Shoey's Travel Blog

Greek Isles Day 1 – Mykonos (2)

shoey — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 21:42:34 +0000

With a bit of rest & a shower we wandered out into Mykonos town. It’s a short drive from the hotel’s Platis Gialos beach, and the town’s houses of whitewashed plaster hugs the bay.

The sky and clouds treated us with a pretty awesome show as the day headed towards sundown:

Greek Isles Day 1 – Mykonos (1)

shoey — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 21:28:56 +0000

My first day in the Greek Isles began with a midday flight into Mykonos. No sooner than five minutes after checking into the hotel, and putting down the bags, there came a knock on the room door.

“A complementary cold drink, enjoy your stay in Greece”

At that moment I knew my holiday has begun – and it had the words rancho relaxo plastered all over it. I felt the weariness of the early morning flight melt away. London with its 10 degree autumn, felt like its a thing of the past.

Hotels in the Greek Isles, especially during the shoulder seasons, tends to be of high quality whilst remaining a relatively cheap price. A pool is pretty much mandatory. Even with high expectations from all the internet research & photos, I was still very impressed. Balcony with view, check. Two minute walk to the beach, check. Nice pool, check. Honestly this is one of the best 60 euro hotel’s I’ved stayed at, and its heaven and earth compared to say, a similar priced hole in the middle of the city in Paris.

Livin’ in London – Gettin rid of 1p and 2p coins

shoey — Sun, 18 Oct 2009 19:44:25 +0000

One of the banes of my existence in London has to be items stupidly priced ending in odd pennies like £4.98, £5.99, etc… In Oz these would have been sensibly rounded up or down to the nearest five cents. Not so in the UK – which inevitably loads me with dirty, near-worthless penny coins. In the past I tried the Coinstar machines (which took a 10% cut) or donating them to the charity boxes (which are overflowing with 1p’s and 2p’s anyway). But eventually I’d still be left with a hundred or so of these coins sitting in a jar at home.

So anyway, one day I learnt a pretty darn good method from another blog which was quite simple and effective – go to a automatic self checkout machine, scan your purchases, then start feeding whatever shrapnel you have and then pay the remainder on a credit/debit card. Brilliant! So, armed with this knowledge, I took ALL my pennies to the Hammersmith Tesco. I was determined to test the limits of the number of coins it would take, as vending machines back in Sydney have had a limit of 20 coins per transaction. And with 10 checkout counters I won’t be holding anybody back in the queue anyway. To my surprise, the machine took all my coins, £1.48 worth of pennies (yep, thats over 100 coins) and I paid the remainder on card. : )

Now I’m penny-free, except for those holey Norwegian Kroners from my last trip!

The best sunset in the world – Santorini

shoey — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 21:23:28 +0000

To me, the sunset view of Santorini has to be the best in the world. At around six on a September evening, in the island’s major town Fira, tourists jostle for position to see the white-washed houses of the bay turn a pinkish hue, and the great yellow fireball sink into the caldera island.

Paris (2) – Versailles

shoey — Sun, 20 Sep 2009 16:28:50 +0000

Way back 2004 in the USA – FallingWater

shoey — Sat, 19 Sep 2009 20:59:24 +0000

Fallingwater, a little house on Bear Run. It was voted The Best All Time Work of American Architecture. Completed in 1939, it was a design by Frank Lloyd Wright as a family home for the wealthy Kaufman’s in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. The Kaufman’s wanted a home that overlooked the waterfall of the Bear Run, instead, Frank Lloyd Wright designed the building to be a series of cantilevered levels sitting on top of the waterfall.

London Livin – Snaps from the Tube (2)

shoey — Sat, 19 Sep 2009 20:17:15 +0000

The Metro

Another classic view of what goes on inside the Tube. Everybody gets a free paper which is either the Metro, The London Lite, or the London Paper. Regardless of how packed a carriage is everybody still tries to read the paper – one way or another.

London Livin – Snapshots from the Tube (1)

shoey — Sat, 19 Sep 2009 20:08:24 +0000

MIND THE GAP

I took this snap from my camera phone about 2 years back. This is peak hour London – I can feel the impatience of the man waiting – sometimes you have to wait 2 or 3 tubes until you can squeeze on to one of them!

It’s a small world afterall – Paris (1) – EuroDisney

shoey — Sun, 13 Sep 2009 22:13:44 +0000

I was never that into Disney when I was a kid. So when I visited Paris’ EuroDisney, I went with a skeptical frame of mind. “It’s gonna be cheesy” I thought to myself.

And yet, spending 12 hours in the theme park later, I have to say I was convinced that it had magic in the air and for the day I really did forget all my worldly problems. Although the queues for the rides were horrendous, averaging an hour long each, it was a definitely a heck of a day.

Lost amongst the ‘cool’ rides like Indiana Jones and Pirates of the Carribean was a old time classic called “Its a small world, afterall”. The ride’s theme song of the same name was one of the most widely translated tunes of all time and was one of the first songs I remember from being a kid. It was also spoofed in the Simpsons with the animated children singing “Duff beer for me, Duff beer for you, I’ll have a Duff, you have one too….”.

London Livin’ (1)

shoey — Sun, 13 Sep 2009 21:34:52 +0000

One of the downsides of living out is the amazing rate in which dishes, pots, pans and unwashed clothes and clutter accumulates in the home. Would you belive all these accumulated in just in 3 or 4 days….