Tag: travel

Nice 2005

We took Lorraine away for a weekend in Nice. We travelled with EUJet from Manston airport, Kent and flew directly to Nice airport, a 20 minute bus ride from the centre of Nice.

We took a walk towards the Fruit and Flower market and had a lovely wander around before it started to rain and we took this as an opportunity to grab some lunch. We headed to the hotel Solara and checked in. We headed off towards the Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art and walked around the outside, but as it was only an hour before closing we decided to head off to the beachfront for a couple of beers in the sunshine.

On Sunday we headed off along the Promenade des Anglais to the Port and admired the huge boats before catching a bus to Cimiez and having a wander through the beautiful Franciscan Monestary gardens before heading back towards the airport and back to Kent.

Nice was a great place for the weekend, lots to do and see and I think it is safe to say that we all enjoyed it.

To celebrate our second wedding anniversary we decided to head to New York. Armed with the Time Out guide, and the excellent books available from the hotel (we recommend the Frommers as it had the best maps and restaurant sections), we explored the city in manageable chunks.

One day we explored Fifth Avenue, Grand Central, Little Italy and Chinatown. The next we went up the Empire State Building and visited Times Square at night. The next day was our anniversary and we spent the day around Battery Park, Ground Zero and taking a trip on the Staten Island Ferry before going out for a wonderful meal. On Wednesday it rained – the tail end of hurricane Frances hit town – and our Yankees game was cancelled, still we found a good restaurant to get over our disapointment in. Our last day saw us heading over to Central Park and taking a great walk before heading back off to Fifth Avenue for the last of the shopping. Our final evening we headed to the Hotel Metro and sat out on their (understated) roof terrace looking up at the Empire State building (one block away).

A great trip, and we’ve left ourselves things to do should we get a chance to go back (like visit the Guggenheim when it’s open as well as many other museums and galleries).

Calcutta 2004

Our real reason for travelling to Calcutta was for Neela and Ste’s wedding, but we did have some time to explore and experience Calcutta during our one week stay.

This was our first trip and I’m sure we’ll return. We found Calcutta to be a very intense place, very polluted (it makes London feel clean), but very friendly. Being one of only a few white faces in a City makes you stand out somewhat, and many people came up to us and introduced themselves (and sometimes their somewhat reluctant families), and we often walked along to the sounds of “Hello Madam, How are you?”. The staring can be annoying, but is something that is just going to happen, and can be helped by dressing appropriately.

We did a lot of shopping – mainly to buy clothes and accessories for the wedding, but also for warm clothes as (typically) Calcutta was having it’s coldest spell for 35 years and Calcutta is not a city designed for cold weather.

We managed to spend a few days doing touristy things. One day we had a pleasant walk across the Maidan to Eden Gardens and to the James Prinsep memorial. Another day we went to Belur Math (the headquarters of the Ramakrishna mission. Ramakrishna preached that all religions should be united. The building has 3 facades – one representing a church, one a temple and the other a mosque [no photography allowed]) and Dakshineswar Kali Temple (the temple where Ramakrishna was a priest). And on other days we visited the Victoria Memorial (an incredibly clean reminder of the British Raj which houses an interesting exhibition about the European colonisation of India) and also the Botanical Gardens (which contain plants from different corners of the globe).

All in all a really interesting trip. Of course the highlight was the wedding, but the rest of our time was enjoyable too – and we found India to be somewhere we’d like to return one day.

11 November 2000

As a birthday gift for my Mum, I treated us all to a day trip in Paris.

Getting There

We took the 07:38 Eurostar to Paris (first time any of us had been on it) which got us into the Gare du Nord at around 12:10. We ate some sandwiches on the train to save some time.

Sacre Coeur

We went down to the Metro and bought a carnet before heading off to Anvers station. This involved changing lines at BarbËs-Rochechouart. From Anvers it was just a short walk to la Butte de Montmatre and the Sacre Coeur. The sun was shining and the sky was blue and we felt very fortunate that it was such a lovely day. We climbed the steps of the hill and enjoyed the view before going into the church itself. After our viewing we left and walked through montmatre and the square where all the artists were busy. It was a very pleasant place to wander through.

L’Arc de Triomphe

We returned to Anvers station and noticed one of the information monitors displaying that the station we wanted had restricted openings. Of course, this was November 11th and there was the Armistice remembrance being held by the tomb of the unknown soldier at L’arc de Triomphe. We decided to try and get there as the monitor seemed to indicate that one of the exits was open. In actual fact we had missed the service and so were able to get out of the metro without problem. We stood on the Champs Elysees admiring L’Arc before using the subway to get closer. Because of the service there were a lot of people and also soldiers stood next to the grave of the unknown soldier with wreaths on it. A huge tricolor hung from the centre of L’Arc and others were around too.

