Monday morning started off as a fine and sunny day in London, however as the day advanced so too the cool weather including some rain this afternoon. I thought I'd post a few of the photos from my weekend in France and Belgium I could write so much about this weekend having learnt so much about the battles that took place in this part of Europe during the Great War. The magnitude of the war and its massive war dead only hits home when you visit the Memorials at places like Tyne Cot, Thiepval and the Newfoundland Memorial Park around [View Full Entry]

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One of the most moving experiences of our trip to France and Belgium was the visit to the Newfoundland Memorial Park situated some 10kms north of Albert and opened in 1925. It is a memorial to the armed forces of Newfoundland who were once independent of Canada Along with preserved trench lines there are a number of memorials and cemeteries contained within the park. Always a popular destination for WW1 battlefield visitors, the park was a focus of early pilgrimages by survivors of the war. A peaceful place today, this park occupies the ground over which the Newfoundland battalion (toge [View Full Entry]

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Having travelled through France from Calais and into Belgium we arrived at the town of Ypres. Ypres is a small Flemish market town, just over the border from France, quite similar to many towns in Belgium. The town of Ypres was the scene of some of the worst fighting of the war with 500 0000 dead in an area of 25 square kilometers. Ypres was one of the first places where chemical warfare was employed. Ypres was totally razed to the ground during four years of fighting. Ypres these days has the title of "city of peace" and on the [View Full Entry]

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I started the day by walking up to Bermondsey Street , just up the road from where I am staying to grab a coffee and a bite to eat . Afterwards I wandered back along the Thames Walk to visit Tate Modern. Created in the year 2000 from a disused power station it displays the national collection of international modern art. The current major exhibition at the Museum is the work of Gilbert and George. The pair are perhaps best known for their large scale photo-montages. They have apparently attracted much attention through some of their shocking imagery, including nudity, [View Full Entry]

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Hello from London. Admittedly I've had a slow start to my new blog however I am in no rush, a holiday is about relaxing isn’t and less about being chained to a keyboard. Having said that here's my first entry! My first two nights were spent with my good buddies Mick and Sal in the wonderfully quaint, yet rather dead village of Stebbing. The village is only small, with a free house (ie. pub) and a post office/general store. We tried to get some dinner in the pub but was advised at 8.15pm that they were finished serving for the [View Full Entry]

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I have been back nearly a week and it is still difficult to accept that my holiday is over. Its hard to adjust to life back home and to deal with the reality of things like looking for work, however there are so many great things about life in Sydney and in particular the northern beaches that I will soon be back into a routine resembling normality. At times the trip feels like a dream and just a flash in time but I have so many great memories and so many photographs that I will never be able to forget what [View Full Entry]

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I left a very soggy Venice behind today having caught my last flight with Ryanair back to London. It was very pleasing to see the sun shining again here in England even if the temperature was a little cool. Tomorrow morning I'm on Gulf Air back to Sydney. The two months I have been away seem to have just flown by without notice and although I have many great memories, they seem but a flash in time now. Today has been a very long day, its still only 5pm in London but I have been awake for 12 energy-sapping hours which [View Full Entry]

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I have just arrived in Venice after 3 lovely days (make that two and half) in Florence. Up until yesterday (Sunday) afternoon I would have said that I've been blessed with some terrific weather. That is up until the last 24 hours. The rain arrived in Florence just after lunch and its been bucketing down ever since. After getting very lost on Sunday morning and being swept up by a tide of marathon runners (I accidentally ended up at the start of the Firenze Marathon!) I decided that I needed to have a satisfying lunch somewhere and so I headed to [View Full Entry]

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After an long sleep (probably much needed) I was up early to visit and climb the Campanile, the bell tower for Il Duomo. The climb to the summit via its 414 stairs is one of the highlights of any trip to Florence. I had read that the opening time was 8.30am and so decided the best method of queue avoidance (or at least be towards the start of the queue)would be to get there when most tourists are still drinking their cafe americanos in their hotels. I hoped for an uninterrupted and comfortable ascent up the tower's narrow stairwell and in [View Full Entry]

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Thursday 29th September and Friday 30th September After a lovely morning (see previous entry) the afternoon turned into a drawn out and eventually frustrating one. I caught the train from Venice to Ancona (a four and a half hour journey) so that I could board the 10pm Adriatica ferry to Split in Croatia. To my total frustration the ferry was not running and I was unable to make any progress in the queue for the earlier 9pm ferry which was already close to capacity when I tried to book the previous day. Unfortunately the ferries run less frequently this time of [View Full Entry]

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