Monday 21 December 2009

GENEVA to GUATAMALA

GENEVA Quiet nights, lamplights on cobbled streets, the fountain on the lake. Scrumping apples in the sun with all day to walk nowhere, wondering how far it is to Byron’s castle at Chillon.

GEORGIA On the Black Sea. It has been on my mind to visit for years, and the Georgian café near Columbia Road market, with an exotic couple from Tiflis and fabulous breakfasts, only increased the desire.

GIBRALTAR In the registry office young English sailor boys queue up with their Spanish fiancées whose stomachs swell with anticipation. Newlywed, we toast ourselves in Watneys Red Barrel and Hirondel red wine, imported from England.

GIRONA The 11th-century Tapestry of Creation in the Cathedral Museum is exquisite: look at the figures flying on wineskins, the monsters of the deep, the seasons that pass in such contented order: it is a picture of a vivid medieval mind

GLASGOW The Gorbals and the Glasgow Boys. Photographs of the tenements in the 1960s started the Shelter campaign.

GOTHAM CITY One of the most successfully imagined cities.

GOZO We lost an anchor off the coast. Swimming down and trying to pull it up was a lesson in the laws of physics.

GRANADA The Alhambra is a vision of culture, a skyline that promises infinite mystery and sophistication that tourist hordes cannot dim.

GUATEMALA There are more than fifty native languages in Guatemala, which has proved a hindrance to political advancement of minority groups. It was not until 1993 that the first Mayan novel was published, written by Gaspar Pedro Gonzalez.