501 Places

Oviedo had barely registered on my radar before my recent visit to the city. As a football anorak I did recall it being a venue during the 1982 World Cup in Spain. Beyond that I knew little about it. So when I was invited on a recent trip to Oviedo to attend the Turismo.as conference [...]

While Prague receives many accolades for its beautiful architecture and cheap beer its residents have developed a reputation as some of the least welcoming people in Europe. I’d come across this stereotype both in accounts from several friends who’d been there and in articles I’d read. Stories of miserable faces, a hatred of tourists and the [...]

Narrow cobbled streets, a world-famous bridge, an architecturally splendid castle complex and a higher concentration of eye-catching classic buildings than perhaps any of its illustrious rivals. Is Prague the perfect European city? Well, it’s certainly not flawless, but it is perhaps as near to a perfect example as you’re likely to find of what appeals [...]

It’s hard to believe that the UK has been smoke-free for less than four years. For much of my adult life I longed for the day when I could enjoy a meal in a restaurant without having my senses of taste and smell overpowered by someone lighting up at a neighbouring table. Once the ban [...]

One of the first topics we will read or hear about Albania is usually the bunkers. Of course there is so much more to this fascinating country than the concrete mushrooms that litter the landscape and I felt it right to write about some of these highlights first. At the same time however a description [...]

The biggest danger of travelling through the Balkans is that you’ll run out of time; there’s just so much to see. Perhaps those who pass through the region as part of an open-ended ‘Grand Tour’ are able to while away the days in one place without a car; we were not so fortunate. Our flight [...]

Looking out over the mass of tiled roofs from the famous city walls it’s hard to believe the traumas that the city of Dubrovnik and its residents has been through in the last 20 years. The near perfect uniformity of the earthy red colour hints at a world recently restored, yet the evidence of a [...]

The first thing that most visitors to Albania will notice is that little has been done to make the place look nice. While further up the Adriatic coast the Ottoman treasures in former Yugoslavia have been carefully and expensively restored, this has not happened in Albania. Apart from the dramatic rainbow coloured transformation of some [...]

Montenegro is one of those places that rarely makes the news. Even in the Yugoslav war it remained largely unaffected, siding firmly with the Serbs before quietly voting for independence in 2006 for the first time in almost a century. The James Bond film ‘Casino Royale’ was supposed to be set here; although it is [...]

Of all the places we were due to visit on our trip to the Balkans, I was most excited at the prospect of finally visiting Sarajevo. Famous for the events that triggered the start of the First World War, for Torvill and Dean (especially in my home city of Nottingham) and for the horrific siege [...]