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. All the melancholia of the Atlantic, songs of colourless, limpid, impotent tragedy. A rough and magic place. An attractive, low-rise town with a highly cultured woman in the tourist office. How come this is the capital of the cheapo holidays? Vlissingen in Dutch. What other place names have the English made their own? .

Monday, 21 December 2009. Quiet nights, lamplights on cobbled streets, the fountain on the lake. It has been on my mind to visit for years, and the Georgian café near Columbia Road market, with an exotic couple from Tiflis and fabulous breakfasts, only increased the desire. One of the most successfully imagined cities. There are more than fifty native.