Most of my long trips begin with a red-eye out of Montreal, and a fair number of those red-eyes put me down at Schiphol with hours to spend before the next leg. …
Ripley’s Aquarium of Canada, at the base of the CN Tower in Toronto, is a lot of fun, and the Dangerous Lagoon is the best of it. It is the aquarium’s largest …
I am usually disappointed by airport food, and by airport coffee even more. So Café Flor, on Schiphol’s D pier, was a surprise. We stopped there in May while we waited to …
I came to St James’s Park the way most people do, straight from Buckingham Palace, with an hour to spare and no real plan. I have done it a few times now, …
In my last post on the National Gallery I followed the Early Renaissance in Florence, and ended with three quiet workshop masters: Verrocchio, who trained Leonardo, Ghirlandaio, who trained Michelangelo, and Fra …
I have always loved the Renaissance, and not just the famous paintings but the idea inside the word itself: rebirth. After centuries in which European art had mostly served the church in …
Pasta is my comfort food. It takes me straight back to Italy, one of my favourite countries, and in particular to a bowl of pasta I ate in Rome that quietly ruined …
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 …
