Inside the Travel Lab

I’d been to Paris once before. It was one of those rush around the museums by coach on a tight schedule affairs, one minute looking at bizarre hanging installations in the Pompidou Centre…

It’s easy to forget how much practice goes in to creating something amazing. When we think about legends in any genre (Al Pacino in the Godfather, Martin Luther King and “I have a dream,” Roger Bannister and the four minute mile,) we…

In France, The Rules Are Complicated
In France, saying cheers is not enough (well, it’s santé for a start, which means health rather than happiness.) No, you must…

Just a reminder that the idea behind eating cardboard to stay size zero, having surgery to look young and all the other painful and dangerous practices people get up to in order to fit the current idea of “beauty” is nothing new…

No, this isn’t about literature, philosophy or trying to justify playing computer games. Brain food is actually about, well, brain as food.

In the midst of a fresh Paris spring, I was standing in another building with scuffed wooden floors…

“We’ll always have Paris,” as the immortal line goes. Now, it seems, Paris will always have something to remember as well…

Mont Blanc, the white mountain, rises out of the Alps to claim the title of the highest peak in Western Europe. I’ve been lucky enough to..

FRENCH FRIDAYS A shiny pink intestine sits on the Charles-de-Fitte Avenue in Toulouse, reaching out of the ground to an overpowering height. I’ve always had the feeling that the museum curators don’t call it the intestine, but Toulousains certainly do. It’s a handy landmark for giving directions – and it symbolizes the entrance to Toulouse’s [...]

Every country seems to have a slightly different hygiene fetish. France, meanwhile, forces men to pay to wear a stranger’s moist speedos. All in the name of hygiene.