The railway up the Douro Valley from Porto is probably also the most scenic rail ride in Portugal
The railway up the Douro Valley from Porto is probably also the most scenic rail ride in Portugal, and I discovered two years ago that you can even get a postcard of Pinhao station in Cascais, near Lisbon, miles away, simply as a supreme example of azulejos tiling - in this case, pictures of harvesting and shipping the local grapes for making port wine in the days before the railway was built."Terminal trajectoryRichard Madge of Bexhill writes in praise of termini:"I have always thought that a small number of stations are special, due to the sense of arrival you get, rather than the range of possible travel destinations that they serve. Usually, they are stations where you can go no further by train: like Venice Santa Lucia, where the waters of the Grand Canal lap on the station's steps; and Istanbul Sirkeci next to the Bosphorus."Saudi splendourMalcolm Stewart of Manchester commends both Riyadh and Dammam:"Late 20th-century Arabic splendour with much marble and vast copper canopies and decoration. Massive halls, air-conditioned, no train sheds - who needs them when there is no rain and only three services a day each way between the two? Ticketing and operation are at the opposite end of the spectrum to the rest of the world: handwritten tickets backed up by a computerised system and full military escort in each carriage."West Coast WondersMegan Dorcas of London praises the Pacific Coast line through California:"It will be interesting to see whether the new US president is any more enthusiastic about railways than his predecessors. Let's hope he is, so that the gems strung along the coast of Southern California can be preserved. Besides Union Station in Los Angeles, the Santa Fe depot in San Diego, close to the Mexican border, is a grand Hispanic symphony, while Santa Barbara's station is a mission-style gem that provides a superb gateway to a marvellous town.
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It's just a shame that the trains along the route suffer from Railtrack-style delays."Tonight on BBC Radio 4 at 9pm, the Archive Hour features railway stations of the British countryside. Cutting through nose-to-tail traffic makes you feel fantastic wherever you are. But when you're slicing through Rome's car-filled streets it's particularly thrilling. First there's the street-cred of joining the city's thousands of scooter riders, from trendy teenagers and designer-clad twentysomethings, to OAPs who've been scootering through Rome all their lives. Then there's the personal satisfaction of negotiating the labyrinthine streets of the city without sustaining serious injury. And finally there's the constant thrill of spying an anc-ient monument at every turn.
Cutting through nose-to-tail traffic makes you feel fantastic wherever you are. But when you're slicing through Rome's car-filled streets it's particularly thrilling. First there's the street-cred of joining the city's thousands of scooter riders, from trendy teenagers and designer-clad twentysomethings, to OAPs who've been scootering through Rome all their lives. Then there's the personal satisfaction of negotiating the labyrinthine streets of the city without sustaining serious injury.
And finally there's the constant thrill of spying an anc-ient monument at every turn. We rented our scooter from a small shop off Campo dei Fiori, a picturesque square just east of the banks of the Tiber which bisects the city north to south. As most of the tourist sites, except for the Vatican and the Castel St Angelo, are on this eastern side of the river, it's a good place to start.A few scooter tips - test the brakes before you leave the rental shop (Rome with poor brakes is suicide), choose the newest bike you can find (old ones will be very old in mileage terms), and choose one with a visor, especially if you're going out of the city.I would also make another strong recommendation. If you have not ridden a scooter before, or if you have any hint of my self-diagnosed condition - "directional dyslexia" - do not try this alone. Find, if you can, a travelling companion who has good orientation skills, knowledge of the city and experience on a scooter. The gladiator culture lives on in Rome - and unless one of you has a natural global positioning system in your head (and luckily my partner Michael did) you will be thrown to the metaphorical street lions. Do as the Romans do - never hesitate, and be aware that after dark red traffic lights are more decorative than instructive.On a scooter, Rome is suddenly a very small place.
