So this one is the confessional piece- as the title says it, because even bad things have a certain je ne sais quoi in French: I don’t like the Champs-Élysées. Or, even worse, I am totally immune to its charms. As far as I am concerned, it might as well not be there- something must surely…
Category: travel diary
Barlove Special Edition: In Search of Lost Coffee- Cuillier Abbesses
The odyssey began on Sunday, and I, the characteristically clueless heroine of this story, had no idea what lay in wait. Then again, I have a slight suspicion that no odyssey ever went according to plan, or it would be called a Japanese train schedule. It was on Sunday morning therefore that I said no…
Morning in Montmartre
One of those things which is just as hard in the morning as you’d envisaged it would be in the evening is waking up at 7 AM after you’ve consumed copious amounts of French rosé. Also, let me here mention the fact that I belong to the Jeremy Clarkson school of thought which considers rosé…
Evenings on the Seine
It took me ages to start this piece, as I was harbouring a vain hope that there is still something that has not been said about the banks of the Seine in Paris, something that has not yet been laid down in a novel, a poem, an essay, a travel blog, a column of fashion…
Retro Slovenia and Some Thoughts About Why I Take Pictures
I was recently faced with several people who, upon hearing that I like to take pictures, looked at me with a friendly smile teetering between pity and condescension: you see, they never take pictures, like, never. It has never crossed their mind to buy a camera, and they don’t even use their phone to snap…
Barlove: Fábrica Coffee Roasters
Finding good coffee in a foreign town is never easy. You may look at your map, see a lot of little cups marking the spot here and there and go: how hard can it be? Well, very hard. There are three basic possibilities: the coffee capital, such as Berlin or London, where there are so…
Bookstore Ramblings- Lisbon’s Ler Devagar
I am sure you have been missing the litany of my defeats, so here comes another one, just to keep things exciting: I don’t speak Portuguese. Now this, obviously, is true of many people, but perhaps mine is made worse by a context that, for once, pertains to something I can do: I speak other…
Day Trip to Paradise: Sintra and Cabo da Roca
Lisbon is a city of only half a million people in the heart of an urban conglomerate of almost three, so there are plenty of exciting day trips to be made. Possibly the best one is to Sintra and Cabo da Roca, though, as the Lisbon to Sintra line is one of the most crowded…
Splendour on the Estuary- Lisbon Guide Part Three
What to see. When a bit of a city looks like a chessboard, it is highly likely some luminary’s fever dream, and in keeping with the maxim, the Baixa was thought up by the Marquess de Pombal, the minister of Joseph I of Portugal, in the wake of the devastating quake of 1755- being on…
Beer Fiends in Wine Country- Lisbon Guide Part Two
What to eat and drink. For those who have chanced on this blog before, it’s perhaps clear that we are firmly positioned on the beer side of life, so any judgement passed on wine will be of the lay kind. And for the lay wine drinker Lisbon is paradise. The variety of wines, both red…
Pocket Diary Budapest 