• Cross-cultural awareness training seminars and courses for expats in London, UK Preparing professionals for an overseas appointment in Thailand, Japan, Russia and the Netherlands (Holland). Based on my specialist training, solid business background and own international relocation experience. The theory and practice of livng abroad explained. Based in London, UK, will travel.

• Cross-cultural awareness training: Thailand
• Cross-cultural awareness training: Russia
• Cross-cultural awareness training: Holland
• Cross-cultural awareness training: Japan

• Japanese, English, Thai, Russian language courses, teacher, translator, interpreter in Central London I'm a university-trained language teacher with long experience of teaching my mother tongue Russian as well as Japanese, Thai and English at the language school and university level. I majored in Oriental Studies and lived half of my life in Japan, Thailand and Holland where on top of my business career I have always had a part time language teaching job, just for the love of it. This is how I got to teach Japanese people Russian, Dutch people Thai and Thai people English.

  I use best hand-picked tutorials and the teaching methods and approaches I have developed based on my own 25-year experience in language learning. I am fluent in five and conversational in a dozen myself. Mastering a language takes both system and fun, I know how to provide both.

  I have excellent recommendations from my previous employers and students that can be furnished upon request.

• Japanese, Chinese, English, Thai, Russian language school, courses, translation, interpreting in Bangkok, Thailand Custom-made group and individual language courses, certified translations, on-site interpreting.

• Beijing - Grandeur, Rusticity & Russiatown The capital of China is an overwhelmingly gigantic imperial city with vast avenues and grandiose public spaces but just a few minutes away from the Tiananmen Square it can be surprisingly cozy and intimate, even rustic.

• Great Wall In Autumn Hues The Badaling section of the Great Wall is derided by some as the Chinese Disneyland for the level of restoration work it underwent. In my eyes, there is nothing wrong with that - instead of the impeccably maintained gangways we could have had to risk our life and limb on crumbled stairs and dilapidated watchtowers.

• Pingyao - A Feel Of The Days Long Gone By
• Once the banking capital of the Qing China, Pingyao was abandoned in favour of Shanghai and Hong Kong. Left behind the industrialization and other novel fads, it has preserved an almost unnatural museum-like feel to it. Painstakingly maintained nowadays, it offers an amazing plethora of sightseeing spots tucked away in unassuming nooks and corners. Most guidebooks merit the town only as a night-over destination, probably because the best sights are not so obvious and take time and patience to discover.

• Xi'an - Terracotta Army, Hot Springs & Mosques
• "Rome in the West, X'i'an in the East." The starting point of the legendary Silk Road, Xi'an is one of the most ancient continuously inhabited cities in China. In fact, it has been a royal capital for 11 dynasties since its semi-mythical beginnings some time around BC 2200. Both Nara and Kyoto, the original imperial capitals of Japan were styled after Xi'an.

• Nanjing - The Swanky Capital Of South
• Nanjing - the Southern Capital, as opposed to Beijing - the Northern Capital - combines antiquity and modernity with a panache. This happy marriage is perhaps best epitomised by the ... Scenic Spot - a tiny if nicely laid out park, with fine Ming-style tea pavilion-come restaurant, set amidst the looming skyscrapers of Beijing Road.

• Yangzhou - The Treasure Box Garden
• Yangzhou is worth visiting if only for the tremendous Slender West Lake Garden. It is huge, so reserve a whole day for your visit. Despite its size, it's so exquisitely planned and executed, you feel yourself inside a jewellery box - every inch is finely tended, every few steps provide a view to yet another haunting vista with arched bridges, toy-like tea pavilions, elaborate rockeries and quizzical ponds full of turtles and brightly-coloured carps.

• Suzhou - The Silk Capital Of China
• Suzhou's heyday as a silk trade centre has left behind a several nice sights scattered around the city. We used the city as the hub for travelling in the area and our short stay did not justice to the Silk Capital of China. I hope to spend more time there some time soon.

