“It was always a great affair, the Misses Morkan’s annual dance.”
Only today, ON the Epiphany, I’m standing outside the four-storey Georgian townhouse in Dublin where the party took place – 15 Usher’s Island. James Joyce’s great-aunts, the Misses Flynn, lived and taught music here from the 1890s, just like Aunt Kate and Aunt Julia in the story, and Joyce’s parents attended the pair’s annual Christmas parties. The house faces the river Liffey near the James Joyce bridge, which was opened on Bloomsday, June 16, 2003, and designed to look like an open book.
The building is now derelict but if I close my eyes, I can almost hear the dance music drifting from the upstairs window, as Gabriel, the Misses Morkan’s nephew, prepares to give his annual after-dinner speech.
“The piano was playing a waltz tune and he could hear the skirts sweeping against the drawing room floor. People, perhaps, were standing in the snow on the quay outside, gazing up at the lighted windows and listening to the waltz music.”
Gabriel is full of ‘notions’, looking down on everyone, including his poor aunts who go through agonies of anxiety to give their annual dance, even as he eulogizes their lives and qualities of humanity and hospitality.
“What did he care that his aunts were only two ignorant old women.”
He crashes through the party mildly insulting people, worried that the quotations he has chosen for his speech will “be above the heads of his hearers”, whose “grade of culture differed from his” and curtly dismissing an invitation to visit the West of Ireland because he’s holidaying on the Continent. In fact he does a pretty good job of insulting the whole country – “Irish is not my language”, “I’m sick of my own country, sick of it”.
One of the things I love most about The Dead is the descriptions of its hospitality, the big table staggering under the weight of food – the “fat brown goose”, the “great ham, stripped of its outer skin and peppered over with crust crumbs”, “a round of spiced beef” and “a dish of hot floury potatoes wrapped in a white napkin”. The “minsters of jelly, red and yellow; a shallow dish full of blocks of blancmange and red jam, a large green leaf-shaped dish with a stalk-shaped handle, on which lay bunches of purple raisins and peeled almonds, a companion dish on which lay a solid rectangle of Smyrna figs, a dish of custard topped with grated nutmeg, a small bowl full of chocolates and sweets wrapped in gold and silver papers.” It’s like Nigel Slater wandered into 19th century Dublin, took off his galoshes and climbed the stairs to be greeted by Julia and Kate.
The longing to depict Irish hospitality is the reason why The Dead was written. It was a late addition to Joyce’s Dubliners short story collection, written three years after the collection was finished. In 1906, the year before he wrote it, he told his brother Stanislaus that:
“I have reproduced (in Dubliners at least) none of the attraction of [Dublin], for I have never felt at my ease in any city since I left it, except in Paris. I have not reproduced its ingenious insularity and its hospitality. The latter ‘virtue’ so far as I can see does not exist elsewhere in Europe.”
The Dead was the remedy to redress the balance.
It’s a story of two halves: the busyness and bustle of the party which ends with the plaintive song The Lass of Aughrim, Gabriel’s wife Gretta in thrall, listening on the stairs, “grace and mystery in her attitude as if she were a symbol of something”. After the party, Gabriel and Gretta take a horse-drawn cab to the Gresham Hotel, where the mood changes and Gabriel is full of romantic notions.
“He felt that they had escaped from their lives and duties, escaped from home and friends and run away together with wild and radiant hearts to a new adventure”. (This is the man who only a few hours earlier abruptly dismissed her entreaties to visit the West of Ireland where she is from.
“O, do go, Gabriel, I’d love to see Galway again”.
“You can go if you like,” said Gabriel coldly.)
What a wanker.
I follow the path they took along the quays to the Gresham, past Adam and Eve’s – the Franciscan Church of the Immaculate Conception where Aunt Julia was the leading soprano – the “lamps burning redly in the murky air” – “across the river, the palace of the Four Courts stood out menacingly against the heavy sky”.
The second-hand bookshops that Gabriel visited every day, Hickey’s on Bachelor’s Walk, Webb’s and Masseys on Aston’s Quay, are long gone. But instead there’s the Winding Stair on Ormond Quay, now one of Dublin’s oldest bookshops, with cosy café and view of the Ha’penny Bridge upstairs.
I cross O’Connell Bridge and, just like Gabriel, salute the towering figure of Daniel O’Connell. Halfway down O’Connell St, I stop off to say hello to James Joyce himself, immortalised in bronze on the corner of North Earl St. Then I continue on to the Gresham, now owned by the Spanish RIU Hotels and Resorts, with a large Spanish staff and clientele – Gabriel would have been delighted.
Recently revamped, many of the bedrooms have had a shiny new makeover, though the swirly carpets and heavy chandeliers add a slightly old-fashioned touch. I can imagine Gretta standing by the thick brown curtains looking wistfully out at the falling snow, as Gabriel looks at her, longing to “cry to her from his soul, to crush her body against his, to overmaster her”.
He imagines she is thinking what he is thinking and feeling what he is feeling and “his heart is brimming over with happiness”, but she flings herself on the bed and starts to cry, sobbing “I am thinking about that song, The Lass of Aughrim”.
A boy she knew in Galway, Michael Furey, used to sing it to her – “I was great with him at that time”. Ill and delicate, when he heard she was leaving Galway for Dublin he stood outside her window one night to tell her he didn’t want to live and died a few days later – “I think he died for me” Gretta says.
Gabriel realises he has never felt like this “but he knew that such a feeling must be love. The tears gathered more thickly in his eyes and in the partial darkness he imagined he saw the form of a young man standing under a dripping tree”, as the snow starts to fall again.
“It was falling on every part of the dark central plain, on the treeless hills, falling softly upon the Bog of Allen and, further westward, softly falling into the dark mutinous Shannon waves. It was falling, too, upon every part of the lonely churchyard on the hill where Michael Furey lay buried. It lay thickly drifted on the crooked crosses and headstones, on the spears of the little gate, on the barren thorns. His soul swooned slowly as he heard the snow falling faintly through the universe and faintly falling, like the descent of their last end, upon all the living and the dead.”
]]>It became a hotel in 2011, and this year Ballyfin in Co Laois was voted the Best Resort Hotel in the UK and Ireland by Travel+Leisure magazine and the Best Hotel in Europe by The Telegraph.
But is it?
Well, it’s certainly attracted a lot of high profile guests, including lords and ladies and, in more recent times, the honeymooning Kardashian Wests and George and Amal Clooney.
Of course, you don’t need to be aristocratic or a celebrity to stay at Ballyfin – you just need the funds to finance it. And with rooms starting at €810 (and running up to four figures) you’ll need to dig deep. But Ballyfin was built for entertaining (you don’t plan sumptuous reception rooms including a Gold Room, Saloon and 80-foot library in your house for cosy family tete-a-tetes) and the entertainment here is lavish.
Our very grand entrance
It starts as soon as we reach the end of the long driveway where six people are lined up at the foot of the mansion’s steps to welcome us. Car doors are opened, luggage is deftly removed, and we’re in the great entrance hall in front of a roaring fire sipping glasses of champagne before you can say ‘I bet that lake was expensive’.
The current house dates to the 1820s and was home of the Coote family for one hundred years. Keen to impress the neighbours, the Coote’s spent lavishly (their family motto is appropriately ‘Coute que Coute’ – ‘cost what it may’), fitting out the house in Carrara marble, scagliola columns, marquetry floors, Bacchanalian friezes and Roman mosaics, including a floor from the ancient city of Pompeii. Yes, that’s right. An entire floor was shipped over from the Italian UNESCO World Heritage Site (cost what it may, remember?).
The Cootes moved out in 1928 and, after a stint as a boarding school, Ballyfin has been picking up awards as a hotel ever since. ‘But we don’t want it to feel like a hotel,’ say the staff, ‘we want to keep that relaxed and friendly country house feel’ and indeed it does feel like staying in a friend’s home, if you have the type of friends who own vast country piles kitted out with antiques and an art collection dating from the 17th century.
Wandering around Ballyfin
Every room is a treasure trove of beautiful things, many purchased from the Coote family who put much of the original furniture into storage after selling the house. Staff are always on hand to offer cups of tea or fulfil your random desires. Can’t find that copy of the Irish Times you saw on a coffee table earlier? No worries, here’s a fresh one, so uncreased it looks like it’s been ironed. Want to know more about the history of the house or the provenance of that urn on the mantelpiece? No problem, everyone seems to be a walking catalogue of knowledge.
And nobody more so than Lionel, who takes us on a tour of the 600-acre grounds in a horse and carriage and shares his vast store of Ballyfin history. We rattle along through woodland (51,000 trees were planted as part of the restoration of the grounds), past walled gardens, tennis courts and the helipad, before driving up to the stone tower, built during Famine times to provide employment for the locals. You can see 16 counties from the top on a clear day.
