Restaurants
Florida road-trip My recent jaunt around Florida has been something of an eye-opener. I don’t think I’ve ever been anywhere else where I’ve enjoyed so much of what I’ve done without actually liking the place itself. Key West is an honourable, brilliant exception to this, but I found the feel of the state as a [...]
Continue reading about The percentage game: Florida’s tipping trickery
In recent times, I’ve encountered a few press trip frustrations that, from my point of view, just didn’t need to happen. It got me thinking – what would my ideal press trip consist of? Well it obviously depends on the stories I’m going to research, but this little lot just about covers it… A [...]
Ask the concierge? Having spent the last week travelling around Switzerland and openly weeping at the cost of, well, absolutely everything, I’ve made unusually frequent encounters with people I don’t usually trust. Common consensus has it that hotel concierges are an excellent source of knowledge about the city they work in. They know where the [...]
North Americans and tax North Americans, as a general rule, really don’t like tax. In fact, if you allowed a significant number of loonbags on the shouty fringe of the Republican party to have their way, there would be no taxation at all – let’s face it, we don’t need those vile evolution-preaching schools and [...]
Continue reading about ‘Plus tax’: A phrase that makes no sense whatsoever
I may be grumpy, but I am also tight. And while there are reams of guides to getting cheap hotel rooms and flights out there, there are a few travel money savers which I use that aren’t immediately obvious. Because I’m feeling generous (and more to the point, like procrastinating about an article I’m supposed [...]
Tipping leads to good service? As I have stated on countless occasions, I hate the whole circus that is tipping. I’ve many arguments against it, but one often thrown back at me is that tipping leads to good service culture. Fair enough; this is a valid argument. Tipping in the States I’ve just come back [...]
As Jeremy Head rightly points out in his new post, there is so much destination guide content festering on the internet that much of it becomes interchangeable. Why, in essence, should you go to one site’s guides above another’s? Many websites – be they for hotel, airlines or generic travel companies trying to build their [...]
Continue reading about How to make destination guides distinctive
New restaurant On Friday night, I decided to try out a new restaurant (Piccolino in Sheffield city centre if you must know). The food was good, the décor quite impressive and the location excellent. But the service drove me mental. Bad service? I’m sure everyone can point to incidences of appalling service they’ve had [...]
Millionaire’s giveaway A fascinating story has been doing the rounds today about an Austrian millionaire who plans to give away his entire £3m fortune and live like a pauper. Karl Radeber seems to have decided that money makes him unhappy, and whilst I’ll not be agreeing with that any time soon, one quote attributed to [...]
Continue reading about The Eternal Awkwardness of Luxury Travel
“Award-winning travel journalist” When I am asked to write a brief biography of myself for contributors’ pages in magazines, I will often bill myself as an “award-winning” travel journalist”. And this is true, because way back in 2001, I was named Student Travel Writer of the Year in the Guardian Student Media Awards. Yes, it’s [...]
Continue reading about “Award-winning”: a phrase not to be taken seriously