In which Lydia Manch goes double or nothing with her Christmas spirit in the entertainment capital of the world. We're skimming over Las Vegas after dark, and the city's one big Christmas tree beneath our helicopter. The pointed spire of the Strat looks like we're in reach-out-and-touch-it distance, the skyscraper glowing white and ruby. The Eiffel Tower marking Paris Las Vegas is golden against the darkness; the Sphere's neon purple tonight, the display casually spinning every few minutes and making it look like the world's largest, most futuristic bauble. For somebody who's never been to Las Vegas in summer, going to say this very confidently: it's better in winter. We arrive into a December that's crisply sunny but not punishingly hot, so wandering the Strip and Downtown on foot suddenly becomes a normal option rather than an extreme sport. And in Vegas the long winter nights are a feature rather than a bug, the city's brightly-lit flambo
In the second part of our Costa Rica travel special, Lydia Manch dives into the Bay of Papagayo's pura vida. There's a huge hammock strung along one corner of our suite at El Mangroove, and a note confirming our pool cabana reservation: a tacit promise that the biggest thing asked of us in the next handful of days and nights will just be the transfer from one sleeping location to another. Bodes well for my plans: sleeping in the sundappled heat of the cabanas; sleeping in our hammock; sleeping in the shade of the huge mangrove trees fringing the beach. Maybe, if I'm feeling energetic, continuing research for my exhaustive, objective, three-weeks-in-the-making leaderboard of the most important chiliguaros in northwest Costa Rica. A small horseshoe curve of coastline that looks far too peaceful and improbably green to be less than half an hour's drive from Liberia airport, the Golfo de Papagayo's home to a handful of hyperluxe larger hotels inside a gated communi
In a featured double bill, Lydia Manch explores Costa Rica's Pacific coast, starting at an eco-resort in the north of the country - where everything is abundant, but most of all the lizards. It thunders my first week in Guanacaste, and everybody's talking about it. Peak tourism season in Costa Rica is November to April, the usual weather along this stretch of coastline pure heat and cloudless skies. But this spring's brought more dramatic weather. Across the border with Nicaragua storms have been landing with devastating force, in northwest Costa Rica the impact's milder: fierce heat laced through with sudden, tropical downpours that end as abruptly as they start. Sometimes it's sundrenched, sometimes just drenched; both improbably beautiful. The minutes and hours after the storms finish deliver the best soundtrack, the light drip from leaves onto corrugated metal roofs, the bellow of the howler monkeys living in the trees next to the apartment we're
Lydia Manch spends a long weekend exploring the beating heart of Portugal's creative capital. It's Porto, but it could be the Hollywood Hills. M.Ou.Co is a low-slung, sun-bleached sprawl of sandstone and polished concrete and slatted wood. It still feels like winter in London when we leave, but in Porto it's all sunlight sliding over textured walls, and the outdoor pool shimmering nearly - so nearly - invitingly enough to make you forget it's not officially spring yet. M.Ou.Co's is a look that over a few nights in the city I'll come to stop comparing to other things - a hint of Scandi simplicity, an echo of the clean lines of a Japanese ryokan, a touch of Californian sun-trap - and just accept as Porto's own. But new to the city, even though the Bonfim neighbourhood - where M.Ou.Co's based - is scattered with tall, narrow, stuccoed buildings in pale blue and dusty yellow and wrought iron and azulejo tiles as evidence that it is, definitely, Portu