Travelling
This autumn, we fancied a bit of sun, good food and culture for little money. Would we find it in Greece again? Looking at the cheapest available flights for the last week of November, we found flights to Corfu, Venice and Bari for around 100EURO.…
Ooooh yes, dear friends, me, who’ll waffle on endlessly about preferring independent travel without crowds, is going to Florence for a weekend in July. It sounds a bit bonkers, since I always try to take my holidays outside main season and school holidays. But then a…
Yeah yeah, typical, writing this thing about travel plans when half the year is almost over. And I have no excuse. Does this happen to you, when your plans, great and totally practicable in January, become a bit woozy in February, then change again later,…
We returned from a (unusual for me) Easter Holiday… ummm, over six weeks ago. We even celebrated Easter twice. Once in Armenia – a country that is so special that it has its own church and a quarter of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre…
What could be better in winter than to soak in hot thermal waters and enjoy some very fine cakes? As a child, we usually travelled to Hungary during late spring for a week’s holiday. We had to apply for a visa months in advance and…
Just in time for Holy Week, here comes an account of my last day in Jerusalem, encompassing visits to Rachel’s Tomb, the Mount of Olives, and the Via Dolorosa. Among the lanes in Jerusalems Old City, the Via Dolorosa marks the last steps of Jesus…
Is a winter trip to Budapest a good idea? It can be pretty cold, and due to its easterly location it gets dark early. But flights to Budapest and hotels cost a lot less than in the summer. Restaurants and attractions are open all year,…
The Temple Mount is part of the Old City of Jerusalem and a site revered by Jews, Christinas and Muslims, and has a dramatic history, which carries on to the present day. For people of the Jewish faith, it is the holiest site. It…
Athens is great! Almost year-round sunshine, close to the Mediterranean Sea, safe, brimming with ancient history and museums full of artefacts. The food is excellent, and many people speak English. But this means it is extremely popular, and do not let the recent Greek economy…
It has become a fashion to visit UNESCO World Heritage Sites. While this is a great endeavour (beats getting drunk, quad biking in the desert and elephant riding, yes?), it can be a bit hard to tick them all of (there are currently 1073) or…
We’re half round the Big Island, and just another three days until we return hone to very early nights and frost, and yet we’re just been away from home a week – that’s what happens when you start a new job and move house. We better…
Friday is Haiku Day! Yeah, it probably makes no sense whatsoever in Japanese, but it’s kinda fun to stick it into Google Translate. I really wanted something a bit sunnier ‘n funnier but the dark wet weather here in the north, no matter how many…
If you’re in Athens and want to spend some time at the beach, you could take a tram down to Glyfada – it’s a decent option. Better though, take a ferry from Piraeus to Aegina. This is a decent sized island in the Saronic gulf…
The Atlanta Hotel in Bangkok is one of the oldest hotels and one of the quirkiest places to stay in this thriving and expanding city. Set deeply back in the 1950’s, lacking the ultramodern comforts that have become standards in city hotels, and applying a…
This is not a very traditional Haiku (the second line has eight syllables) but since I already butchered Line One and Three. Also, I wondered for some time whether I can love a place that belongs to a country that has such a poor…
