Very Busy Vienna

It was late October. Not high season – July and August. Not shoulder season – September and early October. Not Christmas market season – December. Almost November. It should have been the off season. Seven years earlier it had been the off season, but this time Vienna was packed. In the center at least, inside […]

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LBS: More Vienna

October 22-28, 2007: Vienna is a great place for an Art Nouveau fan, with plenty of buildings to admire. (In Austria the style is known as Secession.)  A couple of good examples were conveniently close to the open air market, the Nachtmarkt. Because of a holiday on the 26th (celebrating the withdrawal of post-WWII occupying […]

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LBS: Enjoying Vienna Despite….

…. miserable weather and miserable feet. I had previously visited Vienna during a heat wave, now I was greeted by cold winds, grey skies and rain. No city can really charm you in those circumstances, but Vienna’s buildings seemed as grey as the skies. Nor were my feet helping my outlook – by the time […]

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Back to Budapest

October 19 – 25, 2014: I thought of this as the “going back” trip. It’s true that when it came to Romania i was only going back to the country – all the places i visited there were new – but there would only be three new places after that. Budapest was definitely not new, […]

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LBS: Falling For Venice

Nov 7-13, 2007: I had my doubts about Venice. Hadn’t it become impossibly crowded? Hopelessly touristy? Even smelly? And in any case, at the end of June it would almost certainly be too hot. So on my first trip to Italy, in 2004, I decided against staying in Venice. I took the night train from […]

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LBS: Cooling it in Kufstein

OK, time to get back to travel. Not present day travel as yet (I’ve abandoned thoughts of visiting Alaska, and am thinking of heading back to South America), but carrying on the Look Back Series I started before the renovations got under way last year. After limping around Budapest, hobbling around Vienna, and resting up […]

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LBS: Gracious Graz

October 28-31, 2007: My hurting feet had kept me from hiking around Simmering, but the train to Graz gave me a look at the scenery I had missed. I could see that the craggy, steep hills had been a challenge to the 19th century railway engineers, and given the cold, misty weather, I was rather […]

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LBS: Budapest: Godollo and — Goths?

October 20-21, 2007: Having already done the river trip to Szentendre (verdict: boring stretch of river, very pretty town but overrun with tourists), this time I decided to go inland, to the former palace at Godollo. This turned into a bit of a trek. I started by taking the metro to the end of the […]

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Rio wrap, and a time trap

If you are after fun in the sun on the sand, and/or partying into the small hours, I feel sure that Rio is your town. For culture vultures, not so much. And then there is the security situation. I generally felt OK, but I was definitely on high alert for pretty much the whole time, […]

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Trying Tokyo

Some people are beach people. Some people are city people. I’m a mountain person – nothing lifts my spirits like seeing a mountain in the distance, getting closer. There are a few big cities I like – London, Paris, Vienna, Lisbon – but I approach places the size of Tokyo (12.56 million people) with caution.  […]

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