travelling allrite

The cherry trees were in blossom, but it wasn't Japan. I need to relearn how to visit destinations outside of Asia. At night as I sat in the apartment  I had to remember that I couldn't just duck out into the corridor to grab something from a vending machine or pick up some dessert from a convenience store outside. Canberra isn't Asia and especially isn't Japan. I rather like Canberra. There's a freshness of air, a melding of urban and rural landscapes, a sense of life but also of solitude. There have been many changes since I lived there for three years, back in the early nineties. So many shops empty in Garema Place, so many of my familiar haunts moved or gone altogether: Impact Records, Kingsley's Chicken under Canberra Place, Woodstock Steak & Pizza House , Dymocks, and others. I suspect that some have just moved a little, across to the shinier and newer shopping mall that rings the centre of Civic or continue on elsewhere. Others have gone for good...

I used to think that business people who stayed in bland chain hotels and ate room service dinners without exploring the city outside were plain silly. Now I understand. It's funny, I was looking for accommodation in Prague for the upcoming family holiday there. I found one apartment hotel where the interiors looked like they were decked out with cheap items from Fantastic Furniture, but it was supposed to be convenient and kid friendly, so I was happy. Yet, when it came to booking accommodation for a work trip to Canberra I found myself mentally rejecting such places and instead wishing for a standard modern business hotel. Unfortunately, they are rather thin on the ground and tend to be expensive (at least if you are forced to book via our corporate system). And all I could imagine myself doing (apart from meeting up with a friend) was returning to the hotel at the end of the day, having a quick dinner, then retreating to my room to relax. Don't get me wrong, I love Can...

Thanks to this thread on airliners.net I found some interesting model railway related "sights" in Prague. One suggested accommodation was the Ibis Hotel Mala Strana . Close by is Railroad Kingdom . My Googling also found the Vytopna Restaurant in Prague where the drinks are served by model trains.

I hereby wish to apologise for causing the London riots. If you want a riot or natural disaster for your country please feel free to invite my family in for a holiday.

The woes of the Australian tourist industry are loudly proclaimed. Not only are foreign tourists staying away, but many Australians choose to holiday overseas in preference to local holidays. The high Australian dollar is partly to blame, but the issues run deeper than that. Australia is a large, sparsely populated continent and its human history is mostly Stone Age or relatively recent. Many tourist attractions are widely separated and travel between them is difficult or expensive. You can't just hop in a fast train and catch public transport to most places and driving to the more remote sights can be fraught with danger. One reason that I suspect Victoria is a relatively popular tourist destination within Australia is because of its compactness and density, along with it's European-like emphasis on cultural attractions. There are no sites of epic battles, of fortifications and not much grand old architecture. No ruined cities (although Sydney might be included in that cat...

So, will it be riots in Malaysia or an Icelandic volcano that messes up our European travel plans in November? Got to start the disaster watch before we get too far into the planning. Don't want to get too disappointed this time!

One of my colleagues recently returned from a trip to the UK and shared her photos with us. I was quite taken by her photos of Mount Snowdon in Wales and the Lakes District and entertained the thought of visiting them while in the UK in November. Unfortunately, the Snowdon Mountain Railway , a rack railway, only operates between March and October. According to the National Rail website , Windermere in the Lakes District is a little over 3 hours from London by train, so that sounds doable. Not sure if the weather would make the journey worthwhile. We've only ever seen London in the United Kingdom, so it would be nice to explore elsewhere, though we only plan to spend a limited time in the country. I hope Alex will be okay in the museums of London. He might enjoy the dinosaurs in the British Natural History Museum by that time, but I would love to show B the Victoria and Albert and British Museums. They are all free too.