Baseball comes to London: fresh, crazy, crowded and very American

As the players took the field, I almost wept. America's game had come to London. Proper Major League Baseball, with two legendary teams (the Yankees and the Red Sox), the national anthem, the seventh inning stretch, hot dogs, Cracker Jack and rallying tunes on an organ. I never thought I'd see the day.

As a St. Louisan, baseball is something more to me than just a sport. It's a foundational part of my childhood, a significant plank of my civic identity and the embodiment of summer. It helped me survive difficult times as a younger woman and the sound of a broadcast still brings a sense of calm ... even if I'm not really paying attention. When I first came to the UK, its loss was like severing a limb. These were the earliest days of the internet: I could get game scores, but not much else. In search of a substitute, I had a brief flirtation with cricket (an excellent game, but not mine) before mlb.com launched, allowing me to watch and listen to my home team. A live game was still a rare treat only to be savoured during visits to my homeland, but at least I had some form of baseball in the UK.

Now, for one glorious weekend a year, I have the real thing.

Major League Baseball (MLB) pulled out the proverbial stops to create magic in and around the event. With a few notable exceptions, they succeeded. And the players almost seemed to collude, though I doubt they intended to.

We went to the first game on the Saturday night, in which the Yankees beat the Red Sox 17-13. Those who'd never seen a game, including my godson and his father, were treated to a crazy match up including a 6-run-per-team, hour-long first inning that neither of the starting pitchers completed. Fourteen more pitchers trekked to the mound to try to control things in the course of the game. It appears they weren't coping well with jet lag, since they combined to give up 37 hits. The Yankees scored 11 between the third and fifth innings; the time it took us to grab and consume a beer and a hot dog from the concession stands. (Rather oddly, these are built with no view of the field and there are no tv screens relaying live action, so when you leave your seat you're blind to what's happening.) The Red Sox made a thrilling attempt at a comeback with a six-run 7th, most of the action coming when there were already two outs on the board.

"This isn't a normal baseball game," I warned my godson, whose 10-year-old eyes were still gleaming with excitement well into this marathon. Not normal, perhaps, but a beguiling introduction.

Even if the game had been a low-action pitching duel, organisers had laid on enough baseball-themed distractions to keep newbies interested. A London DJ combined with pre-recorded, traditional organ flourishes to add a soundtrack to the game. Traditions from ballparks around the USA entertained between innings: racing against "The Flash" from Atlanta, a stadium-wide chorus of "Sweet Caroline" from Boston, the grounds keepers dancing to YMCA as they smoothed the infield (a Yankee tradition), slingshots firing free tee shirts into the crowd and a strange bobble head race with Freddie Mercury, Winston Churchill, Henry VIII and the Loch Ness Monster. MLB actually trained food and drinks vendors to climb up and and down aisles selling their wares direct-to-seats, something unknown to British sport. They lacked the jovial banter and booming sales calls of their American counterparts, but the innovation of being able to get a drink without leaving your seat was a godsend. One can only hope that a member of the Twickenham management team was there and inspired.

The opening ceremonies were worthy of a World Series game, with giant flags, plumes of fire, pop stars and celebrity first pitches. Britain's most famous trans-Atlantic couple, Prince Harry and his American-born wife Meghan, took official first pitch duties along with a crowd of athletes from the Invictus games. (Piers and I are happy to demonstrate the Special Relationship next time if the Sussexes are not available.)

The London Stadium (still known by most Londoners as the Olympic Stadium) hosted the games, and organisers worked an impressive transformation turning a 66,000-seat athletic arena with an oblong field into a round baseball venue. To do this they raised the playing surface and built new stands along the baselines. It was still a bit odd, with huge spaces in the foul zones, almost no room behind home plate and awkwardly-placed scoreboards almost impossible to see clearly from our nosebleed seats in the outfield upper deck, but it worked far better than I had expected.

The stadium grounds opened four hours in advance and it was well worth getting there early to walk around the former Olympic site (now a lushly-landscaped park) and visit "Playball Park", a baseball-themed amusement zone set up on a field and running track next to the stadium. There were batting cages, pitching cages with ball speed trackers, a "home run derby", a mini-diamond to try base running and a diving catch station where you could leap with glove in hand into a bed of foam to get captured on slo-mo camera. This was all free and staffed by coaches from the UK's amateur baseball leagues. (Yes, they exist, and were very active in producing and hosting the London Series.) The biggest problem in this area? The wait. In order to play anything you needed a wristband. To get the wristband you had to sign a disclaimer form. And whoever designed that form, to be completed on iPads in bright sunlight, one per individual, gave no thought to speed or efficiency. It took us 40 minutes to clear this hurdle, and we had arrived soon after the gates opened. One hopes they'll speed things up next year.

