain gorilla. But Rwanda is unrecognisable from how it was in the mid 1990s, and although the gorilla population is steadily [...]
What is frankincense? And where does it come from? September 27, 2019 The sun is blazing and the air is hot, dry and dusty. Gazing out over the horizon, there’s nothing but parched, rocky land as far as the eye can see in any direction, except for the strange-looking trees that shoot up from the ground like gnarly, overgrown bushes. You wouldn’t think much could thrive here, [...]