Anna Chancellor | Celebrating Life and Death in Mexico

0:00You're listening to Travel Secrets with Tanya Rose, the podcast that shares wisdom for fellow travelers.

0:09Welcome to Travel Secrets with me, Tanya Rose, the podcast sharing wisdom for fellow travelers. Each week, I ask my guests to reveal their six travel secrets and the holidays and adventures that surround them. I would just like to say thank you to Mason Rose, the sales and communication agency that represents some of the finest hotels around the world for partnering with Travel Secrets, the podcast. Today, my guest is the wonderful British actress, Anna Chancellor, famed for so many amazing things. You're being jilted at the altar in four weddings and a funeral. We were talking earlier about karaoke, which you were in with my son's godfather, Albert Finney.

0:49We've just bumped into James Norton and you were with him in Granchester. The list goes on and on and on and you're in a wonderful play at the moment in Richmond. I know because I've already done lots of research and listened to lots of your tales that you will have some amazing travel tales but some poignant ones too. So welcome to Travel Secrets. Thank you very much for having me. Thank you for coming and before we actually get into the Travel Secrets perhaps you can just tell us a bit about yourself and how travel has impacted the person you've become, how you grew up with travel. Let's just talk about you.

1:19Well I suppose when I was young my father was a keen traveler he my parents were divorced when I was young and he used to have to take four of us on holiday and he would drive to what he would call the continent I've never heard anyone else call it the continent and where was Europe oh to the continent um and we would have these rather sort of hysterical journeys with him where he would be hysterical and we would be kind of out of control children and I remember once we were in Lake Como you were you were talking about that he was an antiquarian book dealer and he would drive his books around the continent um sort of slightly schmoozing countesses and things on the way and he would leave us in the car I think he felt that children were going to be a hindrance anyway he'd disappear for hours I remember me and my brother not exactly setting fire to the car but do you remember when cars had lighters yes and we could i remember i was punching holes in the seats with the lighters and in the ceiling and he would have he would be absolutely furious i'm surprised he left you in the car often he was he was a mixture of sort of fury and negligence and then i remember like one of these contests like oh you're john you have children where have they been they've been in the car for four hours bring them in so we did a lot of traveling with him and sometimes we would just take the train to find him and that would also go really wrong and I remember once four of us and they you know when you travel on the train in Europe they're always like separating the train at Geneva and one bit's going to do it and you have to make sure you're on the right I remember like running to try my poor elder sister I think she's still traumatized by having to sort of corolle us onto the right bit of the train and I do remember once just having so much chewing gum which I'd acquired more and more of throughout the journey and spitting out of the window and getting stuck.

3:13I'm just having to cut my hair. Anyway, it was all quite sort of up and downy. But yeah, we'd, we'd, we'd traveled a lot as kids. Lovely. So let's get into your travel secrets. What's the number one destination that you think everyone should go to once in their lifetime? Well, I don't know necessarily that I have the same taste as other people. I want to hear you. So I suppose the place I have loved really maybe the most, I sort of fall in love with places and I did fall in love with Mexico so should we put Mexico at the top absolutely yeah um and I went there for day of the day I've never been to Mexico have you never no I'm ashamed to say it's top of my list because so many people on this podcast say Mexico City is just so vibrant and so fantastic oh they're unbelievable people the Mexicans you probably have the best experience as a traveler because nobody's that bothered with you yeah absolutely And you actually went for the Day of the Dead, which is a huge festival, isn't it?

4:12We went to Oaxaca, which I had heard was the sort of central place to be. And we took my daughter Poppy's Ashes with us. And she was all very involved anyway, coincidentally with grief and dying and celebration and ritual. So she was very interested in Mexico anyway. But she never went as a person, only as ashes. That's lovely that you actually managed to do that when she was into those rituals. Oh, yes. It was incredibly important. And weirdly, we met Ruby Wax on the airplane. And I managed to get her because we had Alan Rickman was her best friend. With me, he was a great director and I loved him in that capacity very much.

