I’ll spare you the suspense: this entry will contain absolutely nothing about real French gardening, which has always seemed to me a rather typically French and also ultimately futile attempt at rationalizing the environment. The ordered geometry of nicely trimmed hedges and strategically placed decorative fountains is alright, but somehow fails to lift the soul…
Tag: traveldiary
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…
Plenty of Stairways to Heaven- Lisbon Guide Part One
How to get there and around. Unless you happen to live in the western bit of Spain or are Vasco da Gama returning with galleons laden with gold and spices, flying seems the best idea. Lisbon Portela airport is incredibly pleasantly located within the city limits, quite a rarity these days, and all central locations…
Wonders of Tihany
Truth be said, I am not much of a Balaton person. I would never imagine it as the location of a summer holiday for it is, most definitely, a lake and as such misses those crucial elements of a seaside, such as the salt breeze and the rumble of the waves. The water is also…
Sleepy Island in the Sun: Ráckeve
So I finally snapped into action regarding my let’s check where the other HÉVs are going plan and took H6 to its final stop in Ráckeve, some 30 kilometres south of Budapest’s city limits, on Csepel Island. First things first, after more than ten years of living here, it finally dawned on me that the…
Pocket Diary Budapest 