Greek idyll

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The island of Astypalea is a rocky outcrop in an azure Aegean sea. It is so rocky and barren that it’s a wonder anything grows here. But it does. Beside the cottage that we’ve been staying in this week, there is a productive garden in which there are grape vines, pomegranate trees, tomato bushes, fig trees and some flowers. Our Greek neighbour came into the garden two nights ago to harvest some of the fruit and very generously gave us a pomegranate, some tomatoes and grapes and a fig. There are farms on the island, which we’ve seen on our travels around it on our rented scooter. They look completely barren except for bee hives, goats and olive groves.

The appeal of this island for tourists is easy to see. There are many beautiful beaches with shady trees and amazingly clear, blue water for swimming. There are also myriad tavernas, some of which set their tables and chairs in the sand right on the beach, and interesting little shops and cafes in the main settlement of Chora. There are only just over 1000 permanent inhabitants and no harbour big enough for cruise ships, which makes it an ‘unspoilt’ Greek island, unlike Mykonos or Santorini. However, with falling amounts of rainfall due to climate change, water may soon become an issue and there is talk of establishing a desalination plant, though that is costly.

At the highest point on the island are the remains of a Venetian fortress, built in the 15th century as protection against pirates who terrorised the Mediterranean. A huge earthquake in 1956 brought much of the fortress down and there are still areas cordoned off because they are dangerous. There are two churches on the site, picturesque in their whitewash with blue trim and bells that chime in the wind.

Our cottage has a courtyard complete with olive tree and the remains of the well and outside oven that would have served the original house. We’ve enjoyed eating our breakfast out there when there is still enough shade to keep us cool and then again in the evenings as the sun is losing its heat and the shadows lengthen. Our days on this idyllic island have been spent exploring on the scooter and finding unbelievably beautiful beaches, where we can swim and lie the shade to dry off and doze. It will be hard to leave and return to a New Zealand winter. But it will be good to be home!

Carinthian countryside

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After a four-hour train ride from Vienna, we arrived in Villach, the second largest town in the southernmost Austrian region of Carinthia. Our friends have a rural property outside the town and we stayed in a self-contained chalet behind their house, complete with sleeping loft and skylight. It was fantastic! The scenery is spectacular – dense green forests, fields of tall grasses and meadow flowers, deep-blue lakes and vertiginous mountains. One morning we drove up into the foothills and then walked to a look-out point from which we could view the alps that separate Austria and Italy.

The area has been inhabited since the Bronze Age and burial mounds and lake dwellings have been excavated in the region. There are also Roman remains and churches going back to medieval times. It is well-known as a Marian pilgrimage route and there are a number of churches dedicated to Mary that pilgrims visit along the 266 km trail.

The largest lake in the area is the Worthersee. Its startling colour is due to the limestone in the surrounding hills. There is an ingeneously constructed viewpoint called the Pyramidenkogel built high up on a hill and we took the elevator up to the 10th floor to view the lake below. There were myriad boats, sailors and swimmers out on the lake on a brilliant summer’s day. Hard to believe that in the winter, there is enough ice to turn it into a skating rink, though with climate change, the skating season is becoming shorter.

Vibrant Vienna

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Vienna is a beautiful city, perhaps the most beautiful city I’ve visited. You walk along a cobbled street, you look up and see lines of Baroque buildings surrounding a wide courtyard, often with a sparkling fountain in its centre. Or you head for the shade of an avenue of trees and at the end, you see a pair of perfectly matched museums – the Naturhistorisches (Natural History) and the Kunshistorisches (Art History) museums. They were commissioned by Franz Joseph 1 and built between 1871 and 1889.

Vienna’s majestic vistas owe much to its past as the capital of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, which was ruled by the Habsburgs for over 600 years. They had access to immense wealth and this shows in the palaces and churches they commissioned. Most impressive of all is their vast summer residence, the Schonbrunn Palace, which has over 1,400 rooms and expansive gardens. We ambled through the estate along with hundreds of other tourists and there was room for us all. We enjoyed coffee and apple strudel in the Gloriette cafe, which has a wonderful view of the gardens and the palace.

The two main churches in Vienna are the Romanesque/Gothic St Stephen’s Cathedral and the Baroque St Charles’s Church. The former is the seat of the Archbishop of Vienna and its spires dominate the Vienna skyline. It was built on an ancient Roman site and was eventually completed in 1578. The latter is dedicated to Saint Charles Borromeo, who was a leader of the Counter-Reformation. It was commissioned by Charles VI in 1713 in gratitude after a major plague epidemic and completed in 1737.

