ICELAND
Iceland Airways festival
Daily Mirror
CHILLING OUT IN ICELAND
Iceland. A misnomer if ever there was one.
There I was, just below the Arctic Circle at gone midnight in the middle of October, walking through the driving wind and rain in a short-sleeved shirt.
Icy? Not in the slightest. A little chilly, maybe? Not that I remember.
But then again my belly had been warmed by the local "Black Death" schnapps. And I was only nipping between sweaty music venues full of excited young Nordic folk.
Still, it did seem strangely milder than the Britain I'd left behind almost 1,200 miles to the south.
MONTREAL
Where the Old World meets New
Daily Mirror
THE FRENCH CONNECTION
From the plane I saw the forests of Nova Scotia stretching out endlessly from the fractured ocean coastline. Big country. Wild frontiers. What you expect of Canada.
What you don't expect, is confusion about what continent you're on. But with Montreal, that's what I felt. There's the great outdoors and the brash modernity of the New World. Yet it's in the fiercely proud French-speaking province of Quebec and has a diverse immigrant community.
So Canada's second city also has a decidedly Gallic - and worldly - feel. Like North America, but not quite. Like Europe, though literally oceans apart.