Letter to Kyoji

I’ve had an on/off relationship with Japan since the very first days of my working life but today it’s only continued through a Xmas card exchange with and a letter to Kyoji Ohtake.

5 business trips (which didn’t go to plan)

I’ve travelled enough so that I’m pretty adept at avoiding the pitfalls of business trips and the stresses that go with them but even then stuff happens which is outside your control and then you have to adapt. It’s happened to me several times, fortunately never catastrophically, but in today’s world the consequences of the earlier ones wouldn’t have been so easily managed.

Indonesia 2019 (and 2020)

We’ve just spent a couple of days short of four weeks on holiday in Indonesia. It’s a longer trip than we’d normally make and with hindsight would have been better if it had been a few days shorter but you can’t change history so why dwell on it.

Sicily again: 5 highlights

We’ve just come back from a week in Sicily. We had a full itinerary which showed us most of the island and immersed us in its history and culture. You come out at the end with a blur of memories but what really stood out? Here’s my list of five highlights.

I’ve been to Sicily again

temple E at Selinunte … with wild flowers!

I’ve been to Sicily four times now. Twice recently on tours with the most recent being just last month. The other two visits were more in the past and I’ll come back to them later.

Indian Triangle

Some time back I did a post on ‘5 significant holidays’. I’m not sure if my recent trip to the Golden Triangle in India would count as significant but it was truly epic.

what we did that summer …

Earlier this month the Guardian’s travel supplement ran a feature with ten people remembering their ‘most memorable’ holidays. Here’s my memory of my first independent holiday ‘Four in a Mini to the South of France‘ as featured in my earlier post ‘Five significant holidays’. Click here to read it.

OZ17: five takeaways

We’ve just come back from Australia where we’ve enjoyed a three week vacation. It was our second and I’ve been there several times on business as well. But as always when you visit a place you still see something new or you see something in a different light or you’re just simply reminded of what you’d seen before but somehow forgotten.

Tour guides I have loved and not …

We’ve only been taking package tours since about 1998 when we went with Travel Editions to Hidden Italy. We were based in Ravenna and I seem to remember it was early in the year and that the weather was not great.

Five significant holidays

We’re off on holiday shortly and it’s going to be a big one. I’ve got myself a significant birthday so we’re off to Australia (again) via Hong Kong for the best part of 4 weeks with time in Melbourne and Adelaide before taking the train to Perth and a couple of weeks in WA.