The historic English Bar in the hotel is a great place to wind down in a cosy atmosphere. Just around the corner from the hotel you can enjoy traditional Romanian food and wine in La Mama restaurant – very good service and very reasonably priced. And quite close by is a cosy wine bar, Wine Ambassador, where you can enjoy snacks and a choice of Romanian wines, as well as whisky from around the world.
All in all, a very comfortable hotel in a great location. Highly recommended.
We had a wonderful stay at the Athens Gate Hotel in the run-up to Christmas. The hotel is in a perfect location, right in the heart of Athens and close to the Plaka neighbourhood. The Temple of Zeus is opposite the hotel, the Acropolis and the Acropolis Museum are literally around the corner, and Syntagma Square with the Greek Parliament Building is a ten-minute walk away. The rooms are clean and comfortable – those facing the Acropolis are quieter – and the friendly and helpful staff gave us lots of useful advice about getting around the city to see the sights.
The restaurant on the 8th floor offers stunning views of the Temple of Zeus and the Acropolis at breakfast and dinner, and is not to be missed. The quality of the food is very good and the service is very attentive.
We will definitely stay here again on our next visit to Athens.
For traditional Greek food, try O Thanasis in Monastiraki Square, and Ta Karamanlidikka, near the Central Market. And for a wine bar offering a great choice of Greek wines, Wine O’clock, just a couple of streets away on Lempesi Street, is a little gem.
Tucked away in a charming little courtyard just a stone’s throw from Piccadilly Circus is Engawa, one of London’s finest Japanese restaurants.
As you step into the restaurant to the traditional welcome greeting of ‘Irasshaimase!’, you already feel in the zone, anticipating the tasty delights to come.
Engawa is a small, intimate restaurant offering a range of Japanese dishes including Kobe beef, sushi and sashimi, which are all served to please the eye as well as the taste buds.
We went for lunch and chose the two-tiered hakozen bento box for which Engawa is renowned. The assorted selection of fourteen appetisers and seasonal dishes were all carefully prepared and beautifully presented, and were quite simply delicious. These included edamame topped with sea salt and lemon, tuna, salmon and toro sashimi, wagyu and tempura, as well as vegetable dishes, and it also came with miso soup.
It was also a great opportunity to have a Japanese koshu wine to accompany our lunch. The Château Mercian Iwasaki 2019 Koshu wine from Yamanashi Prefecture was the perfect pairing. This is a dry white wine with refreshing acidity, with aromas of vanilla and yuzu, and flavours of citrus fruit and nuts.
With attentive service, a cosy atmosphere and excellent, reasonably-priced food, Engawa offers a real taste of home for Japanese diners and a brilliant demonstration of the wonderful range of Japanese food for non-Japanese.
With the ice-covered trees and city rooftops glittering in the cold, clear air, winter is a magical time to visit Lviv, Ukraine’s cultural capital. We marvelled at the city’s elegant architecture as we wandered through its narrow medieval streets, and enjoyed its cosy coffee shops and trendy restaurants. Wherever we went around the centre of the city, we found something of interest – a church, an architectural monument, a quirky shop, a small museum. Traces of the city’s chequered past can be seen all around the Old Town – the Armenian Quarter, the Latin Cathedral, the ruins of the old Jewish Quarter – so there was plenty to keep us occupied, and with over 700 coffee shops to choose from, we were never far from delicious coffee and cake for sustenance.
Driving back towards Jasper, Canada, my wife and I were pretty buoyed up by the beauty of Lake Maligne’s clear blue water and the towering peaks surrounding it. But the icing on the cake was yet to come. Suddenly there was movement by the side of the road. I slowed down to get a better view and there it was. A black bear cub was minding its own business as it munched on shrubs. Then, as if on cue, Mother Bear came storming out of the trees and began to rub her back on a nearby tree.  What a sight – scary yet elemental at the same time. We had seen elk, moose, chipmunks, birds of prey and even a lone coyote during our trip through the Rockies but this was the closest we would likely ever get to a bear and her cub, and it was magnificent.
It is difficult not to eat great Italian food in Bologna, in the heart of Emilia-Romagna, Italy’s gastronomical centre. With its tortellini, prosciutto, parmesan cheese and mortadella, not to mention wines made from local grape varieties such as Sangiovese, Lambrusco and Pignoletto, it is perhaps little wonder the city is nicknamed ‘La Grassa’, the fat one.