This, as with all the other organisational issues, seemed to come from a failure to anticipate demand. Ticket sales back in November were a nightmare, with immediate sell-outs as each tranche of seats was released. Vast numbers of disgruntled fans took to Twitter to air their disappointment. It was understandable to start with a great rivalry like the Yankees and Red Sox, but those two cities are close enough to London to make a long weekend trip possible. Season ticket holders could buy eight seats per person, per game, well in advance, wiping out swathes of seats before British residents ever got a chance. Ticketmaster's booking system gave you no choice of seating area. If you were lucky enough to get in before availability sold out, you got whatever "best seats" the computer generated. And you'd better have deep pockets. The worst seats were £65. Anything along the baselines on the lower deck was approaching £300.

Merchandising was oddly limited to one large, pop-up store in a tent closer to Westfield Shopping Centre than the stadium. I'd guess many fans coming from alternate routes never saw it. Even so, there were enormous queues to get in and enormous ones to check out. By the time we got in (on our way home) stock was wiped out. There was nothing for sale in the stadium. I might have been tempted by the £37 London Series long-sleeved tee shirt had it been easier to purchase, but I just couldn't cope with more waiting to hand over more money.

Ultimately, those were small hiccoughs in an extraordinary event that brought something new and fresh to London.

Cricket fans are used to the "it ain't over til it's over" ethos, but most other sport in the UK is played to a clock, so pre-game mailers had warned that there was no way of predicting the end point of a baseball game. That was a wise move. At four hours and 42 minutes, London's inaugural MLB contest was just three minutes short of the longest nine-inning game in MLB history. We had to bail at the end of the seventh to have any chance of decent trains home. Lesson for next year: book a room in town.

Next year, when my beloved Cardinals play the Cubs. June 13 & 14, 2020. When they take the field I suspect I really will weep for pure, unadulterated joy.

WW2, please? Visitors drag my brain into the 20th century

From the day I moved to the UK, my cousin warned me that whenever he finally got over to visit, all the sightseeing would be about World War II. It's our grandfather's fault.

Our patriarch was scholarly but also loved swashbuckling drama, and we both remember delightful weekend afternoons as small children watching TV movies with him. (Inevitably to my grandmother reprimanding him. "Johnnie, they're too young for that!") Curiously, however, Gaga ... as we called him ... seems to have fed us different diets. Had he figured out our personalities even then? Did we indicate preferences? Or were we shaped by vagaries of late '60s and early '70s TV programming? All I know is that my cousin, Ron, consumed World War films while I drank in pirate flicks and medieval epics. Those weekend afternoons with Gaga are sacred in our memories and shaped our adult passions. I think I got the better end of the deal, naturally, since my movies led to castles, Caribbean beaches, sailboats, rum drinks and walled European cities. They certainly wired me to lose interest in any story set much after the Napoleonic wars.

But Ron was finally visiting. So I had to change my usual itinerary for visitors. We were going to the 20th century.

His No. 1 request? The Churchill War Rooms. These are a fabulously atmospheric look at how the government ran in London during the Blitz, seen today almost exactly as things were during the war. The prime minister and his cabinet retreated down here to run the war in ... as best they could ensure it ... relative safety. Having seen Hitler's bond-villain style network of massive tunnels carved into the mountain in Berchtesgaden before I got to the London site, I was surprised by the small scale and domestic humility of Churchill's space. It's not even that far under ground. At one point the curators strip back the ceiling panels to show you the iron bars and reinforced concrete, but it didn't seem like much compared to half a mountain. Then again, both spaces reinforce the tale we know. One side grandiose, dark and deluded, the other scrappy, practical and of the people.

The fact that these rooms are dressed pretty much as they were during the war, occupied by mannequins representing historic figures and described on an audio guide that features many authentic quotes adds to the charm. The map room in particular makes you feel like you've been dropped into the middle of a WWII film. The authenticity also fuels a sense of claustrophobia. These are small spaces. It's easy to imagine the fear and frustration as bombs pounded overhead and walls shook.

Though the core suite of rooms has been open to the public since the mid-'80s, additional renovations and restorations since the turn of the century have created what you see today. In addition to the main command and control rooms, you can see bedrooms for Churchill, his wife and staff, support offices, a warren of hallways and an atmospheric physical plant room that's available for event hire. (How did I miss this when I was still in charge of a large corporate budget and events in the IT sector?) There is also an impressive Churchill museum that tells the whole story of his life with artefacts, video and interactive displays. One word of warning: it's easy to lose yourself in here and run out of steam, not realising that the heart of the Cabinet rooms are still ahead of you.

A second word of warning: This is one of the few London attractions for which buying tickets in advance is absolutely essential. Those small spaces limit numbers. Advance ticket holders wait. People who just turn up wait longer, and may not get in. Only members of the Imperial War Museum skip the queue. (An adult ticket to the War Rooms is £22, annual IWM membership is £35. So if you're planning to add either Duxford or the HMS Belfast to your sightseeing within the year, buy membership instead.)

