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Brewery bonanza and street eats in Belfast

Move over Guinness, there’s a thirst for a different kind of brew growing in Northern Ireland. Tap into the beer boom at several iconic Belfast establishments on this three hour brewery and street eats tour.

Taste and Tour’s resident beer expert will guide you through the burgeoning local beer and street food scene in Belfast. You’ll visit a range of fantastic craft beer bars and street food venues, tasting at least seven beers and sampling four very different street eats.

Start at Ireland’s oldest independent brewery, Hilden Brewing, where they’ve been perfecting six craft beers over the past 35 years. Next, it’s off to Boundary Brewing, a co-operative that invites beer evangelists to purchase a stake in the business and become co-owners, allowing the crew to experiment with unusual flavours, such as the Pari Gagnat: a saison with seaweed and green tea.

Your final brewery? It’s a surprise and will be revealed on your tour day. Interested? We are too! There’s more to Ireland’s drinking scene than Guinness.

Italian Art Masterclass

Give Michelangelo a run for his money by refining your artistic expertise in the Eternal City. Your journey begins with an introduction to Rome, exploring its numerous piazzas, ruins and cobbled streets. Later you’ll delve into a relief sculpture workshop, using an arsenal of glass and acrylics to create your first masterpiece (definitely too precious to bring home in checked baggage). Private tours of the Vatican Museums and Galleria Borghese will take you into Italy’s rich past to gape at some of the world’s best Renaissance artworks.

Once you’ve fuelled up with inspiration, dive into learning fresco-painting techniques and the delicate art of mosaic. Plenty of free time is provided between classes, so when you’re not nurturing your inner artist, you can hunt down the finest supplì (the local take on arancini) and red wine Rome has to offer – after all, sustenance begets art, right?

Unleash you inner artist.

Walk, hike and pig out in Portugal

Delicious seafood, surprising landscapes, entertaining history and a dash of mythology – Portugal has it all. And there’s no better way to suck the marrow from this bucket-list destination than by hiking it. Meet your guide in Sintra, where colourful palaces freckle the green landscape and twisted, tiled alleyways connect the town’s many tabernas and bakeries.

Later, amble up the Sintra Mountains for a picnic as the sun sinks into the Atlantic Ocean. The next day, wander Europe’s westernmost point, Cabo da Roca, stopping for a dip in the ocean and to fill your belly with clams, prawns and fish served up at a local restaurant by the sand. Take in coves, sample wine from one of Portugal’s oldest cellars, and discover the magic that has drawn nobles to Sintra for centuries. Earn your appetite.

Classic cars take on Italy’s 1000 Miglia

Unlike the infamous Mille Miglia (Thousand Miles) endurance race that was banned in the 1950s following a particularly devastating crash, the annual amateur re-enactment – with the same name – doesn’t slap down a thrill a minute. What it does boast, however, is one of the most beautiful rally routes in the world, traversing a course of cobbled streets, Tuscan hills and lofty mountain passes. The event draws thousands of spectators each year, all of whom share a love of classic cars: only models that participated in the original races – held between 1927 and 1957 – are welcome to enter. Even so, more than 400 teams cruise in with their vintage rides from all corners of the globe.

While the route varies slightly each year, these ancient engines always rev to life during May in Brescia, at the foothills of the Alps, where motor races have been held for more than a hundred years. If you don’t happen to own a 1951 Jaguar XK120 or a 1927 Bugatti T40, make for one of the checkpoints and watch these charming beauties roll by.

Get to know Italy in winter

We’re often so quick to associate Italy with summer, but we’ve we’re saying ‘no grazie’ to melted gelato and scorching pebble beaches in favour of the country’s off-season – winter! Keen to share a quieter side of Italy, Intrepid Travel is offering an eight-day Highlights of Italy in Winter tour beginning in Rome.

You’ll walk the crumbling ruins of Rome, float over Venice, wander the museums of Florence, explore the narrow streets of Pisa, and learn to make pasta in Bologna. And Mother Nature may even send you some snow (although that is extremely rare). There are regular departures between November and March, so if you want to avoid the crowds – and the sweat – this could be the way to go.

Get arty at Sketch

This Mayfair townhouse is actually an adult’s playground in disguise. Flawlessly designed, furnished and finished with an artist’s touch, Sketch offers a range of rooms for the adventurous soul, each with its own theme, bar and menu. Even the dress code is different.

One of its rooms, called The Glade, is reminiscent of a mystical forest, only it serves brunch and cocktails. The room has been decorated with a single twentieth-century French postcard printed onto hundreds of metres of paper and decoupaged to the walls. Order some Coteaux de l’Ardèche rosé and slip into this fairytale setting before moving on to one of the other rooms. We like the dreamy pink setting of the Gallery, decorated with 91 of artist David Shrigley’s works.

