Any Excuse to Travel

Stories from travels in

Budapest Times

The royal Balaton

My geography is terrible. My Hungarian geography is particularly bad. Add that to a horrible sense of direction and the countless times I’ve gotten lost

Break for the border

I have an innate distrust of guide books, the well-known names in the travel world. I doubt if the authors have ever even been to

Christmas wish from India

The world is in a mess, a terrible mess. Decisions being made in the hallowed halls of power in one country are affecting the lives

Backstreets wanderer

‘So’, I said, ‘what do you want to do?’ My visitor technically wasn’t my visitor at all. I’d borrowed him for the afternoon from a

Comments and their consequences

Dining out alone one evening lately, I got into conversation with a couple of Canadian tourists who were on a driving holiday through the region.

Irish. In Budapest. Next week.

It’s not difficult to be Irish abroad, especially not in Hungary. And especially not during the lead-up to St Patrick’s Day. When he was writing

The great citizen sell-off

Driving to my hotel from the airport in Malta last week, I fell into conversation with the taxi driver. He spoke English, the language of

Alienating tourists

There’s a small part of me that has the makings of a conspiracy theorist. I have what I like to think of as a healthy

Supersized me – po’girl carrying excess baggage

Walking down the aisle on the aeroplane en route from Chicago to Munich, I found it difficult to keep my distance from those occupying aisle

A stream of Southern consciousness

As I write, I am sitting somewhere north-west of Nashville, Tennessee, on the second of a three-day stopover in the state. It’s been a little