Category: Travel

  • Escape to Madrid

    This time last week I was sipping vermouth in a marketplace in Madrid. After a busy start to the year and a family-filled Easter weekend, S and I decided to get away for a quiet few days. We picked Madrid for a few days escape, wandering around a new city. Madrid does not have the…

  • A cold day in Shakespeare country

    “Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?” At the weekend S and I made a quick overnight trip to the home of the Bard, Stratford-upon-Avon. This mini weekend away idea has become quite a success of ours recently. Our working timetables mean we don’t always get strings of days off together, so we make…

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    Travel real tale: What I’ve learned

    I travel for work. I know that sounds very exciting and glamorous – and it is, sort of. But there are a few moments when plane-hopping round the world delivers the sort of head-shaking, face-palming experience that you get in any other work place. Whether it is a 5am flight out of a back-of-beyond airport…

  • Two parties in Tel Aviv

    Last week was a bit quiet on the blog – mainly because it wasn’t that quiet off the blog. I headed off to Tel Aviv, Israel, for a work conference. I’ve not been to Israel before but everything I read said Tel Aviv is the livlier, “more youthful” place to visit, as compared to its…

  • Holiday dreams: Scuba diving in Gran Canaria

    My list of places I want to go is already pretty impressive, but I think it just got one name longer. In a couple of months Spain will open its first ever dedicated scuba diving resort and when “spend your days underwater visiting shipwrecks” is on the bill you know you just might be onto…

  • 60 minutes in Stockholm

    I’m all at sea today. Well sort of. If I’m honest I’m currently sat in a hotel in Dubai which is a far-cry from the photo above, but that is the nature of this job sometimes. I spent much of this week on a whistlestop tour of the Nordics and have just touched down in…

  • 60 minutes in Helsink

    Next stop on the whistlestop tour round the Nordic and Baltic region – Finland. I arrived in Helsinki late last night on a quick-hop ferry from Tallin. There was just time for a quick dinner and a few drinks before hitting the sack. This morning I had an hour to kill wandering around the city…

  • 90 minutes in Tallin

    I touched down in Tallin this afternoon as part of a work trip. One of the weird aspects of this job is that I often get to fly out to cool places but then have little time (or in some cases no time) to look around. On arrival in Tallin I had two work meetings…

  • Coffee in the cold in Prague

    Prague is beautiful, but it is a bit on the chilly side. It is about as cold as the UK, but the wind takes the temperature down below freezing. As a result, while we were exploring S and I found ourselves in need of a warming beverage. Usually this took the form of a gluvine…

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    Walking Prague

    Once Christmas is in the bag people’s attention turns to New Year and the next round of festivities. This year S and I decided to escape the usual parties and head away for the arrival of 2018. We hopped across to Prague for some days wandering the cobbled streets and wrapping up against the cold.…