I don’t really mind the camping element of Glastonbury, just as long as it isn’t too rainy (muddy sleeping bag) or too hot (sleeping in a furnace as soon as the sun comes out) and the loos are far enough so as not to be able to smell them, but near enough that you don’t bust your bladder trying to get there.

Of course you can do it in style – Camp Bagborough offers the chance to sleep in Rajasthani tents on a vineyard near the festival site, with proper beds, hot showers, pamper packs, cheese and charcuterie boards, a bar and Wi-Fi, so you can brag about it all on Twitter around the clock. All for just under £3,000 per person, including hospitality tickets to the festival.

The Pop-up Hotel offers a similar set-up with the option of a luxury Mughal tent for £8,950, but don’t go rushing to book it, it’s sold out this year.

Land N’Sky has availability if you have £2,700 to spare. But wouldn’t it be nice if the sunshine was guaranteed? The Pop-Up Hotel is mulling over locations in the Maldives, Caribbean and Australia for its luxury take on sleeping under canvas.

And One Off Places has just announced the launch of a luxury campsite in Bali. Glamping Sandat is set serenely among rice paddies  near the hill town of Ubud. The five luxury tents come with lava stone bathrooms, Balinese art and a shared infinity pool.

But where can you see nature wriggle out of winter without the aid of an umbrella or woolly jumper?

Western Australia puts on one of the world’s most spectacular wildflower displays from June to November. There are around 12,000 species of flower, nearly two thirds of which are endemic to the region. And they sound pretty evocative too: woolly banksia, common catspaw, bridal rainbow, showy dryandra, pink pokers and more.

On South Africa’s Western and Northern Capes, wildflower season runs through August and September when the landscapes are awash with colour – even the arid desert of Namaqualand comes alive with orange daisies, dainty wildflowers and curious quiver trees.

When the Mojave Desert in California, Utah and Arizona has had a nice wet winter, the floral displays are no less impressive, particularly in Joshua Tree National Park.

Then there are the mountains. The Canadian Rockies, for example:

For a classic closer to home, look for the purple haze in Provence – manicured rows of lavender, punctuated by summery splashes of sunflowers.

]]> http://sophielamtravel.com/2013/05/27/a-floral-tribute/feed/ 0 wildflowers01_tallmullamulla_cr-andrewgregory_large sophielamtravel wildflowers01_tallmullamulla_cr-andrewgregory_large 800px-Namaqua_NP4 energy_joshuatree H9b-Canada-British-Columbia-Kootenay-Rockies-Wildflowers-in-an-alpine-meadow-in-the-Kootenay-Rockies-Gluns-David-Tourism-BC 654903-Lavender-and-sunflower-setting-in-Provence-France_view http://sophielamtravel.com/2013/05/17/picturing-portugal/ http://sophielamtravel.com/2013/05/17/picturing-portugal/#comments Fri, 17 May 2013 11:07:02 +0000 sophielamtravel http://sophielamtravel.com/?p=431 ]]> A quick splash of sunshine before the weekend with a photo gallery of a recent trip to the eastern Algarve.

It was a long way (in spirit rather than distance) from the crowded beaches, mega resorts and neon strips of Albufeira, the glitzy marina of Vilamoura or the golf courses of Val do Lobo and Quinta do Lago.

Faro Island – the airport is just to the right and planes come in to land Wayne’s World-style over your head

There were wildflowers everywhere among the olive trees

A stork nesting on a lamppost in Faro, where they’re as common as pigeons

Pousada de Faro, Estoi’s pink palace

Taking it easy at Fazenda Nova, Estiramantens

Heading off to deserted beaches on Ilha Armona

…and here they are

Waiting for the ferry back across the Ria Formosa to the mainland

]]> http://sophielamtravel.com/2013/05/17/picturing-portugal/feed/ 0 sophielamtravel DSCN0560 DSCN0586 DSCN0565 DSCN0578 DSCN0585 DSCN0587 DSCN0590 DSCN0598 DSCN0600 DSCN0603 http://sophielamtravel.com/2013/05/08/viva-espana/ http://sophielamtravel.com/2013/05/08/viva-espana/#comments Wed, 08 May 2013 13:27:19 +0000 sophielamtravel http://sophielamtravel.com/?p=416 ]]> The South Bank hosted the Streets of Spain fiesta this bank holiday weekend. Sponsored by Spanish wine brand Campo Viejo, the four-day celebration promised stalls from the legendary Boqueria market in Barcelona, wine tastings and a pop-up restaurant from Michelin-starred chef Angel Pascual of Restaurant Punx.

