Category Archives: Travel

Murphy in Paris – September 2022

France, Pandemic Travels, Travel, ,

There was an air traffic controllers’ strike in France on the Friday I travelled. My airline informed me that unless I had received an email telling me that my flight was cancelled, then it was proceeding as scheduled. This was a relief. This was my first trip to Paris in approximately a decade, and it would also be my first foreign trip from my new local airport – Shannon, in County Clare. Paris is a city that I have visited several times over the years, but never really as a tourist. My trips tended to be overnight trips on the high-speed train from Amsterdam for nights out. This time I was going to explore it properly. My co-conspirator for this journey was my friend from England (via Limerick) who’d be arriving on the Eurostar from London.

Arc de Triomphe

The flight was at 19.25. My bus to Shannon Airport was meant to be at 17.24 from Limerick Station, with arrival at the airport at 17.53. The bus arrived in Limerick Station at a leisurely 17.45 and reached airport at 18.15. At security check-in I was told the Vueling boarding pass on my phone wasn’t valid. Back to check in desk I trotted, got new pass and back through security. I went to the lav, bought a Coke, and strolled to the departure gate. Gadzooks. Where was my bag? It certainly wasn’t with me. The clock now read 18.55. Back to the toilet I went – no bag there. Back to security. No bag. The kindly airport policeman checked cameras. ‘You brought it through security’ he informed me. That was all very well I thought to myself, but where was it now. I had my insulin packed in that bag.

The announcement over the intercom ominously declared ‘Flight to Paris closing’.

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Travels in Naples, Sorrento and Capri

Italy, Pandemic Travels, Travel, Uncategorized, ,

Thousands of years ago (meaning February 2020) before the hated Plague had restricted our lives so drastically, I visited Rome for the first time. While I was there, I took the FrecciaRossa hi-speed train service to Naples so I could travel to the outer edges of that city to see the archaeological site of Pompeii. This had been a dream of mine since the age of nine years old when I was taught about it in school. It fascinated me – the idea that a town was frozen in time after the eruption of Mount Vesuvius two thousand years ago. It exceeded my expectations. However, my regret was that it was a day trip – there was so much to see and do in Rome that I didn’t have time to explore the rest of Italy’s third largest city Naples. When my friend suggested an early autumn jaunt back to Naples, I was all over the idea like eczema. Flights were booked, accommodation sorted and on the 7th of October we travelled from Limerick to Dublin to begin our journey.

I felt very responsible. This being my twenty second foreign trip since the start of the pandemic meant that international travel was quite routine for me. My friend hadn’t travelled abroad since late 2019 (when we visited Ukraine) so was understandably nervous. I tried to place myself in her shoes. We’d work it out.

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Travels in the Heel of Italy – Lecce and Gallipolli

Italy, Pandemic Travels, Solo travel, Travel, Uncategorized, ,

As I sat in Dublin Airport waiting to board my plane to Bergamo, I had a thought. If I’d checked travel dates when booking my foreign trips six months earlier, I wouldn’t have travelled to Naples one weekend, returned home, only to go back to southern Italy the following weekend. I’d have stayed in Italy. Sadly, this was only a thought, so there I was again – sitting in Departures, waiting to board a Ryanair flight.

Basilica di Santa Croce, Lecce

Upon arrival in Bergamo I realised why my hotel was so cheap – it was out in the countryside – and as my flight landed at 10.30pm I had to take a taxi there – there being no public transport at that hour. The driver was a sleazy grifter. He didn’t look like one, but he changed forty euros for a five-kilometre trip. In these situations, it’s not worth arguing. I paid the money and swore not to take another taxi this holiday. Arising at 7.30 I started planning my return journey to Bergamo Airport for my 11.50am flight. Sipping a strong coffee, an awkward fact presented itself. It would be quicker to walk from my rural B&B than to take a bus. Also 40 euro cheaper than Uber was telling me the 5km journey would cost. It seems like I had misjudged by driver from the night before. This is after all the most expensive part of Italy. The early morning stroll to the airport was scenic and rustic until I reached the motorway. I could see the airport in the distance, but how to safely traverse six lanes of traffic. A kindly Italian farmer pointed me in the direction of an underpass (he saw me looking bewildered from his tractor). Onwards to Lecce.

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Jezebel Jocks – the Drag Kings of Galway

Musical Theatre, Theatre, Travel,

Over the weekend I travelled to the West of Ireland for a cabaret show. On Friday afternoon I took the tram out to the Red Cow. The Red Cow is on the outskirts of Dublin and marks the point where country people know they have arrived in the Big Smoke. I was being collected there from where we would drive to our ultimate destination – Galway city. The tram journey was surreal – firstly  a very polite sixteen year old offered me his seat. I know that my hair is white, but surely I retain some semblance of youthful effervescence, remaining as I am, in my forties. A few stops further a woman boarded with nine children. All were hers it would appear. Some of  the older children were carrying cooked chickens in brown paper bags. The chicken grease leaked all over the floor. I offered her a plastic Marks and Spencer bag which she gratefully accepted. When the ticket inspectors boarded the tram, it was discovered that none of the party of ten had a valid ticket. I have no idea what happened, as the next stop was the Red Cow where I disembarked.