We circle the orangerie with its 4,000 panes of handcut glass, once used for growing exotic flowers and fruit, including pineapples so revered they couldn’t be eaten. We pass the pretty cascade waterfall, pouring down from the temple (yes, there’s a temple) to the lawns outside the dining room. And we catch glimpses of the tunnels, burrowed underground so the servants could scurry about their business unseen.
There are just 20 rooms in Ballyfin, all individually decorated (you didn’t think George and Amal would be bunking down in Premier Inn style uniformity now, did you) with canopy beds, chandeliers and marble bathrooms galore. Our beautifully wallpapered bedroom, with cosy armchairs and a fireplace, has an entire terrace overlooking the garden. The Georgian vibe is brought right up to date downstairs in the super-plush spa, with a grand swimming pool surrounded by luxury thick-mattressed recliners and sauna and jacuzzi nearby.
At dinner that night, we go for the tasting menu with wine pairing and enjoy delicate plates of seafood tartare, pork ravioli, Sika deer, salmon with fennel and a few extra little courses the chef sends out – just for fun and not because we needed the extra food, but we lapped it all up appreciatively.
Had we so desired we could have gone clay pigeon shooting or horse riding in the grounds or even tried our hand at archery or falconry. But for our one-night trip into luxury we were content to assume the role of ladies of the manor, feet up, fans gently rustling.
Ballyfin, Co Laois, Ireland; visit Ballyfin.com. Double rooms from €810.
]]>I’m rocking in a hammock outside my tent at the Nubia Luxury Camp – just eight tents at the foot of the immense drifting sand dunes of Erg Chebbi, the romantic views of every desert-set film you’ve ever seen. But these are no ordinary tents. If a famous drinks company did tents this is what they would create, kitted out with king-sized beds, electricity and running water – yes, that does mean flushing toilets. There’s a ‘lounge’ tent with cosy couches and a fully fitted dining area, but it’s much more fun to eat outside, having breakfast as the sun rises or dinner beside the campfire, candlelit lanterns flickering around the sand dunes.
Breakfast this morning includes a date syrup that is part of the traditional Berber breakfast, eaten with olives and bread, Lahsen, who serves it, tells me. Though it’s unlikely the Berbers went on to eat an omelette, several pancakes and granola served with coconut fruit yoghurt, as I did, as well as a basket of bread accompanied with three different types of jam, a dish of honey and a bowl of chocolate spread.
Who are the Berbers?
According to local folklore, the Berbers are descended from the children of Adam and Eve and are the earliest settlers in Morocco. Though “settlers” isn’t probably the best way to describe these nomadic tribes. And Lahsen knows their customs very well, being one of them. The Nubia Camp is run by local Berbers, employed by the Beldi Collection which owns it. Many of the tribes are now settling in villages and towns around the edge of the desert, Lahsen tells me, wanting to find work and educate their children.
But nomadic tribes do still travel the Sahara and later that day I meet some of them, visiting nomads Ali and Hra at their desert camp. Spread out across several hundred feet of rocky sand, it has several separate tents and wooden shelters, a space for showering and a lush green garden.
There’s a joyful reunion during my visit between Ali and somebody I assume is a desert local, until I get talking to him later and find out he’s a biker from Berlin, who’s made the trip by motorcycle from his adopted home in Greece for the past three years and is now firm friends with Ali.
Ali and Hera are entertaining us in their ‘living room’ tent, where they also sleep, serving us mint tea and later lunch – platters of barbecued meat, roasted vegetables and salad. Food is one of the greatest joys of visiting Morocco and for dinner back at the camp, chef Omar feeds me delicious lamb tagine with dates, chicken roasted with lemon and vegetable couscous. These are the sorts of dishes I determine to recreate at home as I wrap a tagine in several layers of clothes to protect it in my suitcase, knowing deep down that it’s unlikely to happen unless I pack the star-filled Moroccan sky and a bit of the Sahara as well.
Camp Nubia is a 9-hour drive from Marrakesh, allowing for several stop-offs for tea, photographs and the bathroom, and a leisurely hour and a half break at the Riad Dar Sofian – an oasis within a literal oasis, where lunch is served around a palm-fringed pool.
Back to the Riad Louhou
Flying into Marrakesh from the UK is like flying into the 1001 Arabian Nights, with its exotic domed roofs, red towers and turrets. It’s a city of souks and palaces, mosques and the medina, which is the old part of the city where I’m staying in a riad, a traditional Moroccan house with a central courtyard.
The Riad Louhou is also owned by the Beldi Collection, each of its five bedrooms overlooking the traditional courtyard. What’s not so traditional is the pool on the roof terrace, making it an attractive choice, you can also eat up here at one of the al fresco tables or under luxurious draped curtains in the shade.
It’s an easy walk from here to the souks, the labyrinthine network of lively markets selling everything from food to furniture, where light filters through in small openings to keep the setting cool and a bit mysterious. No space for cars, just travellers on foot, riders on scooters and the occasional donkey pulling a cart. Heavy loads are carried by scooter, from the weekly grocery shop to a mound of cut branches still bearing oranges, and one man who nonchalantly drove through the media balancing – I kid you not – four dozen eggs on his knee.
You can find everything from gleaming brass lanterns to colourful jars of olives, fabrics and glassware, china and silver, slippers and handbags, silks, leathers, beads, metalwork and more, as well as several winding streets of workshops where you can see the artisans at work. I go with a guide, Mustapha, and so I’m not hassled by the sellers at all, in fact I sort of get to hang out with them as Mustapha frequently stops to greet people he knows with lots of hugs and touching of hearts.
What else to see in Marrakesh
He also takes me to see the mausoleum, built for the 16th century Saadian dynasty, grand burial rooms richly decorated with glittering mosaics and Carrera marble, ceilings carved from molten gold. And more richness at the lavish Moorish 150-roomed Bahia Palace, built in the 19th century for the sultan and his harem by 100 master craftsmen from Fez, on a site covering 8 hectares, with its stucco work, fine filigree and beautiful arabesque ceilings.
As a woman travelling alone, I’m looked after very well by Youssef, my driver and guide from Marrakesh to the Sahara. Nobody hassles me but I do get asked a few times if I am really travelling by myself, with several worried enquiries about the existence of a family back in the UK, so they can reassure themselves I’m not an orphan wandering the world alone.
Crossing the Sahara
The journey Youssef takes me on to the Sahara follows the ancient caravan route from Marrakech through the stunning landscapes of the High Atlas Mountains, through Berber villages and the lush green Draa Valley. The views are stupendous, across red mountain ranges and into redbrick towns, through olive trees and cactus plants, passing men riding donkeys and children waiting for school buses. The last two hours are off-road through the desert, bumping across sand dunes and stones, but the destination is worth it, a Sahara camp just before sunset.
And then sitting on a camel, I’m led across the sand by Sakaria from the camp, to watch the sun go down from one of the highest dunes. This is bucket list stuff that everyone should get the chance to try at least once in their lifetime.
I love the fact I’ve become someone who gets up to watch the sunrise and travels an hour to see the sun set, things I wouldn’t contemplate for a minute doing at home – though in fairness, you’d be hard pressed to find a camel in Croydon.
But this is one of the joys of holidays, the space and the freedom to step outside of your routine and do different things, a chance for a while to be somebody else. Or maybe, just for a while, a more open, more interesting, more inspired version of yourself.
Information and contacts
Double rooms at the Riad Louhou £130, suites £150. Nubia Luxury Camp B&B £160 per person per night, half board for one-night, full board for 2 nights or more. Phone UK: 0044 (0)1223 968178, email stay@thebeldicollection.com, www.thebeldicollection.com
]]>The marshes cover 37 square hectares, close to the city of Saint-Omer in the north of France. They feature 700km of waterways, 170km of which are navigable by escute – a traditional long flat-bottom boat made from oak (you can visit the workshop and see how they are made as part of the boat trip; from £9.50, Lesfaiseursdebateaux.fr/en/)). It’s a nature lovers paradise, with hundreds of different plant species and 240 different types of bird, including grey herons, great crested grebes and little bitterns.
But the marshes are no tourist trap theme park. Over 5,000 people live here, their boats moored on the banks. Children learn to swim and drive a boat as youngsters and with over 50 houses only accessible by boat, the postmen drive boats too. Many of the residents work as market gardeners, growing vegetables – including Saint-Omer’s famous summer cauliflower – in the peaty black soil, a tradition that stretches back almost 100 years.
We meet one of them after our boat trip. Loïc Boulier grew up in Paris but swapped his city life for the marshes 15 years ago and now grows 40 different types of vegetables and fruit in a canal-side garden near the pier. I admire his burgeoning artichokes, shiny aubergines and butternut squash, nibble on fiery mustard leaves and fragrant lemon basil and have my first taste of black cherry tomatoes – delicious!
