Articles from this Category
29 July 2011
It wasn’t a long (2.5h) or windy road from Tirana to Berat but strangely people were vomiting. I thought Albanians might have the motion-sickness gene but later bus travels didn’t show that up … so maybe there had been some serious partying prior to the bus ride. Berat is an old Ottoman town scattered on […]
28 July 2011
Wandering around Tirana I soon realised that the sights listed in the guidebook existed because they had to fill that heading with something. The couldn’t just leave the section blank! Tirana isn’t exactly beautiful either as many of the buildings are plain and functional. It’s probably a reflection of the communist era. Despite all that, […]
27 July 2011
I met Nicole for breakfast today; we had studied Thai Masage in Bangkok together and stayed at the some hotel. It was lovely to see her again and the venue was very atmospheric at Mariandl Pension’s cafe called Cafe am Beethovenplatz. It was a nice old building with an outdoor section. I had enough time […]
26 July 2011
After a two-night stay in Downham Market with my brother-in-law, I have an evening flight to Munich for a 22h nightstop. Lufthansa like most good old-fashioned airlines consider any flight connection less than 24h to be a transit (rather than a stopover) and is free-of-charge … anything longer is only permitted on a more expensive […]
24 July 2011
Above: Flying near the Tibetan Plateau, 40,000 feet doesn’t seem so high. It was a 0440 wake up for the 0830 Air New Zealand flight from Hong Kong to London Heathrow. I caught the last “Night Bus” to the airport at 0510 but I should have slept for 15 minutes longer and caught the 0530 […]
21 September 2009
Above: View from Belle Ville Park shows the Paris skyline including the Eiffel Tower. I thought revisit Sacre Coeur today but Marie took me for another “real Paris” outing. We took the bus to Belle Ville park in the northeast and walked back down. The walk back down was a mix of African, Asian and […]
19 September 2009
This morning Marie took me to the northern part of Paris around Gare du Nord (the northern railway station). The area is a hotchpotch of people from Africa, Middle East and the Indian Subcontinent living in more rundown conditions than the Paris we know and love. The markets were incredible and far cheaper than in […]
18 September 2009
Above: Lacy undies? No, the Eiffel Tower. As Paris isn’t entirely new to me, there was any pressure to do the touristy things. Instead it is quite nice to do the day-to-day activities … very soon the familiar become strange! In this case it is swimming … Paris seems to be well-equipped with council swimming […]
17 September 2009
One thing I haven’t done in my previous visits to Paris is the Pere Lachaise cemetery which is home to the remains of many famous people. From a quick googling, I found that it was best to approach from the rear entrance if one is interested in finding Oscar Wilde’s grave … not totally unexpected […]
16 September 2009
We travelled back to Paris today. It was an early morning wakeup, It was dark at 7am as Loix is in the west of the country. 1.5 hours on the bus followed by 3.5 hours on the train followed by another bus ride within Paris meant that the day disappeared 🙁 It would have been […]