Arctic Dreams: The Polar Bears of Churchill. PART I Dec 1, 2011
Arctic Dreams: The Polar Bears of Churchill. PART II Dec 8, 2011
Long-Haul Travel: A Frequent Flyer’s Survival Guide. PART I Feb 19, 2012
The Road Less Travelled Jan 27, 2012
Is this it? Discovering Yellowstone National Park Oct 8, 2011
It’s a traveller’s worst nightmare. Well, one of them at least.
Those huge red, flashing letters next to the departure time of your next flight have the power to rattle even the most frequent of flyers: CANCELLED. A delay is frustrating enough but you see ‘cancelled’ and your heart just sinks.
There are no words to describe the feeling you have when your face is only a couple of feet away from a polar bear: so close that you can imagine the heat of their breath.
Of course, if this happened away from the safety of the hulking polar rover, there would be no imagining necessary. These polar bears have been living on a diet of berries for months now. They are carnivores. They are starving. I rest my case.
Taking a well-rounded spirit of adventure and cranking it up to the next level is always a fun thing to do – and ice climbing fits that bill perfectly. I have to admit, I think I am addicted.
All I’ve thought about since our day on the ice is….when am I going to do this again? I’ve even googled potential ice climbing hot spots back home in Australia. So, you have been warned: ice climbing can be seriously addictive. But, for even the slightly adventurous at heart, what trip to Alaska would be complete without it?
I’ve always been a romantic at heart. In Venice, I deliberately left my map behind in the hotel room and fell into the maze of streets and canals…espresso in one hand and camera in the other. Yes, definitely a precarious balancing act at times but, really…sometimes it’s difficult to decide which one takes priority.In this case, being mid-winter I needed both, but my camera won out in the end. I was almost instantly lost of course amongst the rustic, crumbling walls and surprising splashes of colour in this sinking city.
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Extract from my winter pilgrimage on the Camino de Santiago last year:
I always find it staggering that someone can write an entire book about a single, simple topic and make is absolutely fascinating.
The skill is not in filling 300 odd pages about one subject (most of the literate amongst us could probably do that if we put our mind to it), but that they have actually made it interesting.
Charlie English does this in his book The Snow Tourist and he does it so beautifully, so elegantly, that I had trouble putting it down.
With their subdued ambience, low lighting and casual atmosphere the culture of tea houses in the Czech Republic is something else and Dobra Cajovna is tea house like no other I have found.
The Dobra chain of teahouses has branches all over the Czech Republic but my favourite is the one in the medieval town of Cesky Krumlov. Read more
Arctic Dreams: The Polar Bears of Churchill. PART I Dec 1, 2011
Arctic Dreams: The Polar Bears of Churchill. PART II Dec 8, 2011
Long-Haul Travel: A Frequent Flyer’s Survival Guide. PART I Feb 19, 2012
The Road Less Travelled Jan 27, 2012
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