DINNER AT THE CHATEAU DE BEAULIEU
Loïc supplies fruit and vegetables to local families and businesses, and you don’t have to travel far to taste the local produce on some very fancy dining tables. Like the 2-Michelin-starred restaurant at the Chateau de Beaulieu, with stunning views of the surrounding gardens. I hoover up tiny plates of Cote d’Opale crab, Japanese style tuna and Boulonnais lamb with poached pear among countless other dishes and realise that the secret with tiny food plates is to eat lots of them.
Cauliflower is so beloved in this region that not only did one welcome me in the light-filled foyer on my arrival (encased in delicate porcelain), it’s also the main desert, served meringue style with oozing sorrel sauce and vanilla ice cream. This is followed by a traditional sweet trolley, with shelf upon shelf of handmade wonders. Everything we eat is handmade – in fact I half expected to find a woodwork shop nestled deep in the gardens, churning out the tables and chairs we were sitting on.
There isn’t one. But there IS a menagerie of animals – many rescued and taken here to live out their days in 5-star comfort – including donkeys, goats, geese, rabbits, hens and two big Vietnamese pigs.
There are vegetable gardens that supply the hotel kitchen with 70% of its needs, the rest is bought locally. Flower gardens provide edible garnishes and colour. A river runs through the grounds, circling the 16th century building, moat-like. From my bedroom – a chic haven with wooden floors and elegantly patterned wallpaper – I can see a fountain, ringed by woodland.
The vibe is relaxed and stylish – from the chic bar with elaborate cornicing to the modern bistro spilling out onto the garden terrace with its fire pit barbecue. Next up, owners Christophe (also the head chef) and Delphine Dufosse plan to open a spa on the grounds with swimming pool and river views (rooms from £240, gastronomic menu from £120, bistro lunch £36 for 2 courses; Lechateaudebeaulieu.fr).
OFF TO THE COAST: HOTEL ATLANTIC
For Michelin-starred dining overlooking the English Channel, the Hotel Atlantic in Wimereux offers fine dining with seaside sunset views. We eat plates of mackerel, mushroom risotto, sea bream and a rich chocolate desert, alongside homemade bread with seaweed and local vegetables, each plate matched to a different wine. Our sommelier is full of stories, passionate about his job and a joy to listen to (rooms from £147, dinner from £82; Atlantic-delpierre.com/en)
There’s a lot to explore in this Hauts-de-France region, awarded the European Region of Gastronomy in 2023 to recognise its cultural and gastronomic heritage. Start off by ditching the vineyards – wine is SO passe – these days it’s all about craft beer and artisanal gin.
WINE? SO OVER!
Exclusive to this area are the award-winning gins produced by the Persyn family, among the last surviving producers of genievre – a type of juniper gin – using the recipes and methods passed down through the generations from the 19th century. The distillery itself is a bit like a museum, with copper stills that have been in use for over 100 years distilling local organic cereal, rye, oats and barley, before it’s matured in oak casks (tours from £6; Genievredehoulle.com)
The craft beer produced in the recently restored Abbaye de Clairmarais brewery has a provenance stretching back to the 12th century – though health and safety regulations have forced them to update their methods since then!
Brewed here by monks until the State took over the abbey after the French Revolution, the current brewery was launched five years ago by a few locals keen to continue the tradition. A tour takes you through the brewing methods and types of beer produced – from mild to pungent – you’ll get a chance to sample them at the end (free tours, book in advance; Abbayedeclairmarais.fr)
SAY CHEESE (GROAN…)
You’ll need something to soak up all that beer and gin and you’ll find it at Les Frères Bernard cheesemakers, surrounded by fields of cows. Cows are quite the thing here, you’ll find pictures of the beauties whose milk has been used to make the produce. You can watch the cheese makers at work through big glass windows from the shop Monday to Friday, 9.30 to 12.
THE BIGGEST FISHING PORT IN FRANCE
Nearby, France’s largest fishing port is located at Boulogne-sur-Mer, where 36,000 tonnes of fish are unloaded every year. Stalls line the footpath in front of the sea, boxes upon boxes of glistening fish, lobsters with tails flapping, crabs and oysters, stallholders cracking jokes with customers. It’s bustling and busy and you won’t find fish any fresher unless you dive for it.
The market is located conveniently close to the port of Calais for our return trip to the UK. We have just time to grab lunch at the Dragon Shed, watching the Calais Dragon go by – a mechanical 12-metre-high dragon that takes groups of people on short city tours, while blowing out water and fire at unsuspecting passers-by (£8.50; Compagniedudragon.com/en).
It’s all great fun and a fitting end to a few days of fun, food and chilling in Hauts-de-France. For more information on the region visit www.visitpasdecalais.com.
Hauts-de-France: Getting there
Travelling to the region from the UK is easy by ferry; DFDS offers up to 30 crossings per day on its Dover to Calais service and up to 24 daily sailings from Dover to Dunkirk. I hadn’t been on the ferry for years and was surprised by the luxury – it’s more ‘cruise ship’, less ‘floating canteen’. Floor to ceiling windows flood the stylish lounges with light and a chance to enjoy sweeping views of the white cliffs of Dover, there are smart dining areas and cafes, shops and outdoor decks with picnic tables and benches.
Fares start at £68 one way for a car and up to four people, with day trip and short break fares also available throughout the year starting at £39 return. Upgrade to the premium lounge for the full first-class experience for only £14 per person.
For more information and to book visit www.dfds.com
]]>For his last night out in Zurich, Joyce went to the Kronenhalle bar. Three days later, on 13 January 1941, he was dead, following surgery on a perforated ulcer. He’s buried in Fluntern Cemetery beside Zurich Zoo, the final stop on the tram line. The journey is a steep one, up some of Zurich’s prime real estate hills, past detached mansions on leafy streets with stunning views. Joyce was fond of the Zoo’s lions and when he was buried his wife Nora said she liked to think of him lying there listening to them roar.
The Kronenhalle was also a favourite with designers Coco Chanel and Yves Saint Laurent and artists Marc Chagall and Pablo Picasso, whose art can still be seen on the walls alongside works by Miro, Matisse and Klee. Today it’s as much art gallery as bar and restaurant – expect to pay around £18 for a cocktail and double that for a main course. Zurich may be cool, but it certainly isn’t cheap.
Opposite the Kronenhalle, the Café Odeon, founded in 1911, was another home away from home for emigres such as Joyce, Lenin and the Dadaists, who were founded in Zurich. These days, with its marble topped tables, red banquettes and Art Noveau vibe, it’s a smart spot for food and drinks – try the 2-course set menu lunch, around £23.
Located in ‘Bellevue – ‘beautiful sight’, the area is a good place to start exploring Zurich’s Old Town, where the river Limmat meets Lake Zurich under the Quaibrucke – Quay Bridge. These crystal-clear waters are clean enough to swim in and many people do. Close by the bridge, the Frauenbad – ‘women’s baths’ – is an area traditionally reserved for women with a covered-in section for privacy.
Following the Limmat along to where it merges with the river Sihl, in pretty Platzspitz park beside the National Museum, I find another of James Joyce’s favourite places. Mentioned in Finnegan’s Wake, “legging a jig or so on the Sihl”, it’s where he had his favourite photograph taken, standing facing the river. Today the rivers’ names are inscribed on the wall as Ljmmat and Sjhl – the ‘j’ replacing ‘i’ in his honour.
Along the river, the Fraumünster, ‘women’s church’, with its Marc Chagall stained-glass windows was built on the site of a 9th century women’s abbey and faces the Grossmünster, with its soaring Romanesque twin towers, dating back to the 1100s. The shady Lindenhof with its 52 lime trees and river views is home to the 9th century St Peter’s church, with its distinctive tower and the largest clock face in Europe. Celts, Romans and Ottonians once made their homes here, now it’s a good spot to play a game of chess on giant boards with life sized pieces.
For a more contemporary look at the city, take the number 4 tram to Zurich West, the city’s former industrial area, now home to its cool cultural quarter, where theatres, galleries, museums and artist studios have replaced factories and shipbuilding yards. (The tram is known locally as Zurich’s design and cultural line, as it passes by all the city’s major cultural institutions.)
I’m staying in some luxury at the Storchen Hotel, with its elegant riverfront cocktail bar and upstairs, a restaurant terrace overlooking the water and soaring Grossmünster towers. From here, I watched the sun go down over a Michelin-starred dinner of scallops, oysters and ravoli, accompanied by several amuse bouches and some of the hotel’s own Chardonnay. Across the water people were dining on outdoor terraces and picnicking by the river’s edge, the Alps rising in the distance.
The next morning, I woke up to a view of swans bobbing on the Limmat and breakfasted on eggs from the hotel’s hens. They live on a farm at the lake, near the Stochen’s sister hotel, the Alex, which I could travel to by private riverboat if I took the notion.
