NewsFlash Travelling Around The World

Gustav Klimt prompts are everywhere in Vienna, in this the 150th anniversary of his birth. Naked Klimt women gaze out from hoardings, shops sell jewellery and clothes based on his gold-leaf extravaganzas and nine museums are displaying his canvases in the city that he made home. So I was sorry to find no plaque marking 21 Josefstadterstrasse, where Klimt had his studio in the garden.

Just as picturesque as Bruges, but with only a fraction of the tourist traffic, Ghent is Belgium’s hidden gem. With its canals and cobbled alleyways, it’s perfect for a romantic getaway, and its thriving university gives the city a youthful buzz. And last week, a four-month cultural celebration of Ghent was unveiled; The “art experience” Track highlights the city’s landmarks and open spaces via specially commissioned artworks (track.be; until 16 September).

High summer. Day three of a journey through rural France. It’s peak holiday season. Here are three things you might not expect to find in the country at this time. First, wild flowers in profusion, banks of them surrounding me wherever I go: deep blue delphiniums, delicate pale-blue harebells, pink-tinged scabious, genipi, buttercups, daisies and thick, velvety green grass. Not the sort of blooms you will encounter in late summer on the scorched-earth shores of the Mediterranean.

‘Wish you were here” isn’t a slogan that can be spotted amid the racks of postcards spilling into the streets in Athens’ tourist traps, but the sentiment is visible everywhere. It’s in the eyes of every bored-looking hotel receptionist and overstocked ice-cream vendor.

Since childhood, Italy has been special to me. It was the first foreign country I visited as a teenager and so it was officially the most exotic place in the world. Although that wasn’t hard – frankly, anywhere outside Strathclyde could have laid claim to that title in 1982. I also share my surname with the Italian city of Ancona. (My Italian heritage is all rather tenuous, madly fluctuating, according to whom I’m talking. Needless to say, if I was with Al Pacino, I’d be first generation.) It sounds exotic, but actually Ancona is a port on the east coast of Italy in Le Marche and a city with a bad football team; it’s a bit like being named Ronni Grimsby. Obviously, I was very excited about flying into Ancona airport, but then quickly very disappointed at the lack of reaction to my surname at Ancona passport control.

Parador de Granada, Spain

This one-pot fish dish is as inherently French as cognac, croissants and champagne. It is thought to have originated from Marseillais fishermen who used the bony fish they were unable to sell, to cook their evening meal.