Paris is not alone in being as much a collection of villages as it is a single city; but its villages have to be among the most charming of any city's. And none more so perhaps than Montmartre, set high on a hill, with its basilica, the Sacré Coeur, visible from miles around.
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When you visit a city regularly, you can make time to explore new areas, as well as revisit favourite corners. And you can look for quirky details to photograph as well as the obvious sights. In Paris o, I was on the look out for colourful and interesting street art in the different neighbourhoods we explored.
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It’s no secret that I’ve badly missed travelling abroad over the last eighteen months. It’s not that we were always travelling, far from it, but we always knew that we could. And most years we would go abroad three or four times, on a mix of weekend breaks and longer trips.
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A huge pregnant woman, her body half cutaway to reveal her inner anatomy, strides across the grass. The distinctive curves of one of Henry Moore’s Seated Figures reclines near a lake. A delicate glass spire towers above the trees.
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I am very much inclined to agree with Ratty that there is half so much worth doing as simply messing about in boats. And whenever I spot an opportunity while travelling to take to the water, I am eager to set sail. A whale-watching trip; a cruise around a harbour; an afternoon on a city’s river. Count me in for any of those!
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What is the first thing you think of when I mention the city of Liverpool? There’s a good chance you answered, the Beatles. The ‘Fab Four’ all grew up here, and it was here that they met. Many of their songs feature the places of their childhood and teenage years, and have since become iconic tourist destinations.
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The Gardens at Kew in west London date back to the mid 18th century, when they were founded by George III’s mother Princess Augusta. Today the gardens’ plant collections are the most diverse of any botanic garden in the world.
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Art Nouveau, or Jugendstil as it is also known, was an art and architecture movement of the late 19th to early 20th centuries, at its height 1890–1910. As an artistic philosophy it proposed that art should be a way of life, and that everyday items could be beautiful too. It was inspired by nature – flowers, animals, natural forms. In the old buildings of Riga it is at times at its most flamboyant and exuberant.
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Asen’s Fortress is built on a cliff overlooking the Asenitsa River in Bulgaria’s Rhodope Mountains, and is impregnable on three sides. It isn’t surprising therefore that there has been a fortification here since the time of the Thracians, who fortified it in the 5th century BC. The fortress was rebuilt during the time of the Roman Emperor Justinian as one of a series of fortresses erected to defend the Empire against invasions by Slavic tribes.
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Artist Ben Wilson is the ‘Chewing Gum Man’. While he has produced many other artworks, it is his minute and detailed creations on discarded blobs of chewing gum that have brought him fame. And one of the best places to see them is on London’s Millennium Bridge.
