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 […]

Friday 28 October 2016 Sylvia’s work had organised a short cultural induction as in her new role as Regional President for Royal Canin in Asia Pacific she will be spending a bit of time in this part of the world. First we headed to the Yu Gardens, situated in the centre of town and with the entry through […]

Monday 31 October As we left the hotel in Kyoto we found a sign pointing to the subway. This lead down to a 5m wide passage that ran the two blocks under the shops to the station. Kyoto surprised me with its transport infrastructure. With only 1.5 million people they seem to have city trains running every […]