We were lucky to attend an organ recital in the Church of St Peter. Listening to music composed by Vivaldi and Bach, both of whom lived in Vienna, while gazing at the ornate Baroque interior of this 18th century church was a surreal experience. We also went to a concert of chamber music in a monastery where Mozart lived for a short while. The concert was held in a small, beautifully decorated concert hall called the Sala Terrena and was a programme of Viennese music played by a trio of violin, piano and cello. The cellist charmingly introduced the music and waxed lyrical about J S Bach – “not every musician believes in God but every musician believes in Bach”!

From sublime music to a reminder of Austria’s involvement in the devastation of the 1930s. The beautiful Judenplatz has a sombre memorial to the 65,000 Jewish Austrians who were killed in the 1930s. The square is on the site of a medieval synagogue, which was burned down during a pogram in 1420.

Our time in Vienna was not totally absorbed by palaces, churches and memorials. We were fortunate that our Austrian friends who live four hours away met us in Vienna and they were the most wonderful tour guides. We enjoyed delicious food in their company, including Wiener schnitzel and kaiserschmarrn (a kind of pancake served with fruit compote). We had coffee in a traditional coffee house, where Jim ordered English breakfast tea! and a drink in a roof-top bar with a splendid view of the roof and spires of St Stephen’s Cathedral.

Roman remains

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Wherever they found springs, the Romans established towns complete with baths, roads and, in some cases, aqueducts. This was true in Bath and also in cities we’ve visited in Germany. The soaring towers of the Cologne cathedral are awe-inspiring indeed but the Romans were there long before Archbishop von Hochstaden laid the foundation stone in 1248. Called Colonia Claudia Ara Agrippinensium, it was an important city on the Rhine and there are still Roman remnants dotted around the city.

The cathedral was finally completed in 1880. It is a Gothic masterpiece that was planned to house the reliquary of the three wise men and as a fit place for the Holy Roman Emperor to worship. It remains the seat of the archbishop of Cologne. Its spires are over 150m in height and wherever you walk in the city, you can see them soaring above the other buildings.

The city of Aachen is on the site of the Roman settlement of Aquae Granni, so called because the spring there was dedicated to the god Grannus. The smell of sulphur lingers around the city centre, which is picturesque with its cobbled lanes and wide squares. We sat down for an iced coffee in one square and were presented with a dessert – the glass was almost filled with ice cream with a token amount of coffee poured in!

At the heart of the city centre is the cathedral, which is much smaller than the one in Cologne and built in a different style much earlier, around the year 800. It is the burial place of Charlemagne and is constructed around on octagon. The decorations inside are muted and reminiscent of the Byzantine churches in Istanbul. The cobbles of the lanes and squares are dotted with brass plaques that have Charlemagne’s monogram embossed on them. The story goes that he was illiterate so his administrators had a template made to which he could just add a line to complete his signature.

For someone who lives in the antipodes, it is thrill to visit cities that began in ancient times and to marvel at the glories of their medieval pasts. The locals, however, live modern lives among the splendour and one sees them whiling away the summer evenings along the banks of the river or in a town square with their families and friends, taking it all for granted. It seems incomprehensible that they should walk straight past the cathedral and not even break their stride.

An uneasy history

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Berlin has a long, complicated history, stretching back more than 780 years. Yet it is a thoroughly modern city, largely because of the extreme destruction it experienced towards the end of the Second World War. Some of the older buildings have been restored in their original form but there are many modern structures, particularly in the area that is home to the federal government and chancellery, so there is an interesting juxaposition of old and contemporary architecture. Many of the buildings were also constructed on a grand scale. Walking around Museum Island, one is overawed by the dimensions – soaring columns, huge statutes and fountains, massive entrances and very high ceilings – of the five museums that are built on an island in the Spree River, accessible by bridges.

The river is an active part of the city and we took a pleasant and informative ferry trip along it. The extensive Tiergarten is a green oasis in this bustling city and performs the same function as Central Park does in New York City. The public transport is amazing and you can get around very easily by tram, bus or underground. A daily ticket will allow you to use all three.

