RANDOM RAMBLINGS
If you’re tired of London, so the saying goes, then you’re tired of life. Perhaps that should worry me, because after something like 20 visits to the British capital over the past 10 years, I am so over London.
Not only that, I am distinctly cool about one of the world’s biggest tourist traps, Amsterdam; I wouldn’t miss Paris if I never saw it again and I find the Big Ls in the States – Los Angeles and Las Vegas – only marginally more interesting than Bloemfontein. Closer to home, Cape Town is well past its sell-by date for me.
I have been privileged to do a fair amount of travelling in my life – most of it for work – and have seen some amazing places, yet so many of the “must see” places for others don’t excite me at all.
The first time I saw London – back in the 1980s – it was crowded, cold and wet. It’s still crowded, cold and wet. Its mass transport systems – the Tube and London buses – are overcrowded, dirty and expensive compared to those in Europe. There are a few more mega glass buildings these days – and there are some top-notch hotels and restaurants (which are hellishly expensive) – but lots of London is dingy. No thanks.
Paris, the City of Lights and of Lovers, is wonderful the first time you see it – and more so if you have the light of your life on your arm. Romance seems part of the air in the French capital.
The colours are bright, the food is fantastic (and expensive) and the history is all around you. Anyway, that is how it can seem when you’re young and in love. When you’re older, and a tad more cynical, you’ll find the French rude, the streets piled with dog turds and the main thoroughfares as tatty as back alleys. No thanks.
Amsterdam is where my son lives – and he loves it. The restaurants are good, the parks are lovely (when the sun’s shining, which is normally on July 22, between 4 and 4.35pm) and the higgledly-piggedly nature of tall houses perched over canals looks romantic.
After you’ve tramped through the endless rainy mornings, afternoons and evenings, you’ll find you pay more attention to the kamikaze, lawless cyclists (how do you say: What’s a pedestrian crossing in Dutch?) who fly out of nowhere (what is it about Dutch bicycle construction which makes them so silent?) determined to run you down. And it’s not cheap either. No thanks.
Los Angeles is like Sandton with a beach – flashy cars and posers for kilometres around – but ugly as hell away from Hollywood Boulevard, Beverley Hills and Mulholland Drive. No thanks. Vegas is, well, Vegas. Oversexed, overpriced and over-rated … Unless you love a silicon knocker type of life. It’s garish with the swatches of neon splashed across a desert. And that desert is one of the ugliest – and hottest – on the planet, too. No thanks.
Cape Town is too full of Gauties in December and foreigners most of the rest of the year. Prices are almost European in their breathtaking cheek, and the traffic is a nightmare. Worst of all, you’ll bump into the exiles from all the Joburg “creative” industries (like advertising) who decided to “semigrate” to a place run by white people (the DA). Just beyond the horizon, Bontehuewel is like Beirut in the 80s – a war zone. No thanks.
I will go back one day to Dresden, one of the hidden jewels of Germany and central Europe.
Beautiful city, dramatic countryside around it. A history that stretches back thousands of years and is also bang up to date: it was firebombed by the British in 1945, even though it was not a military target, and more people died than in either of the atomic bombs dropped on Japan later that year.
It was also part of East Germany during the Cold War and where one Colonel Vladimir Putin, then of the KGB secret police, had his office. You can still see it in tours today. Yes, please.
Vienna, the Austrian capital, is what Paris would be if the French had kept it clean and organised. Clean, efficient and cultured – both the city and its people. And it sits alongside the Danube, arguably Europe’s most beautiful river. Yes please again.
Finally, if I am tired of life – at least in a travelling sense – why do I still find Knysna and the Garden Route such attractive places, even though I’ve been there at least a dozen times in the past 15 years?
There’s so much to do there – from beach to forests to mountains – that you won’t struggle to find something different.
It’s also home to the best beach in the world (no, I’m not going to tell you where it is: I don’t want riff-raff spoiling my four kilometre seaview over my glass of chilled white wine…).
Vegas is oversexed, overpriced and over-rated.
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Agree? Disagree? Let me know