• Tongli - The Water Village
• Tongli is a twee fishing village on the Tai Lake criss-crossed by cutesy canals lined with characteristic houses and crossed by picturesque bridges. In fact, the whole setting so photogenic that it could have very well been set up on purpose as a tourist bait but in fact the village is authentic. Once a fishermen's settlement, nowadays it derives most of its income - surprise surprise - from tourism as well as serving the daily catch in the numerous canal-side restaurants. Its status, deservedly so, is so close to an open-air museum that you cannot even enter without a ticket, that fortunately includes entrance to all the museums - except for the intriguingly named Chinese Sexual History Museum.

• Tunxi - Breezy Gateway to Huangshan
• The modern and pleasantly laid town of Tunxi is more widely known as Huangshan City, named so after the major tourist attraction to which it serves as a transportation and accommodation hub. It has a very well restored old quarter, which in fact is a very long pedestrianised street with scores of back lanes lined with fine local Anhui style houses and all sorts of craft, curios and tea shops.

• Huangshan - Mountain Range From A Classical Chinese Poem
• The beauty of this mountain range is of an epic level and defies any camera or verbal description. A 10-minute cable car ride - or a 6-km walk up the steep stairs - whisks you inside a classical Chinese poem painted in ink on silk paper. Precarious looking if sturdy walkways clinging to the sides of precipitous cliffs lead you from one to another stunning view of exquisitely shaped lofty peaks most aesthetically covered with twisted pine trees.
• Hongcun - Water Buffalo Shaped Village
• Known as a "village in a Chinese painting", Hongcun is another UNESCO World Heritage site. It has gained gained international fame as a location for the martial arts epic "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon".

• Shanghai - Carnival Of Life
• Brash and bold, China's second biggest city has always been about money. It sprang up to sudden fame as a concession port in the 19th century and by the 1930s it became world's third largest financial centre. Its re-birth in 1990 as a Special Economic Zone, brought it back to the ranks of major international cities.
• Royal Tour of Morocco: Casablanca, Rabat, Tangier, Fez, Marrakesh, Ouarzazate, Ait-Benhaddou, Tizi-n-Tichka, Draa Valley, Dades Gorges, Essaouira
• Morocco truly is a fairytale land. Pushy market touts, dignified poverty and dubious hygiene may never merit a mention in fairytales, it is a fairytale land nevertheless.

  A step away from the swank Art Nouveau boulevards packed with latest import cars there are sun-scorched comely men in jellabas and pointed-nose slippers pensively drinking fragrant mint tea in fountain-cooled tiled patios while storks watch them perched in their nests on top of half-crumbled minarets. It's exactly the kind of Orient you thought only existed in 19th century travel books. Dive into the baffling maze of a medina, breathe in the ubiquitous gentle whiff of spices, mix in with the colourful jostling crowds in the souks and it's so easy to imagine yourself in a Hauff's fairytale.

• Austro-Hungary Road Trip (Budapest to the Adriatic via Slovenia and Austria)
• From the Danubian exuberance of Budapest via the pristine Alpine scenery of Slovenia to the restrained elegance of Trieste and back by way of the northernmost Italian Renaissance city, Graz: our hardy Suzuki Ignis took us 2,500 km through the mountains and plains of the former Austro- Hungarian Empire to Hungary, Slovenia, Italy and Austria.

  For over half a millennium, it all used to be one country, Europe's second largest, a European superpower, now but a name from a history textbook. Like Paris in the West, Vienna used to graciously preside over the Central European civilisation, reaching with its influence across distances and cultures. It was too busy managing its multi-cultural citizenry to endeavour an overseas expansion so the only far-flung parts of the empire were a tiny concession in Chinese Tianjin and Franz-Josef Land in Antarctica.

• Grand Red Foilage Tour Of China: Beijing, Pingyao, Xi'an, Nanjing, Shanghai, Yangzhou, Suzhou, Tongli, Hongcun, Huangshan
• In many ways, China exceeds any expectations - it's bigger, brasher, cleaner, friendlier, more modern, more expensive, more culturally diverse and has more to offer to the traveller than one could ever imagine. It both defies and confirms the many stereotypes in the most enjoyable manner. And it also does deserve all the superlatives and ecstatic epithets you will come across below.
  
