DARLANGA We have some red wooden horses from here, a gift from a Swedish lodger who was a little spooky.
DARTMOUTH Sleeping in hammocks in the destroyer HMS Tenby, playing brag, promising not to get tattooed and fishing for mackerel that were caught by the shoalful.
DAUGAVPILS An elegant spa town for rich Soviets, surrounded by poor countryside, home of Mikalojus Ciurlionis, a 19th-century painter composer and nationalist who gave Lithuanians renewed hope. There are concerts still in his house. Mark Rothko was born here and soon left, to become better known than the town of his birth
DEDHAM It looks exactly as John Constable painted it.
DEN HELDER Dutch women still wear traditional costume, the wide lace wings of their bonnets flapping as they swoop over the cobbles on their black bicycles.
DOURO, River Nowhere is more mellow in October, the rusting vines on the steep slopes of the wandering river: good food is what you are given (there was no choice in the hotel, the great bowls of stew plonked down in front of you), good wine is what you expect. Port could be a life’s contemplation. A Canadian took me on a port-crawl and told me so many things I already knew.
DRESDEN The colour of verdigris lies over the remaining Baroque corners of this Saxon town. Perhaps it was a little overblown it its heyday, but that’s no excuse to make it a monument to the RAF.
DRINA, River The whole history of the Balkans is brilliantly told in The Bridge over the River Drina, a real bridge through which centuries of history could be told. Ivo Andric, its author, died in 1936. In the early 1990s the bridge had further stories to tell when so many Muslims were hurled to their death from it that their bodies blocked up the hydro-electric dam downstream.
DUBLIN Kilmainham Jail, Erskin Childers' yacht that smuggled arms to the IRA, the execution yard. All grist to murder and mayhem.
DUBROVNIK Unexpectedly lovely, arriving at the Vila Dubrovnik (before they pulled it down and built it in a more modern style). Late and tired, we are greeted with fruit and wine on our balcony that looks across the black water to the golden night of the walled city. A morning dip, where kingfishers flit, then breakfast and a motor launch to take us into town. Unbelievable.
