A Traveller’s Eye, A Thinker’s Heart
I like to tell stories. I like to take photos.
And I like to share them. Enjoy.
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FORTY YEARS OF SPANISH DREAMS
While in university, I took a travel literature course. I loved getting homework … I could do it while lying in bed and drifting off to foreign and exotic lands. My favourite assignment was to read Laurie Lee’s As I Walked Out One Midsummer Morning. The author sets out on foot armed with a violin…
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‘MENU DEL DIA’ IN OVIEDO
I thought I had never heard of Oviedo. But I was wrong. Years ago, I watched a silly Woody Allen called ‘Vicky Cristina Barcelona’. In one scene, Javier Bardem tells two American women that they will fly with him that evening from Barcelona to Oviedo and then make passionate love. The Americans rolled their eyes…
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WHERE THERE ARE NO CROWDS
There’s a big problem of travelling in the province with the lowest incidence of COVID in Spain. Everyone else has the same idea as us. Asturias is packed with holidaymakers. Almost all are Spanish with a sprinkling of French. No Yanks. No Poms. And probably just two Aussies. The hotels and restaurants are bursting with…
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WINDOW TO ASTURIAS
Earlier in the year – the pre-COVID times – Padma and I started dreaming of buying a holiday home in Spain. All of the land agent websites seemed to direct us to the south of the country … to the classical hot and dry Spain with abundant sun. One day as we were looking at…
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BASQUE COUNTRY
A couple of days ago I had never heard of the Basque fishing town of Hondarribia. Padma and I needed a place to hang out for a few days near Biarritz, which is in French Basque country. But Biarritz is too posh and expensive for simple folks like us. So I brought up the map…
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ANOTHER CHATEAU
There are about 1000 chateaux in France’s Loire Valley. Padma and I saw one and a half. That’s enough. Been there. Done that. We started our drive through the Loire with a stop at Amboise and really enjoyed walking through the chateau and the gardens and courtyards. Then we travelled south to the River Cher…
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THE RETURN TICKET
Three years ago today, I got a bit emotional as I bid farewell to the family home and friends of 22 years. Joseph and I were en route on an epic father/son adventure to the Georgian Caucasus Mountains and after that I was heading off to an even greater adventure – a new job in…
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WE’RE NOT KARNEVAL PEOPLE
Karneval has once again arrived in Germany; and once again Padma and I have tried to avoid it. The partying, the drinking, the craziness, the costumes … it’s just not our scene. Maybe we’re just fuddy duddies. So when our neighbour sent a text and asked if we wanted to join them at a Karneval…
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ON TOP OF THE (GERMAN) WORLD
Last Sunday was one of those frigid, yet super clear days that only seem to come around a few times each winter. We were showing Padma’s brother’s family around and were staying with our friends Karl-Heinz and Hiltrud Linke in their little village of Illerbachen. As the sun rose on a very frosty morning, Karl-Heinz…
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