Beautiful little tango bar in the San Telmo district. The place is so small that you can really appreciate the performers' skill. You do get roped in with singing and even dancing, but it's done with such good humour that it's really not that painful.
The bar is featured in Wong Kar-Wai's film Happy Together.
Estados Unidos 299
San Telmo
Buenos Aires
Google map: tinyurl.com/nhvc5v
www.bar-sur.com.ar/
For a special night out while in Boston try this place. Old English style chop house, in a fine dining way (and price!). Make sure you book as it gets really busy. As does the bar, which is also a great spot for a drink apres shopping on Newbury Street.
359 Newbury Street
Tel: 617 262 8900
www.thecapitalgrille.com/Locations/Boston/Main.asp?Location=Boston
Restaurant/bar: fabulous thin crust pizzas, great selection of wines and beers. Superbly chilled out, good value and - best of all - flat screen TVs showing the sport but with no sound... fun for the guys and the gals.
27 Church St
Cambridge, MA 02138
617-868-5362
T stop: Harvard Square
This area is full of very trendy restaurants and bars etc.
This is the best bar in Cuzco (after much extensive research!!). It serves amazing daquaris in every flavour under the sun and the steaks are huge! They also serve amazing roast veg!
The best bit is the decor, half is covered with blue skies, clouds, cherubs etc and the other half of it is red leather, rubber and fetishy!
The sofas are actually old-fashioned iron bedsteads and the tables are old baths with glass tops with real live fish living in them. The service is amazing and the owner and his four boxer dogs are just the nicest people in the world!
The bars and restaurants around Hakescher Markt & Oranienburger Strasse are great: lively venues offering good value with great service. The 'ladies of the night' plying their trade on Oranienburger Strasse was an eye opener.
However, under no circumstances visit 'Dante' in the row of restaurants situated in Hakescher Markt's S-Bhan station arches. We waited 50 minutes before we found that the kitchen had lost our order and a further 30 for the food to arrive, the staff were rude and at no point was an apology offered. This is not the norm as all other retsuarants in the area provided very friendly and efficient service.
In the Mitte. There are countless restaurants situated in and around the railway arches of Hakescher Markt's S-Bahn station, which is on lines; S-5, S-7, S-9.
Fantastic place to eat, drink and recover from a hard day out on the hill. Also has accommodation if you're not a hard-up climber. Can get pretty lively on winter weekends. Great selection of real ales and even better selection of single malts.
Clachaig Inn
Glencoe
Argyll
Scotland
PH49 4HX
t. 01855 811252
e. inn@clachaig.com
A bar for the beer lover. Don't let the dive atmosphere or lack of sunlight put you off. Choose from the extensive beer menu, both local and from overseas. There are 15 beers on draft and up 99 served in bottles. Can't decide? Let the bar tender spin the "Wheel of Indecision" and see where you end up.
This is a cash only venue "In God we trust, everyone else pays cash" as the sign above the door notes and they only serve beer. Don't ask for a JD and coke!
50 Dalton Street, Boston.
MA 02115-3155
Tel: (617) 437-9999
Lovely little pocket of restaurants and bars in a happy, well looked-after area of Manchester.
The parks are very enjoyable when hungover the morning after, before a bacon sandwich in one of the many coffee shops.
M20 area 15 mins from Manchester city centre
This was an area of industrial wasteland with some falling down buildings that has been converted into one of the cultural and artistic centres of Marseille.
It hosts exhibitions, concerts, film projections, dance shows, theatre performances, lectures, debates, recording studios and a restaurant.
There is something interesting on pretty much every day and it's not usually that expensive.
www.lafriche.org
41, rue jobin, 13003 Marseille.
Fantastic, cool bar with an outdoor lounge setting overlooking the lake, plenty of sofas, low tables, cushions, trees, thatched roofs and candlelight. Relaxed atmosphere and v friendly staff who even saw us to our taxi at the end of the night!
Facing the Lagoa Rodrigo de Freitas
The King's Head serves an array of Jennings ales and, in a county with more pubs than you could care to mention, is loaded with character. For a start, it's haunted - weird noises late at night have often been reported, and a couple of Australians staying there recently were so spooked they left town.