Though it has five branches, the main Imperial War Museum is across the river from the War Rooms and was also on my cousin's must see list. Though keeping it in the 20th century, I insisted that we start here with WWI. This museum shut down for a major renovation early in the decade, re-opening just before the centenary of the sadly mis-named "war to end all wars". The WWI exhibition created for that anniversary got rave reviews. So great, in fact, that we couldn't get in the first time we made the attempt back in 2014.  Now that it's been around for four years access is much easier, but it still deserves the praise.

This is modern museum presentation at its best, mixing artefacts with video, sound effects and interactive exhibits. You can play games to help you understand difficult concepts like how to provision an army, measure yourself against the height and weight of typical recruits, try on uniforms or walk through a loud, ominous trench. All of the displays are built around storytelling, whether it's peering into a case containing the personal effects of Edith Cavell, a British nurse who saved lives on both sides but was executed as a spy by the Germans, or sitting around a virtual campfire letting ghostly voices tell you about their experiences.

Given that the Imperial War Museum was a direct result of World War I ... established to teach lessons so that people would not repeat history ... it's no surprise that this is one of the most comprehensive WWI museums in the world. If you tried to take everything in, from causes and early enthusiasm through stalemate, horror, peace and the reparations that set us up for WWII, you'd have to spend a whole day here. Luckily, this is one of London's free museums so you can pop in to graze on what interests you most. Upper floors cover the second World War (with a great side-exhibit on intelligence and spies), the Cold War and modern conflicts, but none do as comprehensive a job at immersive, chronological storytelling as the museum's starting point.

To round out the story of early 20th century warfare we headed out of London, to a far lesser known but equally interesting site. The Army Flying Museum on the edge of Salisbury Plain isn't as good as the Imperial War Museum at Duxford (one of the best aviation museums I've ever been to, written about here), but if you can't get to that part of the country this is an excellent substitute. And the army has one important thing Duxford doesn't: gliders.

They were a stealth tactic to get men behind enemy lines in WWII. Build an airplane-sized glider out of balsa wood and paper, fill it with troops, tow it up into the air, then release it and ...  in theory ... let the pilots glide it smoothly and silently to a safe landing, after which the passengers could slip away into the night to perform their missions. Of course, with no engines these things were difficult to control, and their flimsy construction offered little protection from weather, rough landings or bullets once the enemy spotted you. It took a special, almost un-imaginable, kind of bravery to climb into a glider. Or maybe they were all just crazy.

Given their lightweight, throw-away nature, this is pretty much the only place in the world you can see original gliders from WWII; there are pieces of three of them ... one almost the whole thing ... with displays that tell the story of glider use throughout the war, from spectacular success to horrific sacrifice.

While unique and exciting, this is just the tip of the iceberg here. There are two hangars of aircraft with two floors of museum displays along each. Unlike the Imperial War Museum this is fairly old-school: artefacts and information boards. But it's interesting stuff, starting from the early days of aviation and going up through the modern day. The Royal Air Force split out from the Army at the end of WWI, so you get a comprehensive view of the start of military flight here (including balloons). Though the Air Force got the sexy fighter planes after that, there's plenty of interesting kit here including prototype drones, transport planes and fighting helicopters. Small simulators are dotted around and reasonably priced at £1 a go. Allowing me to confirm my hunch that flying an Apache helicopter is actually quite difficult.

There's a cafe here with a large terrace overlooking a grassy airfield still in use by the base next door, and they do flying exhibitions here on certain days. Tickets are £14 (not related to the IWM network) but good for re-entry over the course of a year, so a great deal for locals. We'll be back.

That trio was all we could fit in during my cousin's relatively short visit. I'm already thinking about what I could show him next. In addition to Duxford (naturally), there's the military command centre and warren of defensive tunnels under Dover castle, the HMS Belfast now docked on the Thames, all the fabulous intelligence stuff at Bletchley Park and more secret squirrel stuff in Disraeli's home at Hughenden, And that's before we consider crossing the channel to check out Normandy. (Read about my visit to the last one here.)

See, I can do the 20th century. It's not nearly as much fun as pirates and knights in shining armour. But I think Gaga would be proud.

The Bridge's "Midsummer" is riotous fun. Book now!

I went to a dance club with a couple of famous TV actors on Friday. I also sampled a Glastonbury-
like music festival. Then there were some Cirque de Soleil style acrobats doing ridiculously impossible things while hanging from silken sheets. And there was Shakespeare.

Rather remarkably, it was all Shakespeare.

The Bridge Theatre's new production of A Midsummer Night's Dream may be the most fun I have ever had in a theatre. (Well, it's pipped to the comedy post by Book of Mormon, but it's close.) This is Shakespeare's most accessible play. With the highly-physical comedy of love potions gone wrong, and its famous play-within-a-play open to lots of interpretation, it's not so important that you grasp every nuance of the 400-year-old language. It was my introduction to Shakespeare on a grade school trip and it's the play I've seen most, through numerous Shakespeare festivals, summer park productions and interpretations on the lawns of English country houses. There are at least three major film versions, the classic being the 1999 outing with Michelle Pfeiffer, Kevin Kline, Rupert Everett and Stanley Tucci. (Highly recommended.) But I've never enjoyed it more than I did in this rollicking, modern production.

