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Luxury Gold – Journey Beyond the Ordinary -
  • Home
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    • Latin America
  • Cuisine
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  • Ulla and son in Burano
    2021 TTC Top Three
    January 5, 2021
    READ MORE
  • Inspiring Travels of Great Literary Figures
    December 18, 2020
    READ MORE
  • Enjoy these popular dishes with Luxury Gold
    December 15, 2020
    READ MORE
  • Our Favorite Rare and Exotic Animals from Across the Globe
    December 15, 2020
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Cuisine, Europe, Luxury Journeys, Make Travel Matter

2021 TTC Top Three

January 5, 2021 by Luxury Gold No Comments
Ulla and son in Burano

I’ve been working in varying roles in the travel industry for some 25 years. In that time I have learnt two things, firstly that my passion for travel will never wane (and that it is a privilege we can’t take for granted) and secondly that you must always expect the unexpected when working in the sector! Admittedly 2020 threw us some pretty big curveballs but the two lessons above have never rung truer.

I am pleased to share with you my 2021 bucket list, I hope you enjoy the journey of reading it, dreaming a little and perhaps in the not-too-distant future take one of the trips confident that when you travel with The Travel Corporation you can sit back and relax knowing that all the details are taken care of on your behalf. What’s more, on all Insight Vacations, Luxury Gold and Trafalgar Tours  in 2021, there will be an on-road team of three – a passionate Travel Director or Traveling Concierge, a diligent driver and – new for 2021 – a dedicated  Well-Being Director to take a proactive approach to your well-being.

Highlight from a recent trip – Venice

Luxury Gold – Ultimate Italy

Back in autumn, as European borders were opening up and we enjoyed some COVID-calm moments, I was fortunate to spend a few days in Venice with my family. Dusting off that passport after not having traveled for several months and the anticipation of what was to come was very powerful and made me realize how much I missed travel. The excitement in our house was palpable. I love Venice – always have, always will but taking my kids there for their first visit when it wasn’t crowded made it even more special.

We stayed in one of my favorite hotels in Venice, Bauer Hotel which is also beloved by our Luxury Gold guests. Staying right in the heart of Venice, a stone’s throw from St. Mark’s and arriving at your hotel by water taxi never disappoints! The team was fantastic as always and the Covid-19 protocols were brilliant, and we felt perfectly at ease at all times. In my mind, there is only one ‘right way’ to do Venice and that is to stay at one of the hotels right on Venice Island instead of staying on the mainland. Being able to stroll through the narrow alleyways at night and being there when Venice comes into its own, is truly magical. At Luxury Gold, we would never do it any other way.

In the picture below you can see my family in St Mark’s square in Venice just before we sat down at Café Florian to enjoy a Bellini and a mocktail for the boys at dusk with very few people.

Another highlight, and my younger son’s favorite experience, was visiting one of the traditional glass workshops on Murano Island and watching the artisans at work. He loved it so much that his current career aspiration is to become a glass blower!

Our trip to Burano with its colorful houses and trying to spot houses in our favorite colors and eating a gelato or two a day were other highlights.

Ulla's Family in St Mark place

 

Making Travel Matter – Insight Vacations Country Roads of Andalucía

Insight Vacations Country Roads of Andalucia

As CEO of Insight Vacations and Luxury Gold, it is a goal of mine to bring people together to enjoy travel but also make it a force for good. Our new trip through Andalucía does just that. Our newly created Make Travel Matter experiences advance the United Nations Global Goals and positively impact our travelers and the communities we visit. They are chosen with great care using an assessment endorsed by sustainable tourism experts which is exclusive to Insight Vacations and its sister brands.

In Seville on Insight Vacation’s Country Roads of Andalucía Tour you will visit The Cristina Heeren Foundation which aims to promote the teaching and conservation of flamenco and is a beneficiary of a TreadRight Foundation grant. You meet the students of the foundation, learn some basic flamenco steps, and then feel the passion as the students perform an emotional show.  The school allows students access to cultural education that otherwise may not have occurred. TreadRight’s sponsorship has helped students to complete their studies in advanced guitar, singing and dance.  As students complete their training, they will carry on and safeguard the traditional flamenco dance, contributing to the protection of Andalusia and Spain’s cultural heritage.

Flamenco in Seville Andalucia

 

Connecting with my eldest – GenZ on U by Uniworld

GenZ on U by Uniworld -Vienna Vibe

My eldest son is shortly celebrating his 13th birthday, and whilst I am still trying to get over the fact that I am the mother of a teenager now, I thought it would be fun to go on The Vienna Vibe cruise together. GenZ on U by Uniworld, their new family program exclusively for teens and their parents on select U by Uniworld cruises is a perfect experience for both adults and their teen.