True to its promise, there were stalls slicing up Iberico ham and peddling dried pimento, cheese and chocolates.

But it was more of a single Street of Spain than a network of seductive stalls like the Boqueria.

Live graffiti by street artists Okuda and Remed added colour to the event.

But sadly the restaurant and wine masterclasses were all booked up.

All the more reason to get out and sample the real thing, particularly since Noma was toppled by Girona’s El Celler de Can Roca on the World’s 50 Best Restaurants list last week (the top 10 also include’s San Sebastian’s Mugaritz and Arzak).

¡Que rico!

1. The Rijksmuseum, which reopened last month in the capital after a 10-year, €375m revamp. Rembrandt’s The Night Watch is now resplendent in the Gallery of Honour.

2. The Van Gogh Museum. Another Amsterdam institution, the museum reopens tomorrow after renovation in this, the 160th anniversary year of the artist’s birth.

3. The Mainport Hotel, Rotterdam. The Netherlands’ home of industrial-cool will flaunt this new hotel from 13 May. Inside the sleek black building is a frenzy of patterned wallpapers, industrial-glam furnishings and something called “Spa Heaven”.

4. The Conservatorium, Amsterdam. This hotel was once a grand neo-gothic music academy and is a hop, skip and jump from the Rijksmuseum and Van Gogh Museum. It still sounds just as sweet, with a vast wellbeing centre and the Tunes Restaurant, whose menu pays homage to Amsterdam Rhubarb Week from 2-12 May.

5. Chateau Bethlehem Hotel, Maastricht. A centuries-old chateau has been converted into a thoroughly modern teaching hotel which takes bookings from the public. Rooms have been creatively themed – a swimming pool or a park, for example. Or you can just take a tour.

We did once all go on a family holiday to Yosemite, but I was too terrified by the thought of bears breaking into our log

cabin at night to appreciate fully the magnificence of this geological Californian crumple (I’d go back now that there’s a lovely, safe-looking new lodge there, the Little Ahwahnee Inn, pictured).

Even in adulthood, the magic of forests endures – the sunlight filtering like gold dust through the boughs and wildlife scampering about unseen, but heard. Perhaps it’s that they catapult you back to childhood, even if your childhood woodland experiences were more akin to riding your bike through drizzle and mulch on East Sheen Common in South West London, falling off every time you hit a leaf-covered log.

Now, some of my favourite hotels aren’t on pristine beaches, but tucked into spectacular sylvan settings, such as The Pig and Lime Wood in the New Forest. North-west of Chicago and south-east of Milwaukee, the Wandawega Lake Resort looks rather special too – a Wes Andseron dream of boy-scout tents, camp fires, cute cabins and crochet bedspreads set among the trees in rural Wisconsin (below).

Then, there’s the spectacular Tree Hotel in Sweden, where you can sleep incognito in a mirrored treehouse, or a giant bird’s nest (left) or UFO north of Lulea – the realm’s of a child’s imagination transposed to the tree-covered far north of Scandinavia.

But one of my top tree-top stays was at a place called Finca Ixobel near Poptun in Guatemala, which seemed to transport its guests to another time and place with its laid-back charm and lack of fancy facilities. It was simple, back-to-nature stuff: just four wooden walls, views of the forest and good wholesome food. Pure magic.

I’m telling ya mate I’d rather

Have a day down Margate with all me family.”

So sang Chas & Dave in their 1982 Rockney tribute to the Kentish seaside resort. But it was at the end of the pier in the North Norfolk resort of Cromer that the duo played this weekend.

More used to welcoming tribute acts and traditional seaside entertainers, the pier’s Pavilion Theatre was packed out with a more mature crowd than the North London pop-rock duo are perhaps used to playing to.

Nevertheless, Cromer is as traditional a seaside resort as you’ll find on the Isle of Thanet: hole-in-the-wall ice cream vendors, knitting shops and crab shacks dispensing the town’s most famous export.

Disappointingly, the long, cold winter has meant that crab season is off to a slow start this year. A fisherman reported that they’d spent 12 hours out on a boat last weekend and caught just eight crabs.

So with crustacea off the menu, turf had to replace surf and it was off to Thorpe Market and the 1,000-acre estate, roamed by hundreds of deer, that surrounds the Gunton Arms just south of Cromer.