At aperitivo time in Bologna, head for the Quadrilatero neighbourhood just off the Piazza Maggiore; here you will find plenty of little bars and food shops offering a relaxing drink and a simple but tasty snack of local cheese and cured meats. At some point during your stay, you should try tortellini in broth (tortellini in brodo). These tiny parcels of meat-filled pasta served in a delicious broth are one of Bologna’s best known dishes and can be found all over the city.
But for la crème de la crème, La Drogheria della Rosa is the place to go for a delicious lunch or dinner and try the restaurant’s simple local dishes in a cosy, informal atmosphere. Set in an old pharmacy with cluttered shelves crammed with phials, jars and other old-fashioned pharmaceutical paraphernalia, La Drogheria della Rosa offers an ever-changing menu of homemade pasta, meat and vegetable dishes that the staff will explain to you. And to drink: a selection of local wines of course!
Emanuele, the owner, is a great host, chatting to guests, pouring the wine and making everyone feel welcome. A charming place in the heart of Bologna.
Tokyo is full of surprises. A charming little one-car tram trundling down the middle of the street was the last thing I was expecting in this vast, bustling metropolis. But as I was wandering in the downtown Shitamachi area of Japan’s capital, there it was – Tokyo’s sole surviving tram, the Arakawa Toden (Tokyo Sakura Tram).Â
With time to spare, I jumped on the next tram to arrive, grabbed a seat and enjoyed a fascinating ride off the beaten track. The Arakawa Toden is a ride into the past, into parts of old Tokyo that have managed to resist the changes of the city’s modern urban development. And as the tram slowly wends its way along quiet back streets of the Shitamachi downtown area, this frequent service from Minowabashi to Waseda is a far cry from the hustle and bustle of the shopping and entertainment districts of Ginza, Shinjuku and Shibuya.
Shitamachi is the clustered commercial district of the city where small-scale merchants and artisans made their homes in feudal Japan. Nowadays the people here are the shopkeepers, artisans, wholesalers and small industrial subcontractors of the old middle class, and the area has a particular air of informality about it. Rather different from the more genteel residential areas and Tokyo suburbs where the new middle class white-collar company employees prefer to make their homes.
At times the track passes so close to the small two-storey houses so typical of the area that you feel you could almost reach out and knock on the windows or grab a persimmon from the branches above the tracks. A few of these two-storey homes still preserve the look of a bygone Tokyo, with rice shops, tofu shops, small grocery stores, tatami mat makers and small craftsmen’s workshops at ground level and the family’s living quarters above. Although convenience stores and fast food outlets have replaced many of these small shops along the route of the Arakawa Toden, you can still get a glimpse of old Tokyo.
The tram also runs close to temples, shrines, museums and parks, and I stopped off en route at a couple of well-known sights – Oji Inari Shrine, with its beautiful painted ceiling, and Asukayama Park with its attractive cherry blossoms, both welcome refuges from Tokyo’s concrete jungle and its crowds of people. With the tram’s one-day pass, available on the tram for 400 yen, you can hop on and off at will.
As the tram approached its final stop at Waseda and the view became more like the typical Tokyo city-scape of tall buildings and busy streets, I realised my leisurely adventure into some of Tokyo’s quaintest and quietest neighborhoods was coming to an end.  Now it was back to the hustle and bustle of this fascinating city which never fails to surprise …. and delight. Â
Beethoven’s Symphony No. 6 – the Pastoral – is a firm favourite. I’m happy to listen to it anytime, anywhere. But where better to listen to it than in Vienna, and what’s more on the Beethoven Walk (Beethovengang) in the Viennese suburb of Nussdorf?
A couple of years ago my wife and I took the tram from the centre of the city to this pretty neighbourhood and then strolled along the Beethovengang as we listened to the Pastoral Symphony on our headphones. This is where the great composer himself used to walk, gaining inspiration for this symphony from the woods, vineyards and open countryside around him, and walking in his footsteps brought an entirely new perspective to his music.
And to cap it all, we then enjoyed a simple meal and a glass of wine in the ‘Heurige‘ (wine tavern) in nearby Heiligenstadt which Beethoven himself used to frequent when he lived for a time in the village, and where he worked on his Symphony No.9. Like Beethoven’s music, it was simply delightful.
For more details of wine-focussed activities in and around Vienna, see here