We’ve picked The Vienna Vibe cruise to enjoy our Austrian heritage. We are most looking forward to having a bit of a cook off in their Viennese cooking class. Come back to our blog to find out whose Schnitzel and Apple strudel is better!

GenZ on U by Uniworld -Vienna Vibe

 

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Unwind

Inspiring Travels of Great Literary Figures

December 18, 2020 by Luxury Gold No Comments

“Traveling – it leaves you speechless, then turns you into a storyteller.” Ibn Battuta

Travel inspires us, from seeing dramatic landscapes that leave us breathless at their beauty, to spending time with locals and learning more about how they live their lives. Many of us are missing the feeling of new discoveries, wondering when will it be safe to travel again and itching to book a fantastic vacation to an unexplored destination.

Many great writers through the ages have been inspired by the places that they visited or lived in. We’re familiar with the many tales set in the city streets of the world’s famous capitals, but what about lesser known destinations that have influenced great works. Through their writing, authors take us on a special journey and introduce us to a place through their eyes. We can travel farther than we can imagine, simply through the pages of a book.

So, we thought now would be a great time to learn more about the locations that some of the world’s best authors fell in love with and we’ve chosen one special destination that links several of these people.

Majestic Switzerland lured several literary greats to its soaring peaks and picturesque lakefronts, spawning fantasy elven towns such as Rivendell and the setting for many espionage thrillers on the cobbled streets of Bern.

Lord Byron – Making a Triumph of an Exiled Summer

Photo by The Society of Classical Poets

George Gordon Byron was only 28 years old when he escaped England for a summer, already a successful poet but wracked with scandal, he decided to take off with some friends to a villa by a Swiss lake. It was 1816, and Byron had split from his wife after being caught having an affair with his half-sister, Augusta Leigh.

At that time, it had become customary for artists and aristocrats to embark on a Grand Tour that took them through central Europe. Byron’s friends Percy Shelley, Mary Godwin (who later became Shelley’s wife), her stepsister Claire and a young physician called John Polidori, along with the disgraced poet, rented the porticoed Villa Diodati near Lake Geneva for a summer, which would prove to be historic. Unlike normally balmy Swiss summers, the weather was appalling, trapping the young group indoors for lengthy periods. After a prompt by Byron that each should try writing a ghost story, Polidori produced “The Vampyre”, which would inspire Bram Stoker’s Dracula and Mary Godwin wrote “Frankenstein”, aged just 19.

However, it was another grand house that gave Byron inspiration – the Château de Chillon. This historic island castle was visited by the young English group in June that year, but it was Byron most enthralled by its grisly past. Its unusual layout, in an oval shape that follows the natural rocky outcrop that it’s located on, makes it stand out like a fairy tale against the towering Savoy peaks behind it, but the thick walls hid the cries of many tortured souls. From persecuting Jews (who were accused of spreading the plague) as far back as the 14th century to imprisoning so-called witches in subterranean chambers before burning them in the castle courtyard, Chillon castle was not a place that anyone wanted to be summoned to for many hundreds of years.

However, Byron’s fascination lay with a 16th century nobleman, François Bonivard, who became a political prisoner at the castle. The poet imagined Bonivard’s torment, as he watches his brothers die and he becomes a martyr to freedom. Indeed, it is Byron’s romantic narrative poem that has made Chillon famous, and why thousands of tourists visit every year to see the dungeons and the column where Byron’s name is etched since that summer in 1816.

Mary Shelley – Evoking the Darkened Skies over Switzerland

Photo by time.com

Mary Godwin was just a girl that summer, but must have felt that she was in the company of giants. Her beloved Percy Bysshe Shelley had left his first wife for her, and she had just borne him a son before they traveled to Switzerland. Lord Byron was a well-established poet and his dashing doctor, Polidari, must have seemed sophisticated to the impressionable young Mary. Perhaps it was the unusual weather that summer, affected by the fallout from an eruption of Mount Tambora, in modern-day Indonesia, that stirred Mary’s creativity.

One wonders if she spoke of herself or one of her companions on the trip when she wrote the lines “I was benevolent and good; misery made me a fiend.” Either way, she poured out the incredible story of “Frankenstein” – the story of a grotesque creature brought to life brought to life by his creator, Victor Frankenstein, a Genovese scientist. She said the phantasm came to her in a feverish dream, and she committed it all to paper that June, housed in the Villa Diodati, the green-shuttered mansion that still stands in Cologny. Although she became a respected writer, this early work would become her most famous, and has been reproduced in many forms to this day.

