Today I’m taste-testing two very different lots of chocolate. In the red corner, we have two brands of Russian chocolate, picked up in the supermarket on my first evening in Moscow, carried around Russia for nearly three weeks and then left in my room for over a month. In the…. also red corner, we have … More Swiss chocolate vs Russian chocolate
On April 16th this year, I suddenly realised that those eternal behemoths of days gone by might not be there forever, waiting for me to get around to visiting them and so Project #BeforeTheyBurnDown began. The very next morning I booked flights to visit the Sistine Chapel; that very weekend I went off to Winchester, … More A Pilgrimage to Canterbury: The Blogger’s Tale
B for Bananas, Z for (you’ll find out!) and V for Volsungs were, to be honest, the reason I started the A-Z of Iceland series. I’ve been looking forward to this one. It’s time to introduce you to the Volsungs Saga! Icelanders are prolific writers. Always have been. I suspect that’s got something to do … More The A-Z of Iceland: V for Volsungs Saga
It was the morning of my first Russian domestic voyage. I was starting small: Moscow to St Petersburg, but how to do it? It’s a short hop on a plane. When we did it on the school trip in 2002 we took the overnight train. But my mum, already delirious with panic over the idea … More The Sapsan high-speed train: a bullet on a coffee table
Of course, there’s so much more to Moscow than the Kremlin and Red Square and I’m really not the person to talk about it because I wasn’t there long enough to do much more than moon over the tourist centre but I do have three other things to talk about. The Cathedral of Christ the Saviour … More Moscow: I also went to a cathedral and some parks
Going inside St Basil’s Cathedral is exciting but it’s not exciting like going into the Kremlin. Even though it’s a standard tourist thing to do in Moscow and a lot of it is now a museum complex, it stills feels illicit, transgressive, as if you’re breaking into a high-security spy headquarters where ordinary civilians, let … More The day I was incarcerated in the Kremlin
I can’t believe we’re so close to the end of the A-Z of Iceland. We’re at U already and today we’re going for one of my favourite subjects: the underground. In its way, there isn’t a lot underneath Iceland. It was formed less than sixteen million years ago when two tectonic plates tore apart and … More The A-Z of Iceland: U for Underground
One of the things my Brownie parents comment on the most is “It would be nice if she could have gone to camp”. Yeah, it would, but we don’t have a camp licence in the unit, we’re struggling to keep the unit running week-to-week and we don’t have as much free time as you might … More My first Brownie camp
The most exciting moment of my entire Russia trip was on my penultimate evening when I walked up the Kremlevskiy Prospekt slope from the north-west corner of Red Square and saw that iconic view laid out before me. I was in Moscow twice. I spent three full days there are the beginning of the trip … More The labyrinth cathedral, the dead man and the legs
Last week I told you that I went to Russia and today we start the blogs in earnest. I currently have plans for 15-20 of them over the next four months – I did quite a lot while I was out there. So, day one, city one – welcome to Moscow! I arrived late afternoon … More Exploring the Moscow metro
I Am A Polar Bear 