Our writers reveal the highs and lows of the year – the best beach, the
nightmare island, the greatest meal, the eco-villain, the New York eureka
moment and the most fun you can have on a cliff without dying
Tell us the high points of your year in travel using the comment form below
- your favourite beach, best restaurant, most spectacular hotel room -
and stick the boot into what made your blood boil. The most interesting and
informative will win a magnum of Canard-Duchene champagne
MATT RUDD
High: Aronia de Takazawa, Tokyo. I had the best meal of my life (by a
long way) in this tiny two-table restaurant that slipped bizarrely under the
radar of the Michelin inspectors. For details (because it’s not as simple as
just giving you the phone number), see next week’s issue.
Low: My virtual holiday in Second Life. It was supposed to be my first
guilt-free, carbon-free holiday, but all that happened was that my
non-virtual wife caught me canoodling with a virtual French nurse in the
virtual south of France. And virtually left me.
DOM JOLY
High: Corsica. It’s somewhere I’ve wanted to visit since I was a kid
watching the ferries leave from Nice harbour, and this year I finally made
it. It was so good, I went twice. The second time, I took my family and we
had a blissful picnic – local cheese, dried ham and bread – before plunging
into an icy crystal-clear river. For an hour, we were as close as you can
get to perfection.
Low: Tenerife. I went on a three-day golf trip. Great company, nice
course but... oh, my God, what an island. A big, ugly building site of a
place, devoid of trees and charm. The trip into town at night was the stuff
of nightmares – drunken Brits urinating on shop windows, while short-skirted
fat women staggered around the place smashed on alcopops. It was like
something out of Hogarth.
ANTHONY PEREGRINE
High: Motorhome in France. Occasionally, highlights are things that you
have been dreading but that work out well. Roll forward Melissa the
Motorhome. I really didn’t want to meet her. After five days, I could barely
let her go. She ushered us round the Alps and Burgundy with grandeur,
feeding us in her kitchen, providing refuge and space for fun and games,
bedding us down and then whisking us off somewhere new. A roam with a home,
it was a revelation. Eurocamp Independent (0844 406 0109, www.eurocampindependent.co.uk)
hires her (and others like her). Treat her well, or else...
Low: Poor dining decisions. Don’t eat sausages from French wayside food
stands. I did, near Agen rugby ground. Three days later, I emerged from the
toilet – thinner, greener, wiser. Be warned.
STEPHEN BLEACH
High: Venice by boat. It’s a white-knuckle thrill ride and the best
sightseeing trip on earth combined. Driving a motor cruiser around the busy
lagoon, we almost rammed a police boat and just missed a floating hearse,
but we saw La Serenissima as she was meant to be seen, from the water.
Anyone can do it, no experience required: brush up on your Italian swearing,
though. A week costs from £845 with Connoisseur (0870 160 5648, www.connoisseurboating.co.uk).
Low: Claustrophobia at Colditz. The second world war prison camp opened
as a youth hostel this year (www.djh-sachsen.de),
and I thought it might be a wheeze to attempt escape. Mistake: getting stuck
in an air vent at 3am was not funny. If you go, use your key.
CHRIS HASLAM
High: Serra Cafema, Namibia. I’d driven for 60 hours through the Namib
desert. I’d been lost in the Skeleton Coast’s fog bank, bogged down in soft
sand and chased by elephants. By now I was prepared to sell blood for beer,
but, as I reached the top of the last dune in Namibia, all I could see was
Angola’s Cafema mountains fading into the twilight. Then I spotted the
twinkling lights of Serra Cafema, one of Africa’s most remote bush camps,
huddled in an oasis on the Kunene River. And, yes, they had beer (www.serracafema.com).
Low: Royal Air Maroc. Serve kidney beans to 148 passengers at altitude
and you get gas. Even my dog knows that. But the Moroccan state carrier
clearly doesn’t – either that or its in-flight menu is created by a
flatulence-fixated sociopath.
NICK REDMAN
High: Beer, southeast Devon. Last summer, I fell in love with this
postcard-pretty coastal village. A cottage rented by a sister came with a
spare room, so I bumbled down by train. A heat wave hovered, the Channel
spangled, and the trip dripped like distilled nostalgia: bees murmuring
around the beer glasses in the garden of the Anchor Inn; ice cream in
deckchairs on the pebbles; and the kids kayaking to catch fish for barbecues
with wine later, below the cliffs and the stars.
Low: Barcelona-Gatwick, EasyJet. Reality dawned as the departure time
came and went – no gate number, no final call, every other airline
leapfrogging by on the screen. That sensible 6pmish choice descended into a
grim, dead-of-night, last-helicopter-out-of-Saigon scenario. Bed finally at
4am. An utter flightmare. Next year: Beer.
STANLEY STEWART
High: Raffles, Beijing. A turbulent history has left Beijing with
surprisingly few grand old buildings. Raffles has not only found one, it has
transformed it into the finest hotel in China (www.beijing.raffles.com).
In a city in love with extravagant modernity, its old-fashioned elegance and
restraint are a breath of fresh air. Somerset Maugham would feel at home
over afternoon tea, and the rooms are furnished with the kind of oriental
antiques normally only seen by collectors.
