When I was a young aesthete, a long time ago now, I sat down and watched the movie Death in Venice. The image of Dirk Bogarde sunk in his deckchair on the Venice Lido, hair dye running down his face, as everyone else (including the object of his obsession, Tadzio) fled the cholera-ravaged city, all… Continue reading An Aesthete at Surfer’s
Author: Ralph Lavelle
Web developer by trade. Married to Tina. 2 kids, Alexander and Eoin. I'm from Ireland, but we all live in Australia.
A chaos of delight
"The delight one experiences at such times bewilders the mind, if the eye attempts to follow the flight of a gaudy butter-fly, it is arrested by some strange tree or fruit; if watching an insect one forgets it in the stranger flower it is crawling over, if turning to admire the splendour of the scenery,… Continue reading A chaos of delight
Obsessed with History in Smolensk
One of the best books - no, make that the best book - I read last year was 1812: Napoleon's Fatal March on Moscow by Adam Zamoyski. I was reading it in Smolensk, fittingly enough, on a flying two-day stay, as part of our two weeks in Russia, in the very city where the Russian… Continue reading Obsessed with History in Smolensk
On Lorikeet Lane
Tina and I got married exactly nineteen years ago. Our list of previous anniversary getaway locations includes Montville (Sunshine Coast), Spicers Hidden Vale resort, Mount Tamborine, and Westport, Co. Mayo. This year we went back up to the Sunshine Coast hinterland for an anniversary overnighter. A feature meal is an important part of an anniversary… Continue reading On Lorikeet Lane
Morning coffee in Moscow
Moscow was our journey's summit. St. Petersburg, in particular the Hermitage, had been more like an outcrop just below the peak, the one with the best views, but we'd still had some climbing to do. It would be all downhill from here to Greece, our next and last destination on this trip. Arriving so early… Continue reading Morning coffee in Moscow
Our, and Russia’s, first Kremlin
Having learnt just enough Russian to recognise the word gorod (town, city) in the name Veliky Novgorod, the town four hours south of St. Petersburg (by train) we'd be stopping in overnight on our way to Moscow, I wondered what the nov- prefix meant. Indeed, what did Veliky mean? Eoin and the dragon Well, turns… Continue reading Our, and Russia’s, first Kremlin
In the Hermitage and at the ballet in Russia’s city of culture
Back home in Brisbane after our European summer break, we watched a movie one cold winter's evening called Russian Ark. It's set in the Winter Palace of St. Petersburg's State Hermitage Museum, somewhere we'd visited on the Russian leg of our trip, and it's unusual for having been shot in one ninety-six-minute-long continuous take. In… Continue reading In the Hermitage and at the ballet in Russia’s city of culture
Back in Zak
Denmark was three different places in three nights. Russia was six in fourteen. A lot of Lego and Museums of Great Revolutionary Wars. In Russia, furthermore, there were also side trips to Veliky-Novgorod (south of St. Petersburg, on the way to Moscow) and Smolensk (west of Moscow, on the way to Belorussia, not that we… Continue reading Back in Zak
A tour of Leningrad – I mean St. Petersburg
We'd lined up a tour guide for our first full day in Russia. Igor came and met us outside our hostel/hotel. He was a serious, middle-aged, academic type, and spent a long time untangling four sets of headphones he said he wanted us to use while he talked into a microphone as we walked the… Continue reading A tour of Leningrad – I mean St. Petersburg
A train to St. Petersburg
As Paul Theroux has said on many an occasion, train travel is the real travel. We couldn't agree more. After our two days in Finland we did what the UK hasn't managed to do in three and a half years and caught a fast train out of the EU. From Helsinki Central Station, with its… Continue reading A train to St. Petersburg
