Having left Melbourne at 6am, Emirates dropped us into Vienna at 8pm, and Lidia was on hand for our first walking tour - of our...

After settling into my room at the Kempinski Amman, I headed down to breakfast at 6.30 and tucked into a pair of fried cackleberries but...

Romance, jewellery, fashion, celebrity… The Iran Crown Jewels is the largest collection of its type in the world. It includes crowns,...

Collectivism in Safari-land. The flight out to the Masai Mara was pleasant, although the low cloud cover robbed us of the view flying...

The drive from Isfahan to Shiraz takes about six hours, across a mostly barren landscape, but it’s full of interest, nonetheless. There...

When Vita Sackville-West visited Iran in 1926, her husband, Harold Nicolson, was working there in the diplomatic service. No doubt part...

Fifty kilometres out of Hamadan is the Iron Age mound of Tepe hush-i-Jan. In the middle of a vast plain, it’s a stiff climb up to the...

It’s day four swathed in headscarf and shapeless garb and I’m over it already. But Iranian women have to live with these cleric-imposed...

Despite all the warnings, our entry into Iran was quick, easy and welcoming. It’s a thirty minute drive into Tehran, the freeway passing...

A highlight of Alaska, Glacier Bay is good tourist stuff, but, as usual, I managed to get utterly sidetracked by a nearby attraction –...

Originally a fishing village, its name means ‘on the sea’, which it isn’t these days. By the time of the Qing dynasty (established in...

The native Kamchadals are pretty plucky folk. The aboriginal peoples (there are about five different tribes, but let’s not go into...

The Aleutian chain of island stretches across 1,000 miles, marking the northern boundary of the Pacific ring-of-fire, with the Bering Sea...

The flight from Barcelona to NYC was uneventful, as was clearing customs at JFK. I checked into the NY Athletics Club – a marvellous...

Boarding the plane for Winnipeg, the forecast was for clear skies and freezing temperatures. They were right about the temperature: they...

So what has Norway given the world, you ask? It turns out plenty. Trolls, valkyries, Valhalla, Hell, Grieg, fjords, Ibsen, aquavit,...

Welcome to the first Great British Games. This major event has taken over from the erstwhile Olympic Games, which sank ignominiously due...

Who knew that Amman, the capital of Jordan, was the original Philadelphia? Certainly not me, and the cheese here bears no resemblance to...

After checking into the Quito Swissotel, I met up with Lynne and Ed at the bar at 6pm, with much laughter all round. Their friends Morris...

It started with an email from John, seeking, on short notice, a volunteer for a cat-six-pack minding stint at his house near Arezzo, the...