AND TAKE ADVANTAGE OF THE 25% REDUCTION You can use

what you save, either to extend your business tour of South Africa's commercial and industrial centres : or to add to the thrill of your holiday by visits to the Kruger National Park, Cango Caves, Victoria Falls, Zimbabwe Ruins, etc.

Ask your Travel Agent for Illustrated Colour folder giving full details of sailings and fares or apply to: s FENCHURCH STREET, LONDON, E.C.3

UNION-CASTLE

carry you in comfort to the Cape

miles of the north-eastern Transvaal called the Kruger National Park, where lions will nonchalantly stretch out on the road before your wheels and where you may see herds of giraffe like spotted rocking-horses making their way through the bush. You can watch herds of hippo playing in the river. In fact, you can see almost every animal that makes its home on the African continent: elephants, cheetahs, monkeys and an endless variety of buck. There are thoroughly comfortable rest camps with every convenience. That is the high spot of any South African holiday. The fishing can be bettered somewhere else on the globe, so can the golf, so can the scenery, even though in the Cape some of the marine drives are breathtakingly beautiful, but the game reserves are unsurpassed and unsurpassable. Hotels are usually good and so is the food.

Cricket and Carnivals

FROM the middle of the Mediterranean the honey-coloured rocks of the coast rise like sentinels: twice in its history Malta has played this part : in 1565 when the islanders under La Vallette, Grand Master of the Knights of St. John threw back the Turks, and again from 1940 to 1943 when the toughness and resilience of the islanders helped them to resist the onslaughts of the Axis air forces.

Malta is only seventeen miles long by eight wide and is shaped like a flat-fish. It is packed with history : its first lords were the Phoenicians three thousand years ago and since then it has known Carthaginians, Greeks, Normans, Arabs and (last but not least) the Knights of St. John who left behind them their Inns and rich churches. But Malta is not living on its past: it is the HQ of the British Mediterranean fleet whose activities dominate the island. This is partly responsible for the variety of sports that await the visitor: you can play rugger or water-polo, go sailing or watch cricket. There is plenty of sand and the swimming is good (with the added attraction of underwater fishing for those who like it). 'mot . _ • --

" 27

Cruising MOST people are confined to a limited holiday period which allows them to visit but one or two countries at a time. A sea cruise has the advantage of showing one half-a-dozen different lands in a two or three weeks' holiday. It is rather like booking at a hotel and finding that one's hotel travels overseas, waits Patiently at a port of call and then carries on to the next place. Your baggage stays aboard and no matter how many Countries are concerned you have no customs formalities until You return home. You enjoy a standard of comfort and service afloat that is unsurpassed ashore; you can travel either first class or tourist according to your means. The programme of calls is arranged with a care and forethought that might surprise you, for your ship must arrive in port at a time which will enable you to spend sufficient time ashore to see all the sights and then sail again at night. If, however, the place has an attractive night life, like a Riviera port for instance, then the ship will not sail until the early hours of the morning. A day or two at sea to relax and discuss your purchases at the. last port, and then another place to excite the eye and to add to a list of memories. Cruising has been popular for more than fifty years, although originally it was possible only for those of means. Today it can be a holiday for anyone fond of foreign travel or life at sea.

It should, perhaps, be stated that a cruise, strictly speaking, means a voyage in the same ship returning to the same place without delays for cargo loading or unloading—in other words a purely holiday voyage. Two companies have resumed such cruises, the P & 0 and the Orient. In 1954, the former will have fourteen and the latter ten cruises in their programmes and both will employ their latest and largest ships so that you may be assured of every comfort in travel that invention and experience has made possible.

In the P & 0 programme you will see twelve cruises going south and two north; the Orient Line have nine going south and one north. Both lines include ports that have so much to attract that any stay is too short—Athens and Istanbul, Venice and Naples, Cannes and Barcelona. There are, too, many other ports like Dubrovnik and Corfu in the Adriatic, Civitavecchia, the port of Rome, Larnaca and Famagusta in Cyprus, Beirut in Syria, Malaga and Cadiz. Northwards the fjords have their charm. There are places like Narvik, still an exciting memory to many of us, and the gloomily impressive North Cape—or the liveliness of Stockholm and Copenhagen.

