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…
Category: travel
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…
Knights, Beaches and Negronis: The (Almost)Practical Guide: Rhodos Part Two
The old town of Rhodos is an open air museum in itself. Work on the fortifications that we see today was begun by the Knights Hospitalier in 1309, the year when they finished the conquest of the island. The different portions of the wall were guarded by the different Langues of the Knights- the langue,…
Love and Loathing on a Sun Soaked Island: Rhodos Part One
We have a complicated relationship, Rhodos and I. It began with what could only be described as love at first sight but then it went down unexpected Rho(a)des. It was the first time I had arrived in Greece by way of water, which could seem odd for a country so fundamentally defined by its seas,…
The Warm and Sweet Waters of the Aegean: a Week in Fethiye
Dalaman airport had long been a mystery to me. You may wonder why I cared about Dalaman airport in the first place, well I did, I’m one of those people who binge watch aviation videos on YouTube and reach for their phone to check Flight Radar whenever they hear the distant rumble of an airplane…
The Ocean Was Angry That Day- Porto Diary Part Two
Since we needed to get to the centre by metro, our second day in Porto also began in the proximity of the São Bento station, and we naturally tried to land some breakfast. All the hip places along Rua das Flores had queues: there is a growing traveler’s fetish for fancy brunch spots, which end…
In Vinho do Porto Veritas- Porto Diary Part One
We flew to Porto at the beginning of summer, when rumours of impending airport apocalypse (or, as the world is going, apocalypse, full stop) were in their infancy. But if you want a taste of misery at high altitude, follow our example. Book Wizz Air. I had carefully avoided them since they cancelled on us…
Fram Means Forward- Oslo Diary Part Two
Day Three There’s an eerie quality to Easter Sunday spent in a country that doesn’t celebrate Easter that weekend. It’s a Sunday, alright, and the city is motionless and sluggish to wake, but I feel slightly out of synch, like a visitor who programmed the wrong century on the time machine. I google Orthodox churches,…
Pocket Diary Budapest 