Month September 2019
It’s that time. After more than two years away, we’re heading home. Though the journey isn’t quite over yet. We’re travelling east via the Trans-Siberian Railway – 76-hundred kilometres, three countries (Russia, Mongolia and China), six time zones. Moscow to… Continue Reading →
From Poland we ventured north to the Baltic States – Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. The people of the Baltics have suffered through a long history of occupation; it was only as recently as the 1990s that the States broke free… Continue Reading →
Gdansk is a small Polish port on the edge of the Baltic Sea. It’s not one of the great cities of the world. It’s not a cultural capital. It’s not a gastronomic powerhouse. But it is one of the most… Continue Reading →
When we decided to head to Poland, several people advised us to skip Warsaw in favour of the southern city of Krakow. The current capital is a big, industrial city without much to recommend it, they said. Whereas Krakow –… Continue Reading →
You’re right, that’s not Prague. It’s Český Krumlov, a city in the deep south of the Czech Republic’s Bohemia region – and what a pretty place it is. The Renaissance Old Town is virtually encircled by a bend of the… Continue Reading →
The people in these photographs are Holocaust survivors. They’re ‘Schindler Jews’, some of a group of twelve hundred Jewish men, women and children saved from World War II death camps by the German factory owner, Oskar Schindler. When Krakow became… Continue Reading →
We’re probably showing our age; mention Dresden and we think of porcelain – and bombs. It’s possible, though, that for some visitors to this German city – at least those from generations after ours – neither Dresden porcelain nor the… Continue Reading →
They took a chance did Mary and John. We’d met this lovely English couple in the Lake District last May when we both happened to be staying at the Royal Oak Inn. We were seated next to each other at… Continue Reading →
We couldn’t leave England without hopping across the Irish Sea one more time. There’s so much to like about Ireland – green fields, wild coasts, ancient history, great writers, good craic, Guinness – the list goes on; but for us,… Continue Reading →
We had to be in Rome for a series of appointments (bank, visas etc) and somehow ended up with a week to kill between meetings. Rome is not a place where you want to spend a lazy week in the… Continue Reading →