• Canada & US Road Trip: Nouvelle France & New England, Quebec, Montreal, Toronto, Nova Scotia, Acadia, New Brunswick, Halifax, Bar Harbor, Niagara Falls
• As the global warming is slowly but surely clearing up the Arctic ice, we may be not that far away from the time when gaily lit-up cruise liners will be taking throngs of aloha shirt wearing margarita-swillers on tours round Canadian islands. But even now, contrary to the image of America's frozen cousin, Canada's summers are hot and sunny. It may be less populated but, as we discovered, is full of character, culture and history. Replete with Victorian architecture, Toronto is world's third largest centre of English-language theatre after New York and London, while Montreal is a kind of sub-polar Paris with great cuisine, grand French-style buildings, cobbled streets in the historic quarter and 32 kilometres of underground shopping malls to enjoy retail therapy throughout the year.

• Drivin' USA: New York City + 9600 KM Through The Southwest
• For much too long I allowed stale stereotypes and a healthy disgust for US foreign policy to keep me from travelling to America. Shedding prejudices always pays off. Two odd weeks in New York City and ten Southwestern states completely changed my mind: I discovered some of the most breathtaking scenery I had ever seen and met possibly the most affable people I can think of. It is hard to believe that it is the same nation that elected George W. Bush twice.

• Amsterdam Without Prejudice
• Amsterdam is world- renowned as the city of pot, tarts and leather dungeons. Throngs upon throngs of tourists descend upon these balmy shores in search of pleasures forbidden back home. Zonked out on marijuana and cheap booze, many never venture beyond the Red Light District and the Sex Museum. The few enlightened ones quickly skim through the Van Gogh Museum and the tulip fields before leaving after a one-night stay. It is a crying shame because this hip global village has immensely more to offer than major hangovers and commercial sex.
  
• Easter In The Valley Of The French Kings: Vallée de la Loire: Orleans, Angers, Amboise
• Where else could it be better to celebrate Easter than in the Loire Valley, the original fairytale land and the Garden of France where both royal and land-tilling tradition form a gloriously enjoyable symbiosis. Majestic châteaux and abundance of fresh land produce – here you get the best of beauty and taste (culture and gastronomy).

• Argentina Has It All: 6,500 KM By Car From The Ocean To The Andes And Back
• Argentina truly has it all: the sultry tropics of Misiones and the alligator-infested swamps of Formosa, the Incan ruins of Jujuy and the Antarctic glaciers of Ushuaia, grand old cities and rustic wine-growing countryside, the mesmerizingly blue Alpinesque lakes of Bariloche and the dramatic sky-propping Andes, llamas in the mountains and penguins on the Atlantic coast. One thing for sure: no matter how much time you travel there, wonders never cease.

• Alpine Adventure: Vienna to Munich via the Adriatic (Austria, Italy, Bavaria)
• Vienna to Munich via the Adriatic was the route of our late summer trip in 2007. This time we had with us two New Russians who spent most of time glued to the shop windows and stuffing their caravan with all kinds of Western goods. When it was full, they bought a roof rack and mounted sacks of goodies there. To top it off, they also seem to have jinxed the weather, and that affected the quality of the few pictures we still managed to take in between Russki shopping sprees.

• A Day In Utrecht
• Away from the coastal marshlands of Holland that would take centuries to reclaim much later, Romans founded a fortress. They named it Traiectum (ford) as this is where the Rhine, which used to flow much more northerly in the olden days, was forded. As Romans also decided that this was as far to the north as their empire was going to expand, they put Ultra (the farthest) in front of the name. Many centuries after their empire collapsed, the two words would come to be shortened to simply Utrecht.
  
• Slow Autumn In Russia: Moscow and Kursk
• In the last decade Moscow has received a major uplift. All historical buildings have been restored or even rebuilt in place of ugly 70-s structures, asphalt walkways are being replaced with paving-stone, the city is full of neat restaurants and cafés catering to all tastes and budgets.

