I want to tell you about a trip we did during our seven-week sojourn in Mexico to a Mayan ruin site, a site that for all its magnificence you've probably never even heard of even though you may well have heard of some of the big-name sites, places such as Palenque, or Chichén Itzá. We… Continue reading Cobá
Category: Travel
Wildlife in Mexico
After the Mayan ruins, the comida, the música, and the artesanía, one of the things we wanted to pay attention to on our Mexican trip was the wildlife. As much as we could, anyway, not being up to hacking our way through the dense selva of the Yucatán. No, we would take our opportunities to… Continue reading Wildlife in Mexico
A taxi into the Mayan jungle
We're on the second leg of our Mexican trip now: the Yucatán leg. We've called it that, knowing - now, at least, unlike when we planned it in the middle of last year, when such subtleties were lost on us - that Yucatán is only one state among the five we'd be in when we… Continue reading A taxi into the Mayan jungle
The Pyramids of Teotihuacán
There are some things that are so beyond the range of your normal tourist sightseeing that it's hard to do them justice in a blog post. Of course, experiences like swimming under a two-thousand-year-old Roman aqueduct spanning the river Gard near Nîmes in southern France, or emerging from the labyrinthine arches of Córdoba's Mezquita into… Continue reading The Pyramids of Teotihuacán
Ciudad de México, the town they call CDMX
Well, we flew in on a redeye from LA, having spent three days in the Californian desert, and were met by our friend Luis's dad, Luis, at Aeropuerto Internacional de la Ciudad de México (the city goes by the abbreviation of CDMX nowadays more than the older 'DF', which stands for Distrito Federal. And yes, it's usually… Continue reading Ciudad de México, the town they call CDMX
Guanajuato, city of Don Quixote
Guanajuato twists and turns, soars and plunges. Callejones empedradas - cobblestoned laneways - descend into plazuelas and teatros. Tunnels, once rivers, convey the newly-arrived visitor on an old green boneshaker from the bus station through improbably narrow calles, past a statue of what looks like Don Quixote, and into the crowded pavements of the centro historico.… Continue reading Guanajuato, city of Don Quixote
From Zakynthos to Athens
A krasáki at Kolonáki We left Zakynthos the old-fashioned way: by ferry and bus to Athens. There's nothing like being on the water to make you feel like you're leaving or arriving on an island - coming by plane just can't compare. On a calm sea we slowly watched Zakynthos turn into a hazy blur on the horizon, a… Continue reading From Zakynthos to Athens
A little tour of the Alpilles
Our couchsurf near Salon-de-Provence was perfectly situated for day tours into the hill towns of Provence. Our first tour was to be of the Alpilles, a long limestone range full of olive trees, vineyards and medieval towns. We got off to a bit of a bumpy start, circumnavigating Salon a couple of times before finding the correct road. … Continue reading A little tour of the Alpilles
From Dublin to Nîmes
This guy got up from his seat two rows behind us on the Toulouse-Nîmes TGV to have a go at the family in the four-seater space opposite us, whose kids were - fair enough - being a bit noisy, albeit harmlessly so, I felt, since they looked like nice people, and you could tell the kids were smart, and while naturally I couldn't catch everything… Continue reading From Dublin to Nîmes
The road to the sunny south-east
We’re on a mission to see more of Ireland, to go to the sorts of places, which, if we ever thought about at all when last we lived here over ten years ago, we would have dismissed as the sorts of places tourists went to. Places with castles and visitor centres, or interpretive centres, whatever they're called. Back then the new Ireland we… Continue reading The road to the sunny south-east
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