At the start, I wasn't sure that would be the case. We entered to see the star attraction, Gwendoline Christie (better known to millions of fans as Game of Thrones' Brienne of Tarth) incarcerated in a glass box as the audience filed in around her. As with last year's exceptional Julius Caesar, this production was in the round with the "groundlings" playing an active role throughout. As the action started, the costuming was decidedly channelling The Handmaid's Tale, with everyone in sober colours and the women all wearing headscarves and sensible shoes. The interpretation highlights a plot point that's often overlooked in productions: the impending nuptials are forced ones. The hero Theseus won the Amazon Queen Hippolyta by defeating her in battle. This is not a love match but an act of political subjugation. Thus the casting of Christie was inspired; enraged, brooding warrior maiden is old hat for her.

Fortunately, things get brighter very quickly and we spend most of the play in the fairy world in the forests beyond Athens where Christie and Oliver Chris (a stalwart of British stage and TV, best known for the play King Charles III on both) play Titania and Oberon, queen and king of the fairies, as well as Hippolyta and Theseus. As is traditional. What is most definitely not traditional is that this production swaps parts, giving Titania the lines meant for Oberon and vice versa. Meaning that it's the man who falls into a ridiculous enchanted passion with a donkey-headed rustic, while the woman manipulates the action.

Not only does this bring some much needed balance to a play where the women are traditionally the subservient characters, but it's just plain funnier. And Chris is a genius of physical comedy. The scenes of passionate courtship between his Oberon and the Barry White wanna-be Bottom, played by Hammed Animashaun, will have you laughing so hard you'll be fighting to breathe. While the whole cast is strong it's these two, rather than the crowd-pulling Christie, who deliver the most memorable performances.

Christie is excellent as well, unsurprisingly, and brings a dignity to the role we don't usually see from Titania. She is a loving wife teaching her spoiled and complacent husband a much needed lesson before their warm reunion.

The groundlings are as much a character as the actors. They dance, they cheer, they join hands and circle the stage as bewitched lovers commit their madness. At one point, we shift scenes with an enormous white cloth being passed over their heads as pop music booms. The peasant players borrow a phone from the audience to check calendar dates, only returning it after a cast selfie. At the end, we all join in to the wedding festivities as cast and groundlings dance together, bouncing enormous inflatable moons around the theatre as Beyonce's Love on Top swells out of the sound system.

The staging makes the most of The Bridge's ability to bring blocks of the performance area up and down, constantly shifting the contours and location of the performance space along with the plot. They also put the gantry above the stage to good use, with the fairy folk doing impressive acrobatics in silk slings and beds levitate.

Reviews of this production have been decidedly mixed, with some Shakespeare purists saying the Oberon/Titania switch didn't work, that the interpretation overdoes the comedy and eclipses some of Shakespeare's poetry, and that an excessive (and unscripted) distribution of love potion forces a gender-bending hilarity in line with Pride Month but distracting from the plot.

I'd ignore them all. This Midsummer is fun. Too many people think Shakespeare is about stuffy classics to be endured rather than enjoyed. Something only the highly educated can appreciate. What BS. Shakespeare was a man of the people who played to the masses. A Midsummer Night's Dream is one of the best examples of that. I think the The Bard would have loved this production, and would have been the centre of the party as the post-production dancing kicked off.

No resting on laurels: Longborough kicks off a new Ring

Back in its early days, when Longborough Festival Opera announced their plans to produce a full Ring Cycle, anyone who could be bothered to pay attention laughed. Putting on Wagner's binge-watching extravaganza of four giant operas ... all needing big voices, a huge orchestra and exceptional skill ... is a challenge for the world's greatest opera companies. The idea of Wagner at English country house opera was comic; surely The Ring would be impossible for a young company operating on a shoestring in a 500-seat renovated chicken shed.

By 2013, laughter had turned to admiration as Longborough produced a much-acclaimed Ring Cycle. They are now officially "on the map", not just for country house opera but for a fanatical sub-culture of Wagner aficionados who travel around the world to see the canon. Over the years I've become used to sitting near Germans who've flown in for the production, or people telling me that they'd seen this in Bayreuth and the Longborough production is much better.

So you'd think that after their enormous triumph, Longborough might take it easy for a while. Work through all of Wagner's other operas. Maybe put on revivals of their acclaimed Ring elements. Nope. Starting this year, they're doing it all from scratch. New teams, new interpretations, building to a new Ring Cycle in 2023.