• American Weekend In Europe: Do Nine Countries In Four Days
• American tourists in Europe are so often pressed for time, it seems many can but resort to country- hopping. We have one American in our two-man team so it only took us to rent an unlimited mileage car to embark on a Yankee-does-Europe tour. Thanks to a Yankee company, Hertz, it is not just possible but very affordable.

• Normandy - Brittany - Jersey: Amsterdam - Lille - Mer-les-Bains - Dieppe - Miromesnil - Roeun - Le Mesnil-Esnard - Giverny - Les Andelys - Fécamp - Étretat - Pont de Normandie - Honfleur - Saint-Quentin-sur-le-Homme - Mont St. Michel - Roz-sur-Couesnon - St. Marcan - St. Broladre - Cherrueix - Mont-Dol - Le Vivier-sur-Mer - Saint-Benoît-des-Ondes - Cancale - Pointe-du-Grouin - St. Malo - Barrage de la Rance - Dinard - St. Lunaire - St. Helier - Grouveille - Gorey - Five Oaks - Amsterdam
• England and France - two major world cultures so common yet so different that love and hate each other so much. The English may envy the hedonistic Gallic lifestyle and excellent healthcare system, the French - the successful Anglo-Saxon world expansionism and infinitely superior rock-n-roll music, but in reality the two nations share more than a centuries-long spirit of rivalry. In April-May 2008 we travelled 2,670 km to see where the twain meet, mix and, on occasion, mate: Normandy, Brittany and Jersey, exploring the best sites in the culturally rich area of Anglo-French contact.

• In The Land of Whimsy: Prague and Karlovy Vary (Carlsbad) (Czech Republic)
• Czechia happens to be the official name of the Czech Republic, even though few people are aware of it. In the recent years Prague has become the proverbial tourist Mecca. At 90 euros all-included return, we decided to follow the herd and visit the city of Hašek, Capek and Kafka. Three hoorays to SmartWings - the only budget airline that serves free food and drinks!

• Toronto - Hip And Laid-Back
• Toronto is a sort of laid-back cross of London and New York: skyscrapers mixed with Victorian Gothic, the subway, the urban retail bonanza, the multiethnic mélange in the streets. I am not a big fan of modern architecture but Toronto's skyline is just beautiful. Even the bromide concrete-and-glass boxes of office buildings look friendly. North American generosity with space is married here to British attention to social matters: the streets are wide, clean and free of crime, you can eat well and cheap, you can drive everywhere but you don't have to. Other cities may have more Rolls Royces, casinos and overpriced restaurants, but Toronto has the real quality of life: clean air, good water, safe streets (homicide rate alone 24 times as low as in Washington, D.C), good education, excellent healthcare, cultural diversity and racial tolerance. Just a short ferry ride and you are on the Toronto Islands, a huge recreation area with an official nudist beach - not bad for the city formerly known as the Methodist Rome.

• Ottawa - A Marriage Of Convenience
• A lot of critics lambasting Ottawa's architecture as staid and boring. That is a bit unfair. It may be a somewhat studied attempt to blend Canada’s Anglo and Gallic identities but it belies the city's origins as a compromise for the rivalry between Toronto and Montreal, there is no way of escaping that. A common Canadian identity at least tried to cool down the centuries-old rivalry imported from the Old World. The result, a certain Châteauesque Neo-Gothic does have an attractive gravitas but in terms of establishing a national unity through architecture it proved still-born.

• Montreal - Straddling The Anglo-Gallic Watershed
• World’s third largest Francophone city after Paris and Kinshasa, Montreal is Quebec’s answer to Toronto. Until the bungled 1976 Olympics got the better of it, it was Canada’s première metropolis, the cultural as well as economic centre. It still puts up a fierce competition spreading to sports, business and contested cultural supremacy. World’s largest inland port, it processes more containers than anywhere else in North America. It is the St. Lawrence River that brings prosperity here. Vast enough to be a major whale playground, in French it is called not a rivière but a fleuve, a waterway rather than simply a river. Somewhere around Trois Pistoles where it takes one and half hours to cross it by ferry, the water that I tasted was definitely salty.

