I really do have a great dislike of airplanes.  This may, as some of you probably have guessed, well be linked to my fear of heights (or, rather, my fear of falling from them) and to my love of sleeping (and hatred of sleep deprivation).  However, recent experimentation has shown that flight has aquired a new facet of discomfort, thanks largely to ( Read more... )

France continues to live up to all of our expectations.  Crowded, dirty and, despite Rouen being a tourist town, rather unaccomodating on the whole.  The good food doesn't quite make up for it

We've been to quite a few places since I last updated.  Prague, Nuremburg, Heidelberg, Luxembourg and, because we decided we should give France a second ( Read more... )

Ah, Germany, land of excitement.  Why, just today in the space of four hours we were treated to the spectacle of a police car that had rolled over (apparently without external aid) in the middle of a busy intersection, the Museum of Hygiene and an (in the) buff young man ambling into the heart of the town to the apparent notice of few.

We spent a ( Read more... )

Well, here we are in Bremen, Germany.   We're here for a few days to recharge our batteries before continuing on our whirlwind trip through western Europe.  So far this week we've been to Brussels, Amsterdam and now Bremen.  Three countries in almost as many dazs (and on one tank of gas ( Read more... )

Just a short update to say that, after some slight misadventure (nearly missing the train from Victoria Station as the Victoria underground line turned out to be out of comission), we've made it safely to mainland Europe.  Well, more or less safely.  European drivers are, indeed, utterly insane and we're rather unaccustomed to driving on the right ( Read more... )

It's really rather amazing how quickly the human body adapts to new circumstances. Only two weeks ago, walking for half an hour across Perth was enough to leave me tired and breathless; now I think little of spending the entire day traipsing around, say, Edinburgh, which is both considerably larger and rather more hilly. That said, on Monday I made ( Read more... )

Whoever would have thought that it rained in Scotland?

I'm in Edinburgh, in an internet cafe, hiding from the rain until my bus arrives.  I suppose it's about time we had a taste of true British weather.  It's making dashing between various fringe events a touch more exciting, slipping and sliding on cobblestones.

The bus ride up here was ( Read more... )

August 9th-14th : Edinburgh for the Fringe Festival.

August 15th-17th : London and surrounds

August 18th-September 10th : Continental Europe, starting in Calais where we will collect our hire car.

September 11th-13th: Back to London.

September 14th: Arrive home.

I have an unerring sense of direction.  If I must reach a particular destination, especially by a particular time, I will unerringly choose the wrong way to get there.   Yesterday, for example, I made it halfway down the Strand before realising that Fleet Street was, in fact, the other way.

Sunday was spent primarily walking around the parks until ( Read more... )

Well, here we are in sunny London, and I say that with no hint of irony.  Today was a beautiful summer day, blue sky’d, cloudless and pleasantly warm at around 28C.  The three of us Australians actually got sunburnt, a testament, one suspects, to our tendency to spend more time indoors than out of it and the resultant lily-white skin.  At 20 ( Read more... )