Category: Culture
-
China: First Encounter
A mate of mine recently visited Beijing for the first time and was mighty impressed with the super high rise modernity and the cosmopolitan ambience. It threw me back to my first trip there in the late 80s. My first visit to China was on a whim in 1989. I saw an ad in the…
-
How to rebrand and zoosh up a hotel
Furama Hotel, Darling Harbour When is a new hotel not quite a new hotel? When it is rebranded by an international group, zhooshed up to meet the demands and wants of guests and given a total personality transplant. Sounds about right? The Furama Hotel Darling Harbour, Sydney is a welcome addition to the Furama family…
-
How to Baguette – or the legend of the loaf
The ubiquitous baguette – bread of a thousand legends, countless laws and constrained to the perfect, ordained length – this is the stuff and staff of life to the French nation – the symbol of France perhaps. Fact: an excellent baguette needs to look, sound, smell and feel the part; with a golden-tinged crust and…
-
How to go for gold – on Queensland’s Gold Coast
Queensland’s Gold Coast is fixed into the holiday psyche of Australians who love to holiday in a place of variety, charm and colour which displays the aesthetics of a true playground for all ages. Winter is coming! So, make plans now to head north and follow the sun. Always appealing, always evolving, ever the charmer…
-
Birdsong – or uncaged birds
One of the most charming surprises on a walk through Sydney is an art installation in the laneway of Angel Place, just off George Street through to Pitt Street. Look up, look up to an array of empty birdcages of all designs suspended and hanging high. Artist Michael Thomas Hill had this splendid work Forgotten…
-
Is there a barber in the house?
Or, let’s visit saucy Seville Arriving in Seville on a sun-drenched early autumn day will set you up for your senses to be tickled and your spirit to be enriched. Various seasons spent here will prompt different moods – so let’s discover the city as the last of the soporific summer sun takes us on…
-
How to make sense of scents
or a little dab’ll do ya! I think I’m more of a sensory person than a tactile one – but I do like to touch food, tree trunks, sand, gum leaves, woollen fabric . . . mmm, maybe I’m both. But back to sensory. I love and adore perfume. I do not go a day…
-
How to embarrass yourself – or myself while travelling
The Princess of Podcasts (but she’s not a ballerina) Amanda Kendle interviewed me and posed the question: have you ever made cultural blunders while travelling the world. Oh, yes, indeedy! I have made many, not deliberately but in my early days of travelling, ignorance, naivete or blundering impertinence sometimes brought me undone. Mea Culpa. Following…
-
Travel: Victorian Highlights
I‘m going out on a limb with this post, taking a risk, throwing caution to the wind, heading into troubled waters . . .that’s a bit dramatic. Posting this piece on Victoria today, 1 June 2021, while the state of Victoria is in a state of lockdown feels a little ambitious? Yes? No? Victorians have…
-
How to appreciate regional art galleries . . .
I sent this blog post out into the world last week but have since had a lovely update on discovering art once you’re out of the big smoke. I received in the mail (how nice to actually have something delivered by the postman) a little booklet/brochure of Renaissance Tours Summer and Autumn 2021 cultural tours.…
Travelgal on the move 