Now I’ve never been on Coconut Airways and I wasn’t off to see ma girlfriend Mary Jane… at least that’s what I told the Scary One and I’m sticking to that story.
And my go-to song when I’m out on the road is Willie Nelson’s standard… it’s my mission statement when I hit a pilgrimage, and my friend Aileeen Eglington’s Destination Anywhere radio show on Dublin South FM.
You’ll get plenty of time on your own when you’re on your Camino on your way to Santiago or your Via Francigena into Rome.
The other Greek words for love are ‘philia’ meaning friendship and which Aristotle popularised, and the Americans were big into, particularly those in Philadelphia (brotherly love).
Before they started falling out.
What’s in a word?
‘Agape’ is more a word denoting charity and God’s love for us and ours for him, while ‘storge’ is the love of parents for their children.
‘Philautia’ (behave!) is self-love while ‘xenia’ is hospitality though unfortunately it has been attached to an opposite Greek word ‘phobia’ or fear to denote a fear of foreigners.
And that has no place on this site, or among Bandininis and Bandanettes.
You’ll have a smashing time in Kos
It’s the meetings with other peoples and learning about their cultures which we’re all missing so much just now.
So let’s hear if for the Japanese who are bringing their own Zen to us in Europe (and Buddha knows we need just now) with their OKU hotels.
The OKU Kos opens on April 5 with 100 spacious rooms including suites with private and semi-private pools and a handful of private two-bedroom villas.
Greek island: Kythera
There’s a spa, hammer, sauna and fitness studio with daily complimentary yoga classes at the beach pavilion or yoga terrace.
Adults only
An adult-only resort with a main pool and direct access to a private beach I’d say this is ‘storge’ because the kids will love having their parents away.
With the faint hope of ‘eros’ for the adults.
And having honeymooned in another Greek island, Corfu, then I can vouch for these Greek islands. Happy times before the ‘paidia’ or children came along!
And whatever you’re having yourself… January is after all what we make it.
Jimuary in Scotland
Jim O’ Shanter
And for me and all of us of a Scottish disposition then January is Robert Burns’ Month.
Burns is Scotland’s National Poet and January 25 is his birthday… he would be 252 this year.
Wherever they are in the world Scots put on kilts and start eulogising little mice and the like… ‘wee sleekit timrous beastie, oh what a panic’s in thy breastie.’
It’s all the whisky we drink you see!
Alloway Bridge
Burns’ Village is a magical place with Burns’ Cottage, Alloway Kirk and Brig o’ Doon.
Where you can let your imagination run wild.
Three Scots mice
January is also the month when Dr Martin Luther King’s birthday is commemorated.. he was born on January 15 but Martin Luther King Day is actually January 18..
I was fortunate enough to attend the 50th commemoration of his assassination and followed the MLK Trail from Memphis to Jackson, Mississippi.
Ginuary in Ireland
G&T O’Clock
And you could do worse than Co. Monaghan, the border county where a ginoisseur will guide you through each gin and tonic.
The Scary One turned her nose up at the juniper when presented with a tray of samples only to then dig in and minesweep them all.
Veganuary
And if it’s good enough for Leonardo Da Vinci, Albert Einstein and Barry White (and he had a healthy appetite, and for food).
Veganuary has really taken off in recent years and I’ve visited the oul’ plant-based food before on this site.
But seeing that the calendar has come around again and that you’ll be performing a public service by not visiting the shops.
Here’s to all those things in your flower beds which also includes the majestic tulip.
And Japanuary
Thanks here to our friends in The Land of the Rising Sun for always keeping it fun and funky.
So Japanuary?
Well, we’re all being encouraged to get on our bikes and in Japan you can do worse than following the Tanesashi Coastline and bike hire is just £10 per day.
They advise stopping off at fish restaurants and temples while ensuring that through the cycling your body remains a temple.
If that’s too sedentary for you then why not canyon through the Sarugajo Gorge.
Talking of temples you shouldn’t go to Japan and not visit a Zen Buddhist temple.
Oh, and in the year when the Olympics are coming to Tokyo then they’re challenging us all to get our adrenaline vibe on.
