Westie
Westie4044
This blog started, as do so many others, with an attempt to let parents and friends know what I was up to during my first ever trip outside of Western Europe: four months in India in inevitable post-uni gap yah. Unfortunately, after a near miss with the bombs in Mumbai in November 2008 my mother refused to read any more blogs as they kept giving her panic attacks...
My biggest joys in travel are awe-inspiring scenery, and what I would love to term 'comparative anthropology', but really just involves discoursing wildly on national/cultural characteristics. I like taking photographs of buildings. I would love to write blogs half as introspective and intelligent as Aspiring Nomad or Ed Vallance or many of the other bloggers on here, but somehow when I'm on the road blogs tend to turn into a vent for all the frustrations inherant in backpacking! Who knows, maybe if I keep blogging I'll find something halfway profound to say one day...
Now working full time for a charity in London, I am taking what holidays I can and making the most of all my weekends and bank holidays to explore the city. I plan to take career breaks for longer trips every time I change jobs - Mongolia, Patagonia, the Sierra Nevadas and China are all on my wish list.
Travel Blog Posts
January 16th 2012
Tallinn's Old Town looked like it had emerged straight from a picture book. Narrow winding streets blanketed with snow muffled the sound of voices and music emanating from cellar bars, occasional doors opening to spill golden light onto the drifts and eject a heavily muffled figure from its depths. Emerging into the central square, a Christmas tree festooned with twinkling lights was slowly being blanketed by white flakes, as the city's inhabitants forsook the streets for the warmth inside. On the Toompea, the hill overlooking the city, the spires of the churches stood silent guard as we made our way back to our small hotel. The following morning the snow had cleared and the sky was a bright cold grey. Bundled in multiple layers of thermals, jumpers, coats and hats we set off to explore, climbing ... read more
The Beginners' Guide to the Motherland
Published: December 8th 2011Europe » Russia » Northwest » Saint Petersburg
September 17th 2011
Russia. For me the country is hard to get my head around. For one thing, its so damn big. I mean really big, covering an eighth of the world's landmass. For another, its so inextricably linked with its history and politics and culture that you don't know whether to think of it in terms of the extravagent and cultured Tsars, the repressive Communist years, or the multibillionare sophisticated oligarchs of today. It is both the country of Nomadic Siberian reindeer herders, industrial mineral and oil extractors, Musovite high fashion designers and artists, and Caucasus' imans. It is desert, tundra, boreal forest, steppes and mountains. Where to start? From humble beginnings. A week in tourist-friendly St Petersburg, where I could make my very first clumsy attempts at understanding this vast and varied country and culture. How To ... read more
In Search of Marmots and Edleweiss
Published: August 30th 2011Europe » Switzerland » South-West » Rougemont
July 25th 2011
July 22nd - 25th 2011 - Switzerland As the train started the slow climb uphill from Lake Geneva, puffing round switchbacks and ascending through small perpendicular villages, the vista expanded to reveal a stunning montage of still blue lake and deeper blue mountains above them. Entranced we gazed out of the expansive windows as the lake slowly disappeared from view to be replaced by stunning peaks surmounted with shaggy shoulders of pine trees, themselves interspersed with green alps that glowed as if they had been created by CGI. I have seen a few mountains in my time, and they were all awe-inspiring in their own way - bleak, intimidating, monolithic or sinister. I had never before imagined mountains could be so, well, pretty! Going to Switzerland for a long weekend implies a lifestyle that one would ... read more
June 1st 2011
The Ideal Big Ben and double-decker red buses. The Royal Family. Cockney rhyming slang and jellied eels. Black cabs and Harrods. Fire, plague and lots of executions. Pubs. Thinking about London's tourist icons is a slightly odd experience for someone who lives there. Especially when trying to work out how these images developed. We don't really have the same film coverage as a city like New York, nor is London represented in hundreds of paintings like Paris or Rome. I guess most foreigners ideas about the City must therefore come from books - Dickens and Austen, Waugh, Wilde, and even Zadie Smith and Ian McEwan. That and school history lessons on William the Conqueror and the Tudors, with perhaps 'Bridget Jones' or 'Notting Hill' thrown in for good measure. I'm not sure what I really expected ... read more
May 18th 2011
14th - 17th May 2011 - Northumbria The pelting rain is driven by the frozen wind directly into our faces as we struggle up the barren hillside towards the ridge through the littered remains of an Empire. The bleak dales rising up around are almost invisible through the sheets of rain, as if the weather is determined to force upon you the extent of the desolate, miserable isolation of this place. This is Hadrian's Wall. And I am so very, very excited. We have driven down from Alnwick to get here, along single-track roads winding through wooded valleys, along the ridges of high moorland, and through small slate-roofed towns. A journey started in weak sunshine deteriorates rapidly into horrendous conditions, but this to me seems fitting - how better to appreciate Hadrian's Wall than it seemed ... read more
