Photography
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Vilnius: Knights, Russians…And Frank Zappa
Tuesday’s snow melts away quickly as a rise in the mercury brings heavy grey skies and occasional drizzle, the ice patches on the uneven pavements are once again just harmless puddles. A 17-mile train ride out of the capital brings us to Trakai, a lakeside town which in summer is a popular destination for city dwellers and tourists alike. Trakai is a town surrounded by water, built on both lakeside flatlands and grassy peninsulas, and is a ramshackle mix of timber clad houses and characterless rectangular apartment blocks, but its popularity is down not just to its watery location but also to its stunning castle structures. One of the castles…
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Vilnius: Stories And Histories
Imagine walking across a bridge in the middle of a capital city and being met with a sign on a shop wall reading “border control”, passing entry instructions to the Republic which include a smile icon, multiple flags with an open palm as the centrepiece, and then finding yourself alongside a wall with the Republic’s constitution detailed in over 40 languages, including such clauses as… “Everyone has the right to die, but this is not an obligation” “Everyone has the right to be happy” “Everyone has the right to be unhappy” “Everyone has the right to have no rights” And concludes with the Republic’s motto… “Do not defeat…do not fight…
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Wintry Days In Vilnius
The temperature touches minus 7 as we head back to the hotel after our evening meal, frost forming fern patterns on car windscreens and turning pavement puddles into treacherous mini skating rinks. But the air is clean and crisp, the moon is bright and we breathe in the tastes of proper winter for the first time in a long time. By first light next morning the snow is falling and the cobbled streets have a covering of pure white as workers shuffle to offices and factories, huddled inside heavy overcoats and hidden behind hats and scarves. For us this is a bonus: we hadn’t expected to see snow this early…
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If It’s In Your Heart…
It seems just about impossible that my first trip to Padstow was over forty years ago, in 1979 in fact. Since then I have visited Cornwall, and Padstow, so many times that I couldn’t even hazard a guess, but I do know that it’s a very long time since the little harbour town, the surrounding Camel Estuary and the wonderful Atlantic coastline found its way into my soul. When a place gets you like that, it rarely leaves you. To this day, over 42 years later, I still give an excited shout as we cross the boundary into Cornwall, and get a sense of joy as we pass the signs…
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Journeys In Greek Food
Our very good friend Terrie, food specialist and food historian, always wants to know more about our food experiences on our travels, so this post is for you, Terrie. Taking time to travel through a country brings with it interesting regional variations to cuisine, and our recent Greek trip was a good example. Some dishes stayed pretty constant, some showed subtle changes as we moved through the regions, others were peculiar to a specific region and disappeared from menus as we moved on. Feast your eyes on this selection….
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Greek Island Hopping: What’s Changed?
Guaranteed sunshine; hot days and balmy evenings; unbelievably blue seas and crystal clear waters; blue and white houses and cloudless skies – the Greek islands are still a beautiful sight with a huge feelgood factor. But these islands have changed. Island hopping has changed. These are still beautiful places to visit, make no mistake, nobody can change the dramatic scenery or those intense colours, but just a little bit of the magic has perhaps gone and the old pioneer spirit of island hopping is no longer really there. Let us explain. Over the last few weeks, and indeed over our last few visits, we have reached the conclusion that there…
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Gytheio: Final Call
And now, with just days remaining, we head to the very last destination of this 12-week tour, down to the coastal town of Gytheio, which neither of us had ever heard of until we started researching where to spend these last few days. Likewise, we knew nothing of Mystras until we take a diversion about an hour short of Gytheio, and discover a gem of a place – one last terrific historic site before we end this trip. The new Mystras is a lovely little mountain village where, it turns out, we would have been content to see out the rest of our stay. Way above this delightful village, on…
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Olympia: Stories Of Past And Present
It’s with a sense of anticipation that we collect our final hire car – our eleventh of the trip – and leave Kalamata behind after our very brief stay. It may be the last few days of this long adventure but we have some exciting places lined up before we are done. Throughout the 90-minute drive it is very plain that we are in different territory now; this area experiences much more autumn and winter rainfall than most of Greece, making for the kind of lush greenery which we haven’t seen for many weeks. There are deciduous trees, giant bamboos and even a combine harvester as hard evidence of change,…
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Athens & Kalamata: Tales From Two Cities
After eleven weeks in Greece and its islands we are into the last week of our journey through this sun soaked land, leaving the wonderful island of Milos and taking the short prop plane flight over the Aegean to Athens. Amusingly the bus ride from Athens airport to Syntagma Square takes considerably longer than the flight. It’s only two years since we were last here in the Greek capital so this visit is one of expedience and we are here just for a single night, in an 8th floor hotel room with magnificent views of the Acropolis. After so many weeks in an assortment of apartments and houses, a hotel…
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Last Of The Islands: Marvellous Milos
We have mixed emotions when we discover that our last ferry journey of this long Greek sojourn is a hulking great catamaran named Champion Jet 2. On the one hand, it’s disappointing that our final crossing won’t be on a quaint island ferry; on the other, there’s a gale blowing and the seas are extremely rough. The powerful craft ploughs through the heaving waves with barely a roll. And so on to Milos which, if we hadn’t been forced to change our plans back in the first week of August, would have been our third island call rather than our last. After Milos we will take six days touring a new…