Fares are, of course, inclusive of accommodation and food, and, worked out on a mileage basis, are surprisingly cheap. First class costs about £5 a day with higher prices for more elaborate cabins and the tourist class passenger pays £3 a day upwards. A typical itinerary for a fortnight is Vigo, T 1±1 Hance and Lisbon or Civitavecchia, Naples, Palermo and Lisbon. 47, Beauchamp Place, Knightsbridge, S.W. 3. 'Phone : KNIghtsbridge 4242.

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Spanish Holiday Tours (London) Ltd. Dept. S.1.

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_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

FRANCE il!N

the unfinished fairy-castle of Neuschwan- stein, set among the forest's and peaks of the Bavarian Alps.

THE SIMPLE LIFE

INTENSELY physical, lustrously clean, richer than Fifth Avenue, Switzerland is the land of happy extroversion, where visitors from dar- ker lands lose their pallor with their angst, smoker's coughs with their sense of the past. This should be a haunted country, so beauti- ful, so written-about, so deeply associated with the endless Long Vacation that ended in 1914. But it isn't. You don't see Whymp.ar in Zermatt or Daisy Miller by the lakeside, only the brown visitors stupefied with health and the placid natives shaking the sheets out of the window. And in the shop and all the other places you decided not to go to this year.

The serpentine coast road that Marcus Aurelius carved out of the volcanic rock is punctuated with towns which famously dedicate themselves to tourists—Bordighera, San Remo, Alassio, Rapallo, Santa Margh- erita, Sestri Levante, Lerice. They have immaculate sea-promenades, bathing estab- lishments, cafés with music playing, Ameri- can bars and English tea rooms. They have tennis courts, some of them have golf courses, and you can sail, water-ski and play bridge. There is every category of hotel from the grandest which is uniform with other grand hotels all over the world, expensively insulated against the gastronomy and character of the surrounding country— and where, if you are not used to them, you may not be able to sleep for the sound of money talking—to modest pensions which smell, according to the winds, of magnolia or unreliable plumbing. To help you discover exactly the sort of lodging you want and to save any embarrassment over bills, you should get the hotel guide, Annuario degli Alberghi d'Italia, which gives the official prices.

If you are a traveller who is opposed to being called a tourist or if you are simply someone who has the energy and imagina- tion to take an unconventional holiday there are fishing villages like Vernazzo which can only be approached by sea, where the vines of the Cinque Terre canopy the river, or the rugged sea towns of Camogli (from Case dei Moglie—houses of the wives who lived so much without their shiloring hus- bands) and Chiarvari (of the key-makers) where they make beautiful furniture, or Bobbio, the remote market town on the mountain pass. Not only in the undis- covered (tourist-sense) hamlets and fishing villages, but even in the old town of a Riviera resort like San Remo there is a timeless atmosphere of a great deal of ticient business going on and everyone minding it. , The Ligurians are dour and industrious and except in the hard tourist cores, they make no fuss of strangers. Traditionally they breed prelates and pirates. Their main sources of income are from ship- building, fishing, smuggling. In the moun- tains they make smoked cheeses and meat, gather chestnuts and wild honey. From the `Costa del Fiori' of which San Remo is the centre they export carnations and gardenias and cacti. But these things and many more you will discover personally, and if you are going to lodge with a prelate or a pirate, with whom the price of your board will depend on your face-value, there is no help fel you and you won't need any.

KALLISTE CAPRI, Majorca and Cyprus are nostalgic names, yet the Greeks, who knew something about beauty, called Corsica kalliste—thc most beautiful—and from the age of Pheidias to our own this claim has persisted. In climate and landscape Corsica is an epitome of two continents. In a few hours you can pass from North African scenery with its palm-trees and orange groves to Italianate chestnut forests and vineyards and on to the more northern lakes and snowcapped mountains of the highlands.

Sun Drenched MOROCCO, ITALY, SPAIN and the RIVIERA

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TO TRAVEL BY FRENCH RAILWAYS

When in France, travel by the service that serves all France. French Railways have the most up-to-date rail System in Europe with fast services to all parts of the country and excellent con- Elections with adjoining states. A whole variety of reduced-fare tickets arc offered, so that extended travelling shows an appreciable drop in cost per kilometre. Aboard the train comfort and courtesy surround you: excellent meals may be had en route and wagon lits or couchettes (1st and znd class) ensure a good sleep for overnight passengers.

