My travels may have been somewhat curtailed in 2021 but I did manage to visit two beautiful cities abroad. One, Paris, is well known to me (this was my seventh visit, I think), while the other, Seville, was new. They proved a rich source of photos, as did my home city of London.
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Sooner or later it seems, all paths in Marrakesh lead to the Jemaa el-Fnaa. The name (sometimes spelled Djemaa el Fna or Jamaa el Fna) means ‘Assembly of the Dead’ in Arabic; but a visit here suggests life in all its vibrancy. To call this the city’s main square doesn’t begin to do justice to it. This is a meeting place, a shopping centre, a performance space, a happening. It is surrounded by restaurants and cafés, each with a roof terrace to offer a ringside seat from where to observe all the action, but better by far to get immersed…
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Just to the west of Seville’s city centre, across the Guadalquivir river, lies Triana. This former working class neighbourhood was once home to the Escuela de Mareantes (School of Navigation) which instructed many of the famous sailors of the 15th and 16th centuries. Both Columbus and Magellan studied there before their expeditions in search of new worlds. It is famous too for its tradition of ceramic tile work and its unique style of flamenco.
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I believe I’ve mentioned once or twice in this blog that I love travelling! It’s the thing I’ve most missed during the past two years, when the world has been turned upside-down. Yes, I know that sadly worse things have happened to very many people than a few missed trips abroad. But the fact remains, I’ve missed travelling, and I know many others have felt the same.
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The capital of the DPRK, Pyongyang, has been developed as a showpiece for the country, demonstrating to both outsiders and the North Korean people the strength and power of the regime, and making a strong statement about the country’s ambitions to be self-reliant in the face of often hostile challenges from elsewhere – those challenges being of course both political and at times physical.
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Pioneer Square was once the heart of Seattle, home to the city’s first permanent white settlers. But in 1889 their wooden buildings burned in the Great Fire of Seattle, to be replaced by imposing brick and stone ones in the then-fashionable Romanesque Revival style of urban architecture. Today it is a vibrant district with plenty of street art.
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What do Parisians do on a sunny Sunday? They do much as people do in any city. They meet friends in a favourite café or restaurant. They exercise in the local park or take the children there to play and for a picnic. They walk the dog, do a bit of food shopping perhaps, or browse a lively market. Certainly the people of Belleville do all those things.
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Never go back, they say. And it’s a rule we tend to follow when it comes to travelling, but we make a few exceptions. And prime among those exceptions is Paris. We spent the first part of our honeymoon there, recently celebrated our fortieth anniversary there, and in between those two trips have visited together on five other occasions. And that doesn’t include a visit each back in our even more ancient and separate histories!
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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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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.