Shelley evokes the dismal days of that summer often throughout the novel – the flashes of lightning that illuminate the lake, but also gives readers suggestions of the surrounding landscape where she wrote the novel – the perennially icy peak of Mont Blanc and the brooding Jura mountain range. On the day of Victor and Elizabeth’s wedding, they sail on Lake Como, but perhaps it was the beautiful shores of Lake Geneva that were in Mary’s mind as she spun the tale.

Mary Shelley travelled widely, but as her characters of Victor and the wretch he creates are so intertwined with Geneva, so too is the writer. Gothic horror fans can follow in Mary’s footsteps on their visit to the tranquil settings that she details in the manuscript.

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle – Inextricable Links with the Country

Photo by britannica.com

If Geneva birthed Frankenstein then perhaps it could be said that it was the death of another huge literary character, Sherlock Holmes. It was on a trip to the Swiss Alps in 1893 where the author, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, planned Holmes dramatic demise.

The famed author had already become wealthy from his serialization of short stories about the eccentric detective, but Conan Doyle was also an adventurer and lover of the outdoors. He felt that writing about Holmes was holding him back, both from pursuing other writing and other hobbies. Thus, he wrote the meeting of Sherlock Holmes with his arch-nemesis, Moriarty, in the elevated town of Meringen on a path overlooking the Reichenbach Falls. The pair struggle and fall into the swirling waterfall and are never seen again, presumed dead. This set Sir Arthur free and he moved to Davos, a town known for the spectacular surrounding beauty and its promising influence on health.

Sir Arthur Conan’s wife, Lady Louisa, suffered from tuberculosis, but the fresh air, altitude and sunshine did wonders for her health. This freed Sir Arthur up to push towards some goals he had, one of which was to ski the 14-mile Maienfelder Furka Pass between Davos and Arosa. Conan Doyle wrote about this experience in an 1894 article for The Strand, entitled “An Alpine Pass on Ski,” and it has been cited as the first guided ski tour in the Alps.

Indeed, Sir Conan Doyle was credited with popularizing the sport for tourists and today visitors can find a plaque in Davos to the man, which reads “The perfect pattern of a gentleman.” Intrepid explorers can follow the route he took on ski tours today, admiring the fir trees below and the undulating white slopes of the Swiss mountains, but certain advancements make it a slightly easier journey than it was in the late 19th century.

Visitors can also find the Sherlock Holmes Museum in Meringen, with an authentic recreation of the parlour where Sherlock Holmes met with Watson at 221b Baker Street in London.

JRR Tolkien – Creating a Fantasy World from the Alpine Landscape

Photo by historycollection.com

Avid fans of The Lord of the Rings or the Hobbit have seen the locations of Middle Earth realized through the eyes of Peter Jackson in the blockbuster movies of the novels. This has immortalized the awe-inspiring scenery of New Zealand in the minds of millions of movie-goers as the setting for this fictional world.

However, it was a walking trip that Tolkien took, at the youthful age of 19, that imprinted the majestic Swiss landscape on his brain, providing such striking inspiration that he created a whole world upon its template. Tolkien was invited on the walking holiday by the Brookes-Smith family who planned regular trips every year and brought along friends who wanted to go. Those familiar with Switzerland can call to mind the diversity of its geography – it’s not simply soaring peaks, but bucolic towns and rushing rivers, placid lakes and sun-dappled forests. This is where Tolkien found his Middle Earth, a fact which he relayed to his son by letter in 1967, telling him of his adventures in the country in 1911.

Traversing the Lauterbrunnen valley, it’s easy to see how this became the Elven town of Rivendell, set amid the rocky cliffs with the 300-meter high Stauben Falls thundering down the mountainside into the valley. This peaceful village sets the scene for where Bilbo Baggins could hide from Sauron in The Hobbit, and it was also where the Council of Elrond met to decide the fate of the One Ring.

The Swiss Alps provide the blueprint for Tolkien’s Misty Mountains, the range that provides the heroes with many challenges throughout their journey across Middle Earth. Tolkien’s party of 13 traversed a number of mountain passes, from the Grosse Scheidegg to Meringen and the 2,165-meter Grimsel Pass to the largest glacier in the Alps, the Aletsch glacier – all immersive experiences which likely fed into his writing. When the young man first saw these peaks, he must have imagined them as a place where mystical beings meet – where the land meets the clouds.

John le Carré – History and Fiction Interwoven in Bern’s City Streets

Photo by www.lesechos.fr

David Cornwall first arrived in Bern, Switzerland, aged just 16, hoping to study at the prestigious University of Bern. The quaint city was a dynamic place for the young man – he took a room near the Tobler factory, attended tea dances at the sophisticated Bellevue Palace, and even claims to have washed elephants for the circus.

