Save info   Get password
Home Submit your blog Edit Account Rules RSS-Archive Contact


That’s Easy For You To Say
2008-03-07 03:48:57
    If you’ve seen the Passion of the Christ then you’ve heard the language of Aramaic – the mother tongue of Jesus himself. The place you get to hear it in Syria is Maaloula, home to the oldest church in the world – the Church of St Sergius and St Bacchus. This church is now the [...]


Put That In Your Pipe…
2008-02-29 02:56:47
    This is a city that runs on caffeine and nicotine. In every restaurant and café, people are near surgically-attached to water pipes. We take refuge at Café Al Nofura next to the Omayyad Mosque, a building that forms the centerpiece of the old town. We start talking to Saeid, Hiba and Bader and share coffee [...]


We’re Only Here For The Culture
2008-02-22 01:24:14
Last week, Damscus was back in the news, as Imad Mughniyeh – Hezbollah’s elusive senior commander – was killed in a car bomb in Syria’s capital. With Israel accused of the attack on the man responsible for killing hundreds of Americans in Lebanon in the Eighties and orchestrating the TWA hijack in 1985, Syria could [...]


Into The Damascene Night
2008-02-15 02:04:42
This week, Damscus was back in the news, as Imad Mughniyeh – Hezbollah’s elusive senior commander – was killed in a car bomb in Syria’s capital. With Israel accused of the attack on the man responsible for killing hundreds of Americans in Lebanon in the Eighties and orchestrating the TWA hijack in 1985, Syria could [...]
Read more: Night

As I Ride Through The Valley In The Shadow of Snow
2008-01-03 03:00:16
  I’ve never ridden a motorbike before; off-roading a quad bike in Iceland felt like an ambitious way to start. I soon discovered that quading is not quite as easy as it looked, especially not in two foot-deep drifts of soft powdery snow sitting on top of several inches of frozen solid ice.   Initially we’re met by [...]
Read more: Shadow , Valley

Blue Lagoon
2007-12-28 02:52:27
    Last night I had spoken to many Icelandic people about the Blue Lagoon . Whilst they all recognised it was a tourist pull, and that Icelanders themselves hardly ever visited it, they all agreed it had to be experienced. I chose an early morning visit and arrived at the Lagoon as the doors opened at 10.00am.  [...]


Sub-Zero Socialising
2007-12-21 06:30:22
  The main street of downtown Reykjavik and one of the oldest shopping streets in Iceland is Laugavegur. On arrival it becomes clear that the daily, early evening pastime is to cruise up and down Laugavegur in your car. Considering most Icelanders drive Volvos or Japanese 4×4’s and not Porsches or Ferraris, I’m not entirely sure [...]


Golden Circle
2007-12-19 06:20:37
  The most famous daytrip in Iceland is the Golden Circle , a collection of natural phenomena and historical sites located along the southern part of the island. But with only five hours of daylight I knew it meant I was going to have a fully charged day.   There are several variations of the tour, but most give [...]


Journey to the Centre of the Earth
2007-12-14 08:50:18
The first thing to note is that Icelandair is definitely a ‘no-frills’ airline. But at least on boarding I get my first exposure to the mythological beauty of Icelandic women – glassy eyes, blonde hair and speaking a language not dissimilar in its sound to elfish. Not that I really have any idea what ‘elfish’ [...]
Read more: Centre , Earth , Journey

Fade Away and Radiate
2007-12-07 02:43:25
As I wandered around the ruins of Prypiat, formerly home to 50,000 souls and now left to decay slowly until its eventual collapse and burial, the words ‘ghost town’ have never seemed so apt. Dressed up against the biting cold, we are 100 km outside Kiev, in an abandoned town which is like a mausoleum [...]


A Side Of ‘Gammon
2008-03-14 03:54:41
  In Café Rawda there’s the usual coffee-drinking and hookah-smoking. But there’s something else taking the attention of the clientele. As well as chess and cards, this is the backgammon centre of the city. Against my better judgement we challenge some of the locals to a game. Somehow I manage to win – the locals are [...]
Read more: Gammon

A Shaky Start
2008-04-07 03:31:35
  It’s an intriguing city, Lima. I’d been warned that it was a grey, bleak and boring place, but we found a buzzing centre with death-wish drivers and laid-back locals, a town with luxury at its core but slums on its perimeter.   Peru’s capital has a violent past, as it was built on the back of a [...]
Read more: Shaky , Start

Haute Cuisine, Peruvian Style
2008-04-14 03:52:36
  While any guide book can tell you Lima’s history, one thing it might not reveal is how spectacular its cuisine has become. Lima is the culinary jewel of South America – there are restaurants here that can out-style New York and could make our uppity little celebrity chefs in London shiver in fear.   I’d had a [...]
Read more: Cuisine , Haute , Style

Get Pumped
2008-04-21 03:28:56
  If Lima’s party animals are eating like that every weekend, they should be the size of Americans. We discovered why they’re not after lunch. Walking through the parks of Miraflores along the coast is like strolling through Miami or parts of LA. Every 10 meters there is someone doing something physical. Basketball courts, five-a-side pitches [...]


Gateway To The Amazon
2008-04-28 03:06:56
  There are many places you can jump off to from Lima – Cusco, to see the ancient Inca city of Machu Picchu; Puno, to play in the vast freshwater Lake Titicaca – but we headed inland about 600 miles north east, to Iquitos. Iquitos is a frontier town, accessible only by air or by sea, [...]
Read more: Amazon , Gateway

Iguitos, Part 2
2008-05-05 03:31:21
    There’s none of the razzle of parts of Lima here. While there are smarter neighbourhoods, and the football stadium is nicely done out, the majority of those in Iquitos are not well off. There’s a whole neighbourhood of wooden houses built on stilts on the edges of the Amazon, and begging, or at least peddling [...]


Page 1 of 1 « < 1 > »
eXTReMe Tracker