Baby you’re a firework. Come on let your colours burst – Katy Perry
And boy did those colours burst, signalling that the world wants to have fun in ’21.
The Middle East led the way with the celebrations with some real actual human beings gathering… at social distance.
And rock gods Kiss even performing in Dubai.
Now New Year’s Eve is always going to be a challenge in crowd containment and resources.
But it is a depressing admission that we in the West can’t trust ourselves, and others, to social distance, or meet in pods.
Now, I love an oul’ firework any time of the year, so as Katy says ‘you just gotta ignite the light and let it shine. Just own the night.’
Dresden takes back the sky
Drum roll… in Dresden
Dresden: And Dresdeners have more reason than most to be wary of their sky lit up above them.
The older generation still talk about the red sky, the Allied bombers’ firestorm which razed their beautiful city to the ground at the end of the Second World War.
The resilient Saxons went on to rebuild their city, the Florence of the Elbe, brick by brick to the grandeur it is today.
The light show on the Elbe was the backdrop for the closing night of the German Travel Mart.
And a magical reminder of how light kills darkness.
Take me to the DC ball park
Me, George and my Travel pal Issy
Washington: They love a firework in DC… and that’s just a Donald Trump barbecue.
They put on firework displays for all their VIPs which meant the delegates at the American Travel fair, IPW.
At the Washington Nationals’ ball park.
Home run!
Disney get any better than this
Acting all Goofy
Orlando: And whatever you’re doing around 9pm of a night in Orlando then stop it and look up at the skies.
Seven nights self/catering, Dublin to Tenerife on February 2, staying at the 3* Suneo Tamaimo Tropical, Puerto De Santiago,
Harbouring dreams of Tenerife
From €459pps (Covid cover and free amendments included).
Or stay half/board seven nights at the 3*+ Hotel Catalonia Las Vegas, Puerto de la Cruz from €499pps and also with Covid cover.
And Lanzarote too
Child’s play: Lanzarote is ideal for families too
While Lanzarote on February 4 comes in at €409pps for seven nights self/catering at the 3*+ Cinco Plazas, Puerto del Carmen (Covid cover included).
It’s just what we all need for the New Year… I feel one of my oul’ walks coming along.
I’m a bit of a Portugeezer too
I’m beginning to look a lot like Christmas
Now there is a story behind this… when my old boss asked if I would get my beardie pimped up for a Christmas story.
And I had been invited to the Portugal Christmas lunch that day too,
Of course the greening of the beatdie and the red Santa hat meant I was showcasing the colours of the Portuguese flag.
Portugal has always held a special place in my heart since my first holiday there, a childhood one in 1973.
Centro beach: Portugal
That’s been followed by our first summer holiday together in the Algarve, the magical trip to Fatima and Portugal Centro nine months after that Christmas lunch.
And a sports trip two years ago when Jidy Murray taught me to play tennis… and dance!
Most of us still place it as Milan-Bergamo after its airport (actually it’s Il Caravaggio Orio al Serio International Airport), and this year we saw it as the Covid-19 gateway to Europe.
The pandemic hit Lombardy hard and early; the world watching in horror as its grip fastened last February and March – a preview of things to come.
Stay strong
It was a surreal light to shine on Bergamo, a medieval city in the Alpine foothills.
Suddenly portrayed not as a bustling cultural and historical hub, but through rolling television coverage.
Of empty cobbled streets, eerie churches and boarded shutters.
Medieval Bergamo
A sweeping landscape
Bergamo boasts rich galleries with works by Titian, Botticelli and Canaletto.
We know its Champions League football team, Atalanta.
It celebrates composer Gaetano Donizetti in its annual international opera festival.
And it has architectural dedications to revolutionary Giuseppe Garibaldi.
The cobbled stones of the old city
Bergamo is known as the Citta dei Mille after 1,000 of its citizens marched on Rome and helped unify Italy in the 19th century.
This year, tourists vanished and a different type of visitor descended.
International news teams flocking to the Papa Giovanni XXIII Hospital, named for another famous son.
Snapshot of Bergamo in the pandemic
But there is light at the end of the tunnel, as many of those who travelled to report on distress, only to find success, have discovered.