4:56But with Ruby, you know, she'd lost her best friend. And so I said, Ruby, get a picture of Alan printed up and we will make a sort of impromptu shrine. How? And they're very unofficious, the Mexican people. So you could just... You can just kind of do what you... You kind of know they're not going to tell you. I remember saying to somebody, we're sort of full of emotion, saying to some poor Mexican, you're just the best people. You're so unofficious. And you're like, A, what does that mean? B, do I actually care? Oh, how wonderful. So where did you do the shrine? Procession. so people are dressed up to the nines there are people in the streets putting flowers in your hair makeup all that is great and then they take you uh one of the processions there's many things going on all around all around oaxaca and all around mexico i'm sure but they one of them leads you to this incredible cemetery which is very grand and it's got long sort of hallways like a sort of mausoleum full of candles and it's like being in a sort of fellini film or something it's a band playing trumpets I mean I basically love brass bands it's everything I love it's color it's flowers it's brass bands and then it's very tender as people are administering to the graves of their loved ones but they sit around drinking beer smoking laughing but that's how it should be a celebration of life yeah and death so we just found a space and we just I was there also with my niece and she had come with her friends for some reason it was just something I went I'm going and they were like yeah we'll come and um so they're arty and you know good at doing things and so they had bought material from the local shops some crates and we set up a sort of impromptu shrine and then there were quite a few of us and then people had on our shrine they had like dogs their dog their pets a baby a scan of a baby that had never been bought that had you know been stillborn and um read poetry and talked and how wonderful yeah it's it's it's great and alan was a wonderful man too so lovely that that shrine oh alan was very very wonderful deep kind person and he would have fully approved absolutely yeah he would have fully approved and i think your daughter would fully approved yeah she was right behind us and then we actually went to somewhere called mozunti which is on the beach which is a sort of holiday destination but there um somebody told me they've got a beautiful cemetery up there and so I took we took Poppy up there in the middle of the night see I didn't leave her ashes in Oaxaca um I just didn't feel right you have to go what feels right and I found this beautiful tomb of this young boy who had obviously died young and it was a fantastic mural of him and the tomb was just full of flowers and almost like a figure head of like a woman on on the front of a ship I mean they just throw everything in and why I liked it was that they had a stack of plastic chairs around the um around his tomb which meant that the family went there a lot yes and could sit and could sit there and do so we left her ashes with him oh yeah there also is i mean i love markets um so that the the covered market in oaxaca is unbelievable it's hanging with these pianatas and just color and if there's a fish shop there's like a beautiful picture of a shark which somebody is just naturally artistic people yeah very it's just natural for them yeah you know everyone makes a big deal of being an artist here yes but there it's just in their bones it's just a it's just the done thing very lovely yes so that's your destination you think we should all go to what's your most unexpected travel experience well maybe um i sort of had a midlife crisis in my 50s and fell in love absolutely passionately with marseille Oh, did you?

8:47Yes, and actually nearly bought a hotel there. And I kind of bought this hotel or sort of bought it and put like money down for it. And then suddenly thought, what am I doing? I'm an actress. I can't run a hotel. What's wrong with you, Anna? You could pretend. You could act it. I could certainly act it. But you see, acting you do it only for a short amount of time. A hotel might take up sort of quite a lot of your life. So did you go back afterwards? I didn't. That was sort of done and dusted. Once I had just sort of like slightly lost a lot of money on the hotel, which I then couldn't. But I absolutely loved Marseille.

9:23I loved the sort of anarchy of Marseille. And it was one of those places, it is still, I imagine, where the rich people have left the center. And so the center is full of African Arabs and which basically I like being amongst that kind of that culture. Yeah. And the locals. Well, I find that fun. I just find all those bags of spices and, you know, they're just the kind of crazy anarchy of that way of life, sort of breadfruit everywhere and just incredible markets. You see, I love markets, as I've said, and Marseille is full of them. Well, the bag you came with today, the green bag, did you get that in the market?

