Home and away, we love to travel. Read about our trips in the UK and overseas including hotel and restaurant reviews and visits to specialist producers.
Husky sledding at Sweden’s Ice Hotel – © Kavita Favelle 2012 ... Read more »
Kyoto City of Temples With a staggering two thousand Buddhist temples and Shinto shrines, City of Temples is an apt epithet for Japan’s former imperial capital. One of the delights of a trip to Kyoto is not only visiting the famous ones in all the tourist guides but stumbling unexpectedly across so many others as ... Read more »
I am not a classy bird. The truth is that words like elegant, sophisticated and lady-like are not ones you’d choose to describe me… and that’s OK by me. On the inside, I’d like to think I’m intelligent, fun, passionate, surprising and all kinds of other interesting things… and I reckon those aspects of me ... Read more »
Even before our guide Mike Roser took us through the origins and history of apple cultivation, I had it in my head that the National Fruit Collection (NFC) at Brogdale was about collecting and preserving traditional British varieties of apples, alongside other fruits such as pears, plums and cherries. I was wrong on at least ... Read more »
Hyper. Adjective: Obsessively concerned; fanatical; rabid (about a given item, idea or activity). Prefix: a loanword from Greek, usually implying excess or exaggeration. Noun (American, informal): a person who promotes or publicizes events, especially one who uses flamboyant methods. Japan: An island nation in East Asia. An archipelago of 6,582 islands of which the four ... Read more »
As soon as we drove off the ferry and onto Islay, we headed straight to Lagavulin for the first of distillery open day of Feis Ile 2013. Yes, even before we headed to our self-catering house and unloaded the car! There I happily spotted the mobile Seafood Shack and quickly bought myself a portion ... Read more »
Not much can beat a sunny day spent wandering from temple to temple in Kyoto’s beautiful Gion and Higashimaya districts. Although we’d recently paused to enjoy freshly made yuba, that didn’t reduce our enthusiasm to find Bunnosuke-jaya, an amazake specialist listed in Diane Durston’s Old Kyoto book. She explains that amazake is a sweet drink ... Read more »
Diane Durston, in her beautiful book, Old Kyoto, describes her chance discovery of a small yuba shop a couple of blocks from Kyoto City Hall. On that first visit, she had never heard of yuba and thought she’d stumbled into a paper maker’s, as she watched the proprietor lift thin white sheets from rectangular vats ... Read more »
This gal has been wanting to visit Five Guys Burgers and Fries for donkey’s years. Recently, I spent a few days Massachusetts for work. When the US team leader suggested we go there for our last lunch of the week I nodded and grinned so enthusiastically I think I startled him! We grabbed a ... Read more »
Like our fascinating walk through Takayama’s Miyagawa Morning Market, Nishiki in Kyoto is full of wonder. Stall after stall of fresh and processed produce, kitchen cookware and tableware line a long and narrow glass-covered arcade that runs parallel to Shijō Street, a main commercial artery running east to west through the city. With Teramachi and ... Read more »
The Place of Onions, in old Lille. After last night’s rainstorm the intense sticky heat has broken and today is cool, breezy, fresh… I love it! A drop of… [more]
We went to Star Wars: Secrets of the Empire at The Void this morning, an amazing VR experience where we got to be Rebel Alliance members going undercover as… [more]