Japanese new year in Sasebo (Nagasaki prefecture). Sake, sashimi, rice cakes, temples, cats, snow.
Articles about travel
Hong Kong
Visited for a few days. Bustling and exciting, as I remembered it. Every third shop sells mobile phones. The Peak still has an unbeatable view.
Tokyo — my new home
Tokyo will be our home for the foreseeable future. First impressions: the shops are fantastic as expected, the food is good and cheaper than I remember, and the people are nice. Looking forward to it.
London
The weather was poor, to nobody’s surprise, so we packed in the museum visits and show attendances. Never a dull moment.
Edinburgh — my old home
Nice to see the old town again. (And the New Town too, of course.) I admit, April is not the best time to visit, but it was still colder than I expected. The haggis, however, was just as tasty as i remembered. I will miss it.
Portugal
We spent most of our time in Lisbon, which was fabulous. Just really pleasant and scenic, with its harbour and the amazing Cristo Rey statue overlooking all. (I’d like to see the much larger one in Brazil someday.)
The Portuguese seem to like eating in quantity, which means they’re all right by me. The language was difficult though – to my ears it sounded like broken Spanish with a French accent. Of course, the deficiency lies in my ears rather than the language, but I still never quite got the hang of it.
Morocco
This was a somewhat challenging place to backpack around. Lots to see, but dealing with the locals was sometimes trying. Like everywhere, most people are basically nice and well-intentioned, but the cultural and language gaps are wide. At least I got to use my rudimentary French. I think Fes was the most pleasant town, while at the other extreme was the rather nasty Tangier.
Gibraltar
It’s a great big rock off the corner of Spain with monkeys on it, with an incongruous little pseudo-English town at the foot of it.
Spain
Top ten things about Spain: cheap shoes, hot chocolate, churros, jamon, jamon, jamon, jamon, jamon, jamon and jamon.
And lots of other things really. We were there in Holy Week, meaning there were Catholic processions everywhere – some were like a noisy party, some were heartrendingly solemn. Holy Week also meant that we were scrambling for accommodation in all the big cities.
SPain also has so many large and famous cathedrals. I have never seen so many statues and painting of Saint Jeronimo in my life. Barcelona was holding the Year of Gaudi, so we got to see a lot of Gaudi works that we would otherwise never have seen.
Reading — England
The first stop on the Bennett and Jo World Tour.Miserable weather (well, this is England) but marvellous hospitality from Liz and Simon.