Americas

Game on: As well as the sports competitions, visitors to Vancouver can enjoy a far-flung city break

City slicker: Vancouver

The world will be watching this Canadian city when the Winter Olympics open here on Friday. Cori Howard reveals the sights to see away from the ski slopes

Inside Americas

Best for soul sensations: Barbados

Saturday, 6 February 2010

Despite what resorts in Barbados would have you think, steel drums, or more mystifyingly, steel drums played over Eighties and Nineties soft-rock muzak, are not the most popular music on the island. That honour, it seems, goes to R'n'B and soul. It rolls out of my taxi from Grantley Adams Airport and there's no let-up at the Fisherman bar in ramshackle Speightstown, where the tuneless trill of Ne-Yo accompanies my flying fish and cou cou – a sort-of fruit version of mashed potato – doused with the local Banks beer and rum.

Best for Harley heaven: California

Saturday, 6 February 2010

There comes a time in life, normally when hair starts thinning and waistbands begin to stretch, when a man's thoughts turn towards a motorbike. Specifically, they turn towards a Harley Davidson, those roaring kings of the open road upon which we can deludedly dream of being transported back to free-spirited days of our youth.

Best for Latin passion: Uruguay

Saturday, 6 February 2010

Font size isn't everything, but Uruguay's self-esteem may be challenged by the succession of travel guidebooks that shout "ARGENTINA" and follow up almost apologetically with "& Uruguay" in much smaller type. The nation (which, since you ask, is nine times the size of Wales, and 90th biggest in the world) seems destined to be merely an appendix to a trip to mighty, beautiful Argentina.

Best for urban encounters: Vancouver

Saturday, 6 February 2010

I was in Vancouver twice last year. Both times, the day I left, it rained; thick, obdurate, rain falling out of a black sky. My hotel room windows looked as if they might dissolve. Gone were the superb vistas – mountains, the ocean, glass city. The deluge made it easier to say goodbye and was a reminder too that Vancouver is a very wet place most of the year.