Eddi Fiegel is an award-winning travel writer who specialises in Spain, France, America and the UK. She lived in Barcelona for several years, speaks fluent Spanish and French and has family in Andalucia and the Costa Brava.

She is the Costa Brava ‘Destination Expert’ for The Daily and Sunday Telegraph.

See Eddi's Telegraph Travel Guide to the region, including Costa Brava restaurant reviews, Costa Brava hotel reviews, as well as an overview of the region, attractions and nightlife here:

She also writes for many newspapers and magazines as well as The Telegraph, including The Times, The Guardian, The i, National Geographic Traveller, Wanderlust and Family Traveller Magazine.

Read some of her features here:

In Search of Monet’s Wild Landscapes - A Glorious Art Adventure in Central France - The Guardian

Rouen, Paris and London are better-known Monet destinations, but rural La Creuse’s rugged gorges, spectacular lake and medieval castle really captivated the artist

As my train inched its way into the station at La Souterraine, some three hours south of Paris on a blisteringly hot June afternoon, the woman in the seat next to me asked: “Vous descendez ici?” Her expression seemed to say “Really? You’re getting off here?”

Read the full article here

Everybody’s Talking About this Roman Ceiling - and it’s not the Sistine Chapel - The Sunday Times

The Eternal City has a new eye-catching ceiling thanks to one of Britain’s best-loved contemporary artists

On a gloriously warm May afternoon in Rome, as tourists queued to crane their necks at Michelangelo’s famous Sistine Chapel ceiling and taxis honked their horns as they whizzed past the the Italian capital’s piazzas and grandiose monuments, a few miles to the northeast I was about to see the unveiling of a very different style of ceiling painting.

Read the full article here

The Spanish Resort You’re Wrong to Avoid - The Telegraph

Its cheap and cheerful reputation for hosting sunburnt Brits belies the reality – Benidorm has changed for the better

"I can recommend the egg cooked at 65 degrees, with foie, truffle sauce and Pedro Ximenez," said the waiter as I sat looking out to sea on the terrace of the D-Vora Restaurant in Benidorm. "It’s the house speciality."

I wasn’t entirely convinced by the sound of it but it looked like the middle-aged Spanish couple at the table next to me had taken his recommendation and were enjoying it, as their soft chatter mingled with the sound of gentle bossa nova from the restaurant.

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Beyond Barcelona! The new Grand Tour of Catalonia which winds for 2000km around its lesser known glories - The i

I was standing in the knave of a small 12th century church in the green, pasture-filled valley near the Catalan Pyrenees when suddenly I heard the heavy wooden door close behind me and I was left in the dark.

Carry on reading here

The city that made The Beatles (and it isn’t Liverpool) - The Telegraph

‘Put your hands here, on the bar” says Hans, a dapper 68 year old sporting a jauntily peaked cap and a twinkle in the eye, as he lays my palms on a chipped but still varnished wooden bar top. “Here is where John stood, here Paul, here George and here Ringo. All of them were standing right here, touching the bar you’re touching now.”…

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Le Touquet - A nostalgic return to the chic French resort Favoured by writers and royalty - The Telegraph

I was five years old the first time I visited Le Touquet – the chichi seaside French town just south of Calais that’s so near to the capital that it’s subtitled “Paris Plage”. For several years at Easter, my parents and sister and I would swap the tame suburbia of north-west London for the coastal chic of the French Atlantic. To me, as a young girl, Le Touquet became synonymous with the beach, searching for Easter eggs in the gardens of the grand Westminster hotel where we stayed, and some seemingly interminable meals of the old-fashioned, starchily formal French kind. 

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Binisafúller, Menorca: Secret Seaside - The Telegraph

If your idea of beachside heaven is a secluded cove laced with pristine, silky white sand, knotted pines and clear, teal water, look no further than Binisafúller. Although you’re less than half an hour’s drive away from the airport in Menorca’s capital Mahon, you’d never guess; this really does feel like an idyllic island hideaway.

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Alternative LA - The Standard

"Say the words Los Angeles and most people think of Hollywood glamour, David Hockney swimming pools and the sanitised glitz of Beverly Hills.

But just half an hour's drive north-east of the city, in the areas of Highland Park, Eagle Rock and Pasadena you'll find another LA where vintage clothes boutiques, cycle shops and tattoo parlours sit amid Moorish Gothic follies and Arts and Crafts bungalows..........

Read the rest of The Standard feature here:

A Quieter Costa - Catalunya's Baix Emporda - The Standard

"Can you taste the saltiness, that almost sea-saltiness in the white wine?” asks Marta, proprietor of Can Sais, a small rural winery, north of Barcelona. “It’s because we’re so close to the sea,” she explains.

Now I know oenophiles can get a little florid in their wine descriptions but I see what Marta means. We’re sitting on the terrace of the 18th-century stone farmhouse in Vall-Llobrega, which is both Marta’s home and the winery which has been in her family for ­generations. It’s a beautifully warm day and although all we can see for miles are the sentry lines of twig-like vines, you can taste the closeness of the sea.......

Read Eddi Fiegel's feature for The Standard here

Arts, Film & Music Journalism

Eddi has written on art, architecture, music and film for The Guardian, The Independent, The i, The Sunday Times, FT, Mojo Magazine and the Art Newspaper amongst others.

Here are a few of her music and film features: 

‘Filming Blur was like making a wildlife documentary’ - The i

Toby L, the director of the new film Blur: To the End, tells Eddi Fiegel about witnessing laughs, vulnerability and 40-year friendships

There’s a scene in the new documentary Blur: To the End where the band are listening back to the tracks they’ve just recorded and suddenly we become aware that singer Damon Albarn is silently weeping. “I think something has been dislodged within the group emotionally”, says guitarist Graham Coxon. “A boulder has fallen out and it’s 40 years’ worth of stuff that now rolls down towards us”.