Better travel by

SNFRENCH RAILWAYS Information, tickets and reservations from any good Travel Agent or French Railways Limited, 179 Piccadilly, London W.I.

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SWITZERLAND

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GERMANY

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S.R.

through Ashkelon, where they are laying the pipes that are to carry the water that is to make the desert blossom like a rose. "So you've been to the Negev," said the head waiter at Dan. "It is God's garden, isn't it?" You can remember only rock, and sand and camels and a few pale, papery crocuses, but you have no strength left to contradict him.

The next time, you drive north, through hundreds of Jewish settlements where they have cleared the rock from the hills of Galilee and it lies in great mounds by the edge of the road. There the bulldozers and the Bedouins are tilling side by side, and you wonder how long they can co-exist. But you're only a tourist so you need not wonder for long. You go to Safad, where some Jews still worship the ancient Jewish God and where other, very different, Jews have made themselves a Chelsea above Lake Tiberius and worship three-dimensional painting. You go to Nazareth and in the church of the Annunciation you stand in front of a brash eighteenth-century altar with the legend " Verbum caro factum est." "Please," says your Arab guide, "and now you will like to see the kitchen of the Virgin Mary."

Within an hour, you are in Acre taking off your shoes outside the Mosque of Jazra. The marble inlays, the columns, and practi- cally everything but Jazra's tomb itself were plundered from the Roman city of Caesarea. On the sea walls of the city are mounted two Turkish cannon; just below them is a stone block carved with the sign of the cross; and just beyond them straggles the concrete suburb in which the modern Israelis live. Rome, Islam, Christianity, Turk and Jew— but this is Palestine. And you have not yet been to Jerusalem, where all the world has staked its claim and built its Churches and dug its graves. For £154 return by air, you can discover why, even though in this day and age, you can only see the outside of the Old City walls so long as you are in

WITH CHILDREN TO BRITTANY

Wax very small children a family holiday abroad can be a formidable undertaking if the budget does not run to air travel. Brittany should commend itself to those who wish to give the beaches of Kent or Dorset a miss for once, yet dread the worry of an awkward journey. The trip by train from London to Southampton is short enough ; the ship that waits is large and stable ; and, after a good night's rest, it is pleasant to finish breakfast while the Falaise slips into the lock at St. Malo. This is ' foreign ' enough in all conscience ; the tall walled town that looks defensively out across the island housing the tomb of Chateaubriand towards the Ile de Cezembre and the open sea. Not many tourists with children will care to stop in St. Malo itself, charming though it is. There are many plages to the east, stretching towards Mont St. Michel and the root of the Cherbourg peninsula. And in the other direction, across the estuary of the Rance (which one crosses in a vedette at a fare of ten francs or so), lies Dinard, rich in hotels of all classes and pensions where the patter of tiny feet is deafening during the summer months. A seasoned traveller may cock a snook at resorts such as Dinard, but not weary parents with children to amuse. Should rain drift in from the sea one day (as it

frequently does), the children may be taken to the admirable aquarium. There they will see such an octopus as they can on the fol- lowing day, if they are lucky, catch in the pools of the beach at St. Enogat, the western suburb of Dinard. Standing on a cliff above this beach as night falls, the lights come out along the broken coast and Cap Frehers great beacon sweeps across the sea. A chambermaid will keep an eye on the sleeping children while their parents try a step or two at one of the (perfectly staid) night clubs.

ENTREE JOYEUSE

IF you stand on the great square in Brussels, you will find around you a world of Northern Gothic very different from the calm classic- ism of the most famous French cathedrals. There all is austere, dedicated to the service of Judge and Redeemer, here there is bust- ling activity, the spires and pinnacles riot in a rumbustious humanism. This is the world of the Flemish cities, turbulent with commerce and seething with a suppressed desire to throw off the yoke of their over- lord, the Duke of Burgundy, whose costly luxury and refinement also affected the life of Belgium, making of it a land of gold- smiths and enamellers. Something of this bourgeois comfort and discontent has per- sisted till this day : you can see in the faces around, the same calm enjoyment of posses- sion as in the faces of Van Eyck's Arholfinis. Certainly the countryside has remained unchanged : fast American cars, driven with an insouciance that makes Belgium one of the most dangerous countries in the world for pedestrians, roar through lush fields or avenues of leafy trees that Reubens might have painted (and probably' did paint). Elsewhere, in the Ardennes, there are deep gorges and great forests where you can still hunt the boar. This is in the pictures too.

