Travel: Stoned Love in Negril

SUDDENLY it’s five am, neither of us can see straight and Beyoncé’s Crazy in Love is booming out of the battered bass bins that teeter above us like so many rickety skyscrapers. The crowd goes bananas. Time for another drink.

Jamaica takes the birthdays of its heroes seriously and Bob Marley’s birthday is the cue for celebrations right across the island. The main event in Negril is an open air all-nighter fifty yards up the road from our hotel. The mighty Stone Love soundsystem rock a good-natured but progressively more boisterous crowd of fantastically well dressed locals in their Friday night finery and lamentably shoddy tourists in their day-glo holiday drabery.

Travel: Ramblas Association in Barcelona

THINGS rarely go to plan in Barcelona.

It’s the start of the city’s annual Mercé festival and Mayor Joan Clos is trying to make a speech. Unfortunately, as well as hundreds of local culture vultures and tourists waiting for the appearance of the neighbourhood Gigantes, Plaça de Sant Jaume is also packed with anarchists, trade unionists and community activists protesting against the Forum, police brutality, new hotel developments, Mayor Clos himself and, well, what else have you got?