See here to read the rest of the feature

I spent the day at David Crosby’s ranch – but I had to pass a test before he let me in - The i

At his ranch in California, the renowned musician, who has died at the age of 81, showed both his outsize ego and swagger as well as his mischievousness and warmth

With most interviewees, what they actually say is what you remember in years to come. Occasionally however, the preamble to the interview can be almost as memorable. That was certainly the case when I met David Crosby.

By the time I arrived at his remote ranch in Southern California in the summer of 2002, I had seriously doubted our interview was ever going to happen.

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Sir Kenneth Branagh interview - The i

'Nobody in my family talked about the riots ...

“It was a defining moment in my life,” says Kenneth Branagh, “and it became clear to me, that that was the last point at which I happily knew who I was. Since then it feels as though a series of masks and disguises have been worn.”

Branagh is telling me about his new, autobiographical film Belfast, which he both wrote and directed, and in particular, about his family’s decision, at the onset of The Troubles in 1969, when he was just nine years old, to leave the city he was born and raised in.

Read the rest of the feature here

Susan Sarandon interview - The i

Hedy Lamarr was a 1940s film siren who invented the technology behind Wi-Fi. She’s just the kind of woman Hollywood should be celebrating, Susan Sarandon tells Eddi Fiegel

“You have to choose to be beautiful or smart,” says Susan Sarandon, “If you’re smart, you’re not very feminine. I don’t think I was ever the most beautiful, so I got character parts, which allowed me to survive.”

Read the whole feature here

Françoise Hardy interview - France Magazine

The singer Françoise Hardy who had her first hit as a teenager in the ye ye era, has just released her 24th studio album. She tells Eddi Fiegel about her life and career.

Read the feature here

Nick Cave / 20,000 Days on Earth - The Independent

"At the end of the 20th century, I cease to be a human being," says Nick Cave as he wakes up alongside his wife, Susie, in the crisp white sheets of their bed at their Brighton home. .....

Read the rest of The Independent feature on the Nick Cave documentary 20,000 Days on Earth here: 

Laurel Canyon - The Independent

Once upon a time, there was a wooded wonderland where long-haired men and women wore flowers in their hair and often little else, where wood cabins nestled among cypresses and bougainvillea and the sound of birdsong mixed with guitars.....

Read the rest of Eddi Fiegel's feature for The Independent here:

The Rolling Stones : Exile on Main Street - The Independent

For many bands, the descent into drug-fuelled debauchery signals the beginning of swift creative decline. But for the Rolling Stones, the haze of the early 1970s arguably produced their finest work.

Nearly 40 years later, Exile on Main St – a gloriously louche and wilfully hedonistic double-album often cited as one of the greatest rock'n'roll albums of all time – is due to be reissued, complete with 10 previously unheard additional tracks. A BBC documentary will also air later this month, exploring the making of what is frequently considered the Stones' masterwork.

The story of Exile goes back to the summer of 1971, when, in order to avoid what they considered unreasonably hefty tax bills in Britain, the group decamped, in semi- voluntary "exile", to Villefranche-sur-Mer in the South of France........

Read more of Eddi Fiegel's feature on The Rolling Stones 'Exile on Main Street' here: 

Gil Scott Heron - The Independent

In 1969, the 19-year old Gil Scott-Heron told the dean of Lincoln University that he wanted to halt his degree studies temporarily in order to finish writing a novel. The dean insisted he see a psychiatrist. The likelihood of his getting the novel in print seemed minimal, but a year later in 1970, The Vulture – an impressively crafted urban noir, was published to critical acclaim..........

To continue reading Eddi's piece on Gil Scott Heron, click here: 

Lalo Schifrin - The Guardian

"I wanted to create the sound of excitement," remembers the composer Lalo Schifrin of the staccato, edge-of-your-seat rhythms to his theme for Mission: Impossible. "It had to sound like energy, promise, anticipation." And it did.......

Read the rest of Eddi Fiegel's interview with Lalo Schifrin for The Guardian here: 

Bernard Herrmann and Alfred Hitchcock - The Guardian

Think of the shower scene in Psycho and what comes into your mind? Almost certainly it'll be the look of terror on Janet Leigh's face accompanied by the nails-scraping-down-a-blackboard screeches of composer Bernard Herrmann's score. So seamless was the marriage of Herrmann's sound with Hitchcock's image that watching the scene you couldn't be sure where Norman Bates's knife attack ended and those nagging violins began......

You can read the rest of Eddi's Guardian feature on Hermann and Hitchock here: 

Art and Architecture Features

Frank Gehry interview - The i

Frank Gehry on his new ‘twist of tinfoil’ tower, Luma Arles: ‘I’ll never make another building like this’

As his showstopping new building is unveiled, the world’s best-known architect talks about the challenges and being inspired by Van Gogh.

This was not easy,” says Frank Gehry. “It’s been a long and interesting, sometimes difficult journey, but great too and I’m proud of what we’ve created here.”

The man who is arguably the most famous architect in the world is talking about the challenges of his latest creation – a tower made of 11,000 light-reflecting stainless-steel rectangles, that rises up above the Southern French town of Arles, like a giant twist of tinfoil, shimmering in the intense Mediterranean sunlight.

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James Ensor Anniversary for The Art Newspaper

Salvador Dalí House Museum for The Art Newspaper