Departure lounge ramblings on music, places, climate change and stuff outdoors

Posts from the ‘Places’ category

Cities and the interesting places within them

Salvador, Brazil

Salvador on Brazil’s north-eastern coast was the first capital of Portugal’s new colony in the sixteenth century, until it surrendered that privilege to Rio de Janeiro in 1763 (it wasn’t until 1960 that the plans to build a new capital in the centre of the country, Brasilia, came to fruition). But if this was once the entry point for European culture (and guns, germs and steel) into Brazil, today it is Salvador’s African heritage, a product of three hundred years as a major slave port, that gives the city its distinctive flavour.

Paris

Paris is likely to end up as markontour’s most visited metropolis of 2015, although I suspect the city has won greater accolades. I just wish I had more time to explore on my regular work trips, not least because there must be more museums per square mile in central Paris than anywhere else on Earth. Let’s call this Paris guide work in progress and I look forward to further investigation.

Rio – city of music, beaches and vegan restaurants (honest)

Rio, which has become one of my adopted homes for four or five weeks of the year, is quite simply the most beautiful city I have every visited. Undoubtedly it has many problems, but a walk along the Copacobana as the morning sun is rising is enough to make you forget about anything bad. From the crashing waves, to the vista of rocky mountain outcrops port and sideboard, and rain-forest behind, Rio is a reminder that it is possible for nature and urbanism to live happily side by side.

The Golden Valley

I have been visiting the Golden Valley, a sliver of countryside beauty astride the Welsh/English border, for over twenty five years, mostly to stay at the beautiful parental home of one of my closest friends. It has become one of my favourite places on Earth and so I am breaking the markontour mould of departure lounge ramblings to send this despatch from the relaxed idyll of Vowchurch in Herefordshire.

Buenos Aires

Buenos Aires is beautiful city of green spaces and white, colonial buildings and, while I can only draw on a couple of days worth of evidence, it is clearly a place to have fun. Here follows the initial markontour guide, hopefully to be substantially updated at some point:

Abu Dhabi

Abu Dhabi is not really my kind of town – I like cities made for people, not cars. But after two visits I will concede that…

Broadstairs

I had no particular expectations of Broadstairs, visiting only to be with friends for the New Year, but it turns out to be a rather nice…

Beijing

My asthma-addled lungs don’t react too well to Beijing’s extreme air pollution, so it’s not on my tourist list. But as this is where the twenty…