Celebrity hotspot – Dublin

12 Friday, 18 April 2008 London Lite
YourTime
FROM COLD WAR ZONE TO HOLIDAY
Celebrity hotspot – Dublin
WHO: Mischa Barton watches
new beau, Rooney guitarist
Taylor Locke, play the city’s
Sugar Club.
WHY GO: the excuse to drink
gallons of Guinness; great gigs,
bars and restaurants — and the
craic, naturally.
WHERE TO STAY: Bono and The
Edge’s boutique hotel, The
Clarence (theclarence.ie),
located in a restored riverside
building, has a great doubleheight restaurant, the Tea Room,
and The Octagon, one of Dublin’s
best drinking holes, where you’ll
probably find a Corr (or three)
and a few visiting celebs
propping up the bar. Double
rooms from £245 per night.
WHERE TO EAT: have a meal at
the Gotham Café (00353 (0)1
679 5266) on Grafton St, like
Mischa and Taylor. The gourmet
pizzas are worth trying — we
recommend you order the
Central Park, a Greek-style
vegetarian pizza with black
olives, red onion and fresh
tomato on a bed of spinach with
feta and mozzarella cheeses and
fresh hummus.
EXPLORE: visit the temple to the
black stuff: the Guinness
Storehouse (guinnessstorehouse.com). One of
Dublin’s top attractions, it offers
tours explaining the history and
the making of the world-famous
stout, ending with a free pint in
the rooftop Gravity Bar.
TOP TIP: check out Brown
Thomas (brownthomas.com),
Dublin’s answer to Harvey
Nichols, where you can stock up
on Irish designers as well as
Relaxed: Mischa and Taylor take a stroll
international names, and then
make a beeline for BT2, its
diffusion store, aimed at a
younger (and slightly poorer, but
equally style-conscious) market.
HOW TO GET THERE: Ryanair
(ryanair.com) flies from Stansted
to Dublin, prices start at 79p
each way, plus taxes and charges.
FOR MORE DETAILS:
visitdublin.com
Sofia’s so
good for
a bargain
getaway
A
S THE gloomy headlines
concur, the credit crunch is
really starting to take its toll.
This, combined with the
pound sliding to a record low
against the euro, makes a
weekend jaunt to the Continent seem a
rather extravagant choice. But, don’t panic,
all you need to do is cast your net a little
wider — forget pricey Paris and head east.
A recent report from Teletext Holidays
pinpointed Bulgaria as the top bargainbasement holiday destination for Brits.
And, with easyJet (easyjet.com) offering
flights to the capital, Sofia, from only
£45.98 return, my old university partner
in crime, Lou, and I decided it was the
perfect place for a cheap spring break.
After a quick peek in a guidebook we
discovered that it’s 18 years since the fall
of communism in Bulgaria but the
watchtowers that overlook Sofia’s tram
tracks and uncompromising architecture
mean that it still resounds with echoes of
that era. Still, we were spurred on by the
fact that a round of cocktails costs less
than a bottle of water at Nobu and the
social scene was described as “hedonistic
with a vengeance”.
GETTING THERE
BY 4.30pm on a Friday we were on a flight
from Gatwick with high hopes for 48
hours of drinking, dining and dancing
Bulgarian style.
After a quick pitstop at the cash machine
to stock up on some local currency (the lev,
made up of 100 stotinki, which is worth
about 40p) we hopped in a £4 taxi for the 15minute ride to our hotel. We’d booked a
room at the threestar H o te l
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BY CLAIRE COLEMAN
Niky (hotel-niky.com), in the heart of the
city. With friendly staff and bright, clean
twin rooms for £35 a night, including
breakfast, it ticked all our boxes.
SIGHTSEEING
WHILE there is some sightseeing to be
done in Sofia, the list of must-see monuments isn’t overly long. More importantly,
the city centre is so small that it’s possible
to walk everywhere — although sturdy
shoes and a good map are essential.
First, we checked out some sculptures,
including the Thirteen Hundred Years
Monument, built in 1981 to mark the
founding of Bulgaria in AD681. The
guidebook billed it as a “strong contender
for the ugliest example of Soviet-era
public art anywhere in the world”.
But it was the Soviet Army Monument
that shows a Red Army soldier leading a
Bulgarian couple towards the promised
land of communism that most impressed
us. In 1993 the city council voted to
destroy it but fortunately they haven’t
quite got round to it.
Next it was on to churches — the Alexander Nevsky Memorial Church and the Russian Church of St Nicholas — from the
outside clusters of gold domes, on the
inside forbidding icons and faded frescoes.
SHOPPING
CULTURALLY enlightened, we dived into
Divaka (41a, 6th September Street) for an
array of tapas-style dishes — necessary
fuel for the shopping we had planned.