10:07Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's fabulous. Yeah, yeah. And actually the South of France has the best markets, don't they? They really do. Yeah. Well, Marseille is different than the rest of the south of France. The French are quite segregated racially, as we know. And so a lot of the south of France, actually, the sort of Arab contingent are often sort of pushed out. But in Marseille, it's a bit different. They're the dominant ones. And it's built around this huge port. We were there for New Year once, and they had these incredible – my husband's algerian and they had these great algerian bands playing on the sea on the around the port singing this song that actually me and poppy and everyone knew because reader well we loved it reader played it and it was all about um going back home it's a song about being an immigrant and going back home in arabic but weirdly we knew it we were like yes were you singing yes how fantastic yes yeah yeah it's amazing and they do a very good booyah bass exactly right on the port yeah fantastic yeah really really i didn't actually know booyah base was fish soup so when i went i ordered fish soup followed by booyah base it's basically the same thing just a fish with more stuff what did you think your base was you just like i'm just gonna try i didn't know i just knew it was famous for that i'm very young so i said i'll have the fish soup to start with and the boobah so it's like fish souped out but it was yes very very you needn't have another one Never.

11:35No, no, no. But it was very, very good. I remember. So what is your most overrated travel experience? Oh, or even underrated. I was trying to think of that. Could be underrated as well. Somewhere that you went to resort. Well, I suppose one of the places I've been to that was so famous that actually wasn't overrated. Rita and I went, we're good traveling companions. We slightly irritate each other at home sometimes, maybe. Once we get traveling. You're fine. We're fine. Some couples are the opposite, aren't they? Their home is fine when you get abroad. Yeah, no, we like traveling. When they're on the continent, there are a few arguments.

12:14And we went to, we traveled around Arizona for five weeks. And we went to the Grand Canyon. But I think what was so good about it was that we were there in November. So you're after Thanksgiving and before Christmas. So it was totally quiet. so we went to Monument Valley and there was no one there yeah that was no one and it was snowing and the snow turned to sort of crystal and you could see the footprints of the mountain lions and then everywhere when you get to the Grand Canyon they try and um sort of somehow organize it I behaved quite badly this is quite typical of me on on holiday is that they said that there were these original 1930s cabins so I booked a 1930s cabin when I got in there I was like this is shit this is definitely not 1930s 2000s this is like a 1980s makeover and it's bad so I went to the desk I went no no this is not 1930s they went it is I went I actually happen to know it's not you need to relocate me and did they yeah and was there a 1930s cabin no but we were sent to a sort of a very modern sort of um you know state-of-the-art one so they weren't then trying to fob you off then they realized they were talking to somebody who i suppose thought they knew well you did know because you were right i was right yeah no i can i'm quite capable of kicking up a fuss oh that's so funny i used to embarrass my daughter so badly yeah um but then you see in in on the grand canyon they they give there are all these kind of cut out bits of rock and they there are these boring geological sort of explanations of the Grand Canyon.

13:56Like, oh, this is 350 million years old, this rock strata. And do you remember how boring geography was? Oh, I hated it. And it reminded me, I thought, how can they make, how can these geologists make the Grand Canyon reduce it to such a boring and probably untrue fact? And then I read that the Hopi tribe that lived there think that it's the sort of vagina of the world and that it is the Grand Canyon is what gave birth to the world. And I thought that seemed much more interesting and much more appropriate. Yes, but also why don't they tell? Well, because a geologist is not going to tell you that story, is it?

14:31No, they're not interested in anything interesting. They want to reduce nature to a sort of boring fact. Hated geography. Which is crazy, right? Because in fact, there's nothing more wonderful and more interesting than nature, of course. Of course. So that opened my eyes to the Grand Canyon when I read that tiny bit of fact some way. I would like to do whitewater rafting. Would you? Along the Grand Canyon because there is that. Would you actually do that? I would love to do that, yes. Oh, you're brave. No, I'm not really, but that is something that I've always wanted to do. I'd like to do that and I'd like to jump out of a plane and parachute, but with somebody because I would never be brave enough to do that leap.

