Who let the dogs out? It’s hard to stay focused when three very large and very aggressive dogs are coming at you from all sides, snarling, lunging and snapping. Whirling about and keeping my hiking poles between their teeth and my legs while walking slowly backwards was my limit! We had been walking for several…
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Ok, we’ve all heard about the Booking.com scammer emails and fake websites and are being careful! So when I received a Booking.com email and app message about a Malta hotel booking I checked the originating email. My name and the booking number in the email were correct, and when I hovered over the booking number…
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Arrived Bucharest Nord station and needed tickets to the airport. Big display said airport train at 12:17 plus the sign next to it seemed it indicate an express train at 12:30, both on line 5, so we went to get tickets. Followed “Billets” sign and found a big bank of ticket machines, some even had…
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After Qantas cancelled our booked flight to San Francisco the code-share operator American Airlines re-booked the tickets on a flight earlier on the same day. To avoid a complicated start to the day I booked a room at the Sydney Airport Travelodge. The price was better than any of the alternatives at the time of…
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How long before departure do you need to be at London St Pancras station fof the 7am Eurostar to Paris?The official advice is 60-90 minutes, but definitely aim for 90 minutes plus. We arrived at 5:30 am, right on 90 minutes, and the queue in the station was already a crowd. There was a 6:16am…
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One day my trusty Acer travel laptop was misbehaving – I wanted to use it without a mouse but the trackpad was not responding. A quick online search turned up numerous helpful suggestions, from updating drivers to reinstalling Windows, but none of them were the sort of simple solution I was looking for. In fact…
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The French rail network is excellent, although often expensive by Australian standards. It can also be very crowded on commuter trains. Today’s trip was slightly challenging – Villefranche-sur-mer to Aigues-Morts requires four separate tickets and takes all day. First: a local train to Nice-St-Augustin – just three stops to the other side of Nice, the…
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France is rightly famous for its wines, so it would be a crime to not sample them. Every corner shop and supermarket has a selection, and the prices start low – you can get very drinkable reds from less than 5€, about AU$8. But don’t expect screw caps on wine bottles, cork (or a plastic…
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I’m writing this while perched on my bag in the luggage zone of a Nice-Marseille TER train. It’s not the most comfortable spot for a nearly three hour journey, but at least I’m not standing. This ticket was booked on RailEurope.com months ago and I didn’t pay much attention to the lack of seat selection,…
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Menton is a French Riviera town of around 30,000 people, close to the border with Italy. Since 1934 Menton has held a two week “Fête du Citron” festival in February/March each year celebrating the local citrus fruits, and it is famous around the world. In fact over 200,000 visitors travel to Menton for the Fête…
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