From Zakynthos to Athens

/ Tina Lavelle

A krasáki at Kolonáki
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 slightly darker blue meeting the ultramarine of the sea.

For the end of September, it was unusually hot in Athens.  The Friday afternoon traffic held us up but we finally arrived in our modest little apartment. Once again we chose to use AirBnb for the luxury of having a bit more room in which to spread out and for the option of eating in if we wanted. We were in the Pangrati district, just a quick walk across a park from the Evaggelismos metro stop and, most importantly, the Airport Bus. Walking into Syntagma Square, the epicentre of Athens, took about 15 minutes, except for the time we ended up going in circles in the National Gardens trying to find an exit. Continue reading →

A little tour of the Alpilles

/ Tina Lavelle

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.  We’d planned a little route round the Alpilles, starting at Eyguières, transiting Mouriès, then hitting Les Baux-de-Provence, where we had our first stop.

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Les Baux – one of the most beautiful villages in France

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A couchsurf in Provence

/ Tina Lavelle

We picked up a car near the Nîmes train station and headed for our next destination – a Couchsurf near Salon-de-Provence.  But as we had a bit of time to kill we decided to do a little side trip along the way.  Referring to our guidebook we found a detour to the town of Miramas-le-Vieux.  They really seem to like these hyphenated town names here, sometimes stretching to four or five words strung together in a memory-testing place name.  We duly took turned off from the highway and headed south.

After about 20 minutes we approached the outskirts of a large town which turned out to be Miramas (note the lack of ‘-le-Vieux’). This ugly modern town seemed to bear no resemblance to the guidebook’s description so we decided to drive on and look for an alternative.  Just after exiting the town we spotted a discrete sign up a narrow local road for ‘Miramas-le-Vieux’.  We’d just discovered one of the little touring pitfalls – if there is a town called ‘le-Vieux’, which of  course means ‘the-old’, then that most likely indicates that there is also a newer, and usually much less picturesque, town with the same name waiting to confuse visitors.

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From Dublin to Nîmes

/ Ralph Lavelle / 2 Comments

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 the guy was saying it was definitely some sort of appeal to the mother to keep the kids’ jabber down, but she, long-legged and splendid of hair, kind of like Michelle Obama, tranquilly rebuffed his every plaintive “Mais Madame…”, explaining that kids will be kids, and saying “That’s just how they are: I don’t have a choice.” to which he answered “Moi non plus, Madame”, turning away, having failed to receive satisfaction, whereupon the father, hitherto uninvolved, offered the guy a desultory “Desolé”.

Les Arènes
Les Arènes

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The Queen’s walk on Mayday, London

/ Ralph Lavelle

At the end of a raw spring week sleet and windy, Sunday turned the corner into May, ready to make amends. That morning we stepped out of our Theseus Walk Airbnb pied-à-terre and caught the number 38 bus to Charing Cross Road, ready to take it on foot from there.

Leicester Square
Leicester Square

Maybe I’d been listening to too many Shane MacGowan songs, but I’d forgotten how pretty Leicester Square can be when it’s quiet and the weather’s good. Thick with tourists, touts, and down and outs as it usually is, it’s hard to appreciate its prettiness under normal circumstances, but on May Day we got to see the square with the Bard and the Little Tramp in a clean light, and it was nicer than I’d imagined it would be.

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Farewell to Clifden

/ Tina Lavelle

On a cold February evening in 1999 I met my future husband in a pub on Main Street, Clifden. By the end of the year I’d moved to that little market town on the Atlantic, where I spent the next four years before moving back to Australia.

As little towns in Ireland go, Clifden’s not bad.  Being a tourist town, there are pubs, boutiques and restaurants a-plenty.  It’s a vibrant place full of tourists,  and you’re always close to beautiful sandy beaches. But in winter it suffers the full force of the Atlantic weather and the tourists disappear along with a good portion on the locals. It’s just you and the mountains. And the lonely bogs.

Sky Road View
Sky Road View

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Ireland’s Heritage

/ Tina Lavelle

One of the best things we did when we first arrived in Ireland was purchase a one year family pass from Heritage Ireland.  For €60 we got a year’s worth of monuments, castles and manor houses.

We purchased it on our visit to Tintern Abbey and Colclough Walled Gardens last September down in Wexford.  Since then we’ve tried to visit as many Heritage Ireland sites as possible, though there are many more that we didn’t manage to get to.  Some of our favourites were:

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Tintern Abbey

A Cistercian abbey, founded c. 1200 by William, the Earl Marshall, and named after Tintern in Wales. It was occupied until the 1960s by the Colclough family.

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A little piece of Greece in Bloomsbury

/ Ralph Lavelle / 1 Comment

Our travels took us to London this past weekend, and to a part of town we weren’t at all familiar with: Angel. Sandwiched between the City Road and Regent’s Canal, our Airbnb place at Theseus Place took us along the calm waters of the canal with its colourfully inhabited barges each time we came and went to Angel tube station, even if the place itself lacked ‘street appeal’. To judge by the posters and books inside, though, the Frenchwoman who owned it was obviously a big Star Wars fan, so we felt the force was with us the whole weekend.

Eoin at the Parthenon Sculptures, British Museum
Eoin at the Parthenon Sculptures in The British Museum

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St. Patrick’s Day Parade 2016

/ Ralph Lavelle / 1 Comment

This year’s parade was our first St. Patrick’s Day Parade here in Dublin. Of course, having grown up here, I’ve been to my fair share of Dublin parades, but not for a long time. Not for twenty years or so.

Parnell Square
Looking up the east side of Parnell Square towards the Abbey Presbyterian Church. Well, I am. He’s looking down O’Connell Street. It’s that visual contrajuxtaposition that makes this picture work.

They throw a decent parade in Brisbane and we’ve been to a few of those over the years, though I fear that the Irish Club on Elizabeth St. won’t be there when we get back. So going to the parade here had long been on our agenda, and we weren’t going to miss it come rain or shine. Came shine, mercifully, and on the Thursday morning we drove into town and parked in a street of unsalubrious aspect between Mountjoy Square and North Circular Road.

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