A question posed by Grantourismo got me thinking about my travels. Usually, I’m planning the next trip (Cape Town long-haul, perhaps Norway short-haul), but I thought I’d take five minutes to ponder my past travel adventures.
1. Learning to samurai sword-fight in Tokyo
An afternoon of theatrics with Tetsuro Shimaguchi, who trained Uma Thurman and Lucy Liu for their Japanese-style fight scenes in Kill Bill. While my cheerleading training meant I was better at learning the steps, my husband excelled in the all-important death scene, with stomach-clutching, face-contorting action worthy of the hammiest of West End actors.
2. Spending a very expensive hour with geisha and maiko in Kyoto
No, this wasn’t that show they put on for tourists in Gion. Nor was it some cheap back-street fake. This was the real deal, in a Kyoto geisha bar (getting into a genuine geisha teahouse would have taken years, but you can hire geisha to join you at a bar or restaurant – if you know who to ask), with me, my husband, the geisha, her maiko (trainee geisha) and the very tipsy bar manager. A surreal, and bank-busting (around £200 for one hour) experience that consisted of the 23-year-old geisha making entertaining conversation, much of it about Kyoto, but also world travels; the 16-year-old maiko giggling, performing a traditional dance and looking very pretty, but lacking the geisha’s conversational skills; and the drunk bar manager popping in every so often to try to get us drunk on expensive sake.
3. Exploring the medieval souk of Fes, Morocco
The souk in this ancient city puts the ones in Marrakech and Cairo to shame, transporting you to the Middle Ages. Permanently lost, in many places, you can stretch your arms out to reach both walls of the alleyways, and the only possible transportation for the souk’s goods are donkey or man-handled wheelbarrow. It’s intimidating at first, but with so few tourists here, locals treat you like an honoured guest. Retreating to your accommodation in one of the souk’s elaborately decoarted riads or dars (traditional homes built around central courtards) feels like stepping into a palace. Most are still lived in by locals, but some have been converted to boutique hotels or holiday rentals, and you can sleep in one for the price of a grubby two-star in London.
4. Exploring Bordeaux’s Entre-deux-Mers region in a convertible
Beyond Bordeaux’s famous vineyards and estates (St Emilion, Margaux, Pomerol), the little-known Entre-deux-Mers region has some of the quaintest historical villages this side of the Cotswolds. You could easily spend a week pootling around the sunflower-filled back roads – and doing it in a convertible E-Type Jaguar made it an unforgettable experience.
5. Meeting Lisbon’s hippest B-Boyz after blagging into its most exclusive nightclub
The concierge at the Ritz can’t even get your name on the list at Lisbon’s Lux nightclub, but thanks to tips from local Tweeters, we tracked down one of the club’s owners (John Malkovich being the other one), where he was presiding over his buzzy restaurant, and somehow sweet-talked our way onto the guestlist. After arriving far too early (don’t bother clubbing in Lisbon until at least 2am), we hung around until it got busy – and the crowd parted ways for the city’s hottest B-Boy crew. After watching them breakdancing for a while, I finally convinced them to teach me some moves, which we then performed – to much hilarity (I’m sure they were laughing WITH me) – together on the dancefloor.
6. Operating a private monorail to an island hilltop bar in Japan
Near Osaka, there’s an island called Naoshima where you can sleep in a modern-art museum (we did), and where the museum-hotel’s handful of guests are given private keys to operate the six-seat monorail that takes you up to the hilltop bar (not too pricey, either). The monosnail, as we were soon calling it, went slower than if you’d actually walked the five minutes up the hill, but really, how many times will you have your own private monorail? Oh, and exploring the world-class modern-art gallery after it had closed to the public was pretty amazing, too. Not to mention the island’s extraordinary fishing-village-turned-installation-art-project, the cat that always sleeps on the main bus bench, the bizarre Charlie Chaplin signage and the world’s most astonishing (for its awfulness) James Bond Museum.
7. Staying in a Fred-Flinstone-style villa in Thailand
My favourite eco-luxe hotel by far is been the Eco Villa at Six Senses Soneva Kiri in Thailand. Built from local soil and trees and almost entirely with handtools, with electricity (even internet) powered by Solar PV panels, pool water purified by a natural waterfall and with rainwater pouring through the showers, it’s definitely eco, but with the high-quality organic sheets, furniture handmade by local artisans and food created by amazing local Thai chefs, it’s also luxurious. In fact, while I was there, the Swedish royal family were staying in a nearby villa. (And I had absolutely nothing to do with the fact that the princess and her boyfriend split up a few weeks later. Honest.)
8. Accidentally being a guest at a blinging Istanbul wedding
Fireworks, an orchestra, a Bosphorus-view gazebo and hundreds of ball-gowned guests suddenly exploded onto the terrace at the Ciragan Palace Kempinski as we ate one of the city’s most delectable gourmet meals a balcony above. As the priest performed the ceremony, the few diners lucky enough to be on the balcony chewed as quietly as possible. Then it was dancing, singing and celebrations until the wee hours.
9. Cycling over the Golden Gate Bridge – and around San Francisco – on a tandem
It was our first experience of sharing a bike, and after five minutes of bickering about the mechanics of it, we fell in love with the tandem. So much so, we now own one. Seeing San Francisco (or really, almost any city) by bicycle means you can get beyond the tourist centre to the areas where people actually live. But doing the classic Golden Gate Bridge cycle ride still provided the best views over the city.
10. Visiting the Deep South’s oldest roadhouse
Even though I’ve lived in London for 20 years, I grew up in the American South, and my British husband had long wanted to go to a locally famous redneck bar on the Florida-Alabama border, called, obviously, the Flora-Bama. Built from scraps of wood, old plastic sheeting and plumber’s plastic piping, the Flora-Bama gets knocked down at every hurricane, but rebuilt in days. When we finally visited, my cousin took us in his limousine (he runs a chauffer company), so we stepped out among the rednecks looking like big-city showoffs. That didn’t stop one of them offering to buy my mom a drink when she picked up a bra that had fallen and hurled it up to the bra-wire strung across the main room inside. (It wasn’t her bra, but he didn’t care.) Although it’s got redneck written all over it, the Flora-Bama is, in fact, on one of the Gulf Coast’s most beautiful beaches, and everyone from trailer trash to millionaires go there for down-home good times.