15:08So those are two things on my bucket list. But as I'm approaching 60, I'm not quite sure I will actually get to do it. No, that's when you get going, isn't it? Yes. I think so. The next phase of your life. That's when you have to do things like that, or else you'll become like uptight. Yes, no, actually, you're completely right. No, that mustn't happen. So you'll see me whitewater rafting down the Grand Canyon next year. That's amazing. Very good. Very good. So you told me that you love markets, but what is your other top travel tip and your travel secret? A tip. This year I went, I met Rita because we travel, we often go to Greece for the winter.

15:45and we had a plan I can't quite remember what happened I was he was driving because we like to take our dog everywhere with us we've got a dog called Fig and what type of she's a Jack Russell she's a sort of cross between a sort of deer and a Jack Russell she's very elegant and she's sort of too cool for school and she doesn't really want to sit on your lap or anything but that's made us completely obsessed with her lovely and so we so we drive around Europe so we can keep fig with us and it's more difficult since brexit but you know with all the injections and everything but we've somehow managed to negotiate that so we travel um a lot on ferries oh okay yeah we actually do something that you're not meant to do because you're meant to leave your dog on um in a kennel on top of the boat which of course he would never do so we do something sly and cunning which is that i get the key to the cabin and then i meet reader secretly it's like we're in a clandestine relation.

16:40But it's because of the dog. I meet him secretly so we can slip the dog in. No one knows or cares. No. Of course not. But you can't have your dog in your cabin unless you do something crafty. So do you always travel with your dog? If we can, yeah. I mean, I would like to go to Mexico for a long time, but we can't because of Fig. No. And actually, if you did take her, you'd have to put her in the hole. And I don't want to. No, can't do that. But this time I was meeting Rita in Ancona um so he was driving and i flew to italy um partly because one of our favorite restaurants is in ancona and that's just a cafe attached to a petrol station and it's still one of your favorite restaurants i love that love it i don't know we're they're very beautiful the women who run the cafe they're all sisters and it just is that very delicious i think that's when italian food is really good don't you absolutely just like just cafe food with the best pizzas very delicious pasta you've got like the workman home cooked home cooked simple so we met there but what had happened on the way was that he had broken down and so I was left not really knowing where to go so I had three days waiting for him in Ancona so I suppose my tip is just take it easy because I suppose I could have panicked and thought I don't know where to go what to do and I'm waiting for him now where all our plans have gone wrong.

18:05But I think maybe since Poppy's died, I'm a bit more like, well, does anyone care? Who cares if your plans go wrong? And actually, I called up my friend who's her friend is an actor, Stephen Campbell Moore. I went to Stephen's house and I got the key. She told me where it was, his lovely wife. And I drove their car. Their car was under a sort of bit of tarpauling. I ripped off the tarpauling. I just drove around. I just, you know, I just did whatever was going to be fun for me on my own. And then went to your nice restaurant. Met Reader at my nice restaurant, exactly. In the cafe, which takes us very nicely into the food and drink question because it's so important as part of travel food and drink.

18:50So what do you like eating? Where do you eat? And what do you drink? I don't actually drink alcohol. Do you not? No. But I drink a lot of tea. Actually, they often don't want to give you tea abroad. That's one of the things I miss. It doesn't taste so nice. No, but in Greece, they have what they call mountain tea, which is just the herbs that people gather and everyone drinks that, and that is delicious. Oh, really? Yeah, that is delicious. And you get that. The old-fashioned places will always give you mountain tea. Oh, good. I'll go to Skiathos this summer. I shall ask for mountain tea. Yeah, yeah.

