rachel.blog

Tag: travel

  • An orchestra in the toilet

    I got my bag early yesterday evening, thank goodness. There’s a B&B in the building we’re staying in so I had the idea to go and knock on their door to see whether my bag had been delivered to the wrong place and it had! I slept poorly again last night. The window which connects my…

  • Fear the hungry vegan

    I’m currently imprisoned in our accommodation in Barcelona and I’m hungry. A hungry vegan is not someone you want to mess with. I’m stuck here waiting for my bag to turn up and if I go out in search of food, they won’t be able to deliver the bag. I have this cynical idea that…

  • I’m in Barcelona

    I made it to Barcelona but my luggage didn’t. Of all the travelling I’ve done in my life – which is a fair amount – this is the first time I’ve ever lost my bags. Today I’m wearing the same outfit I wore yesterday. My bag is expected to appear today so I’m hoping my…

  • Travel anxieties

    Something happens to a woman when she becomes a mother: she starts to worry about things – crazy things that will never happen. It’s very frustrating but there’s nothing that can be done about it except to laugh at the absurdity and put up with the worries. Next week I’m going to Barcelona for work. It…

  • My new home: Aberdeen

    Aberdeen is endearing itself to me. It’s the little things that make a difference. Like this front gate I walked past yesterday with a tin of biscuits for the guard dog. Just in case you want to rob the place and a fierce dog is standing in your way, the owners have helpfully provided the dog biscuits…

  • Duthie Park, Aberdeen

    We’re in Aberdeen and still all a bit tired and jet-lagged but glad to have all the hard stuff over and done with. We ventured out for a walk in Duthie Park yesterday and it was wonderful. They have an enormous winter garden as well as some brilliant playgrounds. Can you judge a city by…

  • Larnach Castle, Dunedin

    We couldn’t leave Dunedin before making a trip to Larnach Castle. It’s touted as the only castle in New Zealand but whether it really is a castle is probably debatable. It was built by a merchant baron and politician, William Larnach, in 1871. It’s on a prominent spot and has battlements and turrets but lots of…

  • Dunedin homes

    On my run this afternoon I took some photographs of some of the homes in the local area. I quite like seeing things other than the usual tourist attractions when exploring a different city, like streetscapes and the types of homes people live in. So here are some of these scenes from Dunedin:

  • Dunedin Botanic Gardens

    I managed to escape my computer briefly today to visit the Dunedin Botanic Gardens; a place that is always well worth a visit.  

  • Diamond Head and more

    I’m day four in Hawaii and I’m having a really nice time. There have been no earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, or tsunamis so far and Ben and the children seem to be managing well without me. A bit too well in fact 🙂 Yesterday we hired cars and drove around part of the island. There was…

  • Honolulu, earthquakes, and films

    Remember how I said in my intro video that I’m no longer the crazy traumatised earthquake woman? How I’d moved on from that and no longer felt anxious about earthquakes? Well, I lied. I’m currently staying in a high-rise hotel in Hawaii that has a bit of a CTV-building look to it. At least, it…

  • Hawaii

    I’m going to Hawaii this week and I have to say I’m not looking forward to it at all. The reason being that I don’t want to leave my kids. I know I’m going to bawl my eyes out the whole way there so I pity the poor soul who ends up sitting next to…

  • Musn’t grumble

    We are back in Auckland and I am down and teary about that but I’m going to try hard not to complain so will leave it at this. Our last couple of days in Thailand were not without drama. We were taken to see some wild monkeys on Friday and fed them a bag filled…

  • The Cairngorms

    Today we left the city for the country and visited the majestic Cairngorms, the highest mountain range in Britain. It was spectacular and my wish for snow finally came true. The scenery was a mix of woodland, mountains, castles, villages, rivers and fields but I’ll let my photos tell the story.   The rest of…

  • The Silver City

    We are in Aberdeen, a city known for its extensive use of granite as a building material and because of this it is also sometimes called the granite city or the silver city. On the train here from York, I tweeted that I was heading north in Scotland. Someone responded to my tweet with, “Ooh,…

  • A beautiful frosty morning

    I have been longing for some snow but there has been none. We haven’t even had a proper frost, that is, not until this morning and the first real frost did not disappoint me. I used to love frosty mornings when we lived in Christchurch with the sound and the sensation of crunchy grass beneath…

  • The Yorkshire Dales from the Settle-Carlisle Railway

    Yesterday we finally made the trip to Carlisle through the Yorkshire Dales on the Settle-Carlisle railway. I have been wanting to take this train journey ever since we arrived and I have Bill Bryson largely to blame. Here’s what he said about it in his book, Notes from a Small Island: The Settle-to-Carlisle line is…

  • A day out in Nottingham

    We had a superb day yesterday. Our hosts took us to see some of the sights in Nottingham the first of which was Wollaton Hall – an Elizabethan mansion completed in 1588 and since 1926, home to the city’s natural history museum. Natural history museums are always interesting places to visit, especially for children, but…

  • Viking poo

    The photo below is an exact replica of a 1000-year-old Viking poo found beneath the city of York, or Jorvik as the Vikings called it. This poo and real ones (not replicas) can be sampled (held rather than eaten) at the Archaeological Museum in York, called Dig. We took the children there today and it’s an…

  • Winter sports are the best

    We went to Newcastle for the afternoon. It started off badly: there was rain, the children wanted to go home and we had nothing planned other than to walk around in the rain for a couple of hours before going back to York. But then things changed. First we ran into someone famous: Then I…