To be fair I’ll have to admt that I don’t truly know what the top attraction is in Barcelona for visitors. But if I had to guess, I’d say the Sagrada Família, wouldn’t you?But I’d imagine that La Boqueria, the huge market, would run a...
Of course, it depends very much on where you want to go. In some cases, there’s no option and it has to be air travel. If I want to go from New York to London, there’s no under-the-ocean railway tunnel that’s going to give me a choice. It’s...
I’m sure that you know what Mount Vesuvius did almost two thousand years ago? Famously, it erupted and destroyed the Roman settlement of Pompeii. There had been other earthquakes of course. Some years before, Pompeii had been pretty badly damaged and the repairs...
They are an icon of Paris, without a doubt. The Morris Columns, developed in the nineteenth century specifically to support advertising posters are seen in other European towns too but yet they somehow seem to be so typical of Paris. When Gabriel Morris, a Parisien...
Meet Cumil. And as the title says, he is (allegedly) the most photographed tourist attraction in Bratislava. One of the surprises of Bratislava is the number of lifesize bronze statues that are scattered about. Cumil is described as ‘Man at Work’ although...
Have you? Maybe you’ve got an idea for a fabulous app that would make a host’s life easier. Maybe you think that a service supplying consumables to hosts for their guests is a great idea. Or perhaps your ideas range from property management to providing...
Sculptor David Černý created the ‘babies’ that you see in the photograph. And they are ‘crawling’ up and down the Žižkov Television Tower. The fibreglass sculptures were added to the tower as a temporary exhibition – Černý is a...
Not long ago I was talking to an American person here in the USA where I live. I haven’t always lived here – I am born, bred and buttered English.This person was going to visit the UK and asked me if the country was safe. I had to chuckle. I’ll...
Some people like foodie tours or trips that include museums or journeys that include rail travel – and so do I, and a lot more besides. But I still haven’t found a rummage-about-in-bookstore tour.If ever I do, then I’m sure that it will include the...
We’ve all heard a million times that first impressions count. And they do, it’s true. But if you’re running a hospitality business, especially in the field of short term rentals, then it’s important to remember that last impressions count a lot...
You know what Londoners are like. If you think that there are buildings in London that have official names such as the Gherkin then you’d be wrong – although just about everyone refers to it as such. There’s also no building that’s officially...
You might think that Count Cesare Mattei was really a bit of a nutcase but let’s be nice and call him eccentric. He founded a medical treatment known as ‘electrohomeopathy’ that was, evidently, total quackery. But, being a rich bloke, he also built a...
If you’re a short term rental hosts I’m sure that you’ve realised by now that there are many reasons why you might get a completely undeserved bad review from time to time, Even if ‘bad’ is pushing it a bit, a review that doesn’t...
The building started life in 1924. Not as a ballroom or music venue though – it orginated as a garage. The internet tells me that this was ‘for Wyatt Tate Brady’s automobiles’. At first I took this to mean that Mr Tate Brady was in the motor...
Right until Victorian times, Tintagel in Cornwall was a remote place with few – if any – visitors. The landscape was wild and inhospitable, the shoreline craggy and naturally fortified. In fact, the island – it’s only narrowly separated from...
I absolutely, completely and utterly hate the fact that I have got to the age when I could preface a sentence with ‘in my day’ so I’m not going to. But nevertheless, I’m getting increasingly impatient with Airbnb hosts who get grumpy because...
Airports these days can be pretty okay, architecturally speaking. But as so many people now prefer to experience travelling by train instead of being sardined into a cylindrical tube in the air, the beautiful railway stations of the world are being fully appreciated....
Although it looks pretty much like something from another world – or at least from ancient times – the Blue Lagoon has only been in existence since the local power station was created. It’s the overspill; the by-product. To be sure that I’ve...
I’ve never really cared for using an umbrella, have you? I find them pretty unwieldy and unmanageable. Plus those small telescopic ones – and those are the best for travel – don’t really provide enough coverage. (And I can never get the things...
The British Isles are so jam-packed with history that you’d need several trips of many weeks to see even a fraction of the items of interest. In fact, you could spend weeks in London and only cover a small number of historic landmarks and sights there. And...