When I first heard the news I was a disappointed. There are Wagner works Longborough has yet to put on, and that I haven't seen on stage. Why not go for those? It seemed too soon for repetition. Last night, Das Rheingold convinced me I'm wrong.

This is the one element of The Ring I hadn't yet seen, I confess, so it was fresh territory for me anyway. But this first installment of the remake shows that, filled with a new confidence and learning lessons from the first time through, Longborough's ambition is to better its own success. They're likely to succeed.

The most noticeable improvement is in production values. With its small performance space, limited budgets and lack of any real backstage, Longborough will always be constrained. Their first Ring Cycle had an austere industrial chic, at times almost a bare stage. This time around we have much more to look at. An ascending circle of rocks with a backdrop of video effects gave us a convincing watery grotto for the Rhine maidens, then expanded into multiple levels with sinister red light later to conjure Alberich's grim mines. Video and lighting continue throughout to expand the universe beyond the small space. Costuming also has a lot more visual interest, especially the Rhine maidens' sinuous silver gowns that are part mermaid, part flapper. Overall, the style is Victorian Steampunk ... something we've seen work before at Longborough, most notably in Alcina. It's still a long way from my fantasy of Peter Jackson (of Lord of the Rings fame) art directing The Ring, but it works.

Music and voices are a given at Longborough and they delivered as usual. Anthony Negus remains at the helm of the orchestra, playing a score that isn't as memorable as the other three installments of The Ring but still has plenty of sweeping drama and poignant beauty. I was particularly impressed with Mark Stone's Alberich, whose powerful voice took us on a delicious descent into greed and depravity, and Pauls Putnins as the giant Fasolt, maybe the only truly good guy in the piece and therefore destined to die for love. The greatest delight was Mark Le Brocq's Loge (aka Loki).

Wagner's all about big and bold, deep and rich. He doesn't give us much by way of light, cheerful tenors. (Probably the biggest difference from Italian opera.) Le Brocq's crystalline notes are like sunshine cutting through the gloom. Even his costume brings a lighter tone: a bright red frock coat against everyone else's dark colours. And his character is a delight. Loge's machinations drive the plot, maintain interest and, at times, offer welcome comic relief ... something I've never seen in a Wagner opera. He is Das Rheingold's Tyrion Lannister. Why the composer didn't carry him through as a major character in the other operas is a mystery. They would have been much improved by his presence.

Such an opinion, of course, would be heresy to many in the audience. In the 10 seasons since we discovered Longborough I've seen enough Wagner to put me in a very small subset of humanity. I've come to appreciate the genius of the works, but I confess (shock! horror!) that I have still never managed to make it through a full performance without a short nap. We may now officially be on the opera's Patron list, but I'm a cretin compared to most of the people who make the pilgrimage here. The Ring started as a way to woo my husband-to-be, and it's grown on me. I like to think that my relationship and Longborough's productions are both getting better as the years go by.

Surprise! Ventnor's a culinary hotspot on the Isle of Wight

Given the Isle of Wight's "stuck in the past" reputation, the one thing we weren't expecting was much of a food scene. I was braced for a week of old-style pub fare, from the era before anyone outside of the medical field used "gastro" as a prefix. How delighted I was to be proven wrong. Ventnor and surrounds can deliver on the pub, chippie and tea room traditions, if that's what you're after, but it also has an interesting range of options for people with more adventurous tastes.


FOR ROMANTIC FRANCOPHILES Our evening at Le Tour du Monde was my favourite of the trip. This small restaurant is only six months old and very much a labour of love from a couple who've decided to change careers and channel years of travel and adventurous dining into a new business. She works front of house while he cooks. The results are fine dining quality with the atmosphere of an elegant yet informal French bistro. They're in a striking building in the centre of town that reminds me of French colonial facades in New Orleans. Bay windows look over a high street that grows remarkably quiet at night. The interior is an eclectic mix of artwork, crisp white linens, crystal and silver, yet despite the formal trappings it never took on the stuffiness that let down the Royal Hotel (described below). Mid-century jazz and crooner classics play softly in the background. Diners seemed to be skewed more towards locals than tourists. (Indeed, this is the kind of "local" I keep hoping one of our neighbourhood pubs will morph into.)

The menu is mostly classical French and Italian, though influences creep in from around the world. Salt and chili calamari sit beside a classic duck salad. Vegetable tempura or beef carpaccio? Mains take advantage of the island's rich larder, with local beef and lamb sharing pride of place with fresh seafood. We were tempted by duck breast with pepper sauce and a melange of sea bass, scallop and king prawns, but ... probably because we'd been commenting on how fine the cows looked in their verdant fields earlier that afternoon ... we both opted for local fillet. I started with the lobster bisque while my husband went for the prawn and smoked salmon salad, an elegant update on the classic prawn cocktail. All was cooked to perfection, not always assured when your husband prefers "bleu". There was a fine balance of flavours on sauces and seasoning. Accompanied by choices from a thoughtfully compiled and surprisingly diverse wine list. We ended by sharing a cafe gourmand, that magnificent French innovation for the greedy dessert lover who can never settle on just one thing. If you judge a French restaurant on the quality of its crème brûlée (as some people do), then you'll be happy here.