• Ode to Canada The Beautiful
• This world would be a much better place if only the US could be more like Canada: safe, clean, socially responsible, environmentally aware, unhurriedly enjoying life rather driving itself into the ground working and playing hard. Leading by example and taking care of its own citizens rather than spending trillions on military power to bully the world.

• Quebec - The Most European City In North America
• Quebec is by far the most European looking and feeling city in North America. And by Europe here, of course, I mean France. The capital of the eponymous province, it is the heart of Quebecois nationalism. For the recent celebration of territory's 400th anniversary it was French Prince Jean, Duc de Vendôme who was invited by the city officials while Queen Elizabeth II was pointedly snubbed.

• Quebec's Tipping Point: Change Becomes Unstoppable
• Millions live off tips in the United States, it’s a major source of income for the service workers eking out living on the minimum wage (US$2.13 per hour without the tips). North of the American border, the deal is more European and human-oriented: gun control, universal health insurance and a comprehensive social security are a few nice boons of being reigned by Elizabeth II instead of a bunch of multinationals. Still, the tips are part and parcel of the Anglo-world and the sacrosanct 10% are duly expected on top of nearly every bill.

• Down The St. Lawrence - Quebec Countryside
• Cathedrals, monasteries, city walls and vineyards – does not exactly sound like your regular North American road trip. Seldom heard of outside its borders, Québec is a very much alive and prosperous French-speaking territory in Canada. For many Americans it is probably the most affordable foreign destination. A one-day drive from New York and Boston, it is a charming French islands in the Anglo-Saxon ocean.

• Acadia, New Brunswick
• There was a trend in the colonization of the New World different to wholesale Christianization and ethnic cleansing so characteristic of post-Columbian Americas. Acadians were free settlers of French descend who came to the area now known as New Brunswick, Nova Scotia and the Prince Edward Island starting as early as 1604. They were land-tillers and they learnt fishing and hunting techniques from the natives of the area, the Mi'kmaq people. Their relationship was that of cultural osmosis rather than downright ethnic cleansing that has been so typical for history of the rest of the Americas. in Acadia American natives were included in councils and education while intermarriage was very common. The Acadians and the Mi'kmaq enjoyed a very peaceful co-existence until the takeover by the British who viewed such it as a "heinous misdemeanour". In 1722 British Governor Richard Philipp made it illegal to for Europeans and Indians to convene and associate with each other.

• Nova Scotia - Canada's Ocean Playground
• Nova Scotia – New Scotland was a part of French Acadia lost to the English in the 1765 war. Not before too long, French speakers were evicted, their houses burnt and any sign of their presence destroyed. The peninsula, connected to the mainland by a narrow isthmus, was repopulated by Northern European immigrants who eventually make the area look like Denmark with brightly painted wooden plank houses perched on gently sloping granite cliffs.

• America's Love Affair With The Automobile
• North America is made for motorists. Just like bicycle paths cover every nook and corner of Holland allowing to reach any place on your bike, America has driveways letting you by, through and around anywhere you want to get to. The whole way the country put together, the layout of its cities and countryside is made for drivers. Except for a few cities, you will have a hard time trying to get around on public transportation.

• Maine: Acadia N.P. & Asticou Azalea Garden
• One of world’s greatest ships, the CAT connects Nova Scotia with Bar Harbour, the gateway to one of America’s wonders, the Acadia N.P. A whole industry of restaurant, tours and hotels caters to those who come to admire the pine-grown pink granite shores and deep azure sea here.

• Amsterdam, NY
• Half way between Maine and the Niagara Falls on the New York Drivethru we could not resist the temptation of visiting the namesake of our home town. Amsterdam, NY has nice historical downtown clearly undergoing a revival programme. Residential neighbourhoods just outside the centre look like a picture-perfect prosperous America of the idyllic 50s with lined with spacious and beautifully maintained New World mansions.

