I was fascinated to see something like the above on many lampposts across Vienna. Luckily my guide book provided an explanation: it seems that this is the way in which newspapers are sold in Vienna. People are supposed to use the small plastic bit as a honesty box and then take a paper from the plastic bag. The guide book also told us that everyone in Austria was so law abiding that they always pay before taking a paper. It was quite interesting therefore that the only person that we say taking a paper did so without paying! ... read more
Vienna steps
This picture shows what must have been one of the scariest staircases that I've ever climbed. I will provide a full explanation just as soon as I have time, but I can tell you that it was in Karlskirche in Vienna, and did provide Mr C and I with a much closer view of the baroque painting on the dome. ... read more
Trip round Europe
Sorry that I've not been here blogging for the last week. Last week was incredibly busy, but then Mr C and I had a nice, peaceful weekend away planned. We flew out to Vienna last Friday and had a great weekend exploring the city. The slight problem came on Monday. After watching the news in our hotel room that morning there was no surprise when we turned up at the airport to find that our flight back to London was cancelled. In fact, no flights left Austria for London at all that day due to the snow back home!We'd flown with Easyjet and the truth behind those cheap flights is that if ... read more
Travelling Comedians
Nearly twenty years before Sarah Palin was the name on everyone's lips there was another Palin attracting quite a bit of attention. In 1989 Michael Palin took off in the footsteps of Jules Verne and travelled Around The World In 80 Days with a BBC camera crew. There was born my love of travel programmes and started a desire to travel.I've been luck enough to visit some of the places on Michael's trip in the last twenty years, but there are still many more places on my list that I'd love to visit. Various other travel programmes have ... read more
Book browsing
After work on Monday I had some time to kill in central London before meeting up with Mr C to go and celebrate a friends birthday with a meal out. I was determined to leave work on time and have some nice "me time" browsing the shops, so I headed up to Marylebone High Street where you can always find a fantastic array of things to buyThis time I ended up in Daunt Books and spent nearly an hour browsing the shelves. They have a fantastic, unique way of arranging the books, which is quite simply genius. In addition to the usual shelves separated into fiction, non-fiction ... read more
An evening at the seaside
After a day at the River Cottage Festival Mr C and I headed south to the coast and Lyme Regis. Dark clouds were beginning to surround us, but luckily it remained dry for long enough for us to explore the sea front. It was lovely to see a couple of young lads enjoying a hobby that many would associate with people much older. As we explored this part of the beach we found a large number of rock pools to explore. A couple of small fish were spotted, but sadly not much more. This beautiful piece of what I guess is seaweed on a rock really caught my eye. The shades of purple were fantastically ... read more
A magical weekend in Jersey
I've just returned from what was quite simply the best weekend away I've ever had. It was my birthday last Friday so Mr C organised a weekend away for us and we went to Jersey. Now I've always wanted to travel to the Channel Islands as I've head so much about the scenery and have always wanted to learn more about what life on the Islands was like during the war-time German Occupation. I'll provide more details of our trip later (once I've finished unpacking and the mountain of washing that's come back with us) but it summarise Jersey is quite simply spectacular and the people there are some of ... read more