much further than the paris accord, to limit global warming. now on bbc news, the travel show. this week, a look back at some of our favourite european adventures. we test drive the continent's fastest and highest ride. watch some masterpiece maintenance in the netherlands. it looks incredible. yeah. 0h, here we go again. and travel back in time — over 2000 years — as wejoin the crew of a replica galley in greece. hello, and welcome to the travel show, coming to you from a very chilly st pancras station. now, normally, this place would be bustling with people going back and forth from the uk to the continent on the eurostar. pre—pandemic, it was carrying around 11 million passengers every year between britain and mainland europe, but that number has dropped by 95% since last march and, today, i can only see two outbound trains on the board. unfortunately, i'm not catching a train today as we are still under lockdown, but that isn't going to stop us from looking back at some of our favourite european trips. we begin with christa's trip to france in 2018, marking the 70th anniversary of one of the country's most iconic cars — the citroen 2cv. the 2cv was born in 1948 in the immediate aftermath of world war ii. the very first prototypes, as well as the very last model and all of the others in between, are kept here at the citroen heritage centre in the north of paris. oh, and here they are. they've really got character. and this one — you can probably see from the bullet holes, must have been from the bond film for your eyes only. with its unique shape, the 2cv — short for deux chevaux, or two horses — quickly came to fame, and not only in movies. within a few decades, the car became a common sight on france's roads, and in its countryside. the founding design principle of this car was four wheels under an umbrella — the idea of a light car, but with really good suspension, so you could drive over a field with four passengers and a basket of eggs on your lap and, by the end of yourjourney, none of the eggs would have broken. they're also a fun addition to any weekend in the capital. bonjour! bonjour, christa! vincent, good to meet you. good to meet you. this must be it. it is. this is it. your turn to drive. excellent! here we go. vincent takes guided tours around paris. i'm definitely going to need a lesson, vincent. he'll even let you drive, if you ask nicely. you can feel the engine under yourfoot, you know. and the noise of the car, and it's very physical and it's not a car that goes very fast, but it's not the goal, you know. it is a very kind of active experience. yeah! there is no sitting back and letting the car do its work. you have to be involved. yeah! exactly. and on the left, this is the louvre museum. ah! there are no airbags, the windows are not electric, and as for ac, let's just say it's pretty rudimentary. but, for some reason, the french really seem to love the 2cv. as long as that remains the case, the car they called the �*tin snail�* will keep ploughing its own furrow on slow lanes everywhere. christa there in paris. next, wejoin mike in central bulgaria to visit a piece of alien architecture. it's a spectacular building shaped like a ufo that's been left abandoned since the fall of the iron curtain. at 70m high and 60m wide, buzludzha look out across the balkan mountains. completed in 1981, it was built as an iconic national monument to glorify the communist party. it's here because this was the birthplace of the bulgarian socialist movement. this is powerful. powerful architecture. following the collapse of the regime, the building was abandoned and later shut off to the public as it fell into disrepair. da—da—daaaa! oh, wow. here it is. me first? welcome. it's seen better days, hasn't it? definitely. it cost the equivalent of $35 million in today's money to build buzludzha. since it was abandoned, the years, they haven't been kind. dora, it's... ..it�*s incredible. there's some work to do, obviously, but it's still very impressive. look at this. 50 square metres of mosaics right on top. there is the symbol of communism, actually — the hammer and sickle — and you can read in cyrillic around it "workers from the world, unite". so there is a mosaic on the ceiling, but the entire perimeter is also covered in mosaic. we have actually more than 1,000 square metres of mosaic inside buzludzha. out of all of these, which one is your favourite? 0ver there — the people defeating a dragon, and the dragon should represent the capitalism, monarchy and fascism — all the enemies of communism — and it's defeated by the communist people. when the monument opened, thousands came from all over the country to marvel at its beauty. there were sound and light shows and talks from well—known communist artists and poets. time could be running out for buzludzha. if the roof collapses, the walls will go, too, and the building will be lost. there's now an urgent debate about what exactly to do with the monument. those who remember the repressions and the hardships of the communist era would like to see it destroyed. others want to restore it to its former glory. but dora is working on a proposal to preserve it as a museum and a place where bulgarians can discuss the past. it was built to represent and glorify the communist idea, and we do not want to do this nowadays. we just want to know the history, want to understand why it was built. but if we keep it intact and leave the symbols in their present condition, i think this will be much more powerful and meaningful for the next generation to understand. mike there in bulgaria, back in 2018. since we filmed that, dora's mission to save the building has had some success. in 2020, with the support of the getty foundation, she led an international team of experts on a project to protect those extraordinary mosaics around the interior and this year, they're hoping to publish a conservation management plan, outlining the steps required to open this iconic but controversial building to the public. to keep track of their progress, you can visit their website. we are going to speed things up now with a trip to portaventura theme park in spain, home to the ferrari land roller coaster, red force. sounds ominous, doesn't it? it's europe's tallest and fastest ever ride, going from zero to 180 kilometres an hour in just five seconds. and we managed to persuade rajan to test it outjust before it opened to the public in 2017. how much testing goes on before it is open to the public? around 6,000. times? cycles. 