The Daily Telegraph - Saturday - Travel
SAMANTHA BOND MY LIFE IN TRAVEL
The actress on getting her big break in Japan, storming Broadway with Judi Dench, and her secret Spanish getaway
BACK IN THE DAY when we were poor, underpaid actors, my husband [the actor, Alexander Hanson] and I would arrange mini-breaks to Paris. We’d stay in two-star hotels with miserable, sagging mattresses then, but we travel in a little more style now. We’ve been going for 30 years. It’s our special place. We love walking up to Montmartre: it can be a bit of a slog but we always take the stairs over the funicular.
I’M BRIMMING WITH RECOMMENDATIONS for food in Paris. Chez Janou is a little restaurant I discovered with the most exquisite chocolate fondant. There’s Le Fumoir too, tucked behind the Louvre. For a late-night coffee, brandy or sweet treat, La Poule au Pot near Les Halles stays open until the early hours. Oh, and Au Chien Qui Fume is one of those typical brasseries from which you can sit back and watch the to-ings and fro-ings of city life. My technical French is terrible but I have a brilliant accent, apparently.
DAME JUDI DENCH AND I went shopping in Bergdorf Goodman – perhaps the most expensive shop I’ve ever visited – when we were both starring in Amy’s View on Broadway. It was surreal. She’d won an Oscar the week before so staff were falling over themselves to help. Judi picked me out a little black dress – “yes, you have to buy it!” I remember her exclaiming. It was the price of a small mortgage and doesn’t fit me now, but my daughter still takes it for a twirl.
PLAYING BROADWAY TO A PACKED HOUSE was an extraordinary experience, not least as I got to live next to Central Park with my two small children at no expense. As anyone who’s been to New York in summer knows, it gets hot – really hot. If I could have lived at The Loeb Boathouse, a restaurant on the lake in Central Park, I would have.
MY FIRST BIG TV BREAK was a series called The Ginger Tree that we filmed in Japan about 30 years ago. One day, when the cameras weren’t rolling, my fellow cast member
Fumi Dan and I took a train up the Chugoku Mountains and visited the village of Yubara, which is famous for its natural spas. Fumi was so famous in Japan that the Westin hotel there had purposefully pumped the spa water up into a rooftop pool and closed it off just for us. We sat out under the stars in Mother Nature’s hot tubs with nobody else around. That was gorgeous. We actually stayed in a ryokan, a traditional Japanese inn.
AN EIGHT-INCH MEGACENTIPEDE BIT ME while I was asleep in Japan. We’d eaten dinner on the floor, as is customary, and I’d bedded down on my futon when I was woken up by a sharp bite on my elbow. It was called a mukade and I had to be rushed to an emergency hospital over an hour and a half away to get medication. It was terrifying. We couldn’t believe its size. It had huge red, squirming antennae. It looked like a baby dragon.
I BOUGHT FIVE INK DRAWINGS when I was in Japan, of ladies in various states of undress. They’re all getting ready for a bath or slipping on their kimonos afterwards. I’ve spread them throughout different bathrooms.
I’D NEVER CRUISED BEFORE but in July I went on a wonderful cruise that started in Southampton, stopped at Bruges, then Copenhagen and finished in Oslo. My husband nabbed a last-minute acting job and dropped out. Fortunately I found a fellow solo traveller on the first night. She didn’t watch TV and had no idea who I was, at all. Over a glass of wine, we struck up a friendship that I think will last forever.
BRUGES WAS NOT ON MY RADAR until I went on the cruise, but it was extraordinarily stunning. In Copenhagen we got our adrenalin fix at Tivoli Gardens and racked up a
MOSQUITO REPELLANT
Jungle formula mosquito spray is my repellant of choice. They like to nibble me for some reason - perhaps they’re attracted to the sunburn? £5.99, boots.com whopping 17,000 steps on the Fitbit. The cruise ended up in Oslo where I met up with my husband’s family and got an insider tour of the city.
I’M RELUCTANT TO SHARE THIS because I don’t want others to discover it, but my favourite place to stay is the Hotel Playa Sol in Cadaqués, Spain. It’s a tiny hotel with a big heart and a magical swimming pool lined with olive trees that provide perfect cover for midafternoon snoozing. I’ve been going for 10 years now. It’s nestled in a fishing port so you’re guaranteed good seafood. Salvador Dalí’s old abode isn’t far, either – that’s worth a snoop.
On a cruise, I struck up a friendship with a fellow solo traveller that I think will last forever
I DON’T SIT AND CRY SILENTLY on flights any more. I always tell the stewards I’m a nervous flier. British Airways are particularly good at consoling anxious travellers. When my husband lived in New York I flew the transatlantic route 20 times in one year. If that’s not love…? Princess Cruises hosted
Samantha Bond as a guest speaker as part of their Champions after-dinner speaker series.