At this upmarket gastropub, the menu inevitably focuses on venison – in sausage rolls, sausages, burgers and stews, some of which is cooked on an open fire in the dining room, above which sits a colossal pair of pre-historic elk antlers found preserved in an Irish peat bog.

The dining rooms are equally impressive, splashed with art by Gilbert & George, Tracey Emin and Damien Hirst (the owner is a rather wealthy Chelsea art dealer) that are interspersed with the accoutrements of a traditional country inn (darts board, pool table, log fires, antlers).

It’s not the sort of place you’d find Chas and Dave having a knees-up at the joanna, but no less welcoming. The sort of place you’d want to make the most of this long, cold winter-spring with a local ale or three. It’s little surprise that it’s this year’s Michelin Pub of the Year.

But it can be so much better than fondant-filled Creme eggs or sugar-coated stale chocolate. In Saint Lucia, you can stay in the middle of a chocolate estate. Hotel Chocolat (clever thinking there) has a sweet little lodge on its working Rabot Estate.

The Boucan boutique hotel is set on the chocolatier’s cocoa plantation, among the trees on the island’s south west coast. Rooms are, of course, decorated in rich chocolatey browns and cool white, while the restaurant specialises in cacao-based cuisine: citrus salad with white chocolate dressing, tuna with cacao pesto, cacao-nib chicken satay.

But of course it was the Mexicans who first cultivated cocoa, perhaps as far back as 1900BC – evidence of chocolate drinking has been found in archaeological sites in Chiapas on the Pacific coast. Today, you’ll still find chocolate lacing the cuisine, particularly in savoury dishes such as mole sauce.

In Cebu province, the Philippines, Maria Cacao is a mountain goddess worshiped when the rains flood the rivers from Mount Lantoy. The fairy goddess is said to live in a cave on the mountain, protected by cacao trees and floods the river so that she can travel down by boat to export her crops. For here, tableya, unsweetened chocolate rounds, are a mainstay of the local economy.

In the middle of the neighbouring island, Bohol, is the weird geological formation of the Chocolate Hills. These bizarre, conical hills are so named for the colour they turn during the dry season.

There are as many legends as there are hills attributed to their formation, but today they’re popular as a tourist destination, with a hotel and restaurant.

Of course, there are more obvious locations where you can satisfy your sweet tooth: Cadbury World near Birmingham, York’s Chocolate Story, Belgium, a chocolate-themed hotel in Bournemouth and no shortage of spas that offer chocolaty treatments (I’d much rather eat it than have it smeared on my face, personally). There’s even a chocolate museum-cafe that’s recently opened in Brixton and sells goodies made in Peckham and perhaps the world’s best hot chocolate (well, South London’s at least).

So even after Easter, you can crack on with your chocolate enjoyment,

Base2Stay, which opened its first cheap’n'chic hotel in Kensington, West London, in 2006, has announced that it is re-branding as Nadler Hotels. Its flagship, The Nadler Soho, will open in May. The name has more than a whiff of Manhattan about it, as does the design – a greigey colour-scheme, Nespresso machines, bright linens et al. It promises “five-star design at three-star prices”, which translates as city-centre doubles for about £170 a night.

Similarly, in South Kensington, the Xenia Hotel is set to open on the Cromwell Road in May with “design-led contemporary” doubles starting at a similar rate.

But more startling is the news that Generator (you know, the one that looked like a Quasar Laser bunker near Russell Square in London) is opening the first ever hostel on Giudecca island, Venice this summer. And, from the CGIs, it looks really nice – more sophisticated member’s club than grotty backpacker hovel.

And then there’s the Freehand, which has just opened in Miami Beach and is as artfully Art Deco as its luxury South Beach neighbours, complete with a vintage-styled cocktail bar and stylishly comfortable bunk rooms. It’s hardly surprising, since the company behind it has also had a hand in the super-cool Ace Hotels and timelessly-chic NoMad in Manhattan.

So next time you book a holiday, there’s no need to blow the budget… on your hotel at least.

Offered by Houdini’s Muse, which hooks you up with off-beat, culturally-rich tours, the seven-day trip takes in Mexico City, Santiago de Queretaro, San Miguel de Allende, Dolores Hidalgo, Guanajanto, Morelia and Patzcuaro, said to have one of the best Day of the Dead celebrations in Mexico.

Drivers travel in a convoy, convening at taquerias, posadas, museums and markets and passing ancient ruins, agave-strewn landscapes, deserts, mountains and artisan’s roadside stalls on the way – and not an ocean wave in sight.