Port requires patience – you must wait 20 years to open a vintage, but then you have to hurry up and drink it within 24 hours.
That’s one thing I learned on a week-long walk through the vineyards of Portugal’s Douro Valley. This spectacularly unspoiled corner of northern Portugal also produces some knock-out red wines. Since drinking and driving were out, we figured the best way to experience Porto and the Douro region was to walk.
Thanks to Inn Travel, we didn’t put a foot wrong.
Tiny Tilos is set to become the first island in the Mediterranean powered exclusively by wind and solar energy. Thanks to a pioneering mayor, a single wind turbine, and a small photovoltaic park, this Dodecanese island is creating a hybrid micro-grid that will generate enough energy to cover local needs – and eventually export power to neighbouring islands. Excess energy is stored in a prototype battery as a back-up for those rare rainy days.
Let’s hope other islands in Greece – and beyond – catch on.
Looking for a European city for a long weekend? Try Thessaloniki.
Greece’s second city has been bombed, burned and bailed out, but has never lost its creative core. And now it’s on a bit of a roll.
Not content with creating one of the world’s 50 best bars (the delightfully decadent Baba au Rum), Athenian rum aficionado Thanos Prunarus has launched his own quarterly magazine, FINE – a magazine dedicated the art of drinking.
Issue No. 3 was dedicated to the Athens bar scene. In this introductory essay, I explain why Athens is always a good idea.
Still in the midst of its debt crisis, the notion of UK travellers on a budget in Greece might induce some black humour from locals. But tourists can help the economy – and save a few euros themselves.
My pick of the best affordable hotels, guesthouses and apartments in Athens, featured in The Guardian.
Check in before all the artists and gallerists hit town for Documenta, the 100-day art show from Kassel, migrating to Athens in April 2017.
Where to stay, what to see, tables to book, and sights to check. A handy guide to the essentials for first-time visitors to Athens.
The Peloponnese is back in vogue, thanks to the arrival of Greece’s first Aman resort, Amanzoe.
I was despatched with Departures’ delightful director of photography, Martin Kreuzer, to peel back the mystique the Aman PR team so carefully cultivated about this exclusive hideaway near Porto Heli.
I’m pleased to report that Amanzoe totally lives up the hype.
The Guardian’s travel editor asked me where to go in Greece for a last blast of late summer sun.
There’s one Greek island where the sea is so warm you can swim until Christmas.
Do you know which one?
‘I waited with nervous immigrants at the Ministry of Justice, where a browbeaten apparatchik was single-handedly fielding all requests. I rode wheezing elevators up and down the tax office, trying to figure out who needed to stamp what. I was bullied by a tax inspector while he baldly negotiated a job for his son-in-law with a stooge, and consoled by a Romanian accountant, whose experience of communism had taught her to handle beadledom with cheerful stoicism. I watched scuffles break out between shiny-suited plaintiffs at the law courts, a compound of cryptically numbered buildings where giant bundles of tattered files teetered on every available surface. There was no sign of the government’s digitisation drive here….’
Since the debt crisis, Greece has become a media plaything, the broken child on the naughty step. Yet few reports manage to capture the essence of the country or the realities of daily life. Letters from Greece, a series of essays published by The Pigeonhole, offer a compelling insight into what it’s really like to be living and working in Greece now.
In my essay, Paperchase, I describe my crushing, and ultimately futile, attempts to negotiate Greek bureaucracy.
My essay is accompanied by haunting photographs of Greek government buildings by Eirini Vourloumis. Her images distil the peculiar mix of neglect and nostalgia that permeate these spaces – the physical manifestation of an anachronistic administration desperately in need of modernisation.
London’s landscape changes faster than pundits can come up with nicknames for the city’s ever sprouting skyscrapers.
For National Geographic Traveller’s 48 hours feature, I took a whistle-stop tour of London’s latest attractions.
From a Design Hotel with exclusive access to the hottest club on Mykonos to a wilderness retreat overlooking one of the best beaches anywhere in the Cyclades, I scoured the Greek islands for the hottest places to stay right now.
Get the lowdown on Conde Nast Traveller.
Athens is bucking austerity with a new wave of bars, restaurants, and hospitality businesses.
In this round-up for The Guardian, I tracked down the coolest coffee shops, B&Bs, and insider guides to alternative Athens.
Athenians love sharing their city secrets with strangers. Airbnb hosts will cook you dinner and take you dancing…
France’s oldest spirit, Armagnac has been known for its therapeutic qualities for centuries. In 1310, Prior Vital Dufour published a treatise listing the 40 ‘virtues’ of this amber eau de vie, including curing headaches, hepatitis, and even deafness. ‘If taken medically and soberly,’ Dufour claimed, ‘it recalls the past to memory, renders men joyous, preserves youth and retards senility.’
Armagnac isn’t just good for medicinal purposes. Earthier than cognac, it’s a delicious digestif. And it adds a delicious kick to all kinds of sweet and savoury dishes. In this feature for Fine magazine, I grilled two of London’s best chefs, Fergus Henderson (St John) and Pascal Aussignac (Club Gascon), about this exceptional amber lubricant.
Greek food is having a moment – and there’s not a souvlaki in sight.
London’s trendiest food markets, Broadway Market and Maltby Street, both have Greek outposts: Isle of Olive, which stocks hand-picked herbs by Daphnis and Chloe, and Maltby & Greek, where you can pick up some mind-blowing Greek wines.
Of course, local ingredients taste even better in Greece. So I persuaded the country’s top chefs to share their hot tips for Conde Nast Traveller.
Discover where Tessa Kiros goes for fried calamari, the secret ingredient in Diane Kochilas’ Greek salad, and where to find Theodore Kyriakou’s favourite taverna, on a castaway island with just four inhabitants.
Brussels isn’t just for bureaucrats. Shedding its patrician (and slightly stuffy) facade, the EU capital has emerged as a vibrant and downright cool destination.
In this feature for the FT’s How to Spend It, I outline the ideal itinerary if you have 48 hours in Brussels.
There’s more to Istanbul than Ayia Sofia and Soho House. I’ve been visiting Istanbul every few months for decades, but every time I stumble on a new denim designer, organic candlemaker or cactus-selling coffee shop.
Read about my favourite haunts in Istanbul in this story for Departures magazine.
As Greece makes tentative steps towards recovery, Athenians are championing the capital’s revival with creative start-ups that focus on the affordable and authentic.
I went to Athens to check out the latest hip hostels, design collectives, and up-and-coming chefs for Conde Nast Traveller.
‘To be travelling through the middle of a city as great, historic and forlorn as Istanbul, and yet to feel the freedom of the open sea – that is the thrill of a trip along the Bosphorus.’
Those are Orhan Pamuk’s words, not mine. In this feature for How to Spend It magazine, I explored the many faces of Istanbul – old and new, European and Asian, Islamic and secular.
Only a couple of years ago, Istanbul’s multiple identities were happily rubbing together, cheek-by-jowl. Now those days feel desperately far away…
Greeks adore kids. You can take your children anywhere – to the beach bar, a midnight feast at the taverna, even the bouzoukia. Kids in Greece have the freedom of roaming free, staying up late, and developing great social skills (so long as they don’t mind having their cheeks pinched).
The Guardian asked me to share my current favourite hotels for travelling with kids in Greece. None of them are big resorts with fancy facilities – in my experience, the most family-friendly hotels are the ones that are family-run. And these guys won’t freak out if your kid spills spaghetti Bolognese all over the floor.
