Vienna is not a city that reveals itself all at once. Its beauty unfolds gradually, through imperial palaces and hidden courtyards, through music drifting from open windows, through elegant cafés where time …
Migration is not only a Greek story, or an Italian one. It belongs to everyone, everywhere, and it always has: the leaving, the packing of a whole life into one suitcase, and …
Bonjour art lovers! 🌸 Paris is not only the City of Light, it’s also the birthplace of Impressionism, a movement that changed the course of art forever. In the late 19th century, …
I loved the first one. Loved it enough that when a sequel was announced, twenty years after Andy first walked into Runway with the wrong shoes, I was equal parts thrilled and …
I went to the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam for the self-portraits and found a room I had not expected at all. Five people round a table in a dark cottage, eating …
I have three of these on a shelf at home. They came from KLM flights, they are filled with Dutch gin, and each one is a scale model of a real building …
Hola, beautiful travelers! After exploring Madrid corner by corner and sharing so many stories with you on BubblyLiving, it finally felt like the perfect moment to bring everything together into one sparkling, …
I have loved Botticelli since I was a girl. Long before I understood anything about the Renaissance, I knew those faces: the tilt of a head, the pale gold hair, the calm …
Trafalgar Square sits at the heart of London, and in early December it runs cold and bright, with the fountains going and a row of wooden chalets set up along the north …
I had waited a long time for this one. I had listened to The Phantom of the Opera for years and learned most of the songs by heart, yet I had never …
For most of my life, the Queen was in my wallet. I grew up in Canada, where Elizabeth II was head of state, and her face looked out from the twenty-dollar bill …
I love The Young Victoria. The 2009 film, with Emily Blunt as Victoria and Rupert Friend as Albert, tells the story of a teenage queen finding her feet and falling in love, …
You walk into the V&A and the first thing above you is a storm of blue and green glass. The great Chihuly chandelier hangs in the domed entrance hall, eleven metres of …
We came out of dinner at Sea Containers Restaurant, just along the river, into the cold and walked straight into Christmas. The South Bank does this every winter. The riverside fills with …
I wanted to love dinner at Sea Containers. The room is good-looking, the South Bank outside is all river and lamplight, and our table looked across the Thames to the dome of …
Most of us know Elizabeth I only as the powerful queen she became. The Virgin Queen. Gloriana. The pale, jewelled figure in the Phoenix portrait, a woman who ran England on her …
I expected to be charmed. Henry VIII is the king everyone knows, the one from the rhyme, the giant standing square in the famous portrait. I went round the places that carry …
I did not expect Rome to have reached this far. I knew the Romans came to Britain. I had just never pictured them building a spa this far from home, in a …
Some nights you just want comfort food. It was a cold evening in early December, I had spent a few hours in Selfridges, and I had not booked anywhere. Selfridges in December …