• Niagara Falls - Big American Disappointment
• I never thought there would come a day when the Niagara Falls left me, well, under- whelmed. Probably there are only so many times in human life when the sight of massive amounts of water falling down from a height can inspire admiration. As you witness more and more thwarted river flows your awe threshold rises, a natural human reaction. That said, I am not jaded to the point I scoff at all waterfalls. It’s just that some are better than other. Height and volume per second do not determine the awe factor: it is about the setting and the variety.
  
• Do You Really Know American Food?
• For many people American food conjures images of McBurgers™ and Coca Cola™ from the infamous Super Size Me documentary. Throngs of rather rotund yankee tourists abroad do not do much good to public's perception of its cuisine. That said, a great purpose of travelling is developing an unblinkered your vision of the world. There may be a certain truth to stereotypes but they often are just a small part of the wide picture.

• Niagara-on-the-Lake - Possibly The Twee'est Town On Earth
• How come that twee things make our hearts warm? We call them naff and tacky out of shame to be considered un-cool but secretly we all have a place in our hearts for kittens, teddy bears, pinky babies, ivy-covered walls and thatched roofs.

• Canadian Wine
• You never really get to hear of Canadian wine - I only discovered it for myself in a restaurant in China’s scenic Huang Shan (another serendipitous and fateful sign that meaningfully only on the afterthought connects the warp and woof of the tapestry of my travels). At a price twice the cost of a dinner for two, it naturally was not the most popular booze in the joint.

• Lille - Boulogne-sur-Mer - Brouwershaven
• In these days of oil hysteria driving to France just for groceries would be deemed crass. Even before they started making us feeling guilty about burning fossil fuels we always combined business and pleasure: stocking up on essential foodstuffs and sightseeing. This time our objective was threefold: shopping in Lille, visiting my school teachers in Zeeland and last but not least a day in Boulogne.

• Lille - The Nearest Bit Of France
• If you beat the traffic around Utrecht and Antwerp it takes only 2 and half hours from Amsterdam to the nearest French city in the northernmost corner of the Hexagon. Lille is not big on tourist maps and some people even wrinkle their noses when you mention it but it is beautiful enough to me. The historic centre, the Vieux Lille, is charming, there is a citadel, a maze of cobbled streets with café terraces, grand squares and attractive Flemish Gothic buildings. I also like that in every neighbourhood there is at least one Auchan hypermarket where I can stock up on good quality French groceries in one stop (say, Carrefour, let alone Leclerc, just doesn't cut it).

• Mers-les-Bains - A Bourgeois Seaside Resort Par Excellence
• The route starts in Mer-les-Bains where the flat expands of the Low Countries finally give way to the photogenic chalky cliffs of the Côte d'Albâtre, the Alabaster Coast. Mer-les-Bains, a resort town built up with colourful turn-of-the century villas, forms one commune with the cliff-side Le Treport (great seafood restaurants) and the inland Eu (a royal château). Victor Hugo, Jules Verne and Gustav Eiffel used to come here on holidays and just like in their time the area teems with Parisians flocking to the closest beaches from home they can find.

• Dieppe - Maps, Ivory And Scallops
• Famous for its scallops and the tragically botched Dieppe Operation during WWII, these days Dieppe is a pretty seaside town with the nearest beach to Paris and a photogenic marina typical for Normandy.

• Fécamp - Liqueur, Seafood & Norman Vestiges
• Home to the Norman dukes’ castle from whence Wilhelm the Conqueror launched his invasion of Britain, Fécamp is now mostly famous for Bénédictine – a sweet concoction of 27 herbs, sugar and alcohol created in late 19th century on the wave of a developing consumerist culture and interest towards all things “traditional and historical”, its name evoking images of medieval monks brewing healing potions. However, just like the pseudo-Renaissance folly of the Palais Benedictine where it is produced, it is a purely commercial creation, a nifty marriage of nostalgia for good old times and mass production technology.

