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Travels

  • A Weekend at Rainbow Beach, Australia

    About 240 kms north of Brisbane lies the small coastal town of Rainbow Beach. We decided to check it out one weekend and made our way through winding pine forests which we stopped at…

  • nyhavn

    Coping with Copenhagen

    Red wine and coffee helped make us tired then wake us up again as we enjoyed the view from the train window. We had left Stockholm behind and were bound for Copenhagen. Endless green soaked meadows passed…

  • Byron Bay’s Secret Beaches, Australia

    The Northern New South Wales beachside town of Byron Bay has long been a favourite weekend destination for residents of Brisbane and backpackers road-tripping up and down Australia’s East Coast. Known for its laid…

  • angourie-beaches

    Exploring Yamba, Australia

    With only a short break from work over Christmas, and in search of adventure, we jumped on Google Earth and started scoping out the coastline of northern New South Wales. Soon the small coastal…

  • stockholm

    2 Days in Stockholm, Sweden

    Dawn broke as I stood on the stern of the ship and watched the sun emerge through the clouds as the ship navigated the narrow corridor into Stockholm. We were aboard MS Victoria, a…

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    Road Trip to Селехово, Russia

    We decided to get out of Moscow for a few days and looked online for a good dacha (country house) to rent. We found a decently priced modern dacha with its own banya (sauna)…

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    What to do in Budapest, Hungary

    After a few days in Belgium we jumped aboard a Ryanair jet bound for Budapest, the Hungarian capital and the 6th most visited city in Europe. I knew little about Budapest and it was…

  • The Moscow – Tallinn Night Train

    Our time in Russia had once again drawn to a close. We made our way to Leningradsky Vokzal which, built in 1851,  is the oldest railway station in Moscow. Inside the station we found…

  • bruges

    The Venice of the North – Bruges, Belgium

    We’d just hopped off the early morning Amsterdam-Brussels train and made our way into the station complex to book a ticket to Bruges. Back home I had googled ‘Bruges in winter’, and the amazing…

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    The Spectacular Moscow Metro

    Opened in 1935 the famous Moscow Metro is the busiest metro system outside of Asia with almost 200 stations and over 6.5 million riders each day. In rush hour a train will arrive every…

  • train graveyard

    Red Star Train Graveyard – Budapest, Hungary

    A Scottish gentleman I had met at the Rizhskaya Railway Museum in Moscow had told me about a hidden train graveyard inside the grounds of an operational train depot on the outskirts of Budapest.…

  • tallinn

    Two Days in Tallinn – Estonia

    Our train pulled into Tallinn station at around 6 in the morning and we were met with an icy wind blowing in from the Baltic Sea, and although we had hoped for snow there…

  • red square moscow

    Two Days in Moscow – Russia

    We had just landed at Moscow’s Domodedovo Airport. It was December 2014 and the Russian economy was collapsing. The flight over had been comfortable as the plane was only a quarter full. For various…

  • Palenque

    Villahermosa and Palenque – Mexico

    We landed in Villahermosa and Tiny and I split up from the Kiwi couple. They had tweaked their tour a bit and wanted to see some different sights to us. The main attraction in…

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    Oaxaca and Monte Alban – Mexico

    Tiny, the Kiwi couple and I jumped on a Mexicana flight to Oaxaca which was some other destination with an archaeological theme that Tiny didn’t seem to be aware of when he’d booked the…

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    Mexico City & The Pyramids of the Sun and Moon

    I’d only been back home from Russia and Europe for a few weeks and was just getting over that post-trip depression when my phone started ringing. It was Tiny, a lad I’d served overseas…