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 [...]
Beirut survived 15 years of civil war, and now Lebanon’s once-beleaguered capital is a highlight of the club scene June 22, 2018 It’s barely nine o’clock in the evening, and I’m uncomfortably close to my first brush with death. Or, to be more precise, Death, a lethal-sounding concoction made with gin, vodka, cognac, sherry, lemon, orange and cinnamon, stored in a bottle featuring a skull and crossbones on the front. It’s the creation of a small, dapper, [...]
Beirut survived 15 years of civil war, and now Lebanon’s once-beleaguered capital is a highlight of the club scene June 22, 2018 It’s barely nine o’clock in the evening, and I’m uncomfortably close to my first brush with death. Or, to be more precise, Death, a lethal-sounding concoction made with gin, vodka, cognac, sherry, lemon, orange and cinnamon, stored in a bottle featuring a skull and crossbones on the front. It’s the creation of a small, dapper, [...]
The region around Vietnam’s UNESCO heritage city of Hoi An is home to tourist sites worthy of Lara Croft herself March 9, 2018 The narrow stone passageway opened into a small stone altar featuring the carved statue of a goddess. Was this a place of worship, I wondered, or sacrifice? At this stage it was hard to tell, but I was enjoying scaring myself. The shadowy passageway curved around again, this time leading to a set of steps [...]
There’s more to Chinese culture than willow-patterned plates or Ming vases; we explore Beijing’s fast-growing contemporary art scene July 28, 2017 Picture the likes of London’s White Cube, the Saatchi Gallery, and the Serpentine, all transported to, say…Hounslow. Would you be as inclined to head there of a weekend to take in the latest exhibition by Damien Hirst, or Tracey Emin? Serious collectors from around the world as well as art-loving Chinese investors are doing something [...]
Ko Samui has long had a reputation for being a backpackers’ paradise – but it’s got a rather unexpected stylish and grown up side June 30, 2017 The taxi taking me on the ten-minute journey from Ko Samui’s tiny, open-air airport terminal to my hotel on Chaweng beach, one of the island’s most popular resorts, slows to a crawl when it hits Chaweng Road. The main artery into this area, the route comes to life after sunset when a host of raucous [...]
Brave sub-zero temperatures to discover Moscow’s hidden cultural treasures February 24, 2017 Russia’s sprawling capital teems with magnificent onion-domed churches, candy-coloured Baroque buildings and compelling, clean-lined, Stalin-era skyscrapers. Pretty parks such as the vast, green Gorky Park dot the city, and at its heart is the imposing plaza of Red Square. This is home to the showpiece cathedral of St Basil, Lenin’s mausoleum and the state-owned department [...]
Long Weekend: Check into Marbella Club, a golf hotel in Malaga with an aristocratic pedigree February 20, 2017 The weekend: Marbs, as certain raffish reality TV characters call it, occupies a prime location by the Med on southern Spain’s Sunshine Coast. Behind this famous tourist town rises the jagged Sierra Blanca mountain range. You can shop, swim, hike, or mountain-bike, but most visitors are here to play a round with their balls. Thanks [...]
Exploring the Sardinian paradise of Costa Smerelda, Europe’s top playground for the fantastically wealthy January 6, 2017 Some places are just so beautiful, so unbelievably picture-perfect, so utterly, gob-smackingly Instagrammable, that you think, ‘if this didn’t exist, someone would have had to invent it.’ So I’m taken aback on finding out, on my first afternoon on the Costa Smeralda – one of Europe’s top playgrounds for the super-wealthy – that actually someone [...]
