The Taverna San Trovaso has been a mainstay of Venetian dining for a great many years, with a faithful following that includes Yours Truly. When I was an intern in Venice (many years ago), this restaurant served as a home from home for our group of foreign students. Its warming atmosphere exuded from everything – the staff, the rustic decor and, naturally,…
Tag: travel
No knives on the tube, puh-leeeeease!
Monsieur and I visited Borough Market on Saturday. Borough Market was great fun; getting there was a little fraught. On the tube we were sat opposite a case of Arrested Development (and I’m not talking about the band). He was dressed in jeans and a lot of red – red sweatshirt bearing some hip insignia I…
Bandes Dessinees weekend 1 – The Case of the Missing Navette
There are too many people in this world who simply don’t understand the fascination of bandes dessinées (otherwise known as graphic novels). Monsieur and I are not among these people. We still read Tintin, raced madly through a series called XIII (Treize, as in ‘thirteen’) which gripped us with political intrigue and Kennedy-esque family, spent last…
Malaysia Part 9 – Melaka Moments
As Monsieur had selected most of the hotels for our Malaysian holiday, I decided to find something a bit different for our time in Melaka. Trawling tripadvisor, I found repeated reference to the Hotel Puri, its fabulous antiques and themed rooms and the über-efficient Madame Jo who ran front desk. If the five-star hotels we’d…
Malaysia, Part 8: Hey Mambo, Melaka!
We were soon to leave the island state of Singapore to return to Malaysia, but first we enjoyed a last breakfast on the terrace outside The Line. There was no more rain. Isn’t that typical? It had rained off and on the whole time we’d been in Singapore but on our day of departure the sun…
World Taximeter
I just found a really interesting site on the internet: World Taximeter! Choose your city and enter your point of departure and destination and the site will calculate how much it will cost. At a click, you can also convert the currency between pounds sterling, US dollars and the Euro. The list of cities isn’t exhaustive, but…
Malaysia/ Singapore, Part 5: In the Night Zoo
I’m not really a zoo person, but I’d been assured that the Night Safari in Singapore was different. Curious to see for ourselves if it was as animal-friendly as we’d heard, Monsieur and I went back up the road for Johor Bahru to talk with the animals. The park itself was opened in 1994 and…
Malaysia, Part 4: A Cold Bus to Singapore
The morning of our journey to Singapore, we were woken by an orchestra of wake-up calls and alarms, set the night before to ensure that we did not sleep late. With somewhat fragile heads, the legacy of hitting the KL night life the previous evening, we made it to Pudu Raya bus terminal intact. There,…
Hokkaido Highway Blues by Will Ferguson
This is one of the most unusual travel books I’ve ever come across, written by a Canadian teacher of English as a second language, who decides to follow the appearance of the cherry blossom by hitchhiking from one end of Japan to the other. I haven’t yet finished, but can’t resist sharing a couple of…
North Bridge Brasserie, Edinburgh
Having survived a flight delay and (temporarily) lost bag, by the time I reached the hotel in Edinburgh, Monsieur’s stomach was audibly protesting its emptiness. Mine rumbled back in sympathy, so out we went in search of decent grub. This we found, by chance, at the North Bridge Brasserie attached to The Scotsman Hotel on…
La Vie en Rose by Jamie Ivey
Having thoroughly enjoyed Extremely Pale Rosé by Jamie Ivey, I was thrilled to find a sequel to quench my thirst for rosé wine in London’s ever-grey winter. La Vie en Rosé does not disappoint. On this occasion, Jamie and Tanya are trying to forge a French life for themselves by test-driving the concept of a rosé wine…
People in Glasshouses need sleep, too
The Glasshouse in Edinburgh is quite something, according to the awards it boasts about on its website. With a preserved church facade behind which the omnipresent glass of this particular hotel stands, it makes an intriguing first impression. However, this place is a lesson in that piece of wisdom: ‘Don’t judge a book by its…
Epicurienne 