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…
Tag: travelphotography
The Art of French Gardening
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…
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…
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…
An Impractical Guide to Lisbon
Lisbon then is at the end of the world, on the edge of it, Lisbon is the fear of toppling over into the abyss of what you do not yet know. Lisbon is the city of dozens of sad poets walking the pavements shiny with the mild rain of the Mediterranean, which never pierces the…
River of Ice- A Walk along the Wintry Danube
To quote Blur (and it’s very nice to start a post by quoting your favourite Britpop band), modern life is rubbish. These days, instead of going out onto my balcony to investigate whether I feel mildly cold, just plain old cold, or hideously cold, I constantly refresh the alpha and omega of all Hungarian weather…
Lake of Ice- A Trip to the Wintry Balaton
So on Friday evening our bit of the world was bracing itself for a weekend out of, well not hell, because hell is supposed to be hot, yet if I compare sitting in a sauna with a nice beer in tow, or meeting an Arctic blast (with or without a nice beer in tow) I…
Pocket Diary Budapest 