FOR ON-TREND LONDONERS With a minimalist interior of pale woods and house plants, a chalkboard of unique cocktails, a bustling young staff and a heavily Japanese-influenced menu that mashes the expected up with the new (soft shell crab "sliders" in squid ink bao buns, anyone?), Smoking Lobster feels like it should be in Shoreditch or Bermondsey. It's quite a surprise to find it on

the Ventnor sea front, rather unfortunately positioned next to a derelict amusement arcade. A good look inside at the innovative daily specials tells you this is not your standard British seaside chippie. Indeed, this was the only restaurant I overheard tourists talking about in other locations during our visit. Those sliders seem to be on their way to fame.

We discovered this place for lunch. A beguiling range of starters makes it ideal for mid-day, tapas-style grazing. A king prawn uramaki dragon roll ... beautifully prepared so the head and tail brought the "dragon" to life, beef tataki with deep-fried beef bon bons and salt & pepper squid were fantastic. And the sliders? Unctuous buns, the touch of ink giving them a hint of umami, pillowing the crunch of tiny soft shell crabs packed with crustacean flavour (rather than the usual dominance of deep-fried coating). No wonder people were talking about them. We booked immediately to return for a dinner later in the week. To the already sampled starters we added a delicious mixed ceviche of seared scallops, yellow fin tuna and yuzu. My Asian-spiced pork belly with accompanying spring rolls was a wonder, but my husband's steak was the one disappointment of our two visits. The fillet at Tour du Monde was better. If you're going to come here, don't bother with the traditional.

FOR MARPLE AND POIROT FANS We thought we'd splash out for a more upscale dinner at The Royal Hotel. I had stayed there when I visited the island in 1989 and was curious to see how it had changed. We were intrigued to learn that it's one of only 30 restaurants listed in all the Michelins (currently with a "plate", not a star) since the Guide's inception. It also benefited from being almost directly across the street from our hotel. With every other dining option requiring a fairly strenuous walk or climb, I think my husband wanted a night off.

They get points for effort. The food is tasty and well presented, the dining room grand and elegant. But it all had an aura of trying too hard. This was actually the time I felt most acutely that the island was living up to its "trapped in the past" reputation. Though the hotel had certainly moved on from my visit, when it was all faded grandeur and good value for money. Now the rooms are £300+ per night (there's a reason we stayed across the street), the lobby gleams with marble and a man in a white DJ plays classics on a baby grand. The dining room appears to have been redecorated recently, but the style ... with its striped wallpapers, grand curtains and old masters art reproductions ...  is solidly fin de siècle. It feels like you've fallen into an Agatha Christie mystery set in Cannes. The menu, however, feels like London five or 10 years ago. Remember when everything was built up from a precise rectangle down the middle of the plate, with a paint brush of sauce beneath? Remember when every meal seemed to have beetroot and whipped goat's cheese?

We have no regrets about ordering the tasting menu with matching wine and champagne flight, and found its £82 price tag good value compared to similar on the mainland. (I'd expect to pay around £120 for similar anywhere in the orbit of London.) But we were surprised at the almost Fawlty Towers reverence we got once we ordered, as if nobody ever really went in for the tasting menu. The beetroot was preceded by a creamy soup and followed by cured salmon and a dish of pork three ways before a palate-cleansing parfait, a cheese plate and a rhubarb crumble souffle that was delicious. The last was probably the dish of the night, but took far too long to arrive at the table. Service was fantastically genial but not terribly informed. Nobody could tell us much about what was on our plates beyond the name of the dish, and we flummoxed not one but two waitstaff with the not-unusual question of what order they recommended we eat our cheese in. But most irritating was uneven pacing of the courses with vast gaps between a few that meant we finished much of our promptly-poured wine pairing before the food ever turned up. (A good sommelier would have been coordinating with the kitchen, or topping up when the delay got excessive.)

If you're feeling celebratory and want the multi-course pomp, it's a bit of a giggle at a decent price point, and the wine pairings are surprisingly good. But on pure quality of food I'd go to either of the restaurants above first.

FOR A TWEE TEA After moving to England, I was somewhat distressed to learn that the English dismissed much of what I had treasured while sightseeing as twee: excessively or affectedly quaint, pretty, or sentimental. Well, sorry ... we can all use a bit of childhood-channeling, fairy-believing, pastel-coloured twee in our lives sometimes. The Old Thatch Tea Shop in Shanklin Old Village is the place to find it. It's no accident "old" appears in that description twice. It's the whole point. I don't think this place has changed at all since I visited 30 years ago. The tough-but-kind, white-haired ladies running it even look the same. Maybe they're Westworld-style robots.


