This year I planned to visit some cities I’d managed to miss, despite having achieved my target of 100 countries in 2019. They were Ravenna for the mosaics, Barcelona for the Gaudi architecture, Granada for the Alhambra Palace , and Brussels for the Grand Square and to include day trips to Ghent, Bruges and Luxembourg. Then a change of scenery, flying to Svalbard, a group of Norwegian islands in the Arctic, in the hope of seeing polar bears – the only large mammal I’d never seen – before ending with a few days in London to catch up with old friends.
With the exception of London, I travelled with Deene, a Kiwi-born woman (her mother having achieved her ambition of giving her daughter a unique name) from Perth, whom I’d met and befriended on my Mediterranean island tour last year.
We’d booked to stay in a remote lodge in Svalbard, in the belief (apparently mistaken) that we’d see more wildlife on land than from a ship. However, a month before our departure date Emma, my travel agent, informed us that the company through which she’d booked the accommodation had filed for bankruptcy, but that she’d managed to book us on a Hurtigruten cruise in the same area. It meant that I’d arrive in London 1½ days later than planned, and miss a concert in the Royal Festival Hall and a play at the National Theatre, both of which I’d booked and paid for, but I was grateful for a small mercy.
Then, 24 hours before our departure, we learnt that floods in Italy had left Ravenna under water. Emma worked all night to rearrange our itinerary, resulting in our staying overnight in Bologna (where an unrealistic, or at least optimistic, chauffeur was waiting in vain to drive us to Ravenna) before flying directly to Spain, where we managed to see two ‘extra’ cities new to me – Bilbao, famous for its Guggenheim museum, and San Sebastian, famous for its food, which we didn’t have time to sample – before starting our planned itinerary in Barcelona.
We’d pre-booked a Gaudi tour for our second day there, which proved to be the only sunny day we enjoyed in Spain (where reports that the rain falls mainly on the plain proved false), and the Gaudi tour exceeded our high expectations, especially the Sagrada Familia basilica, entering which proved an emotional experience for us both.
But disaster struck on our walk back to the hotel, when we became victims of a very clever ruse, for which we were unprepared despite having been told that Barcelona was the pickpocket capital of the world, and I lost my principal credit card. We’d agreed that I would pay for all joint expenses, and Deene would reimburse her half back in Australia. However, I use my secondary credit card only for online purchases, and I have no PIN for it, so Deene had to pay for anything above each business’s PIN-free limit.
In Granada the Alhambra also exceeded my expectations, as I’d had no idea how extensive it is, and the weather teased us by waiting until we were in its gardens before the skies opened.
However, in Belgium we were welcomed by the sun, which continued to shine on us throughout the rest of the holiday. Photos of the Grand Square in Brussels didn’t prepare us for the reality of being surrounded by stunning buildings on all four sides. From there the many signs to the ‘Manneken Pis’, supposedly one of the most representative and loved symbols of Brussels, led us to expect something more imposing, or at least larger, than the bronze statue, only 50cm tall, of a small naked boy urinating into a fountain’s basin. We took a train to the Atomium, built for the 1958 World Fair, but arrived minutes too late to inspect the interior of any of its enormous spheres. Instead we sat on deckchairs, sipping gin and tonic, admiring the structure from a distance of about 150m.
From Brussels we duly took our two planned day tours. Ghent and Bruges fully deserve their reputation as ‘fairy tale’ destinations, both filled with beautiful medieval buildings. Despite a delightful cruise on the canals of Bruges, I defied popular opinion by (slightly) preferring Ghent. The next day the drive to Luxembourg was a long one, and I was rather disappointed when we reached our destination. Its location is certainly picturesque, situated on either side of a deep gorge, but I found its buildings less impressive than those we’d seen in Belgium. However, compensation came on the return drive, when we stopped at Dinant, a pretty Belgian city of which I’d never heard, entering through the narrow split in a huge rock, with only a few centimetres clear on either side of our coach. The birthplace of Adolphe Saxe, its bridge over the River Meuse is lined with huge multicoloured saxophones, each donated by a different country.
We then flew to Oslo, which I’d last visited in 1977. Since then an opera house has been built on the waterfront. Its design puzzled me, until I learnt that its architect intended it to resemble a glacier. It has long slopes on both sides, enabling visitors to walk to its roof, which of course I felt obliged to do. We also took a fjord cruise, and toured the massive medieval Akershus Fortress.
AlthoughSvalbard is Norwegian territory, unlike the mainland it is not within the Schengen Area, which meant that our flight there was interrupted by a stopover in Tromsø, just to go through passport control. (On the return flight our stopover there was longer, as our bags were unloaded from the plane to go through security before being reloaded onto the plane!)
But eventually we arrived at Longyearbyen (on Spitsbergen), the only town of any size in the Svalbard group of islands, where – having booked too late for its Radisson Hotel – we spent a night in Coalminers’ Cabins, which aren’t quite as basic as they sound. The next day, after visiting the interesting museum, we boarded the MS Nordstjernen (North Star), Hurtigruten’s oldest, and probably smallest, ship (built in 1956) for the next three days. During that time we enjoyed five landings, on small boats, to walk mostly through snow – at times knee deep. Either on land or from the ship we saw reindeer, walruses, a whale, an arctic fox and a polar bear. I was disappointed to see only one bear, until the expedition leader told us it was only the third she’d seen this season. Our arctic adventure ended with another night in Coalminers’ Cabins.
Deene and I parted in Oslo – she to fly home to Perth and I to London. Most flights on the trip were delayed, but no delay caused any problem until I missed my connection in Copenhagen, where I had to stay in an airport hotel overnight before catching the earliest possible flight, via Brussels, to London. There I missed two chauffeurs – one booked to drive me from Heathrow to my hotel (when I was stuck in Copenhagen), the other to take me back to Heathrow at the end of my London sojourn; the day before I’d phoned the car company to say that roadworks prevented vehicular access to my hotel, and where I was to be collected instead. After waiting for 30 minutes in hot sunshine, I dragged my heavy suitcase about 500m to the nearest tube station, and then stood in an overcrowded train (it was peak rush hour) all the way to Heathrow.
Despite all the mishaps, it was a great holiday.
Tony Barnett