As many of you may remember, when I was unemployed one of the things I did to keep myself sane when not applying for jobs was to become a Google Local Guide. This meant visiting local attractions and food spots and photographing/reviewing them. The results were then placed on Google Maps. There was no money doing this, but there was an opportunity to get more free online storage from Google.
This 2015 trip was our second visit to Rome. Our first had been in 2002 with Globus. Back then we had stayed in a hotel not far from the Colosseum. The room had been small and the hotel staff arrogant. We wondered how our Trafalgar Costsaver experience would differ. The question was quickly answered when we reached our hotel, the Ergife Palace Hotel, at around 4 pm. It was spectacular.
The Museum in the Doge’s Palace (itself a living museum!) is a tribute to the history of this city. It is not a massive museum, compared to the likes of the British Museum, but comparable to that you would find in many a castle in Europe. As you can tell from the following photos that I took, I was mostly enamored by the weaponry on display. The museum was the
This is the next part of my (long overdue) series on my Trafalgar Costsaver European Cavalcade tour. In my last post I spoke about the courtyard of the Doge’s Palace. Now we are entering the building itself. The path from the courtyard and into the Doge’s Palace is via a spectacular sixteenth century staircase - Scala d’Oro (“golden staircase). You can see my daughter Rhiannon sitting on the steps smirking at silly
If you are visiting Sydney at the moment then you should visit the Egyptian Mummy exhibition at the Powerhouse Museum. This is especially true if you are visiting from elsewhere in Australia because this is probably the best local exhibition of Mummies that I have seen in a while. Sure, not nearly as large or impressive as the British Museum (I was only over there in 2015 looking at some of their
So my pal and brother-in-law Glenn Ison posted a photo on Google Maps. It was of a place in Paris. Next thing he knows he gets an email from Google saying “How would you like to be a local guide?” He goes “Yup” and then tells me all about it. So this post takes you through my look at this particular program by Google. So I started by posting a
As part of the European Cavalcade Costsaver tour’s free time in Venice we partook of the Doge’s Palace. This place is so grand that this one post is only going to tell you about the courtyard. Huh? Yep. Tis true. Just the courtyard. OK. If you don’t know, the Doge’s Palace is at the heart of Venice, next to San Marco. The Doge’s Palace, just like so many older buildings
Last year I wrote about the great evening I had at Vivid. Vivid is Sydney’s annual festival of lights. All around our famous harbour are vibrant and exotic light installations. Here is the link to last year’s story. This year, however, was completely different. I don’t mean that the light installations were any less spectacular (those that I got to see). I mean that the overcrowding ruined it. Indeed, I witnessed panic
And so the saga continues, albeit well behind schedule! This is how I summarised on Facebook our first full day in Venice: “If possible we are even more tired. Another early start to see glass blowing (Rhiannon enjoyed this ☺ ) and then entry into San Marco basilica where I unfortunately could not take photos. Then we had 8 hours free time in Venice. We wandered extensively including Santa Maria de
Hi all, Firstly an apology for my neglect in recent weeks, especially the past fortnight or so. With my final date due to redundancy rapidly approaching (Friday 29 January) I find myself focusing on setting myself up for the future. Alas maintaining this blog or reading other blogs is way down at the bottom of my list of my current priorities. Sorry. :( Interestingly I had coffee today with a friend
OK – long post today. I am way behind in processing my European photographs. Well, I do have around 6,000! But today I worked on it. If you follow me on Twitter (not that I post much) you will see that I am also tired from having swum a kilometre yesterday. I am really not up to that. So today I carry on with the adventure of a lifetime, my
…so we avoided the strange man in the Charlie Chaplin outfit and the squeaky voice… Oops. I’ve started the story midway. Must be because I am tired, confused and still recovering from the wild New Year’s Eve party three days ago. But by damn that was a great party. It was at a local club. The band played mostly 80s classics. There was a lot of dancing. And we had a
Today’s post is brief and back to telling you all about my amazing holiday :) The coach sped us away from Lichtenstein and towards Innsbruck in Austria. My trusty Google map below shows where Innsbruck is. The countryside along the way was a spectacular panorama of mountains and trees. I must admit that I often found it difficult taking high quality photos while the coach was on the move. The
OK – stupid title for a travel post. But let’s face it, Lichtenstein is a tiny and boring place. At least it is on a Trafalgar Costsaver tour. Close your eyes so we can do a mental re-enactment with you as the protagonist. Hang on, can’t do that. You won’t be able to read my wonderfully evocative words with your eyes shut. So you are just going to have to
Hi all, Today’s post is two stories. The first is set today, during a little drive to a New South Wales’ town called Picton where I found a marvellous little “collectables” shop. Then back to Switzerland in September. Armour Collectables in Picton Obviously the name of this shop got my attention straight away. Two things that I love: armour and collectables. Alas I saw no armour in it. This said,
About two centuries before Christ was born people settled the Nidwalden valley. I’m guessing that they were Celts, the so-called Helvetians, based upon vague memories of some of my university studies done in the 1980s. One such place they settled became known as Stans, and I am guessing that from this settlement the mountain known as Stanserhorn got its name. Our tour guide got us out and into the coach
One of my big rules when travelling is to always identify landmarks that I can use for navigating around town. In Lucerne we picked a big double-steepled church just up the road from our tour’s squishy hotel. Up until writing this post I had no idea what the place was (other than a church). So here is a photo taken from a roadway below it. To get from our hotel to
I first visited Lucerne in 2001 on a Globus Tour. Prior to this I had little interest in Switzerland. I just saw it as some mountainous backwater of Europe where people stashed money in inaccessible banks. Pretty dumb, eh? Me, that is. The Globus Tour showed me a magnificent side of the country, particularly Lucerne where we stayed in a fantastic hotel in the centre of town overlooking the lake. I
Imagine a place where in winter, every 10 seconds, water the equivalent to an Olympic size swimming pool rushes down a waterfall. Well, that place is the Rhine Falls near the town of Schaffhausen in northern Switzerland. These are reputedly the largest plain falls in Europe. The coach for our tour (Trafalgar’s Costsaver ‘European Cavalcade”) dropped us off here. (OK - it may seem that I’m giving them lots of free advertising,
Today I continue sharing with you my Trafalgar Costsaver Tour “European Cavalcade” as we sweep briefly into Germany’s Black Forest. But before I do so, I want to take this opportunity to encourage you to visit the blog site of Dani. She is a 35 year old science nerd and I feel that a lot of you regulars here may relate to her. The post I have pointed you towards is
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