Guided by second hand accounts we'd never intended staying in Athens. We still weren't, but arriving at Athens airport at 8.00am for our 3.00pm departure to Dubai left us a yawning gap to fill. Our hosts in Dubai, Dan & Anthia have a 3 year old son. Kids always need more toys and we would go shopping in downtown Athens. Not wanting to be complete consumerist slaves we decided to see the Acropolis on our way to the mall. Leaving our bags in storage we left the terminal and stepped onto the railway. The railway is Lego set brand-new. It looks great but is deathly slow. The journey into the city took 40 minutes. But it would've looked great for the cameras during the 2004 Olympics. The Olympiad may lock the population in a naïve thrall ... read more

Italy as a state came into being in 1861, uniting the disparate regions of the entire Italian peninsula. People who couldn't care less about each other were melded together into one Kingdom. We'd traveled down from the curvaceous rump of Venezia, and had found ourselves in the bony shin area also known as Lazio, Roma. If Rome is Italy's shin, it's a hairy inelegant one at that. Late at night, we disembarked at Termini Station in the middle of Rome. We went from the spic and span high-speed train to the dirty, run-down & slow Roman metro to get to Ottaviano, our rented apartment only minutes walk from Vatican City. Tired and in unfamiliar surroundings, I had to check my negative tendencies and not critique this place to death. But wheeling our bags down Via Candia ... read more

The one & only plane at Beauvais Airport was the one we landed on. It was noticeably chillier than Barcelona. The baggage claim hall smelled like a barn. Maybe the sheep here are given an EU subsidised package holiday before they become chops on a Parisians plate. Beauvais as you might have worked out is a long way from Paris. So we boarded yet another bus with a cracked windscreen (every single tour bus we rode in Europe had one). My first impressions of European buses were from watching them on TV transporting people from Srebenicia. Only single seats remained; I sat next to an Aussie woman living in Paris. As we talked she told me about teaching French businessmen English and I told her about our honeymoon. She was interested in my iPhone, the way ... read more

Madrid is Europe's highest capital city. It lies 2300 metres above sea level on the high central plateau. The short 45 minute flight had taken us over the cracked and burnt countryside. Tendrils of green life grow steadily larger and culminating in large parks as you arrive over the city. Taxiing into the terminal the heat rising hung in a shimmer between the khakied land and the stark blue sky. In Spain an attempt of sorts has been made to stop smoking. Passengers lighting-up straight off the plane as Michelle experienced 7 or 8 years ago has stopped. However those lucky smokers have a little cubicle in baggage claim to puff away in. One senses another civil war could erupt over smoking. So it will have to gently die out unlike many of it's practitioners.* It ... read more

Look up a little and the brilliant sky blues & sun-whitened walls meet in the far-off haze of the hills. Surrounding you. Shadows throw across the old, old buildings and older land. Slowing your heart & mind as you happily wander the alleys and squares. Welcome to Coimbra. We got here Travelling by train. It's where old & new Portugal meet. The coaches are largely modern & roomy but the stations were populated by beggars out of the 19th century, complete with humps. The welfare system according to the online Encyclopaedia Britannica is comprehensive... 'The Portuguese welfare system is composed of several types of institutions that insure workers against sickness, disability, and old age and provide for the payment of pensions and family allowances. Compulsory insurance is provided by employers in most sectors of business and ... read more