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  “I love Barcelona”, we hear all the time, but here’s the thing. You travel for a vacation, pick your destinations carefully, research the sights, restaurants, walks and gradually paint a picture of your perfect stay in the world’s most interesting and desirable cities. And then you arrive, and find that it does not quite resemble the picture on the tin. “Who are all these folks?”, you wonder, “and what on earth are they all doing here?” For me, Barcelona is the best of the best and the worst of the worst. It is a wonderful, quirky, enchanting and fascinating […]

The Scottish Highlands and Orkney make a marvellous combination for the independent traveller Some destinations are boring, some become boring and others have complete tediousness thrust upon them. Sadly, increasing numbers of “tourist destinations” are falling into the spectrum of tedium as vastly increasing numbers of tourists descend upon them with anxious visitors ticking boxes, and completing “bucket lists”. Ironically, escape is simple; unfortunately, the powerful “web” through which we get so many ideas is driven by extraordinarily powerful forces whose interests are usually and increasingly at odds with our own. Take, for example, VisitScotland. This governmental marketing body is […]

Richard Quest, one of my favourite business and travel commentators, is about to embark on a fascinating experiment. He is travelling around the world using only low-cost carriers. I thought that it would be an interesting exercise to see just how much this would cost originating in Toronto, and using a similar route to Richard’s. The journey would be as follows: May 15: Toronto to Reykjavik with WOW May 20: Reykjavik to Paris with Transavia May 23: Paris to Tbilisi with Pegasus May 25: Tbilisi to Colombo with Air Arabia May 28: Colombo to Singapore with Malindo Air May 30: […]

The Guyanas It is hard to know where to start really, when describing the Guyanas. Most folks don’t know where they are, and those that do have only a fleeting memory of school geography, or perhaps collecting stamps. The Three “Guyanas” lie on the northeast coast of South America. They are politically different, two independent (Guyana of Great Britain and Suriname of Holland), and French Guyana remains an integral part of France. They are a part of the giant Amazon basin, and are characterized by massive rivers flowing out to the ocean through vast jungles. They are home to a […]

It is reassuring to know Manari Ranch exists. Our world seems to travel too fast, as we stumble from one crisis to another, each event often caused by the sheer speed to which we have accelerated our lives. We look to media all day, reflect upon it rarely and act upon its’ desires all of the time; we lose control and we head at an ever increasing pace toward something. And then there is Manari. A tiny ranch, now with plans to develop only ten square miles down from its former 95 square mile footprint, the property is history. It […]

Let me introduce Peter Joseph, an Amerindian from St. Ignatius in the Rupununi. Peter is an Amerindian, and lives in St. Ignatius, a settlement of 2,000 folks living adjacent to the Guyanese community of Lethem. The village, home to both the Makushi and the Wapishana people was officially settled in 1909 by a Jesuit priest, but as is the way of indigenous history, their culture and settlement predated this cartographic moment by thousands of years. Of course the village was not called St. Ignatius before the Jesuits arrived, but had been called Zewari by the local people for ever. Traditional […]

By the time that I was finally faced with an armed man demanding money, I laughed; it had been that kind of day. Up early to drive 650kms south from Puerto Ordaz to the border town of Santa Elena de Uairen, we set off in a reasonably jolly mood, tempered slightly by the effects a lovely bar in which beer costs 50c per bottle. The drive south was interesting, to a point, and from time to time. Latin America is not ridden with historical towns and monuments; rural Venezuela is a pretty hard scrabble place, with low-lying towns busy with […]

Travelling to Guyana via Panama with COPA may not seem to be logical, but then again, nor are travel junkies. Here’s the thing. When one is a points junkie like me, travel routings become secondary to the availability of the elusive redemption seats. Coupled with my interests in travelling to some rather unusual places, this has put me on an odd route or two. I wanted to go to the Rupununi savannah in southern Guyana. Doesn’t everybody? It is a pristine land, well off the beaten track, and awkward to reach. Deciding against the obvious, flying to Georgetown and then […]

“The Lusitania”, the overnight train from Lisbon to Madrid The Train It would help to be very small, which I most certainly am not, but I still like travelling by overnight trains. The Lusitania operates daily from Lisbon to Madrid, and although I had travelled on it before, I wanted to repeat the performance. Sleeping compartments are a little like dolls’ houses for grown-ups; they store a remarkable amount of stuff in a terribly compact space. They offer secret compartments, hidden staircases, cunningly designed bunks and an atmosphere of intrigue; although that might be a little too much Agatha Christie. […]

I am not quite sure why I find the post-Soviet countries so fascinating, but I do. Over the past ten years, I have visited all of those in Europe, except Montenegro, and it is quite remarkable how each has evolved since the end of the Soviet era. Of particular interest to me have been the nastiest. Four weeks ago I visited Albania, and today, I am in Romania. So, accompanied by the interesting and knowledgeable Cristina Iosif of Unknown Bucharest, I set off for a primer on the communist regime of Nicolae Ceausescu, the dictator here from 1965 until the […]

I have not written much about The Baltics, and it is a sad omission. The Baltic Sea covers a vast area of northern Europe, and a history that back to the Hanseatic League and forward to the contemporary structures of Northern Europe.  St. Petersburg For most of the Cold War period, the region was the purview of a variety of elaborate Swedish and Finnish ferries, a few fishing boats and hundreds of miles of formidable borders. All this, of course, has changed completely, and now the nine countries that border the region, plus the peculiar Russian exclave of Kaliningrad,are absolutely […]