At long, long last, we come to the end of the A-Z of Iceland! Some of these letters have been really hard (you may have noticed I’ve cheated a bit on a few) but some of them – far more of them than the hard ones – have been sitting in my imagination since late… More The A-Z of Iceland: Z, the deleted letter
It’s traditional to do a post about next year’s plans, even if next year’s plans are a bit vague. But let’s have a look at what I might do in 2020. Some definites: I’m taking my Rangers to winter survival camp. I’m proud of how much they enjoyed being frozen last year. Iceland in May.… More Travel & adventure plans for 2020
Murmansk is a little baby city, only 103 years old, built for industry. That means pretty much everything is functional and built cheaply. There are no decorative survivors of the Imperial era hiding up here. Murmansk is a city for work. But if you walk half an hour or so uphill away from the port… More Up by the lake in Murmansk
Moscow and St Petersburg were pretty straightforward. They’re major world cities with good tourist infrastructure, I’d been to both of them before and I was staying in boring but predictable and safe international chain hotels. Murmansk was a little different. The first sign was that about 80% of the passengers on my plane were men.… More Finding options in Murmansk
This is possibly the hardest entry in the A-Z of Iceland series. There are very few things in or about Iceland beginning with Y. There’s a river called Ytri-Rangá but I don’t know anything about it and there’s a beach called Ytri-Tunga but I don’t know anything about that either. There’s yoghurt, in which I… More The A-Z of Iceland: Y for Yrsa Sigurðardóttir & other authors
I’m not a big museums fan. I’m not a high art or culture sort of person. At the risk of sounding like a brat, I’ve been to the Louvre, I’ve been to the Hermitage before. It’s not my thing. But in St Petersburg, I felt like I really should make the effort to go to… More A day at the Hermitage
There are two main churches to visit in St Petersburg, once you’re done with all the other delights like the Peter & Paul Fortress, the Hermitage labyrinth and more palaces than you can imagine, many of them now home to the sort of staples a big city like this needs more in the twenty-first century… More Great churches in St Petersburg
I’ve never been in Iceland over Christmas but I’ve been there in December, in the run-up, and there’s nothing more Christmassy than a cold dark snowy place that loves warmth and light. Because there isn’t much daylight in the winter, people put up Christmas lights and then leave them up far longer than would be… More The A-Z of Iceland: X for Xmas
I love a boat trip. I nearly froze to death out on the river in Rīga in November two years ago, I went on three different boats in Malta earlier in the year, I did the canal boat in Amsterdam last year (another case of nearly freezing to death) and by the time you read… More A boat trip around St Petersburg
My first morning in St Petersburg was too hot by far and I got off to a bad start by having a pitched battle with a first a metro machine that refused to sell me a smartcard and then a metro machine that was extremely reluctant to sell me tokens. Add to that my local… More Peter & Paul Fortress: my first day in St Petersburg