Needless to say that the Belgians are great eaters and drinkers. Haven't we seen the pies carried by Breughel's cooks and, though he may find the prices staggering these days, the tourist may be quite sure of get- ting his money's worth. Wine is more diflicult (this is a beer-drinking country), but there is a small café in the old town of Brussels with letters from Lautreamont hung on the walls and a musical box playing huge nineteenth-century disks where the vin rosé makes you sleep the sounder and wake the lighter. Here there is history and the wine its essence. Drink and dream of Charles the Bold.

ETERNAL TRIANGLE

Festival Cities

that the pavilions in the Giardini, spick and span in their new paint, will contain the biggest international exhibition of contem- porary art in the world. Here Henry Moore and Sutherland have won important prizes since the war. This year the British pavilion will show paintings of screaming cardinals by Francis Bacon, meticulous portraiture by Lucien Freud, and no less meticulous abstracts by Ben Nicholson. This will be from 19th June to 17th October. In addition there is the Theatre Festival from 26th June to 18th July; the Film Festival on the Lido from 25th August to 9th September, when Venice will be full of directors and stars, and the Festival of Contemporary Music from 1 1 th to 23rd September. If you're going to Venice for the first time, why not go first to Chioggia, at the Southern extremity of the lagoons, and approach thence by water?

EDINBURGH

EAST-WINDY, west-endy. So ran the old gibe against Edinburgh. But that was in the days before the severe old lady began to let her hair down in autumn. The Edinburgh international Festival, the creation of that master of impresarios, Rudolf Bing, is now a firmly established annual fact, and Edinburgh has brought herself to accept it. During the three weeks of concert and play and ballet and opera and the rest, when the streets are loud with the languages of the world, she no longer draws her skirts uneasily aside. The Festival in Edinburgh has become the Festival of Edinburgh, and the change is for the better.

There are festivals which specialise in one art or another, but in Edinburgh they are all, from the grandest of opera to the hum- blest poetry-reading, lavishly entertained. This can embarrass the visitor whose appetite outruns his capacity. Aesthetic indigestion is as easily got as that more humble sort caused by over-indulgence in the fabulous variety of farinaceous foods which the tea-rooms of Princes Street provide. So, a word of advice : choose early and book early and leave sufficient time for leisurely sight-seeing in Edinburgh and around. One thing is certain : you cannot see and hear a tenth of the enter- tainments provided by . the Festival Society and all the " unofficial " organisers.

LYONS

WHEN Lyons followed the lead of places more beloved of the tourist and went into the festival business, it seemed too speculative an undertaking altogether. One associates the city with silk, banking, and Monsieur Edouard Heriot, but with no art other than gastronomy. The idea persists that Lyons is a sort of Manchester where one can eat superbly and where too public an enjoyment of the arts might seem an unwelcome intrusion. But in fact Lyons makes an excellent festival centre for the very reason that it relies not at all upon the tourist trade and no one feels obliged to skin the visitor. One slips easily into the life of the town and cannot fail to note the strength of local support at the various performances. The festival spans late June and early July, and lasts for three weeks. Plays are produced in the big Roman theatre on the hill of Fourviere and concerts are given in the smaller Odeon nearby. Recitals take place in the courtyard of a museum in the town itself and a large exhibition of paintings is always arranged specially for the city art gallery. The programme is never crowded. Since this is Lyons, plenty of time is left for eating and drinking.

BAYREUTII

BAYREUTH offers two sharply differentiated festivals to the intending musical traveller. For a week in May the exquisite little Court Theatre built for the Margravine Wilhelmine, sister of Frederick the Great, ceases to be a museum piece and comes to life for a barouqe Festival of Opera (May 24th to 30th). The Wagner Festival at the Festspielhaus takes place in high summer (July 22nd to August 22nd) under the direction of the composer's grandsons, Wolfgang and Wieland Wagner, and brings together Wagnerites from all over the world.

With such short seasons, and with the little town filled to overflowing with musical celebrities, prices in the hotels are high but admirable quarters were arranged for one in a private house by the Gardiner Travel Service at a guinea a night (bed and break- fast). Another guinea, however, went daily on necessary fortification for inordinately long operas with giant pauses. As tickets are expensive and marks few to the pound, it was noted by one critic last year that English visitors were distinguishable by their hungry looks.