If you’re not up for Michelin dining, you’ll find lots of great foodie alternatives. Zurich is big on responsibly sourced ingredients and also home to the world’s oldest vegetarian restaurant. Open since the 1880s, Hilel is currently run by the fourth generation of the family who founded it. Main courses from £20-£25.
And, of course, there’s chocolate (you didn’t expect me to visit Switzerland and not mention chocolate). Lindt’s Home of Chocolate – producing the good stuff since 1899 – is a 20-minute journey from Zurich, where you can take a tour of the museum and visit the biggest Lindt chocolate shop in the world (Admission £13 adults, £9 children, Lindt-home-of-chocolate.com).
When you’re done with culture (and chocolate), you can be in the countryside (with chocolate-coloured cows) in under 20-minutes, with all of the Alps to explore. Whether it’s a starting point for your Swiss tour or a city destination, there’s a lot more to Zurich than banks.
CONTACTS AND PRICES
The Storchen Hotel is a member of the exclusive Preferred Hotels and Resorts group, rooms from £380; Preferredhotels.com. For more information on Zurich, visit Zuerich.com and MySwitzerland.com. A Swiss Travel Pass, from £186 for 3-days, offers unlimited travel on the country’s rail, bus and boat network, Mystsnet.com.
]]>Hot sun, great food, lovely people, impressive art and architecture – and all just under two hours flying time from the UK. Or, if your eco conscience is bothering you, take the train. Eurostar it from London to Paris, then on to Florence via Milan.
ARRIVING IN FLORENCE
Florence is the capital city and gateway to Tuscany, a region that enjoys an average annual temperature of 20 degrees, with eight hours of sun every day from spring. (Though it’s cheaper to fly to Pisa, just over an hour from Florence with regular fast bus and train connections.)
It’s is a cool city, stretching out from both banks of the Arno, giving it a glorious vista. It’s the final resting spot of Michelangelo and Galileo and the birthplace of Pinocchio. It holds nearly a third of the world’s art treasures according to UNESCO and the biggest collection of Renaissance art on the planet, which resides in the Uffizi Gallery.
To make the most of your time, stay central. The Gallery Hotel Art is located right beside the famous Ponte Vecchio, the medieval closed-in stone bridge, lined with jewellery shops. The smart 4-star boutique hotel has a buzzy downstairs bar, a library dining room and stylish bedrooms – opt for a top floor room with a shady terrace. Dine stylishly in its sister restaurant, the chic Café dell’Oro, around the corner – authentic and inventive Italian dishes with riverside views.
It’s surrounded by narrow cobblestone streets and huge open piazzas and nearby attractions include the Santa Croce, where you’ll find the tombs of Michelangelo, Machiavelli and Galileo as well as works by Giotto and Donatello, and the aforementioned Uffizi Gallery, built in 1581 for the de Medici family with masterpieces dating from the 14th century including many from their private collections.
You can visit some of the family tombs at the Basilica of San Lorenzo and one of their former homes at the Pitti Palace Museum, which is surrounded by great little neighbourhood cafes. There are markets selling local art, souvenirs and Pinocchios everywhere; his story was published in the late 19th century by Florentine writer Collodi.
And while it might be hard to leave Florence, you should. The Tuscan countryside is on your doorstep and it would be a criminal shame to miss those ancient medieval hill towns, vineyards, olive groves and stunning views.
OFF TO VOLTERRA
I enjoyed those views in style from the Borgo Pignano in Volterra, just over one hour’s drive from the city, travelling up mountains as the sun set, catching tantalising glimpses of scenic valleys. But it was pitch black when we arrived and despite the lanterns flickering on the terraces and a floodlit cocktail bar in the garden, I could see nothing else. So, I went to bed excited for morning (and that hasn’t happened so much since I was a child at Christmas).
I wasn’t disappointed. Miles of glorious countryside stretched out before me as I opened the shutters in my suite under the eaves of the 18th century villa, the sky gently pink. I was also pretty excited about the grand piano in my bedroom (yes, you read it right – grand piano!), not to mention the 4-poster bed and the huge colourfully painted bathroom.
I explored the estate as the sun rose – the infinity pool carved out of a limestone quarry, the terraces with armchairs overlooking the valley, the gardens with their golden-coloured family maisonettes glowing in the early morning Tuscan sun, all with stupendous views.
The hotel is set on a 700-acre estate with a working organic farm that supplies a large amount of its produce – heritage vegetables and herbs from the garden, wines from the vineyard, oil from the olive groves and eggs from the hens. There are pigs and a stable of horses, forests with flocks of deer and pheasants. You can tour the farm in a 4×4, by mountain bike or on horseback and take a picnic to enjoy on the way.
After breakfast, a local artist gave me a lesson in oil painting on the garden terrace. I learned how to select a landscape view, mix colours and build a scene on canvas to take home with me, coming over all lady-artist-in-Tuscany for three hours (cost €50). Afterwards I lay by the infinity pool, looking over the valleys in the 28-degree October heat and thought, it’s 12 degrees and raining in the UK.
The pool is heated by woodchip-fired boilers that, along with solar panels, fuel the hotel’s heating and hot water systems using timber supplied from their forests. There are no plastic bottles here. Water is served in re-useable glass bottles and bathroom toiletries are supplied in ceramic containers – both toiletries and containers are handmade locally. The gardens are fed by filtered harvested rainwater, natural and man-made lakes irrigate the farm. No surprise really that the hotel won the Conde Nast Johansens Excellence Award for Best Sustainable Hotel in 2019.
The restaurants offer seasonal and organic food from the estate and local area. Eight-course fine dining tasting menus offer the chance to eat direct from the farm – truffles and mushrooms, snails and cured meats, vegetables and a whole selection of cakes, all served with a selection of organic and biodynamic wines from the region – and that’s just one option! You can eat in one of the villa’s cosy dining rooms or at a communal shared table in front of a medieval fireplace
AND FINALLY… MAREMMA
Two hours away from Volterra, in the Maremma region where chic Florentines and Senesi holiday, the landscape is very different. Bordering the Tyrrhenian Sea, the area has more Blue Flag beaches than anywhere else in Italy, bar Liguria. Around the 5-star L’Andana hotel the countryside is completely flat, the seaside is a short drive away and the Maremma Nature Park stretches along the coast, perfect for walks.
The hotel’s large estate was once the site of Duke of Tuscany’s summer residence. Today it has two swimming pools, a golf range, tennis courts and its own vineyard. There’s a large indoor spa and a thunderstorm, cutting through the hot sunshine on the day I arrive, gives me the perfect excuse to curl up there on a sunlounger all afternoon.
Rooms are set out in the main villa – where my room is kitted out with a luxury lounging area and a sumptuous bath the size of a small pool – and the nearby more family-focused farmhouse.
There’s a Michelin-starred restaurant in the grounds but if you want to eat a more normally priced dinner, there’s an all-day menu available in the main hotel at La Villa restaurant or you can head out to explore the local area – the towns of Castiglione della Pescaia and Grosseto are nearby, Florence and Siena are a 2-hour drive.
And early the next morning I take that 2-hour drive to the airport and back to the UK, rested, sun-kissed and cultured up. But already missing the ice cream.
CONTACTS AND PRICES
Gallery Hotel Art from £200 per night, excluding breakfast, visit lungarnocollection.com/gallery-hotel-art; Borgo Pignano from €300 per night, including breakfast, visit borgopignano.com or call +39 0588 35032; L’Andana from €440 per night, including breakfast, visit www.andana.it, call +39 0564 944 800 or email info@andana.it
]]>Walking across the mountains of Abuna Yosef in north Ethiopia is one of the most spectacular journeys ever. Not to mention pretty hair-raising, slightly hazardous and very challenging. There was a mule involved at the start. We eyed each other, I got on, he did a 360-degree turn on a rocky ridge, I slid off and that was it. For the rest of the journey I was walking. For five hours.
Mekonnen, the boy I sponsor through children’s charity Plan International, lives in one of the most remote parts of Ethiopia. I flew for an hour and a half from the capital Addis Ababa to Lalibela airport where I was met by Kibremidir from Plan, then it was a four-hour drive up rocky mountain tracks to meet our guides and the mules. The climb started from here, three mountain peaks ahead of us to cross.
The scenery around us was breathtaking – I mean literally breathtaking: we were over 3,000 metres above sea level and I was gasping in the thin air as we reached the top of each peak. So it was fairly embarrassing to be overtaken along the ridge by men and women effortlessly walking barefoot, carrying bundles of grain on their backs.
I was there in November, harvest time in north Ethiopia, following the rainy season from June to September. October to January is the best time to visit; from February to the start of the rainy season the temperature rises sharply and the countryside loses its green blanket, becoming scorched in the searing African sun.