19:24Very good for you. Because I usually take my PG tips. Oh, well, you might have to bring them too because it doesn't quite hit the same nerve. Right. Yeah. I mean, if you've got a PG tips addiction, nothing's going to touch that, is it? No. You need to have that too. I love PG tips too. But I like to drink hot drinks when I'm eating a meal. But I think my favorite, favorite, favorite food has probably been in Sicily. Yeah. Lovely. Where did you have your best meal? Well, do you know Catania? Have you ever been there? I have been to Catania, actually. Yes, I have. I don't know it well, but I have been there when I went to, which hotel did I go to?

20:03I think flew into Catania. I think it might have been the Rocco Forte Hotel. Yes, and Catania is quite near that very famous place where they film White Lotus. Taramina. Taramina. Yeah. Catania itself is the most wonderful city. Is it? Well, it's, as you know, right under the foot of Etna. So everyone's kind of, everyone has basically sort of signed off their life to a certain extent. You know, it is what it is. That mountain, that volcano is going to blow. Yeah. Yeah. And of course, I love Naples too. And Naples is obviously quite precarious. And there's one huge volcano under the water in outside of Naples, which is apparently the biggest volcano.

20:44Oh, really? On the continent. So not even Vesuvius. No, Vesuvius is nothing. Etna is nothing. There's a monster underneath. Yeah. But I filmed on an island called Stromboli. Oh, yes. I was there for a month. And I said to one of the other actors, I went, God, I actually thought that was the volcano, but now I realize it's a plane taking off and landing. They went, no, Anna, that is the volcano. Every 25 minutes, boom. And there was something very strange happened to me on that volcano. I became, and it hasn't happened to me again, an absolutely prolific poet. Oh. Yes. Really? Yes. I couldn't stop writing poetry.

21:25And it was all rhyming and it went on for ages. And I have to say myself, it was rather brilliant. You should publish a book. Poets like Stromboli. Well, I kept that in I say so myself, it was brilliant. I don't actually know that a publisher would think it was brilliant. What were you filming there? It was literally called Stromboli. It was a Dutch film for Netflix. Oh, wow. Yeah. Have you done much acting abroad or is most of it here? Well, I filmed in Italy. I filmed in Yostromboli and Puglia, and I've been in the theatre in Japan. I've been in New York many times, well, a few times to do plays.

22:01I filmed in L.A., Canada. Which was your favourite? I had actually a very sort of special time in Canada in this sort of, can I say shithole? Yes. In this shithole called Sault Ste. Marie, which is in the middle, middle, middle of absolutely nowhere. where you fly over kind of pines and lakes that go on forever. It's the middle of, it's a steel town, which is now stock mining and people are poor and there's quite a big drug problem there and kind of a God-forsaken place in a way. But my brother-in-law is also an actor and he had done a lot of work in Canada. And he said to me just this one thing, he said, I tell you, Anna, if you give to Sault Ste.

22:45Marie, it will give back to you. I don't even know why he said it, but I kept it in my head. And I really got into being there. And I went to the local sort of community centers for like a shindig, like a kind of country music shindig. And I went again. I tried to find all the secondhand shops and markets that were going on there, car boot sales and things. And I took a train journey. This train was later declassified. It only had two carriages. And I went for 16 hours there and back on this train to learn my lines. It was a brilliant way to learn your lines. And the train driver, every time he said he got to this particular valley, he'd hold out a Frankfurter and a raven would come and get it from his house.

23:35How extraordinary. So I actually, and then Rita came to see me in Sault Ste. Marie. And they were so sweet, the people, the production company. sometimes you do like not very good job that like not very you know just they don't turn out to be that good films but the experience see i'm all about the experience now of course i want to do good work but the experience and they they gave us a pickup truck i said oh can we borrow a car what do you like i mean we like pickup trucks they gave us this car called a ram and it was red and It was absolutely had the engine of like a sort of aeroplane. And it was in April and the melt was happening and water was just pouring everywhere.