We weren’t travelling to Galway that night. We were spending it in the midlands just outside Athlone – a town on the River Shannon that I had heretofore never visited. We had a drink in Sean’s Bar overlooking the river. This is one of the many bars in the land that claims to be the nation’s oldest. I was impressed by the sight of Linda Gray and Larry Hagman (Sue-Ellen and JR Ewing)  in a photograph taken of them sometime in the 1980s, standing outside the bar. We each gave our impression of a drunken Sue-Ellen. Our AirBnB was located on the Roscommon side of the town, and was a very lovely old farmer’s cottage. The following morning I opened my curtains to the sight of a grey horse who had wandered into the garden overnight. The cottage owner knew who owned the beast so we bid farewell to our breakfast companion when his owner collected him.

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Pandemic travel: San Sebastian and Bilbao

Pandemic Travels, Travel, , ,

As the years go by, realisation is dawning on me that Spain is one of my favourite countries in the world to visit. From the buzz of Madrid to the barrios of Barcelona; to the beauty of Granada; the seaside of Malaga and the Yumbo Centre of Maspalomas, it is a country of vast variety and culture; incredible food and scenery and with lovely people. And it’s hot. The proviso I would apply to my love of Spain is that I cannot visit between the months of June to September, not being built to tolerate such intense heat. Last weekend for the 6th time in three years I boarded a plane for Espana.  My destination was the Spanish Atlantic – the cities of San Sebastian and Bilbao in the Basque Country – a region located in the western Pyrenees, straddling the border between France and Spain on the coast of the Bay of Biscay. Euskal Herria is the Basque name for the area.

‘Puppy’ by Jeff Koons

It’s an area I have long known about, but never visited. Upon moving to Amsterdam in the year 2000 I was friends with a woman from the area who described a region of enormous beauty. Aer Lingus offers direct flight to the area’s capital Bilbao. The time to visit was finally here.

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Pandemic travel: Paphos, Cyprus

Pandemic Travels, Solo travel, Travel,

Ryanair is an airline that receives a lot of deservedly bad press. Its lack of customer service; its ability to charge extra for absolutely everything; its habit of charging more for a flight change than it is to simply abandon your initial flight and instead make a brand new booking; its hard sell at every point of the booking and flying process – I doubt the children’s charities who are meant to benefit from Ryanair lottery tickets receive much funding from the airline Like clockwork Michael O’Leary issues a press release every couple of years to announce that Ryanair are going to start charging to use the toilets on board. Cue lots of press outrage over this publicity stunt, even though everyone knows that free toilets are a legal onboard requirement in the aviation industry.

Paphos Castle

I have no issue with Ryanair. It is upfront about how horrible it is, almost proud of this fact. You get what you pay for – and woe betide you if you miss something – the airline won’t help. I like the fact that it flies to many destinations that other airlines don’t offer. It can also be very cheap so long as you check the small print. Your €9.99 trip to Amsterdam will actually cost you €140 when you add in the price of the return flight; the price of a carry-on bag and the train transfer from Eindhoven to Amsterdam. With a bit of plotting you can get some deals.

Two weeks ago the carrier had one of its flash 24 hour sales. I had a quick look at saw that a return flight from Dublin to Paphos in Cyprus including a carryon bag would cost €120. This is the longest flight on the Ryanair network.  The flight lasts about 5 hours. More horrifically, the outbound leg of the journey was at 5.45am on Friday morning. Needs must.

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Pandemic travels – March in Annecy and Lyon, France

France, Pandemic Travels, Travel, ,

A springtime trip to France sounded like a good idea. Especially as it had been almost fifteen years since I had visited that beautiful country. We decided to avoid Paris. France is a vast country (by European standards) and has appealing destinations other than its glorious capital. A quick scan of the Ryanair and Aer Lingus destinations from Dublin produced a clear winner- the city of Lyon. When I mentioned this to my sister she recommended a daytrip to Annecy. After a quick online search of that town we decided that a trip to both cities was required. And so our tickets were booked.

