Wednesday, 28 October 2009. ANOTHER DAY, ANOTHER BAY. CAPTAIN TUNCAY was the hero of our voyage. Our boat was the 126-tonne Randa. At the airport I had picked up a copy of The Histories. No wonder these cruises are popular with children.

Reflections on a year of travel. Looks back on the countries he visited - with the help of a 5th century BC chronicler. I could use the money however I wanted, go where and how I pleased. Where would you go? What would you chose? Land of the falling feathers. Moscow and St Petersburg were the first places I visited with my prize money.

Historical fiction set in Birmingam and Barcelona in the 1830s, when the first steam engine was installed in Spain. HIGH TIMES AT THE HOTEL BRISTOL. A book of 20 short stories based on events that have happened in some of the 200 or so hotels called Bristol around the world. Travel Book of the Week.

BLESSED JOANA AND THE ODOUR OF SANCTITY. THIS IS a shrine I built in my garden to house the souvenirs of my travels. Which can be seen in Haghia Sofia. The other postcard is from Montserrat in Catalonia. I love these naive ex-voto. On the floor are relics of the True Cross .

But it was dark, it was late, and I was on my way somewhere else. For so long it was a forbidden place, just a purple stripe, like dawn on the horizon, seen on the ferry from Italy to Greece. Here, for the first time, I learned you .

Tuesday, 20 October 2009. I had no idea it was there. Nobody had told me about it. For 20 years we took our turn on an acre of the High Weald, until falling leaves and gathering darkness drove us back to the city. At its exit, a fortified tower, G.

Sunday, 3 January 2010. What is surprising is to find the architecture, the stepped gabled roofs and robust church spires, in town after town from Holland and Germany to Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia - in the trading towns all the ways up the Baltic. In a restaurant in the old town, a band wanders into the room in front of us and starts to play. Next day we notice black dots near the horizon of.

Thursday, 22 October 2009. Ten million people and no traffic lights make it impossible for pedestrians to cross the road. And mine, with Lunch with Elizabeth David. I once saw turtles swimming in the Canal du Midi here. I used to read anything I could lay my hands on about Al Capone.

Monday, 30 November 2009. Families were put aboard rafts at Ulm in Germany and, without any means of propulsion, they simply floated off down river, unable to turn back. We have some red wooden horses from here, a gift from a Swedish lodger who was a little spooky. Nowhere is more mellow in October, the.

Monday, 21 December 2009. It looked like a sorry southern Italian industrial town. No other Greek site gives such a good idea about day-to-.