Little street, lovely restaurant, and my favourite kind of traffic - on foot and attractive. At one point the scene is practically out of a film set - two girls calling up to a friend on a balcony, a guy on an old bike meandering with baguette in hand, a couple walking together hand in hand and the obligatory well-dressed mother with 2 happy kids. The shutters around here are a lovely pastel blue that suits the brick buildings down to the ground. It was the region's main export and made many people very rich. I am in Toulouse, revisiting my [View Full Entry]

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Gawd it's been a busy summer! Festivals, football and tango have the been the order of the day for some time now, much to our enjoyment. The last four months have been a period during which we have felt very happy to be here in the UK, taking full advantage of what we came for - Europe, London and culture. Festivals have punctuated our summer, with 2 in London and one in the mother of all festival cities, Edinburgh. We were lucky enough to get tix to a couple of London's larger music shindigs - the Hyde Park festival, featuring Q-tip [View Full Entry]

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As always, a word on transport. A sane person might safely assume that at 5 am on a Friday, an airport would be, if not an oasis of tranquillity, then certainly uncrowded. How wrong we were - Stansted was packed, heaving with Brits going away on stag dos. We spotted at least four of these groups, who had had the original idea of wearing t-shirts bearing quips like ‘Dangerous Dave’s Stag’, or some such rhetorical achievement. Upon arrival we immediately attacked by rogue consonants. Poland has been invaded many times, and those who ransacked the place fiendishly stole all th [View Full Entry]

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Our love affair with Wales continues. I found a cottage with my usual thrift and speed - a week later we were off to the West with Eesvan and Ro, a doctor and a lawyer. They're not as bad as they sound. We picked said individuals up from Oxford and forged ahead. Things got amusing when the normally infallible Tomtom started to play up - having decided we felt peckish, we instructed the machine to find sustenance. It found us a rabbit. The blasted satnav decided that instead of taking us to the motorway services stop via, say, the motorway, it [View Full Entry]

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A few weeks ago we engaged in a splendidly British activity - house-boating on a canal. Our friends Eesvan and Ro had been planning this for a while, and after several attempts it all came together on an unseasonally sunny Sunday. In the morning we gathered raincoats, snacks and friends into the houseboat. After a cursory lesson on manoeuvring and not breaking things, we were let loose with several tons of wood and metal. The engine was set to putter. Steering the thing was an exercise in anticipation - you have to move the rudder about a minute before you want [View Full Entry]

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What a portentous beginning... Two things have happened: the days are getting much, much longer, and we both have jobs. The difference this makes cannot be underestimated - we have more energy, we are generally happier and more relaxed about spending money, and we are finally at the point where we no longer look fearfully at the bank account every couple of days. I am playing more football. Mon has found a couple of dance classes to go to. We are planning our summer, which has arrived early. The last two weekends have been spent engaging in sun-related activities, to wit: [View Full Entry]

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Sorry, that's the best I could come up with. References to That Movie end here. Salzburg is beautiful, and the airport is close, two factors which make it utterly recommendable in my book. Furthermore, our first discovery was that public transport is absurdly cheap, rendering our hotel's distance from town irrelevant. It was 3 euros 20 for 24 hours of travel on the electric buses. So Salzburg is old - but interestingly the 'old' town is the cleanest-looking, so figure that out. People have been quarrelling and building the resulting castles here for a very long time, so it was no [View Full Entry]

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I've just finished a month-long contract at a hair product company in Soho, during which I was able to enjoy the privileges of commuting, all the while knowing there was a light at the end of the tunnel, so to speak. As most of you will know, London's Tube is a strange place. It silences everyone, me included. I have tried to make a virtue of saying 'bless you' when someone sneezes, but more often than not I am cowed by the overwhelming detachment exuded by all travellers. It's completely understandable - after all, the only thing you share is a [View Full Entry]

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Mon got confirmation about a new contract - the next day we were on a plane to Amsterdam. Our flat is amazingly handy to Heathrow, which means stress-free(ish) travel. We took the bus to the Leidesplein where we'd booked a place and began our exploration. Amsterdam lends itself well to walking - smallish, almost devoid of cars, and full of scenic canals. We perused the main drags, along with every other tourist in town, and quickly decided, as always, that the little streets were the way to go. Small, perfectuly shaped delights are always just around the corner - a beautfiul [View Full Entry]

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Arrr, the countryside. I will join the no doubt embarrassing quantities of kiwis who think they've come home upon arrival in North Wales - no real motorways, hills and mountains, proper beaches and wild walks... We had rented a little cottage for a ridiculous sum, and went on little trips to explore. We soon discovered that Wales had something more: castles! They dot the countryside, a testament to Welsh stubbornness. English Kings were constantly having to put down rebellions, so decided that a little fortification would do just the trick. The result is a series of well-kept structures that w [View Full Entry]

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