Berlin was a divided city from 1961 to 1989 and the East Side Gallery preserves what is left of the Wall. It is covered in interesting art by various artists from around the world, none more (in)famous than the Dmitri Vrubel painting of Brezhnev and Honecker in an embrace. It’s sobering to remember the chilling effect the Wall had on the people of Berlin, separating families and causing at least 140 people to lose their lives attempting to escape, and on the Cold War world. At a former border crossing point between East and West Berlin, at the Friedrichstrasse station, you can still see the Tranenpalast (Palace of Tears), so-called because of the many tearful partings between East German residents and western visitors that took place there.

Berlin’s dark past is also evident in the pitted walls caused by small arms fire in the last ditch battle for the city in April/May 1945. But it is the numerous stumbling stones dotted around the cobbled streets that are the most poignant reminders of all. “Here lived Johanna Klum … deported 1943, murdered in Auschwitz”.

Our accommodation (a comfortable and spacious hotel apartment) was in the vibrant Mitte district, in which there are numerous funky stores, art galleries, restaurants and bars. On our last evening, we enjoyed a drink in a quaint courtyard cafe run by charming Vietnamese Berliners. We had a chat to the two young women sitting at the next table. They were Turkish-born, US-educated Berliners, who spoke impeccable English. The Mitte is cosmopolitan, modern and representative of present-day Berlin.

Across the Tamar …

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… lies the beauty of Cornwall. Once again because I have read so much about it, I felt like I knew it, despite never having been there. Our accommodation was beside the harbour in Falmouth where hundreds of boats are moored and you can watch the ferries coming and going. One drizzly morning we took a ferry up the Falmouth and Truro rivers as far as the tiny hamlet of Malpas. It was magical in that light – the dense foliage that grows down to water level was reflected in the green of the river. There were glimpses of stone cottages, some of which housed smugglers back in the 18th century, and grand houses, the grandest belonging to Lord Falmouth, who still owns all the land you can see on both sides of the river. In one bay there is a pub that dates back to the 13th century and we had delicious fish pie there one evening.

We visited St Ives on a glorious day when the sun glinted off the turquoise sea and holidaymakers thronged the beaches, cafes and ice cream shops. We enjoyed exploring the narrow, winding lanes of Down-along and went into some of the numerous art galleries that are dotted around the town. The jewel in St Ives’s crown is the Tate – a spectacular building housing interesting art.

We also drove to Penzance and onto the charming town of Mousehole, with its quaint walled harbour and meandering lanes. Further along the coast is the Minack Theatre perched on the cliffs overlooking Porthcurnow beach. We enjoyed a performance there as the sun sank behind us, not sure whether we were more captivated by the actors on stage or the vista beyond it – darkening sea, rising moon and even a white-sailed boat moving gracefully through the scene.

Most of the tourists we encountered were from other parts of the country, with a smattering of Dutch and German visitors. Every English family it seems travels with their dog/s. There are dogs in hotels, in restaurants, on beaches, everywhere. On one train trip an imperious young woman with a large dog commanded us to move from our seats in order to give her dog more room – we did not comply!

Bath is pleasant enough …

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said Jane Austen, adding that after six weeks, she’d had enough. We were there fewer than six days but found it more than pleasant and can fully understand why it is regarded by some as the most beautiful city in England. The rows of Georgian terraced houses made from Bath stone, the wide pavements along the grander streets (called parades) and the narrow cobbled lanes, the Avon River and the shady parks make it a desirable destination.

Bath glories in its Jane Austen connections. Although she only lived there from 1801 to 1806, she set two of her novels in the city – Persuasion and Northanger Abbey. 2025 is the 250th anniversary of her birth and Bath is celebrating, no more so than at the Jane Austen House, where one is met by people in Regency clothing and can get an idea of what a house was like in the Regency period. One can even view a life-size wax model of the author. But it is in walking along streets and through parks she mentions in her novels and letters, that you really get a feel for what it was like when she visited and conjured characters like Catherine Morland and Anne Elliott.

Bath is also ancient. The Romans established the settlement of Aquae Sulis and had an extensive network of publics baths using the hot water springs that still bubble up. They also built a temple dedicated to the goddess Minerva and the owl associated with her proliferates in tourist shops in the form of soft toys or cast statuettes. The oldest house in Bath, dating back to Roman times, is where the Sally Lunn’s bakery and shop is now. We bought a Bath bun there and enjoyed it toasted for breakfast in our attic apartment, which we walked up four flights to access. Getting our bags up there when we first arrived was a mission!

Another treat for this bibliophile was a long browse in the small but excellent Persephone Books. Having for many years subscribed to their newsletters and been gifted some of their beautiful books, it was a thrill to be there in person. Yes, Bath is indeed pleasant enough!

