Amalfi The colors are the first thing. You see them from the road above before you have descended to the beach, the red and white cutting through the blue of the water in a way that makes the whole scene…
Victoria’s Guide to the Monaco Grand Prix
There are events you attend and events you absorb. The Monaco Grand Prix is not something you watch in the ordinary sense. It enters you through the soles of your feet before you hear it, and by the time it…
Victoria’s Guide to Royal Ascot
Ascot Racecourse, Berkshire, England There are events you attend for the racing, and there are events you attend for everything else. Royal Ascot is, uniquely, both. In five days each June, it assembles the finest flat racing in the world…
A Day on Spiaggia Grande – Positano
Positano, Amalfi Coast The alarm was unnecessary. By seven, the light had already found its way through the shutters and laid itself across the floor in long warm strips, and I was awake before it arrived, which is how most…
Victoria’s Complete Guide to the Amalfi Coast
Costiera Amalfitana, Campania, Southern Italy There are places that change you slowly, over many visits, and there are places that change you the first afternoon. The Amalfi Coast belongs to the second category. You arrive by boat or by road,…
Leaving England
The hardest part of any journey is not the packing, or the goodbye, or the platform with its particular smell of diesel and damp stone. It is the moment before all of that, when you are still inside, still warm,…
