powerfulfigures in shia islam on day two of his historic trip to iraq. pressure grows on the uk government over its pay offer to health service staff — more unions have joined the backlash. concerns over unnecessary self—isolation for school children in england because of inaccurate coronavirus test results. a warning for the un security council — that anti—coup demonstrators in myanmar are beginning to lose faith in the organisation. and they're usually a sign that spring has sprung, but why is this host of golden daffodils being left unpicked? now on bbc news, ade adepitan looks back at some of the travel show�*s top european adventures, including rajan datar testing a ferrari—themed rollercoaster in spain. 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 — it's 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 lane 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 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 gonna 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 more 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! both laugh. 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 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 copenhill 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 which 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 — the other thing 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 gonna 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 which 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 sail butjust like in ancient times, most of the propulsion comes from the 170 oarsman 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 17km/h, 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�*ve been like for the people who originally rowed these kind 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! 0h, here we go again!

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.

hi everyone, i hope you're doing all right. it is always nice to talk about high pressure when we are looking at the weather for a weekend, because generally speaking it means dry and settled conditions and that sets us up for a headline like this, mostly dry this weekend. quite cloudy and cold as well. a chilly morning, high pressure perched across the uk at the moment. we have this weather front pushing into western parts of scotland. that will introduce thicker cloud and some showers as well as we had a troop this afternoon. we can see that here on the close—up. —— head through this afternoon. should be

mostly dry, if you showers across eastern coastal parts which will tend to fizzle out as we head through the day. the heaviest across the western isles and the northern isles. cloudy here as well, top temperatures eight a chilly start to today, we sought mist and fog and frost as well. a repeat performance as we cast an eye upon this evening's forecast. we still have this weather front introducing a bit more in the way of showers across mainland scotland through tonight, colder air turning to sleet or snow on hills where we could see a light covering on places. you can see the map is awash in blue so temperatures dipping close to if not below freezing pretty much wherever we are. here is how tomorrow is shaping up, it should be a mostly dry day. tomorrow is one of those days when we start to see some sunshine, especially across england and wales, but as we progress through the day, we see thicker cloud building. the north of england, southern parts of scotland, northern ireland seeing some sunshine as well, further north

still talking about that weather front generating showers and rain. a bit more that further north, starting to see mild air trickle in, six or seven celsius. let's look at the pressure chart, there is the high pressure, we have a weather front moving in. that in turn will introduce something a bit less settled into monday, northern ireland, western parts of scotland, our temperatures gradually starting to rise, nine or 10 celsius. thejet stream has woken up. it has been quite quiet over the past week, you can see it here moving in from the west, introducing a plentiful supply of unsettled weather. this is wednesday, you can some weather fronts and area of low pressure moving on, and the white lines, the isobars, are close together which means we are likely to see strong winds. temperatures will rise, so we are turning a page over the next few days. see you soon.

this is bbc news. these are the latest headlines in the uk and around the world: pressure grows on the uk government over its pay offer to health service staff in england — more unions havejoined the backlash. speaking out for dialogue — pope francis meets one of the most powerfulfigures in shia islam on day two of his historic trip to iraq. concerns over unnecessary self—isolation for school children in england — because of inaccurate coronavirus test results. a warning for the un security council — that anti—coup demonstrators in myanmar are beginning to lose faith in the organisation. in cricket — india thrash england by an innings and 25 runs in the fourth test to secure the series 3—1.