• The Limestone Arches Of Étretat
• The busy seaside village of Étretat draws huge crowds thanks to the Falaises d’Étretat –gigantic limestone arches protruding into the sea. In the classic Normandy way, the top of them is lush green and flat and as always the contrast is quite dramatic.
  
• Rouen - The Duck, The Pots & The Cathedral
• The city of Madame Bovary and Monet’s Cathédrale series, Rouen has an appealing historical centre painstakingly restored from the heavy destruction of WWII. The very scale of restoration only dawns on you when you see the pictures of post-bombardment Rouen. Still, here and there in the city are left devastated pieces of what used to be magnificent buildings, preserved so as mementos of how senseless and barbarous wars are.

• Richard the Lionheart's Château Gaillard
• Set on the most picturesque curve of the Seine one can find, the ruins of Château Gaillard are a crumbling monument to the aesthetic sense and unbridled ambitions of England’s allegedly homosexual king, Richard the Lionheart.

• Monet's Japanese Garden in Giverny
• In 1883, four years after his wife's tragic death, grief-stricken Monet noticed the village of Giverny while looking out of the train window. He moved there almost immediately and when he had enough money to buy out an estate, he started a magnificent garden of which he made many famous paintings. The famous water lily pond with a Japanese bridge are also in this garden.
  
• Honfleur - A Picture-Perfect Port
• The slate-covered façades of the houses lining the waterfront are the most celebrated feature of the port of Honfleur but it is the characteristic quality of light in the harbour that earned it a string of painting admirers. Among others they included the founder of Realism Gustave Courbet of the Origin of the World fame, precursors of Impressionism Johan Jongkind and Eugène Boudin, and what would we do without Claude Monet.

• Mont St.Michel - The Marvel Abbey
• Second most visited tourist attraction in France after Paris, this tiny, densely built-up island manages to let through over 12 millions visitors a year - and that is probably why they call it the Marvel Abbey.

• Côte Emeraude - Brittany's Emerald Coast
• Why is it that in Celtic countries even the rocks look like they have souls? Is it a vestige of the druidic worship of moss-grown boulders dotting the wind-swept heather meadows of Ireland, Scotland or Cornwall? The feature that unites all Celtic lands is a mysterious, meaningful air about their understated weather-worn beauty.

• St. Malo - The Granite Jewel of Brittany
• Brittany's most visited place, St. Malo is a stark grey jewel - its austere elegance is very Breton. It may look inhospitable from the outside but inside the granite walls there is reputedly the highest concentration of seafood restaurants in France. On a sunny day St. Malo's beaches are teeming with tourist crowds. Skimpily dressed sunbathers form quite a contrast with the steep and mighty fortification walls towering over them.
  
• Dinard & St. Lunaire - Hangouts Of The Rich
• Also known as the Cannes of the North, Dinard (Dinarzh or “Arthur’s Fort” in Breton) is a posh seaside resort with a vaguely Mediterranean feel. The rich and famous from both sides of the Channel occupy 407 listed Belle Epoque villas in Dinard. Tropical palms and trees line the romantic Promenade du Claire de Lune and sweet smell of rhododendron wafts in the air warmed up by the
  nearby Gulf Stream.

• Jersey - The Bulwark Of Englishness
• Jersey is a mere one-hour speed ferry ride away from Brittany but such proximity did not rub any Frenchiness off on it. It could just be yet another Torquay or Townsend-on-Sea transplanted right next to the French coast. In a very endearing way it is a Fawlty Towers kind of experience, complete with dainty English ladies served rack of lamb by swarthy waiters speaking macaronic English in tweed hotels faintly smelling of fish and chips, overlooking rain-drenched expanses of sandy beaches. It is so strictly British in fact that no tourist brochure about the island mentions its most famous resident, Victor Hugo who was unlucky enough to be French.

• Keukenhof 2008 - Floral Letdown Of The Year
• Keukenhof is something like "kitchen garden" in Dutch. But seriously, my Mother's kitchen garden is a considerably more imaginative than the hyped tourist attraction. A bunch of flowerbeds spread out over quite a vast surface, without any coherence or theme, are there clearly just to lure people into buying tulip bulbs from the souvenir shops and keep the shamelessly overpriced cafeteria in business.