The sun was dipping behind the mountain as we started the final descent into a green valley with a few small tukuls (traditional Ethiopian single-room hut dwellings) surrounded by crops. I could hear a child excitedly shouting ‘faranji, faranji’ (that was me, the ‘foreigner’).
And then there were people running forward, bringing animal skins and setting them down on the ground in front of the huts, our guides were shouting greetings in Amharic, and the mules looked like they’d clocked it – we’d arrived. I asked where Mekonnen was and this beautiful smiling boy, who was busy laying our furry carpet on the ground, approached me.
I hadn’t been able to imagine what our meeting would be like and when it happened I just felt sheer and total joy to finally see him. I thought he might be a bit shy – I certainly was – but he was smiling and confident and shook my hand and then, a great honour, leaned in to touch each of my cheeks with his own. I told him I was so pleased to see him and thanked him for all of his letters over the past ten years. I was standing beside him and my legs were shaking as we talked – I didn’t know if it was from the long climb or sheer emotion, maybe a bit of both.
He speaks some English and his English is good, so it was great to be able to talk directly to him and he introduced me to his mother, his father, two sisters, brother and a friend. I met his grandmother who was sitting outside a neighbouring hut, we bowed and exchanged ‘Selam’, the Amharic greeting.
Then I sat with the family outside their house and gave them a photo album with copies of all the photos of Mekonnen and his family I have received through Plan in the last 10 years. His parents don’t speak English but we managed very well by pointing and smiling at the photos and Kibremidir translated when needed. I also took a football and football annual for Mekonnen – I know he’s a soccer fan from his letters – tea-towels for his mother and ping-pong balls for the rest of the family.
As the sun went down we went inside their tukul, a single circular room with benches around the edge and a small fire pit in the centre, the only light came from the open door and fire embers that Mekonnen’s mother was stoking into life. I was given the seat of honour, a low wooden chair covered in fur skins, under the hut’s only ornamentation – the clay wall that displayed a few photos of Mekonnen’s family alongside one of me, my brother and nephew taken in our kitchen in Ireland on my birthday last year!
After the journey we’d just taken I could fully appreciate the huge task of getting my photos and letters to Mekonnen several times a year. And we had it easy – driving for four of the nine hours of the journey. The community volunteers who carry the letters do it on foot from Lalibela – though mind you they don’t have me panting and wheezing up the side of a mountain to slow them down.
Letters are my link with Mekonnen but it’s the £15 I donate every month that allows Plan to provide facilities for the whole community. For this village of Gormalie and surrounding areas Plan has provided a school for 620 children – so many they take it in shifts to attend, the first group coming to classes from 8am to 12, the second from 12 to 4pm. There’s also a water project which provides clean water for the community, located beside the school.
In the tukul we were served branches of peas and beans – Mekonnen sitting beside me helped me find the sweetest pods. There was a coffee ceremony, with beans roasted on the open fire in front of me, then painstakingly ground in hollowed-out bark by his mother as the kettle boiled on the flames. Ethopia is the original home of the coffee plant and this was the best coffee I have ever tasted.
A huge serving platter of injera – traditional bread made from the local grain teff which grows all over the highlands – dressed with bean paste was passed around and we all helped ourselves from the plate, using the bread in place of cutlery to scoop up the thick bean filling. Freshly brewed beer, foaming furiously, was our next treat, only served on very special occasions as the grain used to brew it is expensive. As dusk fell the cows and goats returned and clustered around the tukul’s open door, more people and children came in and I played ping-pong catch with Mekonnen’s little sister. ‘Would you like some milk? Mekonnen asked, and when I said yes a cup was taken outside to the cow and filled with sweet-smelling warm – and extremely fresh! – milk.
I talked to Mekonnen about school and his favourite subjects – English and maths – and enjoyed the smiles of his younger brother who touchingly never seemed to stop beaming at me the whole time I was there. But by then it was very dark and we still had an hour’s walk across the mountain to the school where we would spend the night. The family were horrified to find we meant to leave and wanted us to spend the night there. I was humbled by the hospitality that insisted on finding space for a group of strangers among a family of seven in a small one-room tukul. Then Mekonnen, his brother and friend insisted on coming with us to carry bags and guide us safely across the mountain.
And there was still more hospitality when we reached the school; the teachers who lived in small stone huts close to the main building were worried the school floor wouldn’t be clean enough for our sleeping bags and insisted on giving up a room so we could sleep in their home, cooking us a dinner of macaroni and egg before we went to sleep.
I’m so moved by the generosity of people who have so little, sharing it with random passers-by who turn up unannounced in the middle of the night. But it doesn’t matter how much or how little, it’s the fact they share it with a happy heart and generous spirit. They may be poor in material possessions but in kindness and generosity the people I met on the mountain of Abuna Yosef are the richest of the rich.
And I learned something very important while I was there – and that’s to take what I’ve been given in life and make the most of it, not to wish my life was different or hanker after a life I don’t have, but use what I’ve been given to achieve what I want. I’ve been blessed with many more advantages in life than Mekonnen. He walks for two hours every day across a mountain to get an education, taking what he has been given to make his life better. I can learn a lot from him.
How to sponsor a child
Plan works with communities in 48 developing countries to help alleviate child poverty. In some of these countries one in five children will die before they reach their fifth birthday. For just £15 a month you could change this, helping Plan to build new schools and water treatment plants in local communities. Find out how to sponsor a child on the Plan website at www.plan-uk.org.
1. Start your trip to Dublin by getting your hands on a Dublin Bus pass. Not only will it let you access hop-on/hop-off tour buses so you can travel easily around the city and see the sights, it will also give you free or reduced entry into over 30 top Dublin attractions, as well as special offers and discounts at restaurants, bars and gift shops. If you buy it online and get it before you go (by post or on your mobile phone) you can also use it to travel for free on the bus from the airport to the city centre. The pass comes with a mini guidebook packed full of information and there’s also an app where you can access more. It’s available for 1, 2, 3 or 5 consecutive days and prices start from €59 for an adult ticket, €29 for a child.
(And of course, this being Dublin, not only do you get a full tour of the city on the big red buses that run every 15 minutes all day, from 9am to 6pm and then on the half hour until 7pm, you also get the bus driver banter. The stories, the insider info – such as the best place to find a pint of Guinness – and the passenger chats. If you want to be really ‘looked after’ in Dublin, take the tour!)
2. Ireland’s National Museum is a great place to start your Irish visit, exploring the history of this ancient land from prehistoric times through early Celtic, Viking and medieval periods. Current exhibitions include preserved bog bodies from the Iron Age, as well as insights into some of the world’s oldest passage grave monuments at the ancient Irish seat of kings, the Hill of Tara. The museum is located in Kildare street and close to the National Library, National Gallery, Government Buildings and St Stephen’s Green, right in the heart of the city. Free
3. Directly opposite is the National Library, where – among other things – you can explore your Irish ancestry. WB Yeats lovers will be delighted to find an ongoing exhibition devoted to the great writer’s life and works. (Being one, I certainly was). Free
4. Completing the triad of historical art and culture, and located nearby, is Ireland’s National Gallery, showcasing a collection of European paintings with a strong emphasis on Irish artists including Jack B Yeats, Paul Henry, Sir John Lavery and Walter Osbourne. You’ll also find one of the most recent Caravaggio’s to be discovered, The Taking of Christ, found lurking in the dining room of the Dublin Jesuits’ order home in 1990, and on loan to the gallery since. Coming up in July and running until the end of the year is an exhibition devoted to the, often previously hidden, works of Irish women artists. Free
5. Even more so than its artists, Ireland is particularly well known for its writers and, as the Dublin Writers’ Museum on the north-side of the city explains, “though geographically outside the spread of Western culture, Ireland has an undue proportion of the world’s greatest writers”. And this small but perfectly formed museum showcases all of the greats, including Ireland’s four Nobel Literature Prize winners, WB Yeats, George Bernard Shaw, Samuel Beckett and Seamus Heaney. Here you’ll also find James Joyce, Bram Stoker – the author of Dracula – Brendan Behan and Oscar Wilde. It’s also a great chance to see inside a Dublin Georgian mansion, with its grand sweeping staircase, ornate ceilings and painted wall decorations. Admission €7
6. Close to the Writers’ Museum is the James Joyce Centre, a museum dedicated to one of Ireland’s great writers, the infamous, formerly-banned, terribly complex James Joyce, author of what is widely believed to be the 20th century’s greatest – and most impenetrable – works of fiction, Ulysses. Housed in yet another grand though faded Georgian mansion at 35 North Great George’s St, this former townhouse of the Earl of Kenmare was turned into a dancing academy by Prof Denis Maginni, who features several times in Ulysses, a very colourful character by all accounts.
