As we arrived on the island. A sentence which is, likely, the most commonplace way to start a piece about Hydra. So, as we arrived on the island, the sky was very blue, the sea was very smooth, and the sun was very high above the horizon, steadily beaming salty, furnace-like heat. It was very…
Category: travel diary
Old Things for New Times- A Visit to Florence
I have spent an inordinate amount of time trying to start this post. Which is not a bad thing, because I have learned something. I have a problem with Florence. It’s not that I don’t like it. It’s more that I don’t know what to do with it. In a nutshell, I was more interested,…
A Little Off the Beaten Track- A Visit to Pisa
It was criminally early on a spring Saturday, and we’d headed south across Europe above a cover of clouds. But as the plane made its descent, I could clearly discern the outline of Pisa, a bit upriver from the estuary of the Arno. We veered out above the sea to line up for landing, passing…
The City is a Labyrinth of Lives- Walks Through Istanbul, Part Two
Our long and arduous quest for nourishment, somewhat hyped in the first instalment, lasted a whole five minutes. Istanbul Modern rubs shoulders with the Galataport development- to be more precise, it is in fact a part of it, dominating one of its ends, alongside the Nusretiye Mosque situated across the same square. For a moment,…
Turkish Words for the Human Condition- Walks Through Istanbul, Part One
Only an idiot would go for two days to Istanbul and hope to achieve anything- and so we did just that. It has to be said that our saving grace was having been to Istanbul before, and, on these occasions, having ticked off all the ‘cumbersome’ must-sees, the palaces, the mosques, the churches, the cisterns,…
City of Liquid Gold: October in Prague
I find myself raiding local bookstores whenever I travel, even in countries where I don’t speak the language. Bookstores are a window into a country’s soul, and, with a bit of luck, you’ll find at least some English translations of local authors. (The availability, and language, of translations is also a good way to gauge…
The Most Dangerous Bag in Berlin&Other Caffeinated Musings
We are faced off in a battle of wills, the German man and me. Only, I think he is not German. Which means I think that perhaps his parents were not born in a small village in Bavaria but somewhere altogether to the south of it. Somewhere with lovely weather, bougainvillea petals floating in the…
Remembrance of Beers Past: A Weekend in Košice.
The train rolled through the thick autumn mist, and we saw nothing. Depending on how you like to travel, this can be a good thing, or a bad thing. It’s good if you travel for the feeling. It’s bad if you travel for the sights. Now, the sights would have been the fairly lush and…
Things Are Not Always What They Symi-Island Hopping in the Dodecanese
After spending one eventful morning embroiled in the entrails of Piraeus port being unable to locate the Hydra ferry, I swore never again to arrive at a port without doing my homework properly. I was also very glad that Duolingo did find it logical to teach me the Greek for ‘where is the boat to…
Athena Was Here, Perhaps Saint Paul Too, But Mary Has Left the Building: Lindos and Beyond
The island of Rhodos offers plenty of opportunities for a day trip, and you can plan most as a mix of beach splashing and more elevated cultural pursuits. After some careful evaluation we went for what we thought was a rather relaxed itinerary of Lindos, Butterfly Valley and Phileremos Monastery, with a starting point from…
Pocket Diary Budapest 