Category: Travels for Fun
-
MURDER IN FJÄLLBACKA
I love a good murder mystery and am always on the lookout for new authors. So when my Norwegian friend, Inger, told me about a series of crime novels based near her Swedish holiday home, I was keen to read on. For a couple of years, I immersed myself in the Swedish coastal town of […]
-
SURF’S UP AT LEEUWIN-NATURALISTE NATIONAL PARK
July is supposed to be cold and rainy, but we’re seeing the contrary this winter. The forecast promised a sunny day, so Joseph, Padma and I drove south for a couple of hours till we reached the Leeuwin-Naturaliste National Park. The Indian Ocean was at its finest and we watched bottlenose dolphins and later humans […]
-
SAKE IN AN IZAKAYA WITH A FRIEND
In December 1981, I was standing on the sidewalk in San José, Costa Rica while watching the Tope parade. A marching band clad in blue uniforms pounded away on their instruments. I looked out amongst the band members and spotted my mate Glen Snyder blowing away on his trombone while keeping in step. Glen and […]
-
THE LEGEND OF THE ULM SPARROW
My friend, Karl-Heinz Linke, has a reputation for exaggerating the truth when he tells stories. He’s the kind of guy who is always pulling your leg, so to speak. So, when he told Padma and me about the legend of the Ulm Sparrow, we assumed it was another one of his yarns. Karl-Heinz insisted it […]
-
A PEACOCK, A BRAMEL AND A WINDY RIDGE
For a number of years, Padma and I have been hearing about a home on a hill in County Cork of southwestern Ireland. Despite numerous invitations from its owners, our friends John Peacock and Paula Bramel, we could never make the trip. But now we finally got a chance to visit our friends and learn […]
-
A CATALAN FRIENDSHIP
The Pyrenees, that long mountain range extending east to west and creating the border between France and Spain, have captivated me for years. As a university student I read Laurie Lee’s As I Walked Out One Summer Morning, which became one of my favourite travel books. At the end Lee secretly crosses the Pyrenees and […]
-
AN APPARITION IN LOURDES
In 1858, 14-year-old Bernadette Soubirous and her sister and friend were out collecting firewood outside the village of Lourdes in the French Pyrenees. They wandered into a grotto where they claim a “a tiny maiden” wearing a flowing white robe spoke to them. The tiny maiden appeared 18 times that year in the area and […]
-
A PITSTOP IN MONACO AND A FATAL HAIRPIN TURN
We could have driven through Monaco in 15 minutes, but Padma and I decided to park the car and explore the city-state. At 2.1 square kilometres Monaco is the second smallest sovereign state after Vatican City. We drove through the heart of the city, and I found a patch of very good bitumen which beckoned […]
-
MEANDERING ALONG THE RIVIERA
I don’t have the patience to read travel guides and figure out what to see and where to go. Padma and I just drive and discover along the way. There are countless cute and picturesque seaside villages along the Riviera. How do you choose where to stay? I let booking.com do it for me. I […]
If you see this after your page is loaded completely, leafletJS files are missing.