{"id":17261,"date":"2025-09-15T07:41:13","date_gmt":"2025-09-15T07:41:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/17261\/"},"modified":"2025-09-15T07:41:13","modified_gmt":"2025-09-15T07:41:13","slug":"the-long-haul-party-flight-that-gave-me-a-sense-of-adventure","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/17261\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018The long haul party flight that gave me a sense of adventure\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"

Tom Odell, 34, is a Brit award-winning singer-songwriter. Born in Chichester, he spent some of his childhood in New Zealand and now lives in London with his wife, Georgina, a model and artist. His 2013 debut album, Long Way Down, went to No 1 in the UK and was followed by several hit singles in Europe and the UK. He is a longtime supporter of refugee charities and a joint concert with Ed Sheeran in 2022 helped to raise \u00a311 million for Ukraine.<\/p>\n

Being airborne is in my DNA. My grandfather Peter Dorrington helped start the Court Line airline in the 1950s, then became a director of Monarch Airlines. My dad was an airline pilot for Britannia Airways, my sister used to work for Virgin Atlantic and my uncle was an aeronautical engineer.<\/p>\n

Dad\u2019s job eventually took him to New Zealand and we moved to Auckland for a year when I was about six. That flight was full of British pilots all going to work over there, and normal rules did not apply: it was a party at 35,000ft\u2026 everybody socialising, music playing, no one fastening their seatbelts. And then we arrived at our new home on the other side of the world. I\u2019m not saying this felt \u201cnormal\u201d, but it instilled an incredible sense of adventure in my young mind. I\u2019m sure it had something to do with me picking such an itinerant career. It sounds weird, but I feel perfectly at home when I\u2019ve got nothing more than what\u2019s in my suitcase.<\/p>\n

\u2022 Read our full guide to New Zealand<\/a><\/p>\n

I remember being at school in New Zealand and I remember the weather being nicer, but I couldn\u2019t tell you much about my daily life. I suppose I was just too young. The childhood holidays that really stood out were our regular trips to Deia in Mallorca, after we got back from New Zealand. We always stayed at the Es Moli hotel and there was a lot of talk about Deia being the rock\u2019n\u2019roll hangout for a few A-listers like Kate Moss and Sting. The Es Moli wasn\u2019t particularly rock\u2019n\u2019roll, but I\u2019m sure my parents preferred that. <\/p>\n

\"Aerial<\/p>\n

Tom travelled to Deia in Mallorca many times on family holidays<\/p>\n

SERGI REBOREDO\/VWPICS\/UNIVERSAL IMAGES GROUP VIA GETTY IMAGES<\/p>\n

Probably the maddest holiday I ever had was me and a few mates camping and surfing in Newquay, Cornwall\u2026 in the middle of winter. It must have been 2007 or 2008 and I can remember walking through several inches of snow on the beach, then feeling the breath knocked out of me as I jumped into the water with my board. What the hell were we thinking?<\/p>\n

I suppose that\u2019s the joy of being 17. Things like having a decent tent and a four-season sleeping bag don\u2019t matter. Those hardships only exist as a lead-up to the evening, when you build a fire, get a few beers in and fall about laughing till the early hours.<\/p>\n

There was something incredibly special about the first trip I took as a professional musician. We went to the Netherlands, Germany and Belgium and, yes, it was \u201cwork\u201d, but it felt like I was being paid to go on holiday. All these grown-ups in their thirties and forties sorting out my flight, meeting me at the airport, driving me to the hotel and then taking me and the band out to eat free food and drink free drinks! I was 21 and it blew my mind.<\/p>\n

\"Outdoor<\/p>\n

The Fairmont Hotel Vier Jahreszeiten is Tom\u2019s favourite hotel in Hamburg<\/p>\n

MAX ARENS<\/p>\n

Hamburg was one of the first cities we visited and I immediately fell in love with it. I was a Beatles obsessive and did the usual trawl around the Reeperbahn area, but then I discovered the Alster Lakes. It felt like there was another city inside the main city\u2026 less built-up, less hectic. I went for a run around the lake early one morning and was overcome by the beauty.<\/p>\n

\u2022 10 of the best places to visit in Germany<\/a><\/p>\n

It\u2019s no surprise that my favourite hotel is in Hamburg: the Fairmont Hotel Vier Jahreszeiten. After the band had been touring for a while, we started rating the different hotels, just for a laugh, and this one consistently scored 10\/10. It\u2019s got so much character; like being in the real-life Grand Budapest Hotel. I was back there last year when I went to see a William Blake exhibition just around the corner from the hotel. I ended up returning to the exhibition two or three times a day. I found myself bombarded with thoughts and ideas, most of which made it on to the new album.<\/p>\n

Because we don\u2019t often get to stay in cities for very long \u2014 two or three days at most \u2014 my early morning runs really help me to acclimatise. I just look for a landmark on the map, like a hill or a river, and set off. In Tbilisi there\u2019s a hill overlooking the city \u2014 well, it\u2019s a small mountain, really, the Mtatsminda \u2014 and I wanted to see if I could run to the top. I did, and the view was spectacular.<\/p>\n

\"Aerial<\/p>\n

The spectacular view over Tbilisi<\/p>\n

GETTY IMAGES<\/p>\n

Some of those former Eastern Bloc countries really surprised me. Georgia seemed to be overflowing with young people, all of them chockful of optimism. On every corner there was a caf\u00e9 or a coffee shop, an art gallery or a nightclub.<\/p>\n

It was the same in Kyiv when I was there just before the pandemic. Everybody I met was in a band or were setting up a new tech company. It was without doubt one of the happiest and friendliest places I\u2019d ever visited. And then\u2026 well, we all know what happened. I remember watching the news after the bombing started and recognising what was left of one of the squares where I\u2019d seen kids sitting around playing guitars. I just hope there are still some pockets of Kyiv\u2019s amazing, youthful energy and that, one day, I\u2019ll be able to go back.
Tom Odell\u2019s latest album, A Wonderful Life, is out now<\/p>\n

In our weekly My Hols interview, famous faces from the worlds of film, sport, politics, and more share their travel stories from childhood to the present day. Read more My Hols interviews here<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Tom Odell, 34, is a Brit award-winning singer-songwriter. Born in Chichester, he spent some of his childhood in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":17262,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[458,146,85,46],"class_list":["post-17261","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-celebrities","tag-celebrities","tag-entertainment","tag-il","tag-israel"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17261","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17261"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17261\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/17262"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17261"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17261"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17261"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}