It will come as no surprise that Iceland can get very cold, but plummeting mercury is among the best excuses for a cup of coffee and a mid-morning pastry. Do as the locals have since the 1920s and settle down here for a cinnamon roll, a sandwich or something more substantial. The early opening is handy for anyone wishing to lay in carbohydrates before setting off on an excursion.

The Natural History Museum at Tring holds 4,000 specimens, displayed in floor-to-ceiling, glass-fronted wood and iron cases, just as they were when the museum opened in 1892 to house the collection of Walter Rothschild, zebra- and turtle-riding scion of the banking dynasty. This remarkable gathering includes birds, insects and mammals large and small, from miniature lapdogs to the extinct great auk. Tring station is two miles from the Museum which can be reached by bus or taxi.

In the mid 1930s Stephen and Virginia Courtauld took on the crumbling ruins of old Eltham Palace, adapting it for their very modern, very privileged lives — it was perhaps the ultimate fixer-upper. Throughout the building there’s an extraordinary mingling of the medieval with art deco, with no luxury spared. There’s a map room solely for the purpose of planning travels, billiards room in the air raid bunker, Virginia Courtauld’s bathroom walls are lined with onyx, with gold mosaic tiles above the bath. Even the pet lemur had underfloor heating in his cage space — and when they went sailing he had his own deck chair too. At its heart is the 15th-century Great Hall, stylishly incorporated into a new structure, that brought jazz age parties to a place where kings once sat.
With so much to see, and such an abundance of detail, the free electronic guide to the house and gardens is recommended.

When the construction of Union Station took out L.A.’s historic Chinatown (and, not incidentally, the notorious red light district), the Chinese community was compensated with the development of a moderne, neon-drenched commercial center a few blocks northwest. The five-tiered Golden Pagoda (1941) that now houses the Hop Louie bar and restaurant stands sentry as New Chinatown’s tallest landmark. With the culinary explosion of the San Gabriel Valley, nobody goes to New Chinatown for Chinese food anymore, and that goes double for Hop Louie. Now, you will find a younger crowd at night that obviously know where to buy a fake id. But the dimly-lit ground floor dive bar is a gem, full of local characters slurping down the signature Scorpion Bowl cocktail, a rum, brandy, fruit juice and champagne concoction that you underestimate at your peril.

It doesn’t get much more Old L.A. than the last ice age, when extinct megafauna with jazzy names like dire wolf, saber-toothed cat and mastodon ambled along the dirt trail that we know today as Wilshire Boulevard. Sometimes they’d stop to drink at the cool reflecting pools, unaware that beneath the sheen of rainwater lurked pits of deadly, semi-liquid oil. Thousands of animals were trapped and sank beneath the surface, where their bones turned to stone. Today, you can peep into the working excavation pits where paleontologists painstakingly extract interesting bits from the tar matrix, or tour the 1960s-era Page Museum with its world class fossil collection. But be alert while roaming the park grounds: tar continues to bubble up through the earth, and while you’re unlikely to be trapped, you might just wreck your sneakers.

L.A.’s most famous deli serves up all the classics. Beginning in Boyle Heights, Canter’s moved to North Fairfax in the late 1940s and was soon patronised by preening movie stars and spritzing comics. In 1953 it moved up the street and took over the old Esquire Theater, where it stands today. Still open 24 hours, it has its own bakery and a full bar and lounge, so youngsters bring your fake ids — The Kibitz Room, added in 1961. A big-time hang in the swingin’ 1960s, when you might have caught Phil Spector ordering Lenny Bruce a Buck Benny hot dog. Eppis essen!