Letter from France: June 2013 part 1

Château de ChantillyOnly June 22: Musical Night at the Château de Chantilly
Next Saturday from 6pm to midnight, the gardens of the magnificent Chantilly Castle will host a musical night of about fifty short classical music concerts that will be played in a dozen stages throughout the park. Thousands of candles on the ground will create [...]

In the footsteps of Jean Cocteau

One of the appeals of Menton on the French Riviera is the largest museum dedicated to the works of Jean Cocteau (1889-1963), a famous French artist who died fifty years ago. Frederic exolores the museum and the three towns forever linked with his work.

Foreign Office

From the website:

“What we do

This is where you’ll find information on all our key roles from supporting British nationals overseas to promoting British business to legalising documents. ”

Whatever happened to Randolph Scott?

So went the opening line of a song by the Statler Brothers as they bemoaned the decline of the western. Little did they know that his name- and that of countless other western film stars lives on in at a museum called the Museum of Lone Pine Film History which is deep in the Mojave Desert of California.

Charting new territories

Stuck for something to do this weekend? Why not check out The Cruise Show over at London’s Olympia? Whether you’re new to cruising and need help planning your first voyage or are a seasoned cruiser searching for inspiration for your next holiday at sea, The Cruise Show should be able to help

Why Doesn’t the US Appeal?

Travel Destinations, Travel Rumblings
Have we lost our appetite for travelling to the USA? Figures released by the US government this week show that 1% fewer of us visited the country last year compared to 2009. What’s 1% you might say. That’s neither here nor there and can easily be made up. But the government also produced figures to show that over the last decade, the number of us travelling had dropped by 18% compared to the 1990’s. Only one other country, Japan had a higher drop over the decade.

Why might this be so?

Adrenalin Rush

I must have reached a point in my life where clearly there was an urgent need for some adrenalin rush because last week I bought a V8 engine’d gas guzzling MG that has your eyeballs pinned to the back of your skull when your right foot inadvertently applies too much pressure to the go-faster peddle and this week I find myself in a country that I have never been to before and that speaks a language that just as well be Martian!