'Be patient, for the world is broad and wide'

Simon Calder’s Travel Week [View in browser]( [The Independent]( [Travel] Simon Calder’s Travel Week [Simon Calder]( Written by Simon Calder | April 23, 2021 Hello, and thank you for signing up to The Independent’s weekly travel newsletter. “Be patient, for the world is broad and wide.” Shakespeare, born 457 years ago today, wrote those wise words in Romeo and Juliet (Act 3 Scene 3). Whether you hope to escape for fair Verona, Hamlet’s princely castle in Elsinore or a dream midsummer in Athens, patience is an essential virtue right now. Trawling through coronavirus infection spreadsheets published by the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control isn’t exactly living the travel dream. But I have been doing a fair amount of number-crunching to try to predict where on this broad, wide world [you and I might be able to visit – and when](. A reminder of the hurdles involved in an overseas holiday: your preferred destination must be prepared to welcome you without too many obstructions, and the barriers to re-entry must be sufficiently low to make a leisure trip worthwhile. Midsummer day's dream? Athens in June, photographed from the foot of the Acropolis The UK’s success in the European Jab Contest means that British travellers are looking increasingly attractive. We may collectively pose a little more risk than people from Iceland, Israel and Gibraltar, but there are a lot more of us and we lover our hols. So forget visions of European unity: as with the Eurovision Song Contest, the competition to win the tourism crown will involve politicking and backstabbing, sadly without the elaborate costumes, as nations seek to out-manoeuvre each other for the souls and sun-starved bodies of the British. Faro shore: the lagoon between the airport and the beach in Faro, the arrival point for Portugal's Algarve Coming home is the emotional as well as geographical opposite of heading for new horizons – and these difficult days returning to the UK is logistically tricky as well. Earlier this morning [India became the 40th country to be “red listed” by the government](, requiring 11 nights in a quarantine hotel for anyone arriving from there. Towards the other end of the colour spectrum, travellers and the travel industry are waiting to find out who has made the green list. Among the major tourism destinations, my top three to join the travel dream team on 17 May are Portugal, Spain’s Balearic islands and Morocco – though right now I rate the chance of any of them going green as less than 50 per cent. I look forward to being proved wrong. Destination of the week: Graffiti Tunnel, London Tunnel vision: a manifestation in Leake Street, London You can always find light at the end of the Graffiti Tunnel. The official name of the thoroughfare is Leake Street, London SE1, and connects York Road with Lower Marsh. But an easier way to envisage it is as the tunnel beneath the throat of Waterloo station – where the railway lines from platforms 1 to 24 converge en route to suburban southwest London and as far as Devon. In 2008, legend dictates, the street artist Banksy first splashed the dank, dark walls with paint. Since then it has become the UK’s leading gallery for constantly changing art, with a constant aroma of spray paint mixed with marijuana smoke. Next time you are in the capital, track down the gallery beneath the tracks. Deals of the week - The optimum time to visit Croatia’s sublime Istrian peninsula is late September. The waters of the Adriatic are at their warmest, having been gently heated all summer, the crowds have dissipated and the truffle season is getting under way. Tui has a week in Porec – which boasts the Euphrasian Basilica, a sixth-century marble masterpiece – for £340 per person including flights from Doncaster (with checked baggage) on 18 September, transfers and a studio at the Laguna Bellevue Apartments. - This weekend London King's Cross station, the southern hub for the East Coast main line, is closed for engineering work. Looking to summer, though, the main operator on the UK’s flagship rail line, LNER, now offers cheap Advance tickets many months ahead. On 1 September. London to Edinburgh is available for a range of middle-of-the-day departures for just £35. Returning two days later, you can get a flying start on the first southbound train – the only four-hour journey, with a single stop in Newcastle – for £94 in first class (railcard discounts apply). LNER says: “In the unlikely event our train times move slightly we’ll let you know well in advance and be happy to change or refund your booking for free.” Question of the week: Australia, this year? Question: I have speculatively booked a flight from London Heathrow to Sydney on 21 December. Will I be permitted to travel? Answer: Australia has just opened a “travel bubble” (officially a “safe travel area”) with New Zealand, which will benefit the tourism industries of both countries. But unlike many of the nations over which a flight to Sydney will travel, Australia is not desperate to allow overseas visitors from anywhere other than New Zealand. “Australia is in no hurry to open up those borders,” the prime minister, Scott Morrison said in a TV briefing this week. The premier wants to protect “the way we are living in this country, which is so different to the rest of the world”. In tune with that message, Tourism Australia is talking up international travel from 2022 onwards; not before. It may be that UK visitors are particularly favoured if Covid rates continue to fall here, and being vaccinated may ease restrictions. But I would be pleasantly surprised if Australia opened up to us before the end of 2021. 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