David Watterson

The first (and last) time I went to this place I saw the airport, the hotel and the office where I was working and that was it. I really want to go back and see more of the city!

What I hope from Krakow is for it to be everything that Warsaw wasn’t and leave me with a better opinion of Poland.

‘Want’ is entirely the wrong word. Rather, I feel that I ought to go to Auschwitz as a reminder and a warning to myself of the inhumanity of which mankind is capable.

I spent only a short time in Warsaw, and unfortunately the damage inflicted upon it first by WWII and latterly by communism have detracted enormously from its appeal to me.

The high-rise buildings distinguish it from many of the Central and Eastern European capitals, but the city does not have the same sense of energy and purpose as Prague, Budapest, Bratislava or Bucharest.

In all of Central and Eastern Europe, Budapest is one of the most impressive in terms of scale and well-preserved historical buildings.

Heroes Square and the Parliament building are immense. The Castle is less impressive, but is beautifully situated. Both the Castle and Citadel command great views over the city. There are several well-maintained parks and gardens dotted across the city.

The main shopping and business districts can get quite busy and noisy as one might expect in a city of this size. The public transport is cheap, regular and generally not too crowded, but ticket pricing is rather confusing.

Bratislava appears to be a few years behind Prague on the development curve but catching up fast – everywhere you look there are cranes. Compared to Prague, there is more of the old town that has not been preserved/restored and this lends it a certain charm.

I would recommend walking round the old town, climbing the tower in the Bratislava Museum for views over the area and sampling the cake in one of the old Austrian-style cafes. The ‘UFO bridge’ over the Danube is interesting, although shockingly the communists tore through a well-preserved Jewish quarter to build it.

Unfortunately I didn’t have a chance to visit the castle.

Obviously the Grand Dune itself dominates – it looks like someone has taken part of the Sahara and dropped on the French Atlantic coast. Directly opposite across the bay is the tip of Cap Ferrat – the peninsula where the great and the good of France go for their holidays.

I was there for a paragliding holiday. Unfortunately a high pressure weather system put paid to my flying ambitions, but I enjoyed walking along the shoreline, and the nearby town of Arcachon was very pretty too. Saw many a vivid sunset over the Atlantic from the top of the Dune.

Not one of my favourite cities in the world, but worth seeing nonetheless. Visit the Eiffel Tour, the Arc de Triomphe and spend some time in the bars and street cafes.

The scale of the great pyramid is all the more awesome when you think about the period in which it was built. Would recommend going on a camel ride out into the desert to see it from a distance. The Sphinx was rather less impressive than I expected.

Also, be prepared for fairly constant harassment from beggars and street traders when you’re there.

I was working in Egypt for a couple of weeks in 2001, but still got to see a lot of sights in and around Cairo in the evenings and at the weekend.

My main memory of the place is the history with which it has been endowed: from the grandeur of the pyramids at Giza to the beautifully preserved artefacts in the Cairo museum. To realize that it all came from a time when we were still living in mud huts makes it all the more incredible.

On the downside are the hawkers which seem to be a fixture of most big cities in the region, although it can be fun to haggle in the souks.