There's a thatched roof. Lace doilies. Shelves of novelty tea pots and miniature British cottages. Roses twine on china. The garden is infested with fairy figurines. There's a lot of pink. They also serve a damned fine tea. Sometimes, tradition is beloved for a reason. Three tiers of goodies. Loose leaf tea in a proper pot. Lovingly cut sandwiches generously filled with fresh ingredients. Light and moreish Victoria sponge. Fluffy scones with clotted cream and home made jam. Of course, the first time I was here, there was no Englishman raising his eyebrow at my "incorrect" sequencing of the toppings on the scone. You can call me an ignorant American, and I'll just keep putting the cream on first, thank you.

FOR PROPER PUBBAGE If there was only a coral reef off shore, the Spyglass Inn would pretty much be my perfect seaside pub. Inside, a warren of cozy, nautically-themed rooms. A venerable old bar that serves a range of modern brews and alcohols that belies its darkened wood. (The local Mermaid Gin has a pop-up party space on site.) Two levels of terraces wrap around the building, offering outdoor seating hanging over much of the southwest edge of the bay with views down a long stretch of sand. Dogs are allowed. Jolly Rogers fly from flagpoles and a few novelty pirate statues offer classic beach holiday photo opportunities. We ate here once. Burgers perfectly respectable, clearly mass-produced patties bought in bulk, with a pile of tasty chips too big for most appetites to finish. It's what I was expecting on the Isle of Wight, and had we not discovered better options we could have been content here every night, working our way through pies, curries and fish and chips.

But the food isn't the point. This is a place for drinking a pint in the sun while listening to the waves and dreaming of a a lottery win that allows you to spend the rest of your life circumnavigating the globe (or maybe just the Caribbean) in a luxury sailing yacht. Of course, you'd turn up on the Isle of Wight for Cowes. The Spyglass accommodates that daydreaming admirably.

Osborne House, Ventnor Botanic Garden are my IOW must-sees

If you're only going to indulge in one bit of sightseeing on the Isle of Wight, make it Osborne House. Its history, size and sheer magnificence leaves everything else on the island in its wake. If you're a fan of the British royal family and their palaces, it justifies a trip to the island just to see it.

No other British royal palace gives you such an intimate, personal connection to its builders. Most layer the tastes and additions of successive generations. The Royal Pavilion at Brighton gets very close to the mind of George IV, but this is even better. George outsourced his desires to others to make real, and spent a relatively brief time living in the result. Victoria and Albert were personally involved with every aspect of Osborne from the foundations up and used this as a beloved family home for decades.

Most of the building is Albert's design, brought to life by London builder Thomas Cubitt. The royal couple took painstaking care with the interiors, many of the prized pieces being birthday or Christmas presents they gave to each other over the years. Little has changed since Victoria died, though almost everything has been beautifully restored over the past 30 years. (The palace was grand, but precariously shabby, when I first visited in the late '80s.)

It's the combination of intimacy and grandeur that makes Osborne worth visiting, but do brace yourself for the price. Unless you're an English Heritage member, adults are £18.50 each. I think it's worth it.

Though it seems impossibly grand to modern eyes, this was meant to be an intimate family home for The Queen, Prince Consort a growing brood of children that eventually numbered nine. If you're familiar with London's Pimlico or Belgravia, both packed with Cubitt buildings (and a very fine gastropub named after him), this is actually easy to see. Osborne is an over-sized Italianate villa of the same type the affluent upper middle classes were building for themselves in London. Vast servants’ quarters in the basement and at the back, practical working rooms on the ground floor, grand entertainment spaces on the first, grown up bedrooms on the second and the children tucked away in a nursery right out of Mary Poppins or Peter Pan up top.

To contemporary eyes it would have been bold and modern. Albert turned his back on the "safe" style of Roman neo-classicism to embrace an eclectic mix of Greek revival and Italian Renaissance. The interiors are vividly colourful and barely a square inch is left undecorated. If your personal tastes veer towards Scandi minimalism, this place may make you a bit queasy.

Furnishings and a vast array of collectibles show off the couples' love of history and high culture: bronzes and marbles reproduce the most famous works of antiquity; paintings show significant events from the past; micro-mosaics, glass and porcelain celebrate the best modern workmanship. There's a stunning Venetian glass chandelier here that looks like a flower garden has exploded into a mushroom cloud in the centre of the room. Ironically, the surroundings are so lavishly decorated that it just fades in.

It's not all high culture, however. Victoria's watercolours from the couple's travels hang next to old masters; the equivalent of holiday snaps. Paintings of peasants and everyday genre scenes balance the worthy subjects. One of my favourites is an Italian peasant girl, more striking in her natural beauty than all the portraits of queens and princesses.

