Tallinn, Estonia – a 2011 European Capital of Culture from Deutsche Welle
Isle of Jersey, from the London Independent
England rugby news – Johnny Wilkinson from the London Independent
National Museum of Scotland reopens from the London Independent
When I was in college, I got completely hooked on live theatre. My mother, on the other hand, had been thoroughly captivated by the ballet for decades. Classical orchestral music was a minor interest but usually in the form of recordings or radio programs, rather than live performance. For whatever reason, opera was not on my family’s radar.
My opera conversion came, unexpectedly, 7 or 8 years ago. It started when a friend offered me her spare opera ticket and I accepted, curious to see and hear what got opera buffs so excited. That evening in Minneapolis was a double bill: Continue reading
Broad Street, Oxford
Over the years, I have visited Oxford, England a few times. The first two times were back in the early 1990s. Both times, I took the ‘official’ walking tour of the colleges, conducted by vetted Blue Badge guides. These guides provided interesting history and were fun to listen to. My most recent trip was last winter. The weather in the northeastern U.S. was snowy and cold Continue reading
Mayfair leaves the UK Monopoly board
Places to go and things to see that appeal to me…
— > Tours International’s Jane Austen tour dates for 2012
Most of us in the U.S. try not to waste electricity, especially these days when so many of us are watching our pennies. When we travel, though, it’s easier to forget to turn off lights or televisions. We’re thinking instead about where to go for a meal or what shopping to squeeze into our trip. There’s little thought given to how much juice we are sucking from the local power grid; maybe we assume the price of the hotel room includes as much electricity as we want. Or we don’t think about it at all.
There are many places in Europe – and I’m sure this goes beyond Europe – where you will use less power than you would at home because Continue reading
When I travel, I spend a great deal of my time taking pictures, especially in places I’ve never been before. Sometimes, though, the camera isn’t handy or an image flashes by so unexpectedly that the shot is gone before I can get the camera out. On such occasions, the image may live on in my journal but sometimes it only lives in my mind’s eye.
Shock memory is a term used to describe how images get imprinted in our minds so completely that we never forget them. Continue reading
bird market on la rambla
The best known area of Barcelona is the pedestrian promenade called La Rambla. It has one very narrow vehicle lane on either side of the boulevard, but these are off-limits to all private vehicles beginning around 8pm. At least that’s what the signs seemed to indicate.
Sooo… having a hotel right off La Rambla is extremely convenient for sightseeing, people-watching and catching a bus or the metro. Continue reading
lunchtime in Bruges
Bruges is one of several European cities dubbed ‘the Venice of the North’. It’s a lovely town with a well-preserved medieval center which includes several canals.
Hans Memling hotel bar from the breakfast room
I found a small hotel, the Hans Memling, on the Web, centrally located just a hundred yards or so from the main (Markt) square and my room came with a sweet surprise that had nothing to do with the hotel and everything to do with location. My room, on the ground floor, faced the side street and each morning before breakfast, the measured clip-clop of horses on the cobblestones drew me to the window and I watched the animals and their open-top carriages glide past on their way to ‘work’. Continue reading
New York has its ball dropping above Times Square. In Paris, there are the flashing lights of the Eiffel Tower and champagne toasts on the Champs Elysees. In London, the lights on the London Eye go off at the stroke of midnight.
There are loads of places around the world staging their own celebrations at the end of the year but for me, the best first night blowout is in Edinburgh, Scotland. It’s even on the list of 1000 Things to Do Before You Die. Continue reading
Cieper – a festival mascotEvery three years, on the 2nd weekend in May, there is a super-sized festival in Ieper (Ypres), Belgium in celebration of the cat. It attracts festival lovers from all over
the world, particularly cat lovers. Held since 1955, the Kattenstoet (Flemish for Cat’s Parade) is a feline-themed Rose Parade with a Mardi Gras flavor. The festival is staged
in Ieper, a mid-sized town west of Brussels in the Flemish-speaking region of Flanders in northern Belgium. Continue reading
SuzanneTheTravelMagpie 