May 2nd 2011
26th April -1st May 2011 - Florence, Pisa, Lucca Florence felt immediately different from any other town in Italy so far. Bologna had given the impression of a place built for crowds but now lacking them, the inhabitants wandering through the monumental colonades in a manner that rather fancifully I likened to the Britons eking out a living in the partially abandoned Roman cities after the departure of the legions. Its graffiti scrawled across the historic buildings in the town centre spoke of economic gloom, raging against the evils of austerity and capitalism. Florence on the other hand seemed to have managed to prolong its golden age; and must remain one of the most visited destinations in Europe today. When asking where I was going on holiday, everyone I had spoken to at home had a ... read more
Piazzas, Palazzo and Pasta in Emilia Romagna
Published: June 3rd 2011Europe » Italy » Emilia-Romagna » Bologna
April 27th 2011
23rd - 25th April 2011: Bologna, Ferrara, Ravenna London can seem like the coldest and greyest city in the world in February. I had been dreaming about Italy for months; the food, the wine, the buildings, the language (I had been taking Italian classes in preparation and really enjoying them).... but most of all the sunshine. I told people confidently in the week running up that as long as I got to sit at a pavement cafe in the sunshine, with some nice wine and a book, I would need nothing else from my holiday. It was therefore a rather nasty shock when I got off the plane in Bologna to drizzle and a lowering dark grey sky! Bologna is probably not most people's first choice of city to visit in Italy, especially for their first ... read more
Empire State of Mind?
Published: March 10th 2011North America » United States » New York » New York » Manhattan
December 13th 2010
3rd to 12th December - New York, Boston The ‘American Dream’ is a concept that has motivated people for centuries – those seeking release from ethnic or religious persecution, for economic prosperity, fame, scenery, or even just the comfort of air conditioning in your home. Due to the inescapable dominance of American TV, brands and so on, this abstract concept of the American nation is one that almost every person in the entire world must have some version of; whether it’s one of love or hate. My ‘American Dream’ is based on fascination with the glaring inconsistences that seem to be inherent in its people, landscapes and culture. How could one country have the best universities in the world, yet be famed for its inhabitants’ ignorance? The origin of every crazy diet known to man, ... read more
"Address to a (Vegetarian) Haggis"
Published: November 16th 2010Europe » United Kingdom » Scotland » The Highlands » Glenshiel
September 16th 2010
27th August to 5th September 2010 It was the culmination of a childhood dream. Planned on and off for over 4 years, yearned for many a time before that, I was finally going to get to go to.... Scotland. Yes, I know it's an odd country to dream about going to. It's right in my back yard after all, and hardly most people's idea of vacation bliss, but blame it on too many adolescent watchings of Braveheart.... and post-adolescent repeated readings of Iain Bank's wonderful book 'The Crow Road'. Yet somehow it had never seemed to happen. India? Yes. Japan? Too easy. But Scotland? Nevertheless I was determined to make 2010 my year. I booked my flights, hired the car, miraculously persuaded Chatterjee to join me, and was gifted "the midge repellent to end all midge ... read more
April 27th 2010
April 21st to 26th 2010 - Paris Strolling down the wide, sunny boulevards, flanked by beautiful mid-19th century neoclassical buildings and the sparkling blue Seine, watching small children floating boats in the Jardin du Luxemborg, and reclining with the watercolourists in the deck chairs of the Tuilleries Gardens, it's hard to imagine this city as anything as a pleasure garden for lovers, artists and society debutants. Hard to imagine the rioting, executions, hunger and poverty that made the 'Jacques' of Paris one of the most revolutionary forces of the 18th and 19th centuries. But Paris shares a remarkable, if unexpected, trait with the cities of the 21st century; Astana or Ashgabat: it's character, appearance and attractions are the work and vision of one man. A vision of a city of monumentalism, grandeur, public spaces and tourism ... read more
Westie4044
| Joined | September 30th 2008 | Trips | 3 |
| Last Login | May 18th 2012 | Followers | 4 |
| Status | BLOGGER | Follows | 16 |
| Blogs | 40 | Guestbook | 55 |
| Photos | 1,341 | Forum Posts | 7 |
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India and Nepal
October 19th 2008 -» January 27th 2009
Japan and Vietnam
August 22nd 2009 -» November 7th 2009
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December 28th 2009 -» ongoing
October 19th 2008 -» January 27th 2009
Japan and Vietnam
August 22nd 2009 -» November 7th 2009
(Mostly) European Breaks
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