Cooking in Jordan

The older I get, the more I enjoy cooking classes. With an opening statement like that, I’m in danger of whirling around in a cartoon swirl and remerging as an immaculately groomed housewife from the 1950s: hair set, rosy-cheeked smile, skirt that sticks out like a snipped triangle and the scent of freshly…

Hitting the Wall in Berlin

Eighteen days ago I set out on a journey of more than a thousand miles. It took me through nine different countries, six different currencies, two continents and it strayed both in and out of…

Trieste: Sadness & Splendour at the Start of the Iron Curtain

Behind me, I know that sapphire lights stud their way across the stone. Right now, though, I’m watching darkness.

Behind me, flames from an occasional car…

Can Ethics Entice You?

Ethical travel. It’s the sort of thing that sounds great but that usually means a hotel tries not to wash your towels and attempts instead to sell you a hand-woven bracelet from (supposedly) a village down the street. Judging a single person’s ethics is a sticky, tricky area but bundle a whole load of people together inside the borders of a country with billions of dollars at stake and it gets trickier still.