As Christophe Sanchez, CEO of Visit Bergamo, said: “Because of the situation we have been through, Bergamo is now the safest town in Europe.”
Visitors it is true, have not always been kind to Bergamo.
But Bergamo is kind to its visitors, particularly those who stay a while.
Owed to Autumn
The Autumn poplar trees
Visiting this autumn, I found the streets, which were desolate in March when everyone was locked away behind their shutters, alive again six months later.
Citizens mingled, talking at breakneck speed behind their masks and, of course, con le mani (with their hands).
Ice cream heaven
They spoke, of course, of the second wave that has now come to pass, and the closure of restaurants, cafes, shops and museums. But also calcio e cibo… football and food.
And whatever it is that a gathering of young Bergamaschi always chat about in loud decibels outside your hotel bedroom window at midnight.
My visit gave me a glimpse into the everyday life of the Bergamaschi – not as victims, although there have been far too many of them, but survivors.
A picture of our times
The testing centre
An exhibition of photographs in the piazza captured the past year.
A masked priest administered Mass; doctors and nurses cared for the sick and dying, and a father cradled his new-born son.
But the Bergamaschi, queuing at the open-air testing centre, knew that the worst had passed and what they were now having to endure is temporary.
They had been here before and prevailed – with a little help from God.
Bergamo is split into old and new towns, Citta Alta (high town) and Citta Bassa (low town).
The best way to reach the walled and cobbled Citta Alta is by funicular.
It takes you into the centre of things, Piazza Mercato delle Scarpe (market of the shoes), and to that staple of any old Italian town, an Irish pub, Tucans.
Take me to Church
Stories for the Masses
For the real beating heart of Bergamo, though, I went to Piazza del Duomo – which houses Bergamo Cathedral and the Basilica Papale di Santa Maria Maggiore.
Here, the Bergamaschi congregation of old could follow redemptive tales of the parting of the Red Sea, David and Goliath and Noah and the Deluge on wooden engravings.
Forza Atalanta
Deliverance was as much a part of Medieval life as it had been in Biblical times.
And when Our Lady finally spared the Bergamaschi any more suffering from the Plague in the 12th century they built this basilica to her.
Of course, all of this speaks to us in 2020 louder than ever.
Good neighbours
They’ll make a statue of me
Matteo, my Visit Bergamo guide, recalled the only sounds back in March when the city was in quarantine – the sirens of ambulances and the whirring of helicopters.
He told me of a citizen stuck in his house with his Covid-hit ageing father, unable to get help.
When he saw a report of a man who had died in the nearby town of Brescia, leaving behind a half-tank of unused oxygen.
He made his way to Brescia, found the house, asked and was given the tank, although, alas, he could not save his father.
Everything in the garden is getting rosier again
Every Bergamasque has a story of loss and suffering but for Matteo, the best response is a return to the life they know and love.
For Italians that means their famous five-course meals.
Food for thought
And there are lots more courses to come
The centrepiece of which at the Trattoria Sant’Ambroeus in Citta Alta is their special ravioli, casoncelli dei sant ambroeus.
Stuffed pasta with sausage, breadcrumbs, parsley, eggs and garlic and cheese…
All washed down with the best Valcalepio rosso Riserva doc Tenuta Castello di Grumello del Monte.
I sauntered to the city walls and La Marianna for their signature milky scoop of ice cream heaven, stracciatella.
Plenty polenta
And, of course, for Lombardy that was only lunch. Dinner in the roof garden of the plush Excelsior San Marco Hotel in Citta Bassa brought five more courses.
In future, those bustling crowds will return.
But that night, the restaurant was an encouraging two-thirds occupancy with social distancing in place.
And even a puppy at the next table enjoyed himself and heeded the rules.
Bergamo currently sits in the yellow zone, the lowest of the three tiers Italy has been applying since early November.
This means restaurants and bars open till 6pm, shops are open, ski resorts / pools / gym / museums closed, people can move freely. The other zones are red (strictest) and orange (medium).
Travel into Bergamo
involves providing the results of a negative Covid test taken within 72 hours of arrival.
Or you can get an airport test on arrival and quarantine for 48 hours while waiting for the results.
Any travellers will currently need to self-isolate on return..