Beer gets crafty in Estonia

You might be surprised to hear there’s a craft beer revolution happening in Estonia, and it’s the Põhjala Brewery leading the frothy charge. The team behind Põhjala – several Estonians and a Scotsman – are, of course, beer enthusiasts. Their industrial-style brewery is so impressive, they also offer behind-the-scenes tours so visitors can see fermentation magic taking place. Beers are brewed and aged in oak barrels and many are infused with ingredients like bark and sap straight from Estonian forests.

There are 24 taps pouring the good stuff, ranging from IPAs to barley wine. Meanwhile, a Texas BBQ menu ensures those imbibing remain well fed at all times. Our absolute favourite feature, however, is the on-site sauna, which can be rented by the hour. Gather your mates and a few bevs then kick back while sweating it out. Cheers to that!

Go underground at Korobok

A nondescript door with a sign that says ‘Staff Only’ is the lone clue you’ll get that you’re close to stumbling upon Korobok, a secret underground bar in Moscow. Owned and run by the esteemed White Rabbit Group, who also own Tehnikum next door, Korobok is perhaps best known for being the bar with no menu. Instead, head barman Evgeny Shashin and his team of world-class mixologists will whip up a cocktail in accordance with your preferred tastes.

Each drink also comes with a perfume – carefully curated to enhance the cocktail you’ve ordered. Talk about personalised service! Korobok means boxes, or matchbox, in Russian, which is a telling name considering the bar itself is just a single chamber that looks more like a lounge room. With dark leather couches and dim lighting to create a warm and inviting space, you won’t regret having to search a little to find this watering hole.

Live out all your Outlander fantasies

The Fife Arms Hotel is a Braemar landmark. A former 19th-century Victorian coaching inn, this grand lodge dominates the historic Scottish highlands town. Recently restored to its former glory, it reopened as a 46-room guesthouse in December 2018.

Owners Iwan and Manuela Wirth have worked tirelessly to craft a classically Scottish experience at the Fife Arms, with an emphasis on showcasing seasonal produce (yes, that includes plenty of whiskey), displaying a collection of Scottish art and sharing the history of Braemar through individually designed rooms that pay homage to local people, places and events. Don’t forget to bring your kilt.

When in Rome

Awash with tradition and heritage, and casually studded with historic structures spanning almost three millennia, Rome can feel like a city living on past glories. Many restaurants around the city’s tourist hubs offer lookalike menus with classic Roman dishes like cacio e pepe (pasta served with cheese and pepper), or cona di gelato, which goes for about AU$6 around the Colosseum and Spanish Steps.

But just one metro stop south of the ancient world’s most impressive stadium, chefs in an emerging neighbourhood are reinterpreting the city’s culinary traditions with a contemporary attitude. Prices are lower, flavours are bigger, and there’s a good chance the refreshing limone ice-cream on offer is crafted from citrus fruit foraged directly from local orchards.

On the River Tiber’s southeastern bank, grittily authentic Testaccio has long been a proud working-class neighbourhood. More than a century ago, the area housed Europe’s biggest slaughterhouse, and many of the abattoir’s lower-paid workers – dubbed la vaccinara – were gifted the quinto quarto (fifth quarter) of the cow and pig parts no one else wanted. Tripe, oxtail and other organs were incorporated into traditional Roman cuisine, and now Testaccio’s eateries and market stalls are resurrecting these classic ingredients with a modern twist.

The Trapizzino empire incorporates two stores in New York, but the original Testaccio location is still the best. After merging the triangular shape of traditional tramezzino sandwiches with pizza dough, Roman chef Stefano Callegari crafted hearty fillings to accompany his pillowy pockets of fluffy pizza bianca. New wave fillings include Ethiopian-style zighini (beef stew), but the flavours from the days of la vaccinara are the most popular with Trapizzino’s loyal regulars. Washed down with craft beers from Italy’s Baladin Brewery, tramezzino crammed with tender oxtail or tripe, tomato, pecorino cheese and mint are regularly devoured by revellers overflowing from Testaccio’s late-night clubs and bars.

For somewhere to eat during the day, Mercato Testaccio is an essential destination. Fruit and produce vendors offer fresh, local ingredients, and at stalls selling some of the area’s best street food, chefs channel the market’s historic roots into their reinvented Roman cuisine. If you dig a little deeper, you’ll also find some of Rome’s best Sicilian flavours.

There’s more sandwich action at Mordi e Vai, with panini crammed with an ever-changing range of fillings. Mainstream flavours include spicy salsiccia (sausage) or polpette (meatballs) in a rich tomato sauce, both best enjoyed when the hearty fillings soak through Mordi e Vai’s crisp ciabatta buns. Traditional cucina Romana is expressed through more challenging fillings like coratella e carciofi (a robust mix of heart, lung and artichoke) and the classic flavours of trippa alla Romana (Roman-style tripe), cooked slowly to a creamy texture capable of converting even the most ardent of tripe sceptics.