The last leg of the trip began with an early ferry across the Gulf of Finland on a sunny and cool morning, queuing up with a few hundred others to lug ourselves onto a fairly posh ship. While the level of finish was high, similar to a newer BC Ferries ride, there was far more… Read More Coda
Borders blur from the bullet train window, and while the frontier between Russia and Finland is distinct, the signs themselves literally become invisible at high speeds. Instead, the only indicators are passport control agents on their purpose-filled staccato journey through each car, offering seatside passport and visa inspections with a cursory goodbye and welcome, depending… Read More And the Livin’s Easy
We left Moscow on the Sapsan, peregrine falcon in Russian, a bullet train whisking between the countryside connecting the two major Russian cities. I am a great fan of these trains, but in this case I was a little disappointed not to have pushed for the overnight train. Bullet trains are certainly faster and almost… Read More Window to the West
Has it really been three years? Unsurprisingly it has felt like far more, and the choice of main destination for our 2019 trip takes on added weight in retrospect – Russia. In the simpler pre-pandemic and pre-war days our criteria were to go somewhere new and different. Russia fit that bill, and after fulfilling some… Read More Ex Post Facto
After the bustle of Istanbul and Cappadocia, we had planned on a quieter and easier few days in Paris to round out our trip, images of delightful cafes, fluffy pastries and croissants, and flowing wine entertaining our thoughts. We perhaps took the French capital too lightly, finding ourselves figuratively punched in the mouth by our… Read More Je ne me souviens pas
We landed at the airport in Kayseri mid-day. The city is a pleasant and tidy, if uninspiring, vision of Turkish urbanity set at the foot of some vast mountain chain on the plains of central Anatolia. Owing to the fact that airport traffic seems exclusive to only 2 destinations, we were soon whisked away in… Read More Anatolian Lions
Beyoglu and Sultanahmet, though each charming in their own respective ways, are merely small slices of Istanbul. In the last 100 years the city’s population has ballooned; once small villages have passed from suburbia into the urban. An ever-expanding march of development and the relentless drum beat of modernism in the construction hammers and the… Read More Modern Times
We landed late in the night into Istanbul, nee Constantinople, just beating out a charter flight from China to the passport control line, a fortunate turn given the general disregard for lines and queues. We too were somewhat short of the willpower to fight them off, but before too long we ushered ourselves into a… Read More A Tale of Two Cities
So Kathleen and I have finished up the last of our travels for the summer, returning late this past Sunday evening from Sardinia, a lovely Italian island lying in the heart of the Mediterranean. The trip was short, only four days, but all together made for a very pleasant and relaxing time. My only complaint… Read More Sardinia
left dublin yesterday (thats the celtic version of the name up there) and headed to the slightly warmer, equally rainy, environs of stuttgart. it is a great relief to know that my baggage and worldly goods are in a place where i neednt worry constantly about them. the same bag was lost and returned to… Read More goodbye baile atha cliath, hello stuttgart
Zak Abroad 