Author archive
15 September 2009
After a miserable wet morning, the sun finally shone and we cycled to Ars … yes, in full it is Ars-en-Re. It is only about 7km each way this time. Ars has a church with a black-and-white spire, so I call it the church of St Michael Jackson. It was probably a white spire which […]
14 September 2009
Ile de Re has many cycle tracks … they seem to have been converted from the old narrow roads once the new roads came in, but I could be wrong. They link the different villages, taking cyclists through bays, salt pans, vineyards etc. Today we cycled to St Martin, which was about 9km from our […]
13 September 2009
Today we zoomed down somewhat towards the South West to La Rochelle in the French bullet train, TGV. It was the first time I’ve ever travelled in a high-speed train. The higher speed wasn’t too obvious apart from the more blurry scenery. From La Rochelle, we travelled to the village of Loix on Ile de […]
12 September 2009
Today we left Porto with the feeling that we’d one day come back to Portugal. It is one corner of Western Europe that is still affordable on a New Zealand income (or no income in my current situation). The price of many things are on par with New Zealand. Fruit and ice cream in particular […]
11 September 2009
Above: Hazy start to the day in Porto on practice day of the Red Bull air race. We attempted to go to a nearby fishing village today … it all turned to custard with bus services being suspended due to road closures in preparation for tomorrow’s Red Bull air race. So we returned to the […]
10 September 2009
Porto or Oporto is home to Port Wine. The city centre is very much a Paris-wannabe like Buenos Aires and Montevideo … with wide boulevards and beautiful classy buildings on both sides. Text continues after this gallery. The old city or Ribeiro is located slightly downhill on the river bank. It is rundown […]
9 September 2009
We travelled up the country through very boring landscape by bus (3.5 hours). The long distance buses are extremely new and comfortable. We arrived in Porto to realise that the Red Bull air race would be on the day we leave for Paris! Coincidentally Kim had his Red Bull airshow cap around town … from […]
8 September 2009
One of the highlights of Lisbon is Sintra, located about 45 minutes out of town. It has an Moorish castle plus a few villas and palaces dotted around the unusually green hilly landscape. Due to the distance and topography, it is essential to get around these sights by bus … and that itself is rather […]
7 September 2009
We took a public tram (number 28) uphill to an old part of the city called Alfama. It was very picturesque as the tram ding-dinged its way through the steep narrow streets where it was so narrow you could touch the houses on either side. There had been about two-tramloads of people waiting. Imagine if […]
6 September 2009
We did an online check-in for British Airways last night and it said on the Boarding Pass that bag-drop opens at 0500. So we thought we’d be able to drop our bags after breakfast then head into the city for a few hours and return to the airport for boarding the evening flight. Unfortunately when […]