We visited New Orleans for a family Christmas and New Year in 2014-15 and what an interesting experience it was: the culture, food and music....and the in-your-face inequality. It's a very pleasant city and we enjoyed some exceptional restaurants at all price ranges, a jazz concert and random jazz on the street several times. Highlights which we would recommend were trips to beautiful and serene bayous and swamps and the New Orleans Museum of Art and Sculpture Garden, which a

With a significant amount of time in Madrid, I was surprised to see how few photographs I took over the years! Happily though I took enough to fill a gallery :-) Madrid is one of our most favourite places and cities in the world. It is Spanish in a way that Barcelona isn't (which is so touristy and international that you could be in another country), and is most definitely one of the classic grand European capitals with its boulevards and palaces. Surprisingly given the lack

In 2017, we spent 6 weeks in Tokyo with family. After 28 years in Japan, they were moving to Hong Kong later in the year and so we thought it was a good time to see them as well as Tokyo and its nearby towns and cities. This also included a trip by bullet train to the countryside a few hours north of Tokyo. Our family took us to enjoy a Ryokan, a type of traditional traveller inn which has existing for well over 1000 years in Japan. The classic Japanese dinner of more than 2

In 2018, after our year in India, we desired a little break in a location where we didn't need to be so alert when walking the sidewalks, and so opted for a week in Singapore. 'Twas an expensive week, but we really enjoyed it and left it with opinions differing from all the criticisms we had heard - such as it is a 'boring' and 'clinical' city. We stayed quite central in a high-rise hotel but still were surrounded by streets of low rise shophouses full of hipster cafes, stree