Category Archives: Slow Travel

Diary of a Slow Traveller – You miss one train…

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St Emilion

I was reading one of my favourite travel blogs, Picnic at The Cathedral and WOB’s hilarious reflections on missing a bus in Poland  and was immediately reminded of missing a train in Bordeaux on Bastille weekend and the repercussions of missing that one train!

Some years age my favourite person and I were traveling through Europe with our youngest daughter, who was about fifteen at the time.

We had arranged a train trip from Bordeaux to Taormina. Yes I  know, this involves going across the water and trains don’t normally travel over water, but in Italy they sort of do! They barge the carriages from the mainland across to Messina and then you continue your journey. We thought it sounded like fun.

St Emilion

Back to the story. We were staying in St Emilion and needed to drive back to Bordeaux railway station to drop the car off and then board the train to Paris, travel across Paris to catch another train to Amalfi where we’d planned a couple of days sightseeing before re-boarding the train to travel onto Taormina. As I write this it now seems so obvious it wasn’t going to be straight forward but I didn’t expect it to turn sour even before we boarded our train in Bordeaux.

After a delightful Saturday morning in St Emilion, we allowed ourselves what we considered to be a more than ample time (two and half hours) to get to the Bordeaux train station. I allowed this time because the previous year I’d been in Bordeaux for work and seen how busy the traffic was.

So all packed and seemingly with plenty of time, we loaded the address into the GPS and set off for the station. Continue reading →

Diary of a Slow Traveller – Catania, Palermo, Naples – three cities that you must visit

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Palermo Cathederal entrance

Palermo Cathedral entrance

 

It would be fair to say that when you think of three cities that you must visit, it’s doubtful that Catania, Palermo and Naples immediately come to mind? However they are each cities with enormous character and personality. Each enjoys a reputation of being dark, dirty, unruly and not safe.

The words of warning are appropriate but so are the reasons to visit!

We took the opportunity to visit all three on our last trip to Italy.

While we had visited Palermo twice before, we had steered clear of Catania and Naples previously, due to the general commentary around safety. So  as I said, on our last visit to Italy we decided to visit both Catania and Naples as well as revisiting Palermo. Infact, we enjoyed each of them so much that we made a return trip to Catania while we were in Sicily and extended our stay in Naples. We also wished we’d allowed a little more time for Palermo.

Each of these cities have their own personalities. Continue reading →

The Diary of a Slow Traveller – The Southern Fleurieu, South Australia

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Sunset at Second Valley

Recently South Australia has been getting some attantion as a hidden gem. AS a local I can only say to those who are thinking of visiting SA – come on down.

We have just had a couple of days on the glorious Fleurieu Peninsula, where we are lucky enough to have a beach house. I love it because our beach house is in a quiet little town, Second Valley where we can hide away  and with the start of winter relax by the fire.

I also love the opportunity to ride up over the range and toward SA’s major tourist town of Victor Harbour about 60 kms away, across to Cape Jervis where the Ferry terminal is for the short trip across to Kangaroo Island or to ride a loop that takes in the range, Torrens Valley and then the stunning coastline at Lady Bay.

I thought for this post I’d let some pictures I took tell the story…

Continue reading →

Diary of a Slow Traveller – Planning UK 2017

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Island of Ortigia, Sicily

 

While I know that many people don’t like planning for travel, that isn’t me. I love trip planning!

When I think back over our 3 months in Italy, so much of the fun was the planning. Where to base ourselves? Initially it was going to be Amalfi and then we settled on Siracusa, Sicily. How would we get there? Why not have a few days in Sri Lanka on the way?

Sri Lanka wasn’t even on our agenda until our favourite travel agent STA Travel suggested it. Once the seed was planted then it was what will we do on our stop-over?  Where will we stay. What about accommodation etc etc?

Then what about the time on Italy? We decided to fly into Milan but what from there? While I’m upto my armpits in the planning, my favourite person likes it all laid out before her so she can comment and amend.

My favourite person  tends to be happy so long as there is plenty of old buildings, nice food (not expensive) and good accommodation – she does like the occasional splurge (so do I for that matter).  She found a delightful city styled B&B in Rome and an awesome accommodation deal in Singapore at The Fullerton during Chinese New Year (so much for my planning – I had no idea it would be Chinese New Year!!!).

A basic itinerary is where I start – lock in where we will fly into and out of and then plot in some ideas for places to visit or regions. I certainly agree with my favourite person that accommodation is important. So often people will talk of low lights and invariably its something to do with the accommodation, whether its budget or 5-star!

When I think of a truly memorable day I had in Paris in 2007 at the end of a work trip as much as I enjoyed my day the hotel was a disaster!  I still have the sounds of Joni Mitchell’s Free Man in Paris ringing in my ears as I think about wandering the Champs Elyees on a glorious summer’s day but all of this was dampened by the middle of the night flood in my room accompanied by the completely disinterested night-porter – definitely a low point. Continue reading →

Diary of a Slow Traveller – San Gimignano – a mix of old and kitsch

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During our sojourn to Italy we took a day trip tof the medieval walled town o San Gimignano. Getting there from Florence is pretty straight forward even if you are not driving.

We’d read the guidebooks and spoken to others, so we knew that we were going to see some amazing sights mixed with shop after shop eagerly seeking to get the tourist dollar. The sites outweigh the endless tourist traps. It is a spectacular place a town set on a hill that dominates its surrounds. It was also just as my imaginings of Tuscany  had been probably  most likely because so many of the photographs of Tuscany in guide books and brochures are from San Gimignano.

The  bus drops you at the gates or if you drive you have a choice of two cents parks which conveniently have signs saying how many parks are available in each.  It felt very Disneyland as we walked through the gates and into Yesterdayland. Just as with Disneyland it is quite special. Continue reading →