CAIRO to CORSICA

CAIRO Ten million people and no traffic lights make it impossible for pedestrians to cross the road. The bazaar, bigger than Istanbul’s, and the nighttime backstreets with medieval workshops and intricate architecture, still reek of the exotic.

CALABRIA Norman Douglas’s land. And mine, with Lunch with Elizabeth David.

CALAIS Every time I go there I think of two women: Queen Mary, who died with the name of Calais engraved upon her heart, and Lady Emma Hamilton, who died here in poverty and exile with the name of Horatio Nelson engraved on hers.

CANTERBURY A tatty town with Britain’s most interesting cathedral. Adolph Hitler thought that if he destroyed it, Britain would surrender. I met a man once who told me that, as a boy, he used to climb on the roof at night to take his turn scouring the skies for the Luftwaffe.

CAPE HORN The Cutty Sark, on rounding the Horn, once completely disappeared beneath the waves, leaving just her top masts to mark her passage. On the high aft deck, the helmsman clung to the wheel as he watched the entire vessel disappear. It came back up again and not one hand was lost.

CARCASONNE A perfect theme park. I once saw turtles swimming in the Canal du Midi here.

CASCAIS Last refuge of deposed European monarchs. Look at their photos in the museum. Oh, the yachts they could have had, and the aquariums they could have filled, if only fate had been good to them just a little bit longer.

CHICAGO I used to read anything I could lay my hands on about Al Capone. It’s a different city now and I have never heard a bad word said about it.

CHILOÉ At the bottom of Chile, a long way away. Cold and hungry we bought a bottle of brandy in a plastic bottle for a few pence and from our bedroom window watched the tide ebb across the mudflats. Indigenous Chileans look like Innuits here. Is Hudson's Bay like this?

CHINATOWN If all the world’s Chinatowns were laid end to end they would reach Beijing. In the Russian Museum in St Petersburg there is a large 19th-century painting of Chinatown in Moscow (today’s Katai Garod, just beside the Kremlin). It looks an extaordinarlily exotic place, the Moscow of the east, a trading town with routes deep in Asia. Hard to imagine today.

COLOGNE Look at the west front of the cathedral, lit up at night. It is truly enormous.

COIMBRA An empty, cobblestone-echoing evening. In this university town, steeped in the romantic tragedy of Inés de Castro, consolation comes from a steamy restaurant with huge bowls of churrasqueiria and copious wine.

CÓRDOBA Past midnight, beneath a full moon, a lone rider, white-shirted, black hair glinting, hand on hip, clip clops down the lane beneath our hotel balcony.

CORSICA Island of the dream hunters. How enticing is that?