I stepped on the tarmac of Málaga Costa del Sol airport, and I took a deep, hungry breath. I immediately felt it. Plane exhaust. But beyond it, something unmistakable, tugging at the deepest recesses of my sensory memory. Salty, briny, fragrant, almost like an infusion of moss and minerals. I screamed, internally, like the Greeks…
Tag: traveltips
Old Things for New Times- A Visit to Florence
I have spent an inordinate amount of time trying to start this post. Which is not a bad thing, because I have learned something. I have a problem with Florence. It’s not that I don’t like it. It’s more that I don’t know what to do with it. In a nutshell, I was more interested,…
A Great Place To Be Lost In- Athens Diaries Continued
We arrived in Athens on a windy day, which sent my two randomly assigned fellow travelers into a bit of a state, as they don’t often fly, don’t really like it, and the bumpy descent was really not what they’d signed up for. They were in their early 70s, came equipped with lovely straw hats…
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,…
To the Shire and Back with the Blue Wave Express- A Visit to Szigliget
The guesthouse owner looked incredulously at us as we dismounted from the minivan and it became clear that it wasn’t ours. We’d gotten the same slightly suspicious glances a few years back when we’d arrived in Giardini Naxos, Sicily, in the same carless state. Crazy, crazy folk. We’d approached Szigliget by train, on the slow,…
Mystery Train to the City of Five Cathedrals and a Crescent- A Weekend in Pécs
I don’t always travel first class, but when I do, I don’t. The glorious rail transportation company of Hungary (or as we frequent travelers fondly call it, k@&va MÁV) is offering discounts for online purchases, because you obviously need more incentives not to go to their ticket office and wait for an eternity and a…
Cellini’s Saliera and the Mo Salah of Beer- A Weekend in Vienna
On an unseasonably warm February morning we strolled through the Belvedere park, among joggers running out of steam on its gentle incline and Asian ladies snapping selfies with bare legs (it was not THAT warm, but the Asian resilience to cold in touristy situations never ceases to amaze me). A few hours later, we were…
Refuge by the River- Visit(s) to Szentendre
It recently dawned on me that, shockingly, I haven’t written anything about Szentendre here, though I’ve probably been there more than to any other place in Hungary besides Budapest, which figures, since it’s a leisurely 40 minutes away by HÉV line number 5, which gently rocks upstream along the course of the Danube. (An extension…
The Land of Pigeons and Wild Boars: The Hapless Guide to Kușadası
The first rule of Kușadası is that no one talks about the ineptitude of Google maps when it comes to Kușadası. For if they did, no one would ever go there. Jokes put aside, if your accommodation is in the old town, loosely referred to as Kaleiçi, basically the area surrounding the bazaar and the…
Rocks, Saints, Rivers- A Visit to Ephesus
Present day Ephesus lies stranded inland, about 5 kilometres away from the coast. As with many ancient sites, one could hardly notice its presence if it wasn’t for the road signs. The closest settlement is Selçuk, a sleepy provincial town on the road from Izmir to the seaside resort of Kușadası. Most visitors also come…
Pocket Diary Budapest 