Friday 10 March 2017 With Sylvia based here as the Regional President of Royal Canin we have a nice apartment, situated on the edge of Nassim Hill, close to Orchard Road and the Botanical Gardens, in a complex with a gym and a nice pool. It’s a great opportunity to explore Singapore and many of the surrounding […]
Friday 6 January 2017 As Sylvia headed off to Singapore to hunt out an apartment for us I was very privileged to be invited to Kaiteriteri, in the north of the South Island, by Karl and Rachel and their son Sam. We stayed in an apartment overlooking the beach. Rachel’s extended family, mainly from Christchurch, were camped […]
Thursday 24 November 2016 Arriving late yesterday afternoon I made some enquiries about what to do in Bangkok. One suggestion was to take the public boat up the river. I went for a stroll around the local streets; as always I was intrigued by the jumble of power and telephone lines. Returning to the Mandarin Oriental hotel there were […]
Monday 21 November 2016 Established in 985, Montpellier is one of the few cities in France without a Roman heritage and one of the few in Southern France without a Greek foundation. With around two hundred and sixty thousand people, one third of whom are students, it is the eighth largest city in France. I strolled to the […]
Wednesday 16 November 2016 Sylvia’s colleague Hannah had studied in Madrid a few years ago. She very kindly gave me a list of places to go. We are staying at Hortaleza, about 10km from the city centre. It’s a stunning day with the only mark in the clear blue sky a short vapour trail. I […]
Monday 14 November 2016 After a relaxing Sunday in DC we caught the overnight flight to Brussels. Having spotted a huge arch from the taxi on the way into town I decided to go and investigate. After short stroll from the hotel I came across Parc Cinquantenaire, or “Park of the Fiftieth Anniversary” Most buildings of the U-shaped […]
Saturday 12 November 2016 Sylvia had been at a conference in Washington DC all week. I arrived last night. Just down the road from the hotel a Statue of George Washington stood in the middle of a round-about on Pennsylvania Ave. Off to the left some distance down on F Street is the International Spy Museum. Although most […]
Sunday 6 November 2016 After a fairly long day, mostly in the air, I arrived, via Denver, in Anchorage Alaska. Steve and Chantel met me at the airport. Steve has been down to NZ a few times, both visiting and hunting. My friend Ross and I visited Steve just over three years ago and had a great […]
Saturday 5 November 2016 Whilst enjoying a glass of wine at the hotel in LA on Friday night I got a call from Steve letting me know that the All Black’s game was to start at 3pm Saturday, not 7pm as we had all presumed. A few phone calls to change the flight was a very costly […]
Sylvia: Saturday 29 October We flew into Osaka arriving late Friday evening. We managed to board the bus to Kyoto right at the last minute for a fairly easy transfer to our hotel in Kyoto. Kyoto is very different from Tokyo – still clean and tidy (although not as clean as Tokyo) but older, a lot less busy […]