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Travel

The other side of Croatia: ‘a landscape that could out-Tuscany Tuscany’

Weekenders from Zagreb head to the rolling green Samobor Hills for nature, vineyards, delicious local food and Habsburg-era architecture ‘You’re going to Samobor? You must try kremšnita,” my Dubrovnik friends told me before I set off on my trip north. “But I’ve already had kremšnita in Zagreb,” I told them. They do it better in Samobor, they insisted. I wasn’t about to get embroiled in a battle of the cream cakes in a region where Croatians, Slovenes and Austrians all like to celebrate their own versions of this decadently thick, fat custard slice topped with puff pastry and icing sugar. But I

The Guardian – Travel

Socialist hotels – in pictures

Socialist Hotels is the first photography book to focus solely on the architecture of hospitality in Eastern Europe and the post-Soviet landscape. These state-constructed buildings were used by visiting government workers and ordinary citizens. Today they are a fascinating legacy of a social and cultural idiosyncrasy. Socialist Hotels by Elena Amabili is published by FUEL Continue reading...

The Guardian – Travel

Beyond Bradford and the Brontës – new walking trail shows West Yorkshire’s natural beauty

The Bradford Pennine Gateway Trail, launching this weekend, aims to ‘change perceptions of Bradford’ by taking in the moors and the area’s new national nature reserve A grainy photograph, dated 1938, hangs in a frame on the downstairs wall of my B&B. It shows 100, perhaps 200, elegantly attired trippers sitting on the green at Shipley Glen in West Yorkshire. They’re picnicking, chatting, taking the air and enjoying the sunshine, while admiring the rocks and woods that frame the deep gully below. It’s local, low-carbon, cheap-as-chips tourism before the jet age – and also a model for how we

The Guardian – Travel

‘Gateways to heaven’: readers’ favourite trips in Europe’s mountains

From the foothills of the Pyrenees to the peaks of the Dolomites, you share your top views, meals and adventures at altitude • Tell us about a trip to Germany – the best tip wins a £200 holiday voucher No doubt your first thought on hearing the words “double-decker” is of a bus. But in the Swiss village of Stans, an old wooden funicular carriage ascends to the station, where a double-decker cable car awaits. Inside, a spiral staircase leads you to an open upper viewing deck. At the summit, the views back to Lucerne are superb, and there are alpine marmots to spot too. There was a wedding cerem

The Guardian – Travel

‘Like a Bond villain’s lair’: I climbed the Dolomites to the world’s most spectacular mountain hut

Perched above the clouds in northern Italy, Santnerpass refuge doesn’t just look stunning. It’s a marvel of eco-building – and vegetarian cuisine ‘I think my boots are falling apart!” shouts Nigel just as we hit the pinnacles, a whole range of them jutting up and out from the mountainside, all thrillingly tall, spiky and knobbled. Through them we painstakingly step, fingers aching in gloves, heads sweating in helmets – squashing up narrow chimneys, squeezing through mighty boulders and inching along slender ledges on a twisting path that’s only just discernible through swathes of sharp white s

The Guardian – Travel