Tag Archives: architecture The Swiss city of Bern is indelibly associated with bears. The bear has featured on the city seal and coat of arms since at least the 1220s. Stories relating to the keeping of live bears in a Bärengraben (bear pit) in the centre of the city – in what is still called Bärenplatz (Bear Plaza) – date back to the 1440s (or 1513 – depending on your […]  It can be relaxing to travel like a “tourist”: to find a haven in crisp sheets and smiling staff who speak your language, after a hectic day in a bustling foreign environment. I usually avoid up-market resorts – mostly because I’d rather travel twice as often than pay twice as much. But, every so often, an offer comes to my attention, one that fits […]  Woods and water are the central features of Canada’s Sunshine Coast. This rugged, mountainous, landscape on the southern-mainland coast of British Columbia (BC) in Canada’s west is bounded by the Coast Mountains on one side and the Strait of Georgia on the other. Although it’s just a stone’s throw from Vancouver, no access roads have been built around the fjords or through the […]  Seen one castle, seen them all? Not quite! During our wet month in Ireland in 2012 (Ireland), we visited a lot of castles in various states of ruin, renovation, or disrepair. What surprised me most was how different they all actually are. Perhaps it was the brief respite from the rain, but my husband and […]  It was another 4:00am wakeup call: we were expected to break camp before 5:00am so we could drive back into Namib-Naukluft National Park and catch the sunrise colours over the sand dunes near Sossusvlei. Sleep, as they say, is over rated. We were aiming for Dune 40 – 40 kilometres past the Sesriem gates on the road to Sossusvlei, […] |
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