Lake Annecy in Les Alpes

For my reading entertainment on the lunchtime flight to Lyon, I was reading ‘Not the girl next door’ a biography of Hollywood legend Joan Crawford. Joan seemed like a suitable guardian angel for air travel. In case of turbulence I could picture her snarling ‘Don’t f*ck with me weather, this ain’t my first time at the rodeo’ (to paraphrase Faye Dunaway in ‘Mommie Dearest’.)
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Cathédrale de Saint-Jean-Baptiste, Lyon
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Pandemic travel: Zagreb in Croatia

Coronavirus, Covid-19, Pandemic Travels, Travel,

Since the pandemic, life has gotten smaller. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, and in many ways it is not. These days, more thought needs to be invested in the planning of outings. Spontaneous nights out to concerts or plays are less frequent, and less certain. If you are single then your circle of friends may have contracted. It has in my case. When the two kilometre lockdown was imposed, followed by the five kilometre restriction then people were excluded from my life, by virtue of physical location. With worry over transmission, that distance seemed to continue after the lockdown lifted. Self-reliance became more essential. Being happy in your own company took on added importance. Being willing to travel abroad alone, comfortable in your own skin, is one of the skills that Covid has bestowed on me. I was accustomed to solo travel before the pandemic but it was the exception rather than the rule. I preferred back then to travel with company. I still do in fact, but in a situation where it’s a choice between yet another canal walk alone in Dublin or a little foreign jaunt alone – I choose the latter.

So it was last weekend I booked a trip to the capital of Croatia, the city of Zagreb. This was my first trip to Croatia and my second trip to a country from the former Yugoslavia, having visited Belgrade in Serbia in 2009. Croatia is now a popular seaside destination on the Mediterranean. Direct flights from Dublin to Dubrovnik; Split and Zadar are increasingly popular. Zagreb is about 150 kilometres inland. It’s a city of almost a million people so a decent yet manageable size.
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Zagreb Cathedral
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Pandemic travels: Riga, Latvia – January 2022

Coronavirus, Covid-19, Pandemic Travels, Travel,

I’ve already described my efforts during the pandemic to visit both Lithuania and Latvia, and how the public health situation had consistently thwarted my efforts. I finally visited Lithuania last November. Vilnius is a wonderful city. Latvia remained unvisited.

About a week ago I was checking the Ryanair website. The evening before I had watched a Dutch documentary on YouTube called ‘Ryanair: Mayday, Mayday’ from 2013. This film had alleged serious safety failings on the part of Ryanair in its relentless pursuit of lower fares. Ryanair denied everything of course. Michael O’Leary doesn’t convince me – he has the grubby demeanour of a used car salesman with a substance abuse problem. Whether or not he would, he looks like he’d scream at an under-seven’s team if they lost a match. That said I am a sturdy flier – getting into a tube of metal and flying at 35,000 feet above ground for hours on end, is a leap of faith. No point in needless worry. I will always try to find an alternative to Ryanair if possible. This isn’t always possible, so I will continue to hit that ‘Buy ticket’ button. On the Fare Finder section of the website while browsing that evening, I found a return flight for twenty-eight euros. As this trip was only forty-eight hours long, I could pack all my requirements into my stylish man-bag without paying for an additional carry-on. Excitingly the journey was only a few days hence.

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Pandemic travel: Sibiu, Transylvania, December 2021

Coronavirus, Covid-19, Pandemic Travels, Travel, , , ,

My final trip of the year was touch and go, as to whether it would actually happen. I booked the ticket only a few days before departure, when Ireland was shutting down once again. I had planned to see Villagers in concert on Saturday night in Vicar Street. As cases of the omicron variant were exploding, new restrictions were introduced, meaning the show was cancelled. Travel was still permitted however, so I went to the ‘Fare finder’ section of the Ryanair website, and entered my flight budget (under 80eur). The result came back as either Birmingham or Sibiu in Romania. I like the city of Birmingham, but this was not a difficult choice. I would be traveling for the first time to the country of Romania, to a city whose name I had never previously heard.

Grand Square

In the days prior to departure I checked the news to make sure that new travel restrictions had not been imposed. I had a bad case of the nerves – fear that while abroad, Ireland might place Romania on a red list of countries. I was still going though. Some precautions would need to be taken. I carried a month’s supply of insulin in case I got stranded. My work laptop was neatly packed in the event I was still abroad on Tuesday when I was due back at work. I had plotted my exit from Romania to Budapest via bus, in case any flight bans were introduced. Excessive planning on my part, perhaps, but everything seemed so flimsy, I thought it wiser to be prepared.

Sibiu is a town of approximately 170,000 people in the centre of Romania. Located in Transylvania it is known as ‘The City with Eyes’ for the design of the houses with eye-shaped windows in the rooves. It was originally a Saxon city, and until World War 2 it was a city where the ethnic German population of Romania lived.

I was staying in a little ground floor apartment in a courtyard off a street, that was metres away from the Piața Mare (Grand Square) where the annual Christmas market was being held. The two bloodhounds roaming this courtyard were very friendly but had a disconcerting habit of jumping on you to express their happiness to see you. I arrived too late on my first night to go out, so ordered a pizza and watched Dolly Parton videos on MTV Romania – the woman is a star the world over.

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