I am going to the Espelette pepper festival this year, and I have not been this excited about a village party in a long time. The Espelette pepper festival 2026 happens half an hour from my front door: two days, one small Basque village, around 20,000 people and house fronts hung with drying red peppers […]
Espelette Pepper Festival 2026: Dates, Programme and How to Get There Read more »
Direct flights from Tallinn are easier and harder this autumn, both at once. Easier, because 2026 brought seven new direct routes to Tallinn Airport, Rome and Vienna among them. Harder, because airBaltic is shrinking in Tallinn for the winter, and several routes you may be used to vanish from the schedule at the end of
City Breaks With Direct Flights From Tallinn: 9 Cities for Autumn 2026 Read more »
The best Christmas markets in Europe are the same five or six names every year, and every year they have the same problem: you cannot fly to Strasbourg direct from Tallinn or Helsinki, a hotel there costs €250 a night in December, and as of September the city has not even confirmed its 2026 dates.
Helsinki Christmas Market 2026 closes on 22 December, two days before Christmas, and that tells you more about Finns than any guidebook. The market is called Tuomaan markkinat, St Thomas’s Market, and St Thomas’s Day is the day by which Christmas preparations must be finished in the Finnish tradition. After that, everyone goes home, to
Helsinki Christmas Market 2026: Dates, Prices and Why It Closes Before Christmas Read more »
Finns do not do Halloween. They do pyhäinpäivä, All Saints’ Day, and in 2026 the two land on the same Saturday, 31 October. So on the same evening that Helsinki’s clubs are full of costumes, thousands of families are lighting candles at Hietaniemi cemetery and the shops are on Sunday hours. If you want to
Halloween in Helsinki 2026: 5 Events and the Other Celebration Finns Actually Keep Read more »
This list of spa hotels in the Basque Country started in a pool full of magnesium salt in a forest above San Sebastián. It made me realise that the Basque Country is famous for everything except this. People come for pintxos, surf, Michelin stars and the Guggenheim. Nobody tells you that within about an hour
The 8 Best Spa Hotels in the Basque Country (Spain and France) Read more »
The first thing I did at Arima Hotel & Spa in San Sebastián was swim on the roof with a forest underneath me. Not a view of a forest across a car park. Actual treetops, right there past the edge of the pool, and somewhere behind them a whole city that I could not hear
Arima Hotel & Spa: The Hidden Gem of San Sebastián Sits in a Forest Read more »
The first thing I saw in Guéthary was a group of kids on a big square, playing a game I had never seen in my life. One of them had a long curved scoop strapped to his arm, something between a basket and a pirate’s hook. He caught the ball in it and then hurled
Guéthary: the little Basque village I keep coming back to Read more »
Fishermen stood on the cliff edge. Right there on the lip, where Europe simply runs out and the ocean roared below. They cast their lines, calm as anything. I stood back, and honestly it turned my stomach. The locals do this here every single day. It’s a completely insane way to die, one wrong step
Sagres and Lagos: A Trip to the End of the World That the Surfers Made Their Own Read more »
Discover Mallorca beyond the tourist crowds — secret beaches like Caló del Moro and Cala Llombards, charming villages like Fornalutx and Valldemossa. A practical guide for planning the perfect off-season long weekend.
Mallorca Hidden Gems: Secret Beaches and Beautiful Villages Away from the Crowds Read more »
