The reason why I do not travel around Hungary based on throwing darts at the map is that a) I do not have a wall sized map of the country, and b) even if I had it, the dart would probably land off the map anyways, and after some convoluted calculations I would figure out…
Category: travel
Wonderwalls of Montmartre
A long long time ago, when the Internet was still not widely available- and a bit before I received my first beloved PC, with a box of a monitor and one of those tantalizingly slow modem connections- I was surfing the web on my father’s work computer looking for Interesting Things. Since, as already mentioned,…
The Five Sunrises
Whenever I sleep away from home, irrespective of how great the accommodation is or how tired I am, the first night is a bit of a struggle. The bed will invariably be positioned oddly, the smells are strange, even more so the sounds- or, should I happen to be in a remote place, the lack…
Je N’Aime Pas Les Champs-Élysées
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…
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…
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…
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…
Pocket Diary Budapest 