Córdoba is the first port of call in Andalucía. It's famous for what would have been the world's largest mosque (the Christians buggered that up), and for a smooth gazpacho. It is absolutely crawling with tourists. A pleasant place to visit and, perhaps, to eat.

On the road and gathering experiences. I'm writing travel notes here. Something different to the normal fare, but perhaps of help to others, or mildly entertaining for regular readers. This post takes you to Singapore Airport, then Paris and Madrid.

I hope my readers find it interesting and perhaps helpful in the future.

Hello my lovely gastronauts. Guess what? I'm off to Iberia (and Paris). Quite soon, actually. Impending, so to speak. So bring on the tips.

Look what all those selfish seafood-loving tourists have done! No see, no touch, no flash in Japan.

I once lived in Canberra. In the late 80s it was shockingly quiet. For a city overrun with public servants, diplomats and the entourages of politicians, it offered relatively little in the way of nightlife or culinary enjoyment. Seventeen years since I left, has anything changed?

Much delayed but newly relevant (as some friends were asking me about Lyon), it's high time I published a description of a city I visited earlier this year and greatly enjoyed.

There are so many reasons to visit Paris; so many reasons to enjoy the city and – most pertinently – the food. Lacking the resources to hop from one name-restaurant to another, it seemed much better do markets, shops, and luscious pastries while staying in modest lodgings…

It's three years since I was last in Britain and I was curious to see what might have changed in the food scene. It wasn't hard to miss the popularity of gastropubs, the growth of decent chocolatiers, and the burgeoning enthusiasm for organics. My impressions of markets, new shopping habits and some random bits.

I was in the mood for cocoa bean product. I set off with a sheaf of addresses under my arm. Chocolate from here to eternity. This is the first instalment of my Chocolate 2007. What I ate in London. A number of surprises and some unexciting old names.

In this world of the online bookselling behemoth Amazon, it's always nice to find an independent bookshop catering to one's specialist area of interest. Imagine my joy when I found a new gastronomic bookshop — and purely by chance. As the rain poured down on me on Place Bellecour in the French city of Lyon, I frantically looked around for somewhere to take shelter and spied a bookshop bearing the words 'la librairie de toutes les cuisines'.