Low: Budget airlines. They seem convinced that you forfeit your rights
the moment you press the confirm button for your credit-card details. When
passengers from a budget flight were left behind in Rome recently in a
boarding-gate cockup that the victims felt was clearly the fault of the
airline, no refund was offered, just a demand for payment for tickets on the
next flight.
VINCENT CRUMP
High: Coasteering, Pembrokeshire. How do you snap a 13-year-old
über-teen out of her MSN-induced ennui? Tell her to go jump off a cliff.
Daisy and I booked together for a morning of “coasteering” on the spiky
shores of St David’s – it’s a kind of extreme paddling where you scale crags
and chuck yourself into gullies of pounding surf. Her goth fringe looked
spiffing with a wetsuit, and her doubts evaporated with our first breathless
plummet into the brine. “It’s a once in a lifetime thing, eh, dad?” TYF
Adventure (01437 721611, www.tyf.com);
adults from £50, under18s from £35.
Low: Oirish music, Co Clare. You won’t be reading about my summer
pilgrimage to the Burren in search of Irish music. I didn’t find any – just
bored-looking duos crooning Danny Boy for Japanese bus parties. The bars of
Doolin, alleged fountainhead of the traditional session, were the most
sanitised of all. Seems like the craic’s been crocked by tourism.
PAUL CROUGHTON
High: Trattoria del Vapore, Cernobbio. There’s a lot surrounding Lake
Como – hotels, cafes, bars and the like, and many of them are great, but
here’s a restaurant that is so far beyond great that I have no superlatives
grand enough. So here it is in straight English: the crab pasta was the
greatest fish course I’ve ever eaten, the service was superb, the wine was
delicious, the terrace garden beautiful. If you are within 20 miles, go
there. And have the crab pasta. (00 39 031 510308, Lago di Como, Via
Garibaldi 17.)
Low: Alitalia. I’ve flown with it four times this year. The first time
was fine, although the food was miserable. The second, I was delayed for six
hours with no explanation. The third, it lost my luggage. The fourth, it did
it again. There will never be a fifth.
BRIAN SCHOFIELD
High: Cologne. What a fantastic city – obsessed with cutting-edge art
and top-quality lager, full of beautiful open spaces, bicycle trails and
vibrant neighbourhoods, and populated by the sort of laid-back, cheerful
people who know they’ve struck it lucky. As a hub for Germany’s ludicrously
fast and inexpensive rail network, Cologne could be the base for scores of
continental adventures – or just stay put and enjoy flutes of boutique beer
and the inexplicably affordable food. From £82 return from St Pancras (www.raileurope.co.uk).
Low: The Air Transport Association. Representing all the leading
American airlines, this lobbying group is currently undermining the European
Union’s efforts to include flying in its greenhouse-emissions trading
scheme. Basically, it’s the bad guy.
SUSAN D’ARCY
High: Villa Feltrinelli. When I ask my favourite hoteliers to name
their favourite hotel, this is invariably their reply. So my expectations of
this sumptuous Lake Garda mansion could not have been higher – and yet it
exceeded them. It is the most perfect expression of Italian flamboyance: as
luscious as Sophia Loren, as feel-good as the most rose-tinted scene from Il
Postino. It should top your 100 things to do before you die list (00 39 0365
79800, www.villafeltrinelli.it).
Low: Jade Mountain, St Lucia. The rooms are truly stunning. Sadly, the
service was shambolic when I was there, and most of the facilities are
shared with its sister resort, whose guests were the sort of fat Americans
who have their photo taken with the waiter.
ED GRENBY
High: New York plus New England. First, do the bright lights, big city
thing for a couple of days in Manhattan. Next, hire a car and drive round
the block a couple of times, playing at being local (honk horn; shout
“Asshole!”). Then, light out on I-95 or I-684 until you hit the white picket
fences of Connecticut. The revelation of the year – for me, anyway – was
that it takes just 75 minutes. The NY/NE combination is my new favourite
holiday.
Low: Molton Brown goodies. Nothing actually wrong with them; I’m just
fed up with hoteliers thinking a bottle in the bathroom makes the place
“boutique” and justifies sticking 20 quid on the room rate.
RICHARD GREEN
High: Tesla Museum, Belgrade. The curator pulled the lever, and the
air, plus anything breathing it, tensed. The 20ft-high copper coil pulsed
with half a million volts and two metal orbs at the top started to fizz
lightning bolts. Then, the neon strip light I was holding – unattached to
anything but me – burst into light. A fabulously exciting and impractical
Obi-Wan Kenobi moment, and a thrilling demo of Tesla’s unsung genius. He
also invented AC current, the electric motor, remote control and radio (www.tesla-museum.org).
Low: House of MG hotel, Ahmedabad. With a cold beer and cashews,
large-screen TV and squidgy settee, I was set for the Rugby World Cup final.
There were reassuring trailers on the Star Sports channel and it was 1.30am.
Just minutes to go. Then the feed switched to Superbike racing from
Melbourne, and I wept (www.houseofmg.com;
doubles from £86).
Delicious and refreshing, Canard-Duchêne Brut has become one of the best
selling Champagnes in Britain. In France its popularity is such that a
bottle is opened every 20 seconds. A magnum provides twice the pleasure!
