"Why, Sir, you find no man, at all intellectual, who is willing to leave London. No Sir, when a man is tired of London, he is tired of life"

Vienna is a jewel box. A city made of several hundred palaces (not a typo), connected via grand boulevards and narrow cobbled streets. In keeping with this opulent ambiance, and the key reason we visited Vienna, was to see the Spanish Riding School. These stunning white Lipizzaner stallions ('grey' in the horse world) were shipped all the way from Spain, the home of the Escuela Alta and the very peak of international dressage. Why the journey? A too-long and too-complex histo

We spent a couple weeks in July 2018 exploring Busan, a dense coastal city full of museums, beaches and flame-grilled pork. Lots and lots of of Korean barbeques which were fun and delicious! Especially one particular little back alley one close to our airbnb, where they just kept bringing us amazing things....and charging accordingly it turned out :-) We left fuller in stomach, lighter in wallet, and happy. It was fun to be in a city that spoke so little English unlike the do

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

In 2017, we were lucky enough to visit Hong Kong on three occasions (although this gallery reflects just the first two). The first visit was surprise-organised about a day or so before we left - by a family member who was moving to Hong Kong and needed to visit to pick out a flat. This made for a less common experience, as we flitted between potential flats across Hong Kong with the estate agent and their 8-seater van and driver. One of many hundreds and thousands sprinkled a