6000 cycles? 0k. thankfully, i have this veteran of nearly 1300 different roller—coasters in 21 different countries as company. what i love now, it's the thrill of the chase. it's finding those coasters that are in obscure places — i go off to a place like china — to find something different that you haven't done before and other people haven't gone to. i went to dubai recently and i did 25 theme parks in six days. this is more than your average hobby. marcus spends up to two months a year in theme parks in chase of thrills... here we go! ..and now advises on how to maximise roller—coaster excitement. shall we go for it then? yeah, let's go for it! come on, let's go! let's do it. oh, you're going to get the best views from the front. you feel the force on your face, as well. right, right. there's a loose bolt there. should that be...? a loose bolt? hands up. eyes wide open — you don't want to miss it. ok, i'll try my best. i'll try my best. see if you can tell the difference... here we go! ..between the seasoned coaster and the rookie tv presenter... argh! now, i knew you wouldn't be able to. uptown funk by mark ronson plays. incredible. what the hell?! both laugh. that was rajan becoming the first member of the public to try the red force roller—coaster. good on you, rajan! time now for a bit of high culture in amsterdam. now, i went there in 2019, 300 years on from the death of one of its most famous artists, rembrandt. in 1631, he made this city his home. and it's here that he painted his most famous masterpieces. and you can see many of them on display at the rijksmuseum. but what i've come here to see is very special and involves a painting that rembrandt is best known for, one of the most famous works of art in the world — the night watch. the painting is almost four centuries old and, over the years, there have been various restoration attempts. but now, the museum is undertaking the most sophisticated one ever, using high—tech methods to carry out a forensic examination of how rembrandt actually painted the picture before restoration can begin. and it's all being carried out in one of their galleries in full view of the public and live—streamed online. oh, man! so that's it, the night watch. yeah. it looks incredible. and what are they doing there? the machine you see there is an x—ray fluorescence scanner and, this way, we get an idea of the elements present in this painting. but this is a painting which is for us to admire. why is it so important for you to know about the elements? because we need to figure out... yeah, we want to know how rembrandt painted it, what his ideas were when he was painting it, how did he make this nice composition? was it first all ok on the canvas, or did he change his mind and change small things, or did he change the composition? those things we would like to know. yeah, we're basically on rembrandt�*s shoulder and watching him while he's painting these paintings. so we're going to photograph the painting in daylight, but we're not going to do it, like, one snapshot, but we're going to do a lot of photos next to each other. i think, from the top of my head, it's 11,000 photos. wow. so then we get a really high resolution. it's like you're looking through a microscope. 0ne pixel in that photo is like a blood cell or, basically, it's smaller than a hair. or, basically, it's smaller than a hair — a human hair. all of this scrutiny and all of this work for one artist. what do you think rembrandt would make of it if he was around today? i would personally think that he would think we are crazy. yeah, yeah. well, that feels like such a long, long time ago. let's hope we can all go and see the restored night watch very soon. we're off to denmark now, where somebody had the crazy idea of putting a dry ski slope on top of a renewable power station. cat went to check it out. fuelled by waste and billed as one of the most environmentally friendly plants of its kind, the copen hill spans more than 40,000 square metres. the slope i'm on works its way from the bottom all the way up the side of the building and it is open for hikers, sightseers and even skiers. the ski slope is made from a slippery synthetic material that is coloured green to stop the slope from discolouring. so they are stilljust doing a little bit of work up here but, look, right over there, that's sweden, which is very cool. and on the other side, we have this amazing view of copenhagen. and how did you guys come up with putting a ski slope up here? one of the things we realised quite quickly is that if you take a section of the building, it actually steps down from low to high, from the area where the trucks drive in to the furnace, to the boilers, the flue gas treatment areas, all the way up to about 90 metres. and one of the other things about denmark is that danes love to ski but denmark is completely flat, so they will drive for three hours to sweden to ski on a slope that is about 80 metres high, so we quickly realised that since we have mountains of trash, apparently, we could turn it into mountains of recreation and skiing that could become a public amenity in the very centre of the city of copenhagen. sustainability tends to be this thing that is seen as a protestant act. sustainability is something you do which means that you have to do less of something and that