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Travel Reviews

  • Zanzibar – Mnemba Island

    Zanzibar – Mnemba Island

    By Jon Hawkins

    He may have been displaced by Carlos Slim at the top of Forbes’ annual rich list, but Bill Gates still knows his onions. So the fact that he has stayed at Zanzibar's Mnemba Island Lodge should be all the encouragement you need to hop on the first plane there immediately.

  • Provence

    Provence

    In Provence and the Côte d’Azur this week for a gastronomic adventure. The area is famous, of course, for dishes such as bouillabaise, pissaladière, petits farcis, bourride, daube and the sensational swiss chard tart, tourte de blettes – to name but a few. Whether you can find any of these dishes cooked well is another matter.

  • Scotland - Gleneagles

    Scotland - Gleneagles

    By Martin Deeson

    If there are two words in the English language designed to make any right-thinking man recoil in horror and run for the nearest deep-buttoned leather arm chair, then it is the doom-laden phrase, ‘activity holiday’. Visions of men with mirrored wraparound shades and massive thighs cramming themselves into tiny, little, stupid sailing dinghies, compete with the living horror of any sort of group activity that involves heavy sweating, other than having a sauna or enjoying a beer in a very hot country.

  • Shanghai

    Shanghai

    Emerging on a smog-free day from Shanghai’s metro system into the beating heart of China’s new economy is to confront one of the most iconic skylines of the 21st century. While Tokyo will forever evoke Bladerunner and New York a 1970s Coppola backdrop, Shanghai with its kitsch, candy-bar Pearl Tower and wide designer avenues is the world champion of post-modernity.

  • St Lucia – Jade Mountain

    St Lucia – Jade Mountain

    By Jon Hawkins

    When the view from your room is a jaw-dropping panorama that takes in St Lucia’s World Heritage Piton mountains and the Caribbean Sea, you probably don’t strictly need a private infinity pool, boutique spa and fitness centre, star-gazing terrace, art gallery, watersports facilities and fine dining from an award-winning chef, but they certainly help.

  • Taiwan

    Taiwan

    “Snakes? You want snakes?” Roused from my sleep at 35,000ft, why would I want snakes? “Oh, you mean snacks.” Lovely as the air steward was, with a contented tummy already full of EVA Air’s finest Din Tai Fung braised beef noodles, I didn’t quite fancy snacks – or snakes for that matter.

  • Tuscany - Casole

    Tuscany - Casole

    Peeking over the edge of an infinity pool scooped into the Tuscan hillside, idly watching a family of deer bouncing around the still misty valley below, it’s not hard to see the appeal of Castello di Casole. The view is in-your-mind’s-eye perfect: an unspoilt panorama of woods, fields and vines, with a hill town in the distance that will slowly disappear as the mist dissolves into a heat haze. It might take a few hours or so, but a lazy morning well spent, surely.

  • London-Dorchester

    London-Dorchester

    By Martin Deeson

    If Mayfair is the HQ of luxury in London then the Dorchester is its luxurious bomb shelter. Built in the early 1930s by concrete magnate Sir Malcolm McAlpine (son of Sir Robert ‘Concrete Bob’ McAlpine), when the job was finished the client was unable to pay for the construction works and so the McAlpine company took possession of the building.

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