The pub was built in 1640, and as recently as 2003 refurbishments turned up a deep well in the corner of the main bar, now covered over with a glass plate. There's a beer garden and a bowling green, formerly the stables and paddock from when this was a coaching inn. There are four rooms with shared bath too (£25), a great place to start or finish the Cumbria Way.
14 Queen's Street, Ulverston
Tel: 01229 588064
(not to be confused with The King's Arms on King Street)
Fantastic pub for lunch after a hard morning's hike - the ploughman's lunch plus a pint of Black Sheep or Riggwelter, both glorious darker ales from the Masham brewery, sets you up for the rest of the day. The bar is to be found in the converted stables, the white-washed walls and horse brasses don't attempt to hide the humble beginnings of the place, far from it, the bar is a cosy and even on busy weekends, often a fairly quiet spot to have a meal or just a drink. Dog friendly too, we've taken ours into the bar without problems, or there are tables outside if your pooch is wary of other people. Decidely a locals' pub, it is nonetheless a friendly place to escape from the hordes of tourists around Beatrix Potter's house in near Sawrey. Having never stayed in the hotel I can't comment but if the bar is anything to go by it should be great!
Far Sawrey, Ambleside, Cumbria, LA22 0LQ
Telephone: 01539 443425
www.sawreyhotel.co.uk/
You probably wouldn't associate the usually serious and austere city of The Hague with unfettered summer hedonism, but at the adjacent resort of Schevingen is the Dutch answer to Blackpool beach.
Check out Crazy Pianos, for example, for an irrevent mix of live music, comedy and the drunken teenage antics you know oh-so-well from back home. Frankly, it's just a great bit of harmless fun in an otherwise slightly dull part of the world.
Strandweg 21-29, Scheveningen
+31 703227525
www.crazypianos.com/pageENG.aspx
A fantastic venue in the centre of Kendal featuring music, theatre, dance and comedy events and 2 cinema screens as well as exhibitions, activities for kids, an atmospheric bar and a great restaurant. Their forthcoming Womens Arts Festival features an amazing line up of artsists that you wouldn't expect to see performing in a small market town in Cumbria.
Brewery Arts Centre
Highgate, Kendal, Cumbria
Tel: 01539 725133
www.breweryarts.co.uk
Roberto Menedez is a bit of a local celebrity. He was the driving force behind the Mallorca Jazz Festival and last year he opened the Jazz Voyeur Club on Carrer del Apuntadors in Palma. It has live music - jazz and soul most nights - and is the antithesis of the Puro beach bar. Where the latter is a dazzling white, outdoors Miami-style bar with local hipsters nodding to ambient tunes, the jazz club is small, dark and smoky. Nice.
Hidden behind heavy wooden doors lies an exotic courtyard garden that looks like the set for a Peter Greenaway film, filled as it is with birdcages, fairylights, bowls of fruit and countless flowering plants. It looks like it was made for misbehaviour - although the price of the cocktails may put you off going too wild.
Abaco, c/San Juan 1
Tel: 00 34 971 715974
Really unusual bar, with a Gothic theme - almost like you are sat inside a haunted house. Lots of leather chairs, fireplaces and intimate booths. Serves tasty food too. Great place to escape the shopping crowds.
Underneath the Burlington Hotel, off New Street in the city centre.
Something like the Dutch answer to Wetherspoons, this Eetcafe on the Spui enjoys a fair variety of Belgian beers and bar snacks. In the summer, sit out on the covered terrace and observe the daily battle between the trams and the cyclists - like watching a pack of sharks taking on a school of darting fish.
Spui 30
(0031) 20 6225110
www.beiaardgroep.nl/
With lamb shank with pomegranate and tomato salsa, and cognac chocolate pot on their menu, this is the place to be for a taste of Istanbul's fusion offering. This one stands out in the trendy Beyoglu neighbourhood and is a bar and restaurant, so perfect to start a night out. For a 3 course dinner with wine, it came to £26 a head and was excellent value.
Mesrutiyet Cad. No. 149/1, Tepebasi Tel: (212) 245 60 70