ISRAEL
Eilat and the Red Sea
Daily Mirror
HAPPY TO BE IN THE RED
It didn't take long for us to get off-road and be engulfed in the sheer raw nature of the desert . Roaming the frontier region in the spectacular mountain range just a few miles from our base in Eilat, we saw the brutal beauty of the towering, tumbling rock faces churned up by the geological rift that separates North Africa from Arabia.
Up high, near an Egyptian border post, we looked down over the sea and landscape and had a real sense of being at the crossroads of the Middle East. The mountains of Jordan and Saudi Arabia are on the other side of the 6,000km long rift, while Eilat is in the valley that sits directly on top of it and forms most of Israel's eastern border.
The geological split seems to reflect the political one. Our guide and driver was asked if the fault lines are still active. "Luckily, no," he said with a weary smile. "We have enough trouble without earthquakes."
FUTUROSCOPE
Daily Mirror
France's alternative theme park
BACK TO LE FUTURE
THE sun gleamed on futuristic glass buildings being polished acrobatically by abseiling cleaners as semi-feral children scampered across sculptured lawns to get to the front of lengthy queues.
I was in Futuroscope, France's theme park with a difference. No rollercoasters. No funfairs. No - mon dieu! - brash Americanism. Near Poitiers, south of the Loire Valley, Futuroscope is spread over 150 acres of parkland with 20 science and technology-based attraction areas that try to balance fun, education and culture. It tries to be subtle. A leetle more French.
And it seems to work. It's had more than 30 million visitors since opening in 1987, making it the second-largest attraction in France. (Behind that Mickey Mouse outfit in Paris, of course).