As already mentioned in this, let me fancifully call it ’Paris series’, for Paris is in many ways such a fanciful place itself, I am not your number one expert when it comes to navigating the city. And the epitome of my being confused about Paris has always been Montparnasse. Irrespective of which metro station…
Category: urban exploration
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…
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…
Arad 50/mm Continued
The first Arad 50/mm installment was a bit of a Schrödinger’s cat of intentions situation, so I can proudly declare that I really meant the second one, as a sort of late spring follow up to the late autumn edition. I also decided to try and take some snaps of my nieghbourhood, which, since I…
Your Ruins to the Right of Me- Discovering Népsziget
Since it transpired that we’ve summited almost all of Buda’s many hills we decided it was time to turn our attention to other places of interest such as, let’s say, islands. Though, as previously specified, of those there are only three in Budapest and we’ve been to all of them, although Csepel has sadly gone…
A Limes Ran Through It- Aquincum and Római-part
Our recent visit to the Kiscelli Museum came with the extra bonus of a free ticket to either the Castle or the Aquincum museums, which can be used for up to 30 days from the purchase of the first ticket. Emboldened by this prospective, we decided to go for the Aquincum museum, which proved to…
Museum on the Top of Town
Encouraged by our Lisbon exploits, we decided that it’s high time we tackled yet another Budapest hill, and the one we picked as our next target was Mátyás-hegy, towering at 299 metres and lying in Buda’s third district, just a little off the more popular Hármashatár-hegy, which we had already mapped last summer. Mátyás-hegy is…
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…
A Glimpse into the Hidden Budapest
One of my most frequent compulsions when walking the streets of Budapest is stealing a furtive glance into the inner courtyards of the houses when an unsuspecting inhabitant is going in, perhaps lingering a few seconds to hoist a shopping bag or lead a reluctant mutt over the threshold. Every now and then, I glimpse…
Pocket Diary Budapest 