New York: city break feature for the Sunday Independent

September 19, 2004May 20, 2013 ~ Sarah Barrell ~ Leave a comment

No sleep till dawn? Maybe. But you’ll still want a decent hotel

Great places to stay in NYC now offer much more than just a bed for the night, reports Sarah Barrell

The current batch of new New York hotels are not so much new as reinvented. The formula seems to be: out with the old (name, staff and décor), in with the new (high-concept branding and hot design team). The most exciting makeover has been the Dream Hotel. Set to bring a sense of fun to the homogenised Midtown hotel scene, the 228-room Dream Hotel will be…

Toulouse Weekending: one of the regular city break features for the Telegraph

September 18, 2004June 3, 2013 ~ Sarah Barrell ~ Leave a comment

This is the place for gourmands, romantics and even aviation fans, says Sarah Barrell

Why go? Since Antoine de Saint-Exupéry’s pioneering mail flights in the 1920s, Toulouse has been at the heart of France’s aviation industry. Today it is also home to a large student population and a vibrant art scene. The city has a medieval old town and an attractive setting along the banks of the Canal du Midi and Garonne river.

Vintage Hamptons: a tour of Long Island’s vineyards

August 22, 2004June 3, 2013 ~ Sarah Barrell ~ Leave a comment

A cheeky little number – with just a hint of spud

A short drive from Manhattan, old potato farms are being turned into prizewinning vineyards. Sarah Barrell raises a glass.

Two hours after leaving New York I am sitting on a white sandy beach sipping a fine local chardonnay. Have I travelled by resurrected Concorde to California’s wine country? No. I haven’t even left New York. Or at least I haven’t left New York State. The north-eastern tip of Long Island, known as the North Fork, may be two hours’ drive from Manhattan but it is a world away. California still hogs America’s viticultural spotlight but thanks to Long Island’s vineyards and award-winning vintages, New York is now established on the oenophile’s map.

Making tracks: learning to drive a 4X4 in the Malverns

August 21, 2004June 3, 2013 ~ Sarah Barrell ~ Leave a comment

Reluctant motorist Sarah Barrell gears up for the Land Rover Experience in the Malvern hills

Sunday drivers. Nothing worse right? Wrong. Consider the annual rent-a-car driver. The unpractised arrogance of these only-on-special-occasions motorists strikes fear into the hearts of hire car firms. There ought to be laws against them. And I should know – I am one. You see, I hate driving. I hate it with a passion that only applies to things I truly suck at. Driving is something to be done only when it can’t be avoided. The idea of spending an afternoon doing it for fun? I’d rather go to the dentist.

Icelandic adventure: whales, waterfalls and boiling mud

December 28, 2003June 3, 2013 ~ Sarah Barrell ~ Leave a comment

As adventure activities go, baking bread probably doesn’t rank very highly in most countries. But then Iceland isn’t most countries. We’re at the Bjarnarflag bakery in the northernmost reaches of the island, a handful of miles from the Arctic Circle. It’s midsummer and horizontal sleet steams as it hits the mud around our feet, underneath which sits the “bakery” – half a dozen pits dug into boiling soil, covered with dustbin lids, containing hverabraud – steam bread made with rye and molasses. Bending to peek inside, we’re blasted with a vapour so sulphuric that you have to wonder if perhaps “Bjarnarflag” is Icelandic for “Beelzebub” and we have, in fact, interrupted a satanic scone-baking session.

Riding pillion on the Mother Road: Harley Davidson on Route 66

August 24, 2003June 3, 2013 ~ Sarah Barrell ~ Leave a comment

Sarah Barrell heads for Milwaukee, home of the world’s most famous motorcycle, to join the centenary celebrations.

Sitting in a quiet roadside café on Water Street it’s hard to imagine Milwaukee as the host of the “world’s largest rolling birthday celebration”. On a muggy evening in mid-August dark dock houses loom over the recently regenerated canal-side area of this modest Mid-West city, the new waterside walkways as deserted as the surrounding concrete shopping precincts. With several hundred miles of highway still ringing in our ears, the silence is oddly deafening.

Essex is lovely: no, really. It is.

August 10, 2003June 3, 2013 ~ Sarah Barrell ~ Leave a comment

Put aside your prejudices, says Sarah Barrell, and explore the rural heart of this much maligned county

It may be news to those in Gants Hill or Billericay but Essex has gone posh. And we don’t mean “posh” as a prefix to Spice. We mean the kind of posh associated with muddy green wellies, chic converted heritage hotels and conservation-protected countryside. If you’re looking for a bit of English quaint within dashing distance of the capital, forget the holy trinity of Home County boltholes – Sussex, Surrey or Kent – head to Essex. Or, at least, “Real Essex”.

“We needed to raise our profile,” admits Essex councillor Peter Martin. “Essex has a high profile but perhaps not the one we want to promote.” Out of such diplomatic understatements Real Essex was born – a savvy marketing campaign launched last year giving the county the kind of PR makeover that determinedly eschewed false nails, Outspan foundation and the mere mention of white leather. Despite the campaign being met with a certain amount of snorting derision from the press, one year on, with re-branding established and the general approval of the tourism industry, it seems that Essex is not, as stereotypes would have you believe, taking it lying down.

Prickly Heat: travels in the Brazilian outback

November 25, 2002June 3, 2013 ~ Sarah Barrell ~ Leave a comment

The Sertao is Brazil’s desert land, where donkeys and cacti proliferate. But it is also home to the continent’s finest prehistoric treasures. Sarah Barrell goes exploring

There is a place in Brazil, it is said, where nothing grows but sorrow and cacti. A place of donkeys and drought where the scalding sky shows little mercy for the creatures below. In this place, potholes are more common than people and distances between towns are measured in days rather than miles. As travel destinations go, the Sertao, Brazil’s north–east hinterland, is one of the world’s less obvious. It is also one of its most spectacular.

At sea in Ireland: A trip to Rathlin, a tiny, inhabited island off the Northern Irish coast.

March 31, 2002June 3, 2013 ~ Sarah Barrell ~ Leave a comment

Do you wanna buy a pebble?” A pint-sized girl strides across the beach and fixes me with the kind of stare characteristic of a Marrakesh market stall holder. Bargaining is going to be hard. Our guide, Alison Hurst, introduces us. “This is Shannon, and over there is her friend, Brona,” she says, indicating another girl avidly combing the beach behind us. “Now you’ve met almost half the island’s children.” Rathlin is Northern Ireland’s only inhabited island; with a population of 70 (including five children) this is only just the case.

An article about getting hitched in Las Vegas (or rather, failing to)

March 30, 2001May 19, 2013 ~ Sarah Barrell ~ Leave a comment

We were in The Doghouse when he popped the question. On bended knee, he made a game job of it, shouting above the clamorous hip-hop playing in the cool-for-canines Soho bar. That was more than six years ago and we never did progress to the ring/invitation/fall-out-with-your-family stage. The asking was, somehow, enough. That was until we reached Vegas.

Sarah Barrell

Award-winning travel writer & journalist

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