The house owes its continued existence to Joycean scholar Senator David Norris, a neighbour on the street who saved it from demolition in the 1980s. And one of the key dates on its calendar of events is Bloomsday – that famous date in literary history, June 16 1904 – the day depicted in Ulysess when the hero Leopold Bloom takes his stroll around the city of Dublin, from 8am through to the early hours of the next day. Celebrations include dressing up in the fashion of the period and visiting all of Bloom’s stops on his journey, as well as readings, performances and the legendary Bloomsday Breakfast, including liver and kidneys alongside the traditional fry. Admission €5
7. Staying with legendary writers, in an exhibition – and cultural space – new to the city of Dubin, the Seamus Heaney Listen Now Again showcase draws on the National Library’s extensive archive of Heaney documents and features the poet’s original manuscripts, letters, unpublished works, diary entries, photographs, note books and multi-media recordings. This will be the first exhibition to be housed in the new Bank of Ireland Cultural and Heritage Centre in central Dublin.
8. Another writer who features heavily in Dublin’s history, though he wasn’t always delighted to be a part of it, is Jonathan Swift, author of Gulliver’s Travels and Dean of St Patrick’s Cathedral, the national cathedral of the Church of Ireland. It is believed to be built on the site of a former church established by St Patrick himself, the much-loved patron saint of Ireland. Today’s beautiful building was re-established by a grandson of Arthur Guinness, Benjamin Lee Guinness. Admission €7
9. Which brings us neatly to one of Dublin’s most famous attractions, the Guinness Storehouse, where, it is said, you will be served the finest glass of the black stuff in the world. Arthur established his brewing premises in 1759 at the St James’s Gate Brewery, signing a 9,000-year lease at £45 per year, making it one of the best-value investment in Dublin’s history. The brewery produces 3 million pints of Guinness every day and also offers 360° views of the city. Our tour bus driver treated us to a rendition of ‘You’re drunk, you’re drunk you silly old fool’ as we drove past. Advance admission from €19.50
10. Also in this area, which was heavily colonised by the Vikings and Normans in medieval times, is Christchurch Cathedral, once a major pilgrimage site which housed relics including a miraculous speaking cross and a piece of the Baby Jesus’ crib. Founded almost 1000 years ago, the building was in ruins by the 17th century when it was rescued and revived by another purveyor of alcoholic beverages – Henry Roe, whiskey distiller. A mummified cat and rat in the crypt are referenced in James Joyce’s other famous – and even more complex – work, Finnegans Wake. Admission €7
11. Henry Roe’s distillery closed down in the 1926, despite producing 2 million gallons of whiskey a year in its heyday, probably the highest output of any distillery in the world at the time, and twice as much as the Jameson Distillery was producing. Jameson’s is still going however and you can visit its Bow St premises in Dublin’s Smithfield where you will be given three shots of whiskey to try – American, Scotch and Irish. No prizes for guessing which you are supposed to favour. Admission from €17
12. Catch traditional Irish music seven days a week at a local Smithfield pub. The Cobblestone in North King St is legendary but there are plenty to choose from, all located easy wandering distance from each other so take it handy and have the craic. (The craic for the uninitiated is a particular blend of fun, enjoyment, conversation and entertainment much loved by the Irish on a night out). Free
13. History buffs will find much to engage them at Kilmainham Jail, scene of imprisonments and executions during the famous Irish rebellions of 1798, 1803, 1848,1867 and 1916, as well as the holding pen for convicts on route to Australia. Closed as a prison in 1924, it’s now a museum offering guided tours through the evocative building and several generations of Irish history. Nearby, the War Memorial Gardens commemorate the 50,000 Irish men who died in the First World War. 120,000 fought for the British Army, while back in Dublin, their countrymen were fighting against the British for control of their own country. The modern monument opposite the gardens, 15 blindfolded statues, represents the 15 leaders of the Easter Rising shot by British in May 1916. All were shot standing except one, James Connolly, who was too injured to stand and was strapped to a chair for his execution. Advance admission from €8
14. For a very contemporary take on Irish history, The Vaults is a new 60-minute actor-led journey through 800 years of Ireland’s past, blending live performance with special effects and lots of audience participation. It is opening soon in the newly-renovated old Augustinian St John’s National School, just off Thomas Street.
15. Shop for Irish gifts and souvenirs in the city centre; fashionable Grafton St on the south side, with the nearby Kilkenny Shop, Powerscourt Centre and Avoca perfect spots to browse the best of Irish design, crafts and gourmet food. Over on the north side, Henry St has lots of traditional high street boutiques and shopping centres, as well as the famous Moore St market.
16. Take coffee and cake in Bewley’s Café on Grafton Street, one of Dublin’s most iconic and celebrated landmarks, which has recently undergone a multi-million- euro refurbishment. Check out Bewley’s Café Gourmand, the Coffee Opera Cake and, an original favourite, the Bewley’s Mary Cake.
17. Stay at the Fitzwilliam Hotel, overlooking St Stephen’s Green in the heart of the city, which is a peaceful place for a relaxing early morning stroll. With top floor balconies overlooking the beautiful gardens, contemporary interiors that still have space for a cosy fire in the foyer and a very stylish afternoon tea option in the fashionable Inn on the Green bar, it’s a great city centre location to base yourself for your trip. Rooms from €289, afternoon tea from €39
18. If you want to splash out on some old-world glamour, head across the Green to the Shelbourne Hotel, where the guest register includes names like Greta Garbo, Laurel and Hardy, Rock Hudson, Princess Grace of Monaco and the Kennedy’s. The hotel’s 265 rooms have undergone a complete refurbishment in the last 18 months and its spa’s ‘drawing room’ relaxation area is one of the most sumptuous you will ever see. Or you could just pop in for a drink to the famous horse-shoe bar, where media stars and local characters rub shoulders. Traditional afternoon tea in the Lord Mayor’s room overlooking the Green €49; rooms from €300, suites from €1800
19. Dublin has another connection with legendary film stars – did you know that the famous MGM lion who roars at the start of each film is from Dublin Zoo? The Zoo is located in the Phoenix Park, the biggest enclosed public park in any capital city in Europe, just a mile and a half from the city centre. It’s a pleasant stroll out there along the River Liffey, which flows through the centre of the city and divides Dublin into north and south sides. Or, if you take the Dublin tour bus, the Zoo is one of the scheduled stops. Admission €17.50
20. And, staying with film stars and cinema, check out the beautifully restored Stella Theatre, an iconic cinema in buzzy Rathmines, a throwback to the glamour and glitz of the 1920’s and just short distance from the centre.
21. For more traditional theatrics, there’s the world-famous Abbey, Gate and Gaiety Theatres with programmes of Irish and international new works and classics. And this year’s Dublin Theatre Festival runs from the end of September to mid-October.
22. Private art donations provide some of the most inspiring collections in the city, including the Hugh Lane Gallery, an impressive array of modern works in the beautiful north-side gallery with its imposing architecture. Here you can also visit the studio of Francis Bacon, painstakingly re-created exactly as the artist left it on his death, namely, in complete chaos. Bacon claimed the mess was like his mind: ‘My life is like that, I needed to create in chaos – chaos suggests images to me’. Free
23. The other private collection bequeathed to the State is the Chester Beatty Library, located in Dublin Castle and a short distance walk from Trinity College and Grafton St. (If you’re in Trinity College, don’t forget to see the Book of Kells, the illuminated gospels dating from around 800). Described by the Lonely Planet as not just the best museum in Dublin, but one of the best in Europe, with exotic artefacts from across Asia, the Middle East, North Africa and Europe. At any one time only one percent of the collection is on display so even with regular changes, it is would not be possible to see all of the collection in a lifetime; quite amazing to think of breath and scope of it. Free
24. Dublin Castle, for many years the base of British rule in Ireland, is itself open to visitors and its current exhibitions include Coming Home: Art and the Great Hunger. This shows 50 acclaimed artworks from the world’s largest collection of famine-related art at Ireland’s Great Hunger Museum in the US, the first time they have been seen in Ireland. Admission from €6.50
25. For the latest finds on the food scene, try Berlin-d2, newly re-opened in Dame Lane, Boeuf in South William Street and Opium in Wexford St.
26. Those of a sporty nature will love the newly re-opened 132-year-old Clontarf Seawater Baths, with an open seawater swimming pool, bar and restaurants, all with panoramic views of Dublin Bay. Clontarf is a coastal suburb, not far from the city centre, most famous for the 1014 Battle of Clontarf where Brian Boru, the High King of Ireland, defeated the Vikings and ended the long-running Viking wars.
27. More for adrenaline junkies: there’s wakeboarding at Dublin docklands, from €25; white water rafting on the River Liffey, from €59; zip-lining at Tibradden, close to the city, from €15 and mountain bike trails at Ticknock, from €35. Meanwhile armchair enthusiasts can catch the GAA football and hurling season throughout the summer, with matches played most weekends.
