Month: May 2017
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Italy – Orvieto’s glorious cathedral
I was remembering coming up a narrow street in the small, mediaeval hilltop town of Orvieto in Umbria: I lifted my eyes and saw the most confoundingly beautiful structure – a striped cathedal, with intricate, delicate relief carvings on the capitals with sumptuous cornerstones. It may not be the biggest and the best in the…
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India’s pride and joy
How many times have you seen an image of one of the world’s great monuments and memorised it for years hoping to see it in all its glory one day? Stonehenge in England, the Parthenon looking down from the Acropolis in Athens, the Great Pyramid of Giza in Cairo to name just three. And once…
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Manchester rules OK?
After yesterday’s horrific news of the bombing in Manchester and the destruction it wrought to the families of the dead and injured and to the morale of the city’s citizens, I thought it time to revisit ‘up north’. I send my condolences to all concerned. I visited last year after a 20 year absence –…
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Eating humble pie
When life gives you lemons – go make a pie. For me, travel is 50 per cent about the food. Taste local, mingle in restaurants, explore the great outdoors with a picnic and trawl food markets for perfect produce. But do you ever hanker to have a home-cooked meal? A meal you have cooked yourself?…
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NYC and Brooklyn’s little surprises
I love New York City. Many have said it before but I REALLY love NYC. I visited 18 months ago for first time in ten years and it’s same, same, and changed as well. The usual suspects on the tourist trail appear. I felt that all-familiar feeling when I strolled through Times Square: ticket touts,…
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Travel to Spain: Make mine a Michelin
Hola! I’m revisiting this post as Spain is the hot spot top visit in 2020. The restaurant is till flourishing and waitig for your attendance. Travelling across the arid plains of the autonomous region handsomely called Extremadura, in Spain, there are sleepy, medieval towns that have not been pillaged by 21st century tourists. The classic…
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Flim Flam, thank you mam.
It was a few years ago that I immersed myself in as much Scandi as I could during a 14-day trip that covered the city of Copenhagen, Stockholm, a little ‘unruly’ cruise along the Norwegian Coast from Trondheim to Bergen and a stint in Oslo. I landed in the Viking lands at the end of…
Travelgal on the move 