you somehow have to have less life experience. but what we really wanted to do with this project is to express that, somehow, sustainability can be something that is positive and fun and that actually gives us more back to people and to the city. so i don't really know how this is going to go, or if i'm gonna wipe out. giggles. i just want to make it down without falling over. whoa! after that initial wobble, i was soon feeling confident. maybe a bit too confident! laughs. well, that went really well. cat there in copenhagen. now, the last time we saw christa, she was driving in a citroen 2cv around the roads of paris. well, the bosses of the travel show obviously thought she had things far too easy, because we're going to end this weekjust on the outskirts of athens, where she has to help power a far older form of transport. moored close to the modern yachts, a different kind of ship is ready to go out to sea. the trireme 0lympias — the only life—sized replica in the world of the athenian battleships that dominated the naval wars from the fifth century bc until early christian times. this amazing—looking galley belongs to the greek navy and, every year, groups of very lucky people get to go aboard and actually row, just like ancient athenians did. this year, i'm one of those lucky people, so i'd better get ready. i think it's going to be quite hard work. the ship carries two small sails, but, just like in ancient times, most of the propulsion comes from the 170 oarsmen staggered over three levels under the deck. well, my fellow rowers are starting to arrive now, so i've picked a plum spot, right in the middle of the action. ready for ramming speed. woman speaks greek over loudspeaker. reaching speeds of about nine knots, or 17kmh, this boat was considered pretty quick in its time... woman speaks greek over loudspeaker. ..and its manoeuvrability won athens some decisive victories at sea. the bronze ram served as the main weapon to puncture the hulls of enemy ships and to sink them. looking around, it's almost impossible to imagine what this must have been like for the people who originally rowed these kinds of boats. i mean, to be in battle, three layers of different people all sweating and trying to ram another boat in the open sea. i mean, it's unimaginable, given how pleasant and lovely this is today. woman speaks greek over loudspeaker. oh, here we go again! woman speaks greek over loudspeaker. well, that's the end of our european look—back. but, don't worry — there's lots more great stuff well, that's the end of our european look—back. but, don't worry — there's lots more great stuff coming up next week. carmen's in fukushima, ten years after a tsunami sparked a nuclear disaster there, to meet the surfers out to reassure travellers that a decade on, it's safe to return. no change. yes. still safe! don't forget, you can watch this episode and many others again on the bbc iplayer, and you can also follow us on social media. but for now, from me, ade adepitan, and all the travel show team here in london, it's bye—bye. hello. the weather is pretty quiet out there at the moment, and tuesday promises to be a fine day on the whole. the rest of the week, though, oh, my goodness, it's going to get significantly livelier. a deep area of low pressure forming out to the west at the moment, in the atlantic, will come hurtling towards the uk for wednesday and thursday. expect some very strong and gusty winds, and some spells of heavy rain. so, in contrast, for tuesday, yes, some showery light rain affecting northern reaches of the uk, but overall a lot of fine weather. some sunny spells and light winds. a quiet enough day. temperatures just about making it into the lower end of double figures. through the afternoon, however, and into the evening, the wind starts to strengthen in the west, as this weather front pushes in. wet conditions for northern ireland and scotland, through the evening. overnight, the rain sinks further south, into england and wales, and the gusty winds will follow that band of rain. but the wind, the rain and the cloud do make for a milder night tuesday into wednesday. wednesday daytime, the cloud and rain tends to hang back across england and wales, as our next front bumps into scotland and northern ireland. generally a lot of cloud around, some heavy rain, but the wind the key factor again, i think, through wednesday. across the board, strong gusty winds. those are the figures in the black arrows. this is wednesday afternoon, and in exposed areas, we're looking at 50mph and inland 35—40mph. this is the area of low pressure wednesday into thursday. the fronts run off into the continent. the low centre, though, stays to the north. thursday actually brighter for many, but a lot of showers coming in, and just don't underestimate that wind. behind the fronts, actually, it could be stronger on thursday than it was on wednesday. certainly will feel colder. i think we could see some snow showers across the highest ground, and the winds at exposure in excess of 60 mph, inland 40—115 mph. so a really windy 48 hours. winds slacken back a bit, perhaps friday, but bands of showers sweep across the uk. and then for saturday, it looks like we'll see a more organised band of rain spreading into all areas. and still a fairly blustery story into the early part the weekend. this is bbc news, i'm mike embley. our top stories: silent so far — buckingham palace is yet to reply to that explosive interview with the duke and duchess of sussex, by oprah winfrey. the broadcast has shaken the royals and divided viewers we have in tandem the conversation of he would be given security, he will not be given a title. and also, concerns and conversations about how dark his skin might be when he is born. gunfire. more stun grenadaes and chaos as protests grip myanmar — but there's a moment of reconciliation as one roman catholic nun joins demonstrators, and prays with police.