28. Enjoy green living within the city. The National Botanic Gardens of Ireland are located just 3km from the city centre in Glasnevin. The garden is free to visit or you can take a guided tour for a small fee, enjoying the wonderful plants in gardens and glasshouses, including 300 endangered species and six that are already extinct. Afterwards pay a trip to the nearby Glasnevin Cemetery, which dates from the 19th century and is the final resting places of Irish notables including Daniel O’Connell, Charles Stewart Parnell, Eamon de Valera, Maude Gonne, Constance Markievicz, Kevin Barry and Brendan Behan. One of the most visited graves in the cemetery is that of Michael Collins, the nationalist leader who signed the Anglo-Irish treaty with the British government to create the Irish Free State and was later assassinated for his ‘betrayal’ in the Irish Civil War.
29. Get some sea air. Dublin’s coastal location makes it a great city break with a seaside option, and buses and the local DART train service run regularly to a wide range of beaches and clifftop walks. Check out Howth Head, Skerries, Dun Laoghaire Harbour, Sandymouth Strand or Killiney Beach for starters.
For more information on visiting Dublin and Ireland, go to www.VisitDublin.com and www.Ireland.com. Aer Lingus operates daily flights from London Gatwick and Heathrow to Dublin with fares from £32.99 one-way including taxes and charges. For more information or to book visit aerlingus.com
So nobody’s going anywhere for the foreseeable future – except now, perhaps into somebody’s back garden – but luckily, lots of kind people have taken it on themselves to make sure that we can still get a (24-hour-a-day-if-required) fix of art, culture, music and books. Here’s a round-up of some of the best.
THEATRE, OPERA, BALLET
The Royal Opera House in Covent Garden is beaming opera and ballet around the world, with a schedule of free broadcasts and live content. Check out the Royal Ballet’s Peter and the Wolf and The Metamorphosis, as well as the Royal Opera’s Così fan tutte and much more on the ROH Facebook and YouTube channels.
Ditto for the New York’s Met Opera – catch their productions here – string of pearls optional.
The Bolshoi Ballet is streaming previous productions including The Nutcracker and Spartacus on its YouTube channel with more to come – pull the curtains and pretend it’s Christmas. Staying with Christmas, you can watch the English National Ballet’s Swan Lake here.
The Irish National Opera has also put several of its productions online, including Puccini’s Madame Butterfly and Gluck’s Orfeo ed Euridice – full listing here. And catch Mozart’s Marriage of Figaro from Glyndebourne here.
Slava’s Snowshow is one of the most beautiful pieces of theatre I’ve ever seen (twice). You can’t recreate the magic of turning a theatre into a giant snowstorm/playground for giant floating balloons in an online screening, but you can enjoy the gentle humour and magic of the show. Try this as a taster and when we’re all released from house arrest again, check out a live performance somewhere in the world.
The Guardian has put together a great list of ‘Quarantine soirées’ – classical music and opera to stream at home from around the world, updated regularly.
Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre has over 130 filmed productions on its Globe Player video-on-demand service, including Twelfth Night with Mark Rylance (love Mark Rylance), Jonathan Pryce in the Merchant of Venice and A Midsummer Night’s Dream with Michelle Terry.
The Globe is showing past productions for free on its YouTube channel, releasing a new show every week at 7pm. Each will be available from the date of release for 14 days. The productions are:
Hamlet (2018), Romeo and Juliet (2009), A Midsummer Night’s Dream (2013), The Two Noble Kinsmen (2018), The Winter’s Tale (2018) and The Merry Wives of Windsor (2019) – plus, in a late addition, Macbeth (2020) has just gone live now.
You can also watch all of the Complete Walk series on its video-on-demand service. These are 37 short 10-minute films recorded with an all-star cast and shot on location, commissioned for the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare’s death.
Latest shows just announced for the National Theatre’s YouTube channel in May and June include A Streetcar Named Desire, Coriolanus and This House. Get full details here.
Here’s a list of free musicals and plays from FilmedOnStage that you can currently stream – updated daily.
And What’s On Stage has also done a very useful round-up of stage shows, musicals and opera you can watch online for free.
Ireland’s Rough Magic Theatre has just put How to Keep an Alien, by Sonya Kelly, online, filmed at the Dublin Fringe Festival. And you can watch Druid Theatre’s award-winning production of The Playboy of the Western World here.
The Abbey Theatre and Royal Court Theatre’s co-production of Cyprus Avenue by David Ireland, starring Stephen Rea, is now available to watch online here.
Staying in the country, Dear Ireland is a series of 50 monologues created in self-isolation by 50 writers and 50 actors, exploring life during the Covid-19 crisis, commissioned by the Abbey Theatre. Streamed on YouTube over four nights and online for the next six months, it features actors and writers including Brendan Gleeson, Edna O’Brien, Cathy Belton and Joseph O’Connor and asks the question, what should Ireland write on a postcard to itself?
MUSEUMS
Why not pop over into an Irish museum while you’re at it. A whole load of them have just put themselves online for virtual tours here – top tip, the Chester Beatty Museum is a beaut.
Have a browse around behind closed doors in the BBC series Museums in Quarantine, featuring Tate Britain, the British Museum, Warhol at Tate Modern and Young Rembrant at The Ashmolean in Oxford.
Somerset House has released a brand-new virtual tour of its exhibition Mushrooms: The Art, Design and Future of Fungi. It’s the first time that the public will be able to see inside this original show from home, exploring the colourful cultural legacy of mushrooms and their powerful potential in the planet’s survival, featuring works from the likes of Beatrix Potter, Carsten Höller and Tom Dixon.
FILM
This could be a good time to consider a subscription to the British Film Institute – free 14-day trial and then £4.99 a month for lots of free films, plus others to rent for just £2.50. New films are being added all the time, plus there’s a substantial archive list. They have the Buena Vista Social Club – what more do you want?
The Regent Stree Cinema is also offering free membership for three months and the chance to enjoy FILM ESSENTIALS, a selection of specially curated titles powered by online streaming service MUBI. Join to receive details on how to start watching films for free over the next three months.
MUSIC
NEW: Watch the London Mozart Players in action with regular recitals broadcast every week on the LMP website, YouTube and Facebook, as well as interviews with leading musical lights including pianist Howard Shelley and jazz singer Claire Martin.
NEW: There’s more classical music on demand here, courtesy of Bachtrack – and catch the Royal College of Music concerts here.
NEW: The Sligo County Fleadh has been cancelled of course but they’re streaming some live music sessions instead this coming weekend, from May 29.
Billy Bragg live streamed a concert from New York at the start of May, featuring Rosanne Cash, Mary Chapin Carpenter, Steve Earle, The Indigo Girls, KT Tunstall, Loudon Wainwrigh and many more. It was a paid-for event – but here he is playing New York’s Bowery Ballroom last September.
A treat for trad lovers. Irish language TV station TG4 is running a 6-week musical tour of the west coast of Ireland every Sunday at 9.30pm, with legendary traditional musicians, father and son, Breanndán and Cormac Ó Beaglaoich – Slí na mBeaglaoich (Journey of the Begleys). Travelling up the west coast from Kerry to Donegal in their 40-year-old camper van, they’ll team up with friends for tunes and explore the landscape, musical and physical. I’m so enjoying this every week and – of course – Sligo was the highlight.
NEW: For more great Irish music, catch Mary Coughlan gigging in her garden – wrapped in a blanket! – with her band, raising money for Bray Women’s Refuge. And Glen Hansard was recorded live in the National Library of Ireland – not sure if I enjoyed looking at Glen or the books more.
In April, Jack Lukeman launched what would have been the start of his tour with a live show from his sitting room – love this and great to see the comments pouring in from all over the world. (The start of this is particularly hilarious – you have to watch it!) The good news is that it went so well he’s now doing live shows (from his sitting room) every Saturday night at 8pm. He’s already done Leonard Cohen, Bob Dylan and Johnny Cash tributes, an ’80s night, folk night and songs from the 27 club. He’s on a break now for a few weeks, back on June 20 with a Bowie night.
Back in the real world – if it still exists, anyone looked recently? – Jack and Mary Coughlan are doing a show in London on Saturday 26 September in Shoreditch Town Hall. I’ll be first in as soon as the door opens.
Jack did it, so Andrew Lloyd Webber thought he would too. He’s releasing a new musical every Friday on this YouTube channel, each one will be available for 48 hours and first up is Joseph and the Amazing Technicolour Dreamcoat.
Catch Andrea Bocelli singing from Duomo di Milano, Milan Cathedral, here. This solo performance was been created as a message of hope and healing to Italy and the world.
