Last couple of days in Nice and I’ve caught up on a lot of stuff. I’m had two interviews for TFM Radio, am waiting a call from a reporter for the Evening Chronicle, have a lot of accommodation sorted courtesy of people on Couchsurfing.com and been to see The Simpsons movie, which utterly rocked. Make [...]

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A couple of things about exchange rates. Firstly, always make sure you know what the rate is between what you’re spending and what’s in your bank account. Secondly, always assume it’s worse than that. If the rate is, let’s say, 2.7 to the pound (or your native currency), do your calculations based on 2.5 – [...]

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OK, when I say “deprived me of the opportunity” I mean “saved my ass”. When we woke, it was to look down the valley and see the same bunch of kids wearing white pyjamas with black belts round the waist wailing crap out of each other. Eep. After showering (2 Euro each, but way cheaper [...]

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More achey than breaky, thankfully. Today was rather full-on. I still have no idea of the distance we walked as all the guidebooks Delphine has (indeed all the signs) are marked in hours and minutes, not kilometres. Suffice to say it was somewher between “a lot” and “a hell of a lot”, or so it [...]

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The first proper day of our hike went well, though it was flipping hot. There are places to get water as you hike but often they’re few and far between. We found one after about 45 minutes but the trickle from the tap was so slow that a snail coughing in the next village would [...]

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Which is probably very bad French, but that’s the standard I’m at. Best laid plans and all that. Delphine had arranged a gîte (hostel in the mountains) for us to stay at in a place called Saint Dalmas. I thought it was called Sandalmass until I saw a sign. Oops. It’s around two hours from [...]

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This household and hospitality is just what I needed after the recent whistlestop tour around Europe: Late lies in. Shopping for camping gear – I now have a nice new stove and scary gas bottles. Swimming in the sea – while attempting not to ogle all the nice topless women. And grimace at the not-so-nice [...]

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Finally we landed in Nice and a ragged, exasperated cheer went up. Everyone filed off, ignoring the staff again and we rattled through the baggage collection. Delphine was there to meet me and it was nice to see a smiling face for the first time in far too many hours. The last time I’d seen [...]

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So what do you in Rome when you’ve seen pretty much everything interesting and it’s too hot to go wandering around all day? Well, I opted for a lie in before checking out as late as possible. I bought my train ticket for the journey to Fiumicino airport (11 Euros for 30 mins, as opposed [...]

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Don’t get your Colosseum ticket from the Colosseum. The queues can be huge and the ticket you receive is valid for both the big round thingy and the nearby Palatino… so get your ticket from the latter instead. The queue is rarely longer then five minutes, but make sure you have change as the guy [...]

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