Destinations

Land-locked, football mad, the eternal rival to Barcelona, Madrid has a lot more to offer than boulevards and the beautiful game. Here, Rosie Benson takes at look at five must-dos in Spain’s capital city… What to drink… Nobody drinks sangria in Spain anymore, it’s all about Tinto de Verano. The perfect prelude to an afternoon siesta, this drink is made up of cool red wine and lemon soda, served on ice with a slice of orange. Admittedly very similar to...

Thirteen years ago my husband and I, married that day, waved goodbye to family and friends through the rear window of a 1957 Armstrong Siddeley. It was midnight, we were giddy with excitement and had no idea where we were headed. My parents had arranged a surprise hotel for our wedding night. In stately fashion we rolled through Wiltshire villages, dissecting the day with feverish hilarity. We laughed at the vicar asking my dad not to smoke in the church,...

By Joe Mellor, Deputy Editor  Wonder what a safari guy does in his time off? This seal dive in Cape Town was just the ticket and Simonstown seemed like a perfectly good place to launch the boat from bearing in mind that's the same place you launch to go out on a cage dive with great whites, especially seeing as seals are the great whites favourite prey species and you're about to go in the water with them for the...

by Adam Turner If you’re looking for a Spanish city where you can drink cocktails out of jam jars, and party all night until the rubber on the souls on your Dr Martens melt into the dancefloor…I probably wouldn’t recommend Seville. Spain’s fourth largest city isn’t as cosmopolitan or vibrant as the likes of Barcelona or Madrid just yet. However, if you look hard enough you’ll find some absolute gems and I was lucky enough to be shown some of...

For a reason unbeknownst to us, Portugal is a hotbed for spa hotels. Probably more than any country in Europe per capita, there are swathes of luxury retreats with promises of R'n'R, coming away a new person, and stepping away from the hustle and bustle of the world. We want all of that. To our room, please. Having last year holidayed in the Portuguese beach town of Cascais, where the sky was cloudless, the veggie food was terrible and the...

A city with a cuisine unlike any other.

As the meeting point between the cultures and climates of the East and West, Turkey has a lot to offer on the gastronomic front. Search for typical Turkish cuisine and you might find meze, kebab, kofta, coffee and raki served up as common examples, but the reality is that finding ‘typical’ in a country stretching some 301,384 square miles and bordering one of the most diverse collections of civilisations on the planet (Greece and Bulgaria in the West, Syria, Iraq...

by Beth Roberts, travel writer It’s 11.30pm on a Sunday night in Amsterdam airport - the tail end of a wild weekend, culminating in this most hideous of hangovers. Without warning, our long awaited London-bound flight disappears from the departures screen, cancelled due to the fog and marooning us in the city. Admittedly, there are worse places to be stuck. Yet conscious my boss would likely read ‘stranded in Amsterdam' as 'stranded in coffee shop’ and swiftly realising we had...

by Rosie Benson, travel writer Thought Scottish cuisine stopped at haggis and deep-fried Mars bars? Think again. In recent years Scotland has been transforming its culinary culture, with Glasgow, its largest city, leading the way. This year sees the launch of Glasgow’s first restaurant festival; a month long celebration of local produce and businesses, giving restaurateurs the chance to showcase their most mouth-watering creations. At TLE, our epicuriosity knows no bounds, so we went to see what was on offer. If it’s fresh ingredients with a local feel that you’re after, drop in to The Ubiquitous Chip or ‘The Chip’ as everyone refers to it. Here we sampled the brasserie evening menu, with starters costing between £5-£7 and...