At church one Sunday, he met a pair of consular officials who would later task him with his first tasks for British intelligence. He found fame under the pen name, John le Carré, when he began publishing thriller novels featuring the spy, George Smiley.

Apart from attending university in Bern, le Carré also made it the setting for many famous scenes from his novels. “Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy”, published in 1974, is one of his best-loved books and one scene sees two British spies evade the police by escaping through stairwells and hallways decked in mirrors and glittering chandeliers. That is the Bellevue Palace, where le Carré spent the Saturdays of his youth.

In “Our Kind of Traitor”, Bern features again. The 2010 novel centers around a money-laundering oligarch who is lured to Bern by the leader of a criminal brotherhood. Later in the novel, a safehouse is found for the Russian oligarch in the Swiss Alps.

Perhaps most profoundly, the magical Old City of Bern is a central location for his mostly autobiographical novel, “A Perfect Spy”. The protagonist, Magnus Pym, travels there to run an errand for his trickster father, where he works odd-jobs at night. Le Carré’s descriptions bring the city alive, even in the candlelight. He also paints a perfect picture of nearby Elfenau, reached by tram, where St. Ursula’s English-speaking church is located, the place of his own recruitment.

 

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Cuisine

Enjoy these popular dishes with Luxury Gold

December 15, 2020 by Luxury Gold No Comments

Fondue

Photo by angela pham on Unsplash

Fondue is Switzerland’s national dish, its name comes from the French word fondre, meaning to melt, and that is exactly what it is! Melted cheese combined with flavorful additions. Fondue was invented out of necessity, when the locals and herders relied only on cheese, wine, and bread to get them through the cold alpine winter. When the cheese made in the summer started to dry out and the bread became hard and stale during the winter months the ingenious locals melted the hard cheese with wine and dipped the stale bread into it.

Now Fondue comes in many different guises and varies from region to region. In Fribourg they use Vacherin cheese, in Neuchatel they use Gruyére and Emmental. You can even get gourmet versions that combine truffles and champagne with the cheese.

Dig into a Fondue on our Majestic Switzerland tour, just don’t drop your bread in the cheese or the drinks round is on you!

Paella

Photo by Kaitlin Dowis on Unsplash

Originally created in Valencia paella is a combination of saffron-flavored rice with a wide array of additional ingredients, such as seafood, vegetables, or meat. Its name is derived from a traditional shallow pan; a paellera or paella. Always served in the pan, this Spanish classic can be found everywhere in the country, in an endless number of combinations.

Why not try to sample different paellas on our Spain and Portugal in Style tour?

Ceviche

Photo by Goya foods

Ceviche is the national dish of Peru consisting of slices of freshly caught raw fish or shellfish that is spiced with salt, onions, and chili peppers, then marinated in lime juice. Due to the acidity of the marinade the meat is ‘cooked’ without any heat and the texture of the fish changes. Traditionally served in specialized ceviche restaurants called cevicherias, ceviche has an aroma of the sea with a slightly spicy and acid flavour. It can be served The flavors of ceviche are slightly acidic and spicy, with an intense aroma of the sea.

Eat authentic ceviche in Peru with us on our Treasures of the Incas Journey!

Tandoori Chicken

Photo by Maunika Gowardhan

Its name derived from the Persian word tannur, meaning fire, Tandoori chicken is one of the most popular dishes in Indian cuisine. This unique dish which is traditionally cooked at high temperatures in a clay over called a tandoor consists of chicken meat that is marinated in yogurt, seasoned with tandoori masala, nutmeg, and cumin, then placed on skewers. The clay oven results in a succulent meat that is crispy on the outside with a smokey flavour.

Eat Tandoori chicken or a dish derived from it Chicken Tikka Masala on our Spirit of North and South India Tour

Ramen

Photo by GoodEats YQR on Unsplash

Ramen is a noodle soup that first appeared in Japan in the early 20th century. Chinese cooks mixed the curly noodles that are bright yellow and more elastic than the noodles prepared at the time in Japan with a salty broth. The dish can be either kotteri (rich) or assari/paitan (light), depending on the opaqueness and the heaviness of the broth. Ramen should be cooked al dente and eaten quickly so that the noodles don’t become too soft and mushy from sitting in the broth. Ramen is now one of the most popular dishes in the world but the original expansion out of Japan was made by Nissin Foods when it produced the first-ever instant version of the noodles.

Enjoy fresh Ramen on our Majestic Japan Journey!

 

 

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Recent Posts

2021 TTC Top Three

2021 TTC Top Three

January 5, 2021
Inspiring Travels of Great Literary Figures

Inspiring Travels of Great Literary Figures

December 18, 2020

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