Over 200 musicians have come together to share their music, with concerts broadcast at 8pm on YouTube (brainchild of the artists’ agency Weltenklang, donate to the project here). With performers from Ireland, Scotland, Austria, Portugal, Canada, Louisiana, Makedonia, Iceland, Mali, Sweden, California, Romania and other exotic places taking part, you’ll join them in their homes for the session – because, these days, there’s nowhere like home.
Catch some singing – here’s a virtual performance of Cyndi Lauper’s True Colours, recorded by the Camden Voices choir from their individual homes. More videos on the way they say.
ART
NEW: Take a virtual art tour, courtesy of Art Fund; options include tours of the British Museum, the Courtauld, Oxford’s Pitt Rivers Museum and the National Galleries of Scotland.
NEW: Delve into the minds of the Impressionists at the Royal Academy of Arts, with its Painting the Modern Garden: Monet to Matisse exhibition, guided by expert curators, artists and garden enthusiasts.
NEW: You can also explore two of the Royal Academy’s recent Hockney exhibitons – A Bigger Picture in 2012 and 82 Portraits and One Still-Life in 2016. I ended up seeing A Bigger Picture shortly before midnight one Saturday as the gallery opened up all hours to meet the demand for tickets. One of the best late-night Saturdays I’ve had in London.
NEW: Speaking of late nights, Uniqlo Tate Lates have gone online now, starting from this weekend – a chance to listen to talks, poetry and music, create your own artworks and even do a bit of meditation.
NEW: Or just go to the Barbican.
You can browse beautiful paintings at the National Gallery – stare at Caravaggio to your heart’s content, I know I do. The gallery has also put together several curated collections to watch on video – take a look at paintings of people working from home, enjoy a tour of art history’s female protagonists or spend a day in the countryside.
Take a tour of the new Andy Warhol exhibition at Tate Modern with curators Gregor Muir and Fiontán Moran – the launch of this show was one of my last trips out to the real world. You can also tour the Aubrey Beardsley exhibition at Tate Britain – also excellent.
The Tate’s collection is here – both contemporary and historic. There are loads of great art projects for kids here – and everything from quizzes to crafts here.
While the BMW Tate Live Exhibition has been cancelled in real time, one of the artists programmed for this year’s event has created an online work instead, performed and filmed in the empty Tanks at Tate Modern after the gallery closed. Watch My Body, My Archive, a performance re-invented for this unquie situation, by Congolese choreographer and dance artist Faustin Linyekula.
And you don’t need to stay in the UK obvs; the Uffizi gallery in Florence holds nearly a third of the world’s art treasures and the biggest collection of Renaissance art on the planet – and you can look at it here.
Browse the works of Frida Kahlo here.
Or re-create your own art at home – this one is my favourite!
BOOKS & KID’S ACTIVITIES
A fantastic piece of news – The Hay Literary Festival has gone digital this year, with a programme that is running from now until May 31. There will be talks, readings, author Q&As and special events, including a reading of the works of Wordsworth by a celebrity line-up including Hilary Mantel, Stephen Fry, Benedict Cumberbatch, Margaret Atwoood and more. All of the events are free but you do have to register – and while there are thousands of places available, some of the more popular events – such as Hilary Mantel talking about her latest novel The Mirror and The Light – are filling up fast. All are available to view afterwards for a limited amount of time. See the full programme and catch up with previous events here.
Galway’s Cuirt International Festival of Literature also went online for the first time in its history this year, with some excellent readings and talks from, among others, Anne Enright, Sara Baume, Sinead Gleeson and Lisa McInerney – catch them all here.
You won’t be able to go to your local library any more for books, but you can borrow ebooks and audiobooks from thousands of libraries online using your library card with the Libby app or at Borrowbox. If you don’t have a library card you can still join online while they are closed – just sign up here.
More places for free books – try Project Gutenberg, a library of over 60,000 ebooks which you can download or read online. And for another 16 free book options, Lifewire has put together a list of the best websites here, with pros and cons for each.
Internet Archive has just put 1.4m new books online for free browsing, from study support and educational texts to the latest novels.
If you’re looking for kids’ books, David Walliams is releasing 30 free audio books for children. And here’s a list of children’s authors doing read-alouds and activities.
Also for kids, some very enterprising person on FB has just published a timed list of daily activities – quite fancy a few of them myself:
9am PE with Joe Wicks
10am Maths with Carol Vorderman
11am English with David Walliams
12pm Cooking with Jamie Oliver
1pm Music with Myleene Klass
1.30pm Dance with Darcey Bussell
2.00pm History with Dan Snow (free for 30-days)
4.00pm Home Economics with Theo Michaels (Mon/Wed/Fri)
Non-daily events include: Science with Professor Brian Cox and Geography with Steve Backshall
Of course, if you want to support independent booksellers during this incredibly difficult time, lots of them are now doing deliveries – some by skateboard – and they need your money more than Amazon.
GET CREATIVE OR ‘GO’ PLACES
NEW: Pop along to Ireland’s Bloom festival this weekend, Sunday May 31, with workshops on cooking and gardening as well as a craft beer and farmhouse cheese tasting, not quite sure how that’s going to work out…
NEW: If you’re living in Croydon, you might want to contribute to the Museum of Croydon’s Lockdown Stories, reflecting the lives of Croydon residents during the COVID-19 pandemic and providing a record for future generations. If you’re not living in Croydon, you might want to seriously re-consider your life choices.
Get creative yourself – there are literally thousands of courses being released for free at the moment, everything from cookery to cricket (well, I’m not sure really about cricket – but there’s bound to be one eventually). My favourite last week was a masterclass of guitar lessons with Carlos Santana, this week I like the look of these free online art courses, thoughtfully rounded up by this kind man on YouTube.
Once you’ve progressed from learning guitar with Carlos, you can find out how to compose a film score with Hans Zimmer (did music for Inception, The Lion King, The Dark Knight) – this one is a paid-for course.
Gresham College in London has put a whole archive of lectures online – everything from mysteries of the dark cosmos to equations that have changed the world. They’ve also put a fantastic collection of lectures specifically about London up – am most looking forward to ‘The City of London in Literature’. Went to a few of their lectures in the days I could roam freely – they are really excellent (I’d like to take this chance to recommend their Christmas series).
If you really have to ‘get out’ – you can virtually wander across 825 miles of Florida’s beaches, go to Austria or – just for fun – tour the Eastern State Penitentiary in Philadelphia, once the world’s most famous and expensive prison, which housed Al Capone.
NEW: Visit the pandas at Edinburgh Zoo, wander around Buckingham Palace and Kew Gardens or make the most of this quiet time in the world’s busiest tourist spots and check out everywhere from the Spanish Steps and Colosseum to St Mark’s Square and Prague’s Old Town. Here’s what New York looks like empty. And here are some eerie photos of London before and after lockdown.
Visit Highclere Castle for a tour with the lady of the house every Friday evening at 7pm, courtesy of Viking TV. The home of Lord and Lady Carnarvon, it’s better known today as the ‘real Downton Abbey’.
If you want to go even further back in history, look at prehistoric cave paintings in the Dordogne, view medieval buildings and travel through beautiful countryside here.
Why would we ever want to leave the house again?
800 years ago, this place was a monastery. Monks climbed the stairs of this abbey, passed under the vaulted ceilings, enjoyed the sunlight through these huge stained-glass windows.
But they didn’t walk on carpet on their way to eat in a Michelin-starred dining room. They didn’t rock in the huge wooden swing by the lake. Nor would they have crossed the hump-backed bridge to the tiny island with its trees and treehouse.
Back then there were no swings or treehouses and the lake was a sewage facility for the 12th century monastery. Now the lake is a home to ducks and a family of herons, and the abbey-turned-hotel has been sympathetically preserved by an English family to display its wonderful architecture to a whole new generation of worshipers.
Only now we come to admire the beauty of the building, the gourmet food and the tranquil setting instead of God. But if you have any spiritual awareness at all, you’ll quickly find this beautiful place resonating with your soul.
There are 20 rooms in total at the Abbaye de la Bussière explains owner Clive Cummings when he picks us up at Dijon train station, a half hour drive from the abbey, including rooms in the main house as well as the various other buildings around the grounds, some of which have been converted into family suites.
There are two restaurants, again with soaring arches and magnificent architecture. The fine dining Michelin-starred restaurant is a grand affair with stone arches and chandeliers and offers both a tasting menu – matched with wines – and an a la carte, with choices including frogs’ legs, local freshwater zander and pigeon. But in fairness, the quality of the food is just as good in the hotel bistro, pictured below.
Our cosy double is nestled under the eaves with views of the gardens and lake. As befits its luxurious setting, it’s kitted out with a Nespresso machine and a welcome bottle of home-made peach liqueur – there’s a jacuzzi bath in the bathroom, fluffy robes and slippers in the wardrobe.