Green and pleasant

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The English countryside is wonderfully pleasant to travel through. We’ve done train trips to Lewes in East Sussex, Wivenhoe in Essex, Oxford and Reading in Oxfordshire and are now in Bath. The views from the train are of densely green hedgerows, golden fields of wheat, meandering rivers and the occasional church spire. Our friends have taken us on walks along rivers, through woods and villages, churchyards and high streets. I keep saying in my head “It’s so English”, which is nonsensical but also true. It is the England of countless poems, novels and films, so that even if it’s a first visit, one feels one knows it.

But there is also the spectacular. One gazes at the undulating South Downs and then is confronted with the stark white chalk cliffs along the English Channel coast in East Sussex. One takes a train to Bath through benign countryside only to be amazed by row upon row of immaculate Georgian terraced houses and the 2000-year-old baths of the settlement the Romans called Aquae Sulis, where they also erected a temple dedicated to the goddess Minerva. To say nothing of Oxford’s “dreaming spires”…

This is London

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From the glory of the Victorian age and empire, to the teeming streets, train and tube stations, to the art, architecture, theatres and museums, to the river, the stately homes and the picturesque pubs, London is endlessly interesting. We’ve visited Ham House, crossed the Thames in a little ferry and caught a much larger ferry down the river to Greenwich, marvelled at the V & A collections, ridden the tube multiple times, taking the opportunity to observe Londoners in their natural habitat, and taken in a riveting theatre production (Giant at the Harold Pinter Theatre starring the wonderful John Lithgow).

London is also literary. There are blue plaques commemorating when and where a writer lived, bookshops everywhere and the newspapers and magazines available in news agents are numerous – from the frivolous (Hello! OK!) to the serious (London Review of Books, The Economist). It’s a good place to be a bibliophile and I have enjoyed reading hard copies of publications I usually read online. Though most commuters on the tubes seem mesmerised by their phones, there are plenty who read actual books. I sat beside one who carefully placed her bookmark, then wrapped the book in a fabric envelope, which she stowed in her briefcase before alighting.

A poignant sculpture in the forecourt of the Liverpool Street Station commemorates the Kindertransport. It immediately made me think of the marvellous Judith Kerr, who came to England via the Kinderstransport, and went on to write When Hitler Stole Pink Rabbit, The Tiger Who Came to Tea and the Mog series. How much the poorer we would have been if she had not survived the Holocaust.

We came from away

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Nova Scotia is green with an abundance of trees growing right down to the water, and there are myriad waterviews in the charming city of Halifax. We stayed in a friend’s house nestled among tall trees on the edge of the Northwest Arm of the harbour, where we enjoyed Canadian hospitality and ate a lot of seafood – halibut, salmon, mussels and lobster. Halifax is overwhelmingly Scottish (not surprising in New Scotland!) and its colonial origins are on display at the Citadel historic site, dating back to 1749 when it became part of the defence complex built to defend the Halifax harbour from enemies of the British Empire. We heard the stirring sounds of bagpipes on our visit there and we climbed the ramparts to view the city and harbour below. We learnt a little about the Indigenous Mi’kmaw people who inhabited the Halifax region for 10,000 years before any colonial arrivals. Wandering along the harbourfront in brilliant sunshine, eating Cow’s Creamery ice cream (Canada’s best) was a very pleasant way to spend the afternoon.

Nova Scotia and the other provinces along the Atlantic coast are known collectively as the Maritimes. Fishing and boating are long-established here and there are many picturesque lighthouses in the bays and coves that are a feature of the coastline. Perhaps the most famous is the lighthouse at Peggy’s Cove, which has a sweet, though possibly apocryphal, story associated with it.

Anne of the Island

We spent a couple of days on Prince Edward Island, which I have wanted to see since I first realised that Anne Shirley, or rather her creator, L M Montgomery, came from there. There is a Green Gables heritage centre featuring a house and barn that approximates the fictional home that Anne shared with Matthew and Marilla Cuthbert. But it was the surrounding countryside and lanes through the woods that really evoked the spirit of the books for me – Lover’s Lane and the Haunted Wood! The whole island is dreamy, basking in the hot summer sun, its famous red cliffs glowing. It would be wonderful to see it in all the seasons that Montgomery describes in the Anne books. As I wandered, episodes from the stories kept occuring to me – a clear case of association by place!