• Summer in Alsace
• Heavy on German flavour, but still unmistakably French - Alsace is the blond region of France, where fair-haired people have their local pizza, flammekueche, with silky crème fraîche and wash down pale choucroute with fine white wine.

• Talampaya & The Cuyo
• The descend from the Saltan heights takes you through the phantasmagoric rocks of the Quebrada de Las Conchas, the trekking and outdoors capital Cafayate - a laid-back atmospheric town surrounded by nature wonders ans sprawling vineyards, home to the fragrant Torrontes.

• Salta & The Andes
• Making it to Salta, as any other road to a treasure trove, involves a true hurdle race. You have to cross a scarily long bridge over the Paraná, then drive many hours through the sun-scorched plains of Chaco, including a certain place called Pampa del Infierno roughly translated as Grassland from Hell.

• Iguazu Falls And Misiones
• The magnificent Iguazu Falls are well worth the two-day dash from the moderate, very European climate of the capital to the tropical sultry abundance of Misiones, the province where the Iguazu Falls are situated. The 8-lane elevated speedway stops abruptly after Rosario and the rest of the journey you have to do on the equivalent of the American blue highway. It is not bad as it sounds: the traffic is light and the roads are well maintained. You also get to cross a subfluvial tunnel - that is a tunnel dug under a river - so that is one for your log of somewhat oddball experiences.

• Buenos Aires - More Old World Than The Old World Itself
• When you land in Buenos Aires after a 14-hour flight mentally braced for the proverbial Latin American deal, you are in for a quite bizarre, alternative universe kind of experience. You find yourself in Mediterranean Europe but with a twist. As it goes, your brain first picks the familiar and only a little while later the differences start dawning on you.

• Graz - The Northernmost Italian Renaissance City
• We did Graz pretty much on the run. Considered the time we had, we still accomplished quite a bit. Miraculously, despite the midst of the summer the opera had shows on - Umberto Jordano's Andre Chenier was starting in just about an hour. Frothing and panting, we rushed to the hotel to change from the hiking shoes and cargo shorts into fine tailored suits we luckily had in the hotel. You don't want to look shabby in an Austrian opera house.

• Slovenia - Triglav, Ljubljana, Bled & the Adriatic
• Slovenia is a peculiar little country with magnificent nature and a high standard of living - a Switzerland on the Adriatic. Just like Switzerland it knows division on the linguistic basis - the balmy coastal areas, once Venetian possession, are Italian-speaking while the Austrian-influenced Alpine inland is, surprise, more German-speaking. That is not to forget about the national language Slovenian, which to me sounds somewhat akin to the word usage of 8th century Russian epic stories - bylinas.

• Free Port Trieste and Miramare Palace
• Trieste has been an Austrian city for over five centuries, the only maritime access of the empire that never bothered to acquire overseas colonies. Briefly occupied by Venice and France it grew into a flourishing free port populated by a multicultural melange of nations. Italians, Slovenians, Austrians, Croats and Hungarians contributed to a vibrant atmosphere of creativity and prosperity on the balmy Adriatic shores.

• Hungarian Countryside - Wine, Hot Springs & Palaces
• Most visitors to Hungary do not venture beyond Budapest or, at times, the Balaton. A real waste, because Hungarian countryside is a delight. With good roads and varied landscape, you are in for many an enjoyable surprise here: former landowners' palaces, hot springs where you soak full-body in hot mineral water, pretty villages on undulating hills, vineyards, lovely roadside restaurants, akin to the French rustic auberges. The language may be a doozie, but everything can be solved with body language and a phrasebook - I swear by mine!

• Budapest - Figaro, Turkish Baths & Synagogue
• Figaro the opera, Turkish baths and Synagogue epitomize the exotic mixture of various cultures in the capital of the kingdom that once majestically spread from the Ukraine to the Adriatic.

Santorum - the frothy mix of lube and fecal matter that is sometimes the byproduct of anal sex.