24:17And then we went for a walk and Rita saw a bear, which is a time you shouldn't see them because they're coming out of hibernation. You shouldn't bother them. And he was like running after the bear to get a better look at it. I was like, you're crazy. That bear is going to kill us. But it didn't. And then we swam in those big lakes. I thought it was called Lake Sensational, but it's apparently called Lake Superior. Same thing. Same thing. And so we swam in Lake Sensational. That's brilliant. I loved Canada. I thought the people were wonderful. Very, on the film set, very egalitarian people, you know.

24:52What was the film you did there? I can't remember what it's called. I know. Isn't that awful? And you don't watch yourself. Never. We watch you so much and you don't ever watch yourself back. No, because I think I'm Ava Gardner, so I'm always disappointed. good. I was trying to work out why don't you? I think it's literally sort of vanity and a sort of complete delusion. I actually, I mean, there are lots of actors who don't watch themselves because it kind of puts you off, right? Yeah. I remember when I met Maggie Smith with Albert Finney, actually, and she was talking about Downton Abbey, which she didn't obviously like.

25:20Oh, she wouldn't watch that. And she said she'd never watched it. I can totally believe that. Yeah. She was never going to watch it. It's extraordinary. Anyway, we've all watched you many, many times and loved every minute of it. So thank you for that. so that takes us nicely onto the most poignant travel memory you've ever had and you've talked wonderfully about taking your daughter's ashes to Mexico so that may well be the most poignant yes but we I also filmed in Croatia we filmed oh Patia it was called in Croatia and it was just we were still in lockdown I think and I hadn't seen Poppy for six months or something she would I've been in Brighton or been away anyway it's probably the longest time I hadn't seen her and I had this fantastic hotel it was a modern hotel it didn't look great from the outside but it was fantastic from the inside we had the good view marring everyone else's view um so I called her I said you've got to come so she came and I think she stayed for three weeks I wasn't really in the show that much and we hired a car and we drove and we just had the great time and one of the guys working on the film he was the first AD which won't mean anything to anyone he's funny enough the son of an actor called Henry David Tomlinson anyway Henry is the son fantastic he's like a real bon vivant I don't even know why he was our AD but he he was into sailing and so every weekend he'd hire like this really proper sailing boat and we the actors and Poppy and all of us would go on these trips we were like real euro trash it was so much fun and we would go and to these like caves that you could swim in.

26:56Croatia is very beautiful. Have you been there? I have. And actually that's the best way to do it because that coastline is so wonderful. Is it called the Dalmatian Coast? Dalmatian Coast, yes. Really is lovely. And I like the Croatian people so much. Quite bad tempered people. Very, very well educated and sort of pissed off that their country has been like taken out of their hands. Somebody said to me, I feel like an extra in my own country. So I could see there were problems with croatia because it's very you know many many tourists and the people who live there can't probably afford you as as true of lots of places but um i really really thought they were great and once you got in once once you cracked a few jokes with them um i i really really enjoyed being there and poppy did too and we just had we just had a great time we You would always go looking for waterfalls are our thing.