Champs Elysees

We crossed back through the subway and walked along the Champs Elysees stopping only for a drink in a cafe. We were quite taken with the vivid gold colour of the adornments on the Alexander III bridge.

La Place de la Concorde

We continued along the Champs Elysees until we got to la place de la concorde with it’s obelisque, statues, fountains and a big wheel (we weren’t sure how permanent an addition this was). We spent quite a lot of time just looking at the different styles visible in the surroundings. We also took a look through the gates of the Jardin des Tuileries towards the Louvre before crossing the Seine and looking along the river towards L’Ile de la Cite and Notre dame.

Les Invalides

As we crossed the river we had the National Assembly building in front of us and the Dome du Eglise visible to the right. This is where our next port of call was. We walked along the banks of the Seine, stopping only to view the Pont Alexander III a bit closer, along with the Grand Palais to the left of the bridge before walking towards L’Hotel des Invalides. After walking through the gate we walked past several cannons and several trees before entering the courtyard. As it was approaching 5pm by this stage entrance to either the MusÈe de l’ArmÈe or the …glise du DÙme was out of the question and so we just looked around the outside of the buildings.

Le Tour Eiffel

The final stop on our short but full tour was to see the Eiffel tour in closer detail. We approached it through the Champs de Mar which is a really pleasant environment to view it from. Due to the lateness of the hour it was starting to get dark and so the tower was starting to light up which was really impressive. I stood under the middle of it and looked up at it which is an unusual viewpoint on it.

Dinner

Our day in Paris was coming to an end and so we headed back to the Gare du Nord and had a meal at one of the brasseries opposite the station. The brasserie was full of french rugby fans warming up their voices for the France v New Zealand rugby match to be held that evening. The menu was good value and the wine we chose was very good. Unfortunately we didn’t get around to dessert as it was getting close to check in time

Getting home

We got to the Eurostar at around the time we should have been boarding only to discover there was a 15 minute delay – we could have had dessert after all. We got back into Waterloo shortly after 10.30pm, after a thoroughly enjoyable day.

Resources used

• Metro – a program which helps you to get from one metro station to another. See Metro website for more details
• CitiKey – a program containing Parisian information (Other cities are available). See CitiKey website for more details.
• CitySync – a Lonely Planet palm publication. See CitySync website for more details

Gibraltar

August 1999

This was a dolphin watching trip organised through Discover the World. It was very well organised, and the dossier received from DTW was excellent, information about the dolphins we were likely to see and about Gibraltar itself.

We spent 3 nights on Gibraltar in a village named Catalan Bay. We stayed in the Caleta Palace hotel, which was in the process of being refurbished. Consequently, if you upgraded to a superior room, you got a more recently decorated room, with fan and they were generally more pleasant than the standard rooms. However, the standard room was fine considering we didn’t spend that much time in the room. We also had a sea-facing room which was pleasant.

The dolphin watching was arranged through Dolphin Safari, and we were led by Captain Tim Montgomery. We had 3 2.5 hour trips, two were in the morning and was late evening. We found the morning ones to be more fun. We saw two types of dolphins, Bottlenose dolphins (as in Flipper) and Common dolphins (smaller than the Bottlenose, and with a distinctive hour glass pattern on their sides). On our trips there were 12 people plus crew, and this proved to be quite a nice number as there was always plenty of space. Normally, they operate trips for about 2 hours most of the time during the summer, and it costs £15 for an adult, and £9 for a child under 12.

Gibraltar as a whole is quite a strange place, part Spanish, part British. There are some quite interesting caves to be seen on the rock itself, St Michals Caves which can be reached by the cable car and then a walk. We opted for the “Rock Tour” organised by Discover The World and saw most things during the 3 hour trip. We also went up on the cable car on another day. Catalan Bay is very popular due to it’s beach and there were always lots of people around. There were three main eateries. Two were bars serving Tapas, and pub food, and one was a restaurant which did a really good Rice Marinera (a bit like Paella but completely fish/sea food based). The hotel also had a restaurant but we didn’t get around to trying it. In Gibaltar town itself there are lots of British pubs, and fish and chip shops, and also along the marina there are some waterfront restaraunts too.

All in all a very good trip. It has given me a taste for dolphin and whale watching trips, but I don’t think I’ll be returning to Gibraltar as there isn’t really much more to see there. It is however quite a nice place to visit for a weekend.