Five places that changed my life: Nina Caplan

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This was published 5 years ago

Five places that changed my life: Nina Caplan

By Julietta Jameson
Nina Caplan.

Nina Caplan.

LONDON, ENGLAND

My parents arrived from Melbourne in 1967, before they had children, and decided to stay. I have never managed to love the weather (must be my thin Australian blood), but London was a terrific city to grow up in. I boated in Regent's Park and saw Richard Eyre's amazing production of Guys & Dolls at the National Theatre; later, I learned how to drive by braving Trafalgar Square, my dad quaking in the passenger seat (it has since been pedestrianised; I hope that's a coincidence). Now, being a travel journalist helps me to escape the weather, but it's still a great place to live.

PARIS, FRANCE

In 1989, when I was 16, my mother took me to Paris for the bicentenary of the French Revolution. I fell in love with the food, the art, the self-confident architecture: the Pompidou Centre making external decoration of all its internal pipes, the beautiful classical arches of the Louvre surrounding a funky modern glass pyramid. Before university I came back to improve my French, walked into a cinema at random and came out obsessed with the New Wave films of the 1960s. After university I became a film critic; that trip to Paris is largely responsible.

MALAGA, SPAIN

Teenage holidays were often in southern Spain, conveniently near a golf course (my father was a keen golfer, a passion, unlike his love of wine, that I didn't inherit). Here, I tried grilled swordfish for the first time, as well as tiny, lightly battered whitebait. I was enchanted by the Andalusian lifestyle: eating late and well, drinking copiously but without drunkenness, then strolling home through streets scented with orange blossom, and I still am.

BURGUNDY, FRANCE

Years ago, a newspaper asked me to cycle through Burgundy's vineyards for a story. The scenery was stunning, the cycling easy (the steeper the hill, the better the wine, so roads and cycle routes are all on the flat) and I determined to go back every year. Then I fell in love with a man who had four young children growing up there, so now, in the most unlikely circumstances, I do.

ROME, ITALY

We took a trip to Rome with the stepchildren in 2015, and for me, Titus's Arch was the revelation. It was built to celebrate Emperor Titus's victory in the Jewish Wars in the first century AD, and its inner curve is carved with a victory parade, the Jewish slaves subjugated, the booty held aloft. That booty, including the seven-branched candlestick, the Menorah, from the lost Temple of Jerusalem, got me thinking about wandering Jews and wandering vines and the connections between them, and the result was a book on wine, modern travel, and Ancient Rome.

Nina Caplan is an award-winning journalist and wine writer. Her new book The Wandering Vine: Wine, The Romans and Me is published by Bloomsbury.

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