Category: City sights
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Travel: Make mine Marrakech

Marrakech Morocco, it’s bold and it’s beautiful. Colours collide here and eyes and ears are put to an endurance test. Every morning I woke up in the Red City, I fell in love with it, over and over again. The early foreign travellers to Morocco called Marrakech ‘Morocco City’. The city of old has…
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Art Deco capital of New Zealand (and possibly the planet)

Not often you get to thank a natural disaster and community tragedy for a splendid architectural creation. In February 1931 a bastard of an earthquake rocked Napier, a town on Hawke’s Bay on the east coast of the north island of New Zealand. The ‘quake measured 7.9 on the Richter scale and rocked the Hawke’s…
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How not to look like a tourist
You are a tourist but you need not be so obvious – try the ‘blend in’ tactic. We are on the move again. And with the current debacle with lost and lingering luggage maybe it’s time to fly with carry on luggage only. So pack carefully and think on how to mix and match limited…
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USA – Red Rocks and a Mile High City

Denver has been the subject of many songs by famous artists especially native son, the late John Denver, but my fave is by Jimmy Buffet: I’m about a mile high in Denver Where the rock meets timberline I’ve walked this ground from town to town Just to finally call it mine Dating back to the…
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How to see York – in 48 hours

I love cities that have many layers of history, where the stones speak of grim deeds, majestic events, innovative creations and the odd ghost. If your itinerary allows – spend some time in the atmospheric and elegant city of York, in Yorkshire, the UK’s second mediaeval city. Eat, drink, sleep and play – all budgets…
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The ultimate town of colour

I was so excited to finally visit the Blue Pearl – Chefchaouen in Morocco. Seeing images of the pretty town for years made me wary that I might be disappointed. No. This small city does not disappoint. How many words for blue? How many shades of blue are there? Baby blue, azure, cobalt, pale blue,…
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How to do ‘heritage hotel’

Amid the tall and slender, new and shiny and fair and funky, there’s a place where refinement and coolness resides in Sydney . . . Primus Hotel Sydney. The Presidential suite. When is a hotel not a hotel? Well, it’s always a hotel if it’s a hotel! But if it’s not a tall, shiny new…
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Street wise: Hanoi, Vietnam

www.sofitel-legend-metropole-hanoi.comA quick fix blog this week as I am away on a yoga retreat in the Blue Mountains, a couple of hours west of Sydney (I knoooow, what was I thinking) and am short on blogging time this week. A post on the yoga experience might even make its way here if I survive bending,…
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The (almost half) year that was

I was reading a colleague’s ‘year of travel tales’ and thought I might put my 2018 up in lights too. After a few trips last year that were diverse in their locations I have many warm memories and hopefully some insights into what makes the world tick outside my limited realm. Once I began looking…
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Singapore: Shophouses shine…

There was a time in Singapore when everything old is old again and must be torn down. After the devastation of Singapore during WWII, the region struggled to rebuild and restore pride for the locals. Well, Singapore quickly became an economic gateway for the Asian region and a powerhouse for modernity, architectural innovation and post-war…