Bangkok and the Mandarin Oriental Hotel

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 […]

Two Wet Days in Montepellier

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 […]

It’s Autumn in Brussels

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 […]

Washington DC

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 […]

A weekend in Kyoto

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 […]