First the markets. The Ladies’ Market in
the north-west of the city was a chance to
see the real Sofia — housewives haggling
over spring onions and the like — but we
found the flea market outside Alexander
Nevsky Church more interesting.
Crammed with everything from Second
World War memorabilia to Russian dolls
and jewellery, we settled on a Bulgarian military cap from the Fifties, a bargain at £4.
It’s scenes like this that make you realise
how recent Bulgaria’s communist past is.
The young people may be much more Westernised, speaking English as their second
language rather than Russian as their parents did, but there is still a huge swathe of
the population who have spent more of
their lives living under communist rule
than under a democratic government.
Our next stop was the perfect counterpoint to the Ladies’ Market. Vitosha
Boulevard, where Sofia’s hip youngsters
and moneyed WAG-alikes shop, is Oxford
Street meets Sloane Street.
London Lite Friday, 18 April 2008 13
Travel Taking off...
HOTSPOT, BULGARIA’S CAPITAL IS A COOL URBAN DESTINATION Sleep with De Niro
Stunning: Sofia’s
Alexander Nevsky
Memorial Church is
full of icons and
frescoes. Inset: the
Soviet Army
Monument
●ROBERT DE NIRO has become a
hotelier. The actor’s long-awaited
New York hotel, The Greenwich,
has finally opened. The Tribeca
lodging has 88 rooms, all of which
are unique. The spa has a Japanese
theme; rooms feature antique silk
rugs, hand-blown lamps, Moroccan
mosaics and Tibetan rugs while the
food is Italian. It’s not cheap,
though, with rooms starting at
£370 per night. However, guests
are taken straight to their rooms
for a private check-in — no chance
of bumping into Bob in the lobby,
more’s the pity. (001 212 941
8900, thegreenwichhotel.com)
Lay back and cruise
●FANCY a jaunt on the world’s
oldest sleep-aboard ship? Book a
trip with Swedish Gota Canal
Steamship Company and you can
hop aboard the vintage M/S Juno,
which dates from 1874, and still
ploughs its way from Gothenburg
to Stockholm, via canals, rivers and
lakes on a four-day cruise. The
intimate, historic vessel is as far
away as you can get from those
mammoth super-cruise ships.
Departing on 22 May, the trip costs
£525pp, with a saving of £205pp
on a limited number of cabins.
To book visit gotacanal.se
A total eclipse
●HEAD east this summer for the
total solar eclipses on 22 July and
1 August. July’s eclipse is expected
to be the longest for a century.
Adventure travel company Explore
is running total solar eclipse tours
in China, Kyrgyzstan, Russia and
Uzbekistan. Prices start at
£2,295pp for the 19-day Imperial
Journey & Eclipse trip to China
departing 19 July, including flights,
accommodation and the services
of an Explore tour leader.
For further information, go to
explore.co.uk
no name, we found
what appeared to be
Sofia’s underground
drum&bass scene.
With beers at 80p a
pop, great music
and a young,
friendly crowd, it was the early hours
before we made it to bed.
NIGHTLIFE
AFTER dinner (a huge chicken shashlik and a great bottle of wine) at Pod
Lipite (podlipitebg.com), a rustic
restaurant reputed to be one of the best
in the city, we headed out into the night.
Our first stop was Apartment (68
Neofit Rilski), which was literally
decked out as an apartment. You wander into the kitchen and ask for what
you’d like — two vodkas with fresh
strawberry juice and a slice of chocolate cake — then settle down in one of
the art-bedecked rooms.
We decided to up the tempo a bit and,
wandering on to the street, we were
attracted by a heavy bassline pumping
out of the basement of 18 Vitosha
Boulevard. Downstairs, in the club with
§
When In Bruges…
THE FINAL TALLY
SO CAN I recommend a weekend in
Sofia as a brilliant bargain break? If
money is tight, then yes. It doesn’t
challenge New York on the shopping
front, and it’s no Paris when it comes
to sightseeing, but the people are
friendly, the food is fantastic and
there’s an edgy post-communist
feel that is really appealing.
More importantly, a weekend of random adventures
that didn’t feel like a budget break came to just
over £150 per person — in
London you’d be hardpressed to make that
stretch to a big night out.
If the cap fits: Claire
Coleman bags bargain
military headgear
from a stallholder
in the flea market
●IN BRUGES, the new film starring
Colin Farrell, is about two Irish
contract killers forced to pose as
tourists amid the canals and
cobbled streets of the Belgian city.
If it inspires you to head off to
Europe’s magical and medieval
mini-metropolis then VFB Holidays
is currently offering short breaks to
Bruges from £134pp, based on two
sharing, including two nights’
B&B and Eurostar.
Call VFB Holidays on 01452
716831 or check out
vfbholidays.co.uk
EDITED BY OLIVIA WALMSLEY
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