The modernity included electricity, some of England’s earliest flushing toilets and plumbed baths, and a clever “U” shaped dining, lounging and billiards suite which anticipates today’s passion for open plan living. There was an important reason for the last, however. In this innovatively-shaped room, the court could still technically be in attendance on the queen while being out of her sight and hearing, giving Victoria some rare privacy.

The tour includes the family's private apartments, where their personalities are revealed even more. Albert's room carries on the German tradition of the kunstkammer, the cabinet of curiousities in which items from the natural world, antiquities, religious memorabilia and small works of art mixed to show off the owner's "Renaissance Man" credentials. Victoria's private space is both more feminine and more religious, but that also no doubt reflects the fact that she lived to into her 80s, whilst Albert's rooms were frozen in time after his death at just 42. Victoria died here, with a painting of Albert on his funeral bier above her. Macabre but touching. The office they shared between their private rooms is particularly revealing, packed with all the bits and pieces they loved the most. Nothing banishes the idea of Victoria as a prude faster than the enormous and titillating painting of a group of lovely ladies in various stages of undress at their bath that hangs directly across from the desks. It was a birthday present from Victoria to Albert.

All of these rooms, and the nurseries above, overlook a rolling green landscape that gently falls towards Osborne Beach and the Solent. The scene reminded Albert of the Bay of Naples. That seems a bit of a stretch, particularly as the modern view is dominated by the cluster of Portsmouth's towers across the water, but on a sunny day it's still glorious to see scores of sails skidding across the Solent's almost-Mediterranean blue.

Victoria continued to use Osborne regularly in the four decades after Albert's death, with just one major change. As India's importance grew and she was named its empress, Victoria became increasingly entranced with the sub-continent. She added an Indian-inspired wing to reflect her fascination, dominated by the astonishing Durbar room. This enormous space drips with ornate plasterwork and outrageous decorative detail. It's the architectural equivalent of Chicken Tikka Masala; something that's supposed to be Indian but is actually terribly English. The hallways leading to it are full of beautiful portraits of Victoria's Indian subjects, from jewel-bedecked maharajas to humble labourers. They're almost as fascinating as the remarkable room beyond.

Osborne is surrounded by an enormous estate full of gardens, woodlands, views and walking paths, almost all accessible with dogs. (They’re not, of course, allowed in the house, but there are a decent number of shady parking spots so you can leave them in a well-ventilated car.) You can easily spend a full day here and many people come with picnics to enjoy the remarkable views. The seriously horticulturally-minded, however, should head to the other side of the island to get their garden fix.

The Ventnor Botanical Garden is nestled in the southern edge of the Undercliff, a geological feature of the Isle of Wight that creates a micro-climate that is, on average, drier and 5 degrees (C) warmer than the surrounding area. The result: semi-tropical gardening conditions typical of the Mediterranean. The courtyards, paths and long borders at the heart of this garden remind me more of the Villa Ephrussi de Rothschild on the Côte d'Azur than anything I've seen in England. And I'm guessing that my visit in late May put me there at the garden's peak, with roses, iris and many other flowers in glorious bloom and towering spikes of blue Echium (aka bugloss) making bold architectural statements.

Ventor really gets unique, however, when its inspiration leaves this continent. A South African garden spills down sunny terraces to show off the treasure trove we get from that country. It's a crazy, glorious patchwork of colour. These are plants mostly grown in the UK as annuals but I suspect that here, as in South Africa, they're perennials.

Further down the path comes Australia, where the plants get more exotic and eucalyptus trees frame a beguilingly foreign scene with their ghostly, striped bark. There's a forest of tree ferns and a re-creation of one of the rocks in the outback with ancient, native paintings.

Someone has clearly put a lot of money into this garden recently. You enter through a beautiful, modern facility cut into the hillside with shops, educational spaces and restaurants. The garden advertises two places to eat … a cafe on the top level, with an enormous deck overlooking the gardens below, and a "proper" restaurant called Edulis on the formal patio with pond two stories below … and it was obvious on my visit that tourists were coming just for the dining opportunities.

If only their staffing was equal to their facilities. I visited on a Saturday, at the end of a week of school holidays. Presumably peak time. Yet only the cafe was open, and there appeared to be just three people staffing the whole garden. They'd all shifted onto cafe duty, leaving nobody to sell tickets, plants or a range of lovely housewares in the shop. Even with all those hands to the kitchen pumps, a sizeable crowd was waiting more than 20 minutes to buy coffee or a sandwich. There's enormous potential here for an upscale tourist destination on top of a great garden, but management will need to improve to make it so.

The Ventnor Botanical Garden isn't affiliated with any other institution, so neither English Heritage, Royal Horticultural Society or National Trust cards will help you here. Admission, if you can find someone to pay, is £9.50. I wish I’d realised in advance that they allow dogs on leads, buying your ticket online reduces the price by a pound and the ticket allows a return visit within a week. All of which would have encouraged me to discover this garden near the beginning of our trip, had I only known. I leave you, dear reader, to take advantage of my discovery.