27:48So we'd look to see where there's a waterfall, where there's rivers, where we can swim inland. Lovely. Yeah. We've actually got some lovely hotels in Dubrovnik owned by Adriatic Luxury Hotels. They own the five best hotels there. So if you want to go back to Croatia, it's really beautiful. Don't go during high peak season because the cruise ships come. Everyone gets off. Yes. And then it's very busy. but if you just go outside of those peak times it's beautiful something so so funny happened to us in Croatia it was the cast party and it was quite far from our hotel and everyone got so drunk especially the drivers that they couldn't drive the actors or the director back to the hotel right and especially the guy my driver I loved Tomas was only young and I said as we were like waiting how are we going to get back um everyone's too drunk so then i found thomas i went thomas give me the keys to your van because you can because i don't drink no exactly i pile yes so i drove the uh the van um the people carrier back with sort of 18 actors and a director i was gonna say did you have to go backwards and forwards to pick i think i only did it once i crammed us all in that was just fun that's actually brilliant that you don't drink because you can always be the designated driver how marvelous yeah yeah yeah how fantastic so finally i asked you to bring a photograph so the photograph is of us in mexico with our um makeshift um you have you heard a gorilla planting where people just shove in plants no it sounds marvelous they just shove in plants in depressing places but basically it's be you're just planting when you haven't got permission so i think we were sort of gorilla shrining um and yes so that's the picture beautiful picture there are a few of us just sitting around um sort of there's something about people just being together and focusing and concentrating on um your grief on other people's grief um and there's this beautiful green light in the background i don't kind of know how it got there but anyway that's what it wasn't there when you actually were watching it just well Mexico's just full of these surprising things and when you came out of that cemetery there was like a there was like a funfair the craziest maddest funfair that was going on and the wheel was going far too fast it looked like people were going to be just like flying out of it because as I said they were very unofficious so there's a crazy feeling about it but it might have been like from the funfair that you see in this photograph or not yeah it might have been something else yeah yeah how wonderful so before I let you go what are you doing next and where are you going I'm gonna go when when I finish this play in Richmond um Richmond not really being a holiday destination particularly for English people but maybe for other people yes Petersham Nurseries exactly nice yeah so when I finish this um this play almost immediately I'm going to go to Australia to do a TV series about, do you remember a film called My Brilliant Career?

30:55Yes, absolutely. Yes, very good film. Great film. Yeah, with Judy Davis, who was the great, great Australian actress. And now they're doing a Netflix series of, I think it's a novel, which I haven't read. But the film I definitely have seen quite a few times. A few years ago. Probably in the 80s, right? Yeah, I think so, yeah. Yeah. And do you remember, she's got that sort of fuzzy hair and sort of blistered lips. So what are you going to be? I'm going to be the sort of dominating grandmother. Fantastic. I'm quite often the bitch. Well, I've seen a few things when you've been quite dominant. Dominant, yes.

31:35The crown. You can't imagine that now, having met me. No, not at all. So do you. No, but how lovely. And have you been to Australia before? Yeah, yeah. when poppy was young um i my first job was a ferrero rocher advert and i got paid 17 000 pounds and i almost immediately right now i'm thinking why don't you stay and try and improve your career but almost immediately i put to take it to australia because my best friend from drama school lived there and poppy and i went to australia for about three months yeah so she must have been tiny she was four yeah and where's this filming in adelaide oh right do you know no i mean i'm certainly not adelaide um sydney and melbourne yeah i think adelaide has i think i don't know but i think it's got a lot of vineyards so it's countryside and probably quite near very sort of quite wild landscape as well which is imagine what they want yeah because it's very potent uh australian landscape isn't it yeah very powerful and i think not a bad idea for a backdrop for a tv series no that sounds well and you're going for a month three three months Oh, wonderful.

32:42So you're leaving your doggy behind. I know. I'm not thrilled about that. And then when you come back, you'll need a holiday in Europe somewhere so you can drive with the dog. Yes, exactly. But August won't be the best time, will it, I don't think? No, September. Wait till everyone's gone back to school. Actually, I think the real key time is November because then everyone, no one's around. Yeah, but weather can be dodgy then. But October. We went to somewhere else actually in November, outside Naples in lockdown. There was no one there either. Somewhere called Paistum. Have you been there? No.

33:17Unbelievable. Like these Roman temples completely intact. I mean, yeah, southern Italy is very beautiful. You can't go wrong. Thank you so much. It has been so lovely to meet you and hear your travel tales and your poignant travel secrets. Thank you. It's been wonderful. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you so much for listening to this episode of Travel Secrets. I'm loving making this podcast and want it to reach as many people as possible to build this community of fellow travellers. So please do subscribe on your favourite podcast app and share with a friend. I'll be back next week. And remember, this podcast might not change your life, but it might just change your plans.

34:07Thank you.