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Pintxos

My brother was on a business trip to Bilbao last week, so I took a couple of days’ leave and spontaneously flew over to see him. We spent Sunday and most of Monday bar-hopping around the city, drinking cerveza and eating pintxos (the Basque word for tapas pinned to pieces of bread with—in Spanish—pinchos, or long toothpicks), as well as admiring one of the most extraordinary buildings in Europe. Pure pleasure.

It’s a busy week at work and home now, so the photos will have to wait, but here’s a pintxo to be going on with.

Bilbao, 29 October 2017

6 November 2017

Viking Centre

With this summer’s school holidays almost upon us, here’s a trip from last summer. We’d long been tempted by the idea of a city-break in Copenhagen—during winter, perhaps, for the full Killing effect—but with young children in tow had put the idea on hold. But now it was the perfect time to visit Denmark, with a (then-) five-year-old and nine-year-old, to combine a city-break with a Lego City break. We started with a few nights in Copenhagen, then rented a car and drove across Zeeland, over the longest bridge in Europe and the island of Funen, to the Jutland peninsula. After two nights in the old Viking town of Jelling, half an hour from Legoland, we made our way back to Odense in Funen for a night, before driving through to Copenhagen Airport on our last morning.

Read More · 27 June 2017

Dipping

In the February school holidays we spent four nights in Madrid, which I’d first visited in 1986 but hadn’t since. We stayed in an Airbnb in the Lavapiés district, handy for Atocha station, the Prado and other downtown sights. In the Prado I caught up with my 18-year-old self’s doppelgänger, hanging right next to Las Meniñas. Later we wandered around Retiro, the royal park near the Prado, and visited Plaza de San Miguel to hop from stall to stall for tapas.

Churros at El Brillante

Read More · 22 June 2017

Iceland

The weeks march on, and I haven’t had the right moment to write about our trip to Iceland at the start of April. But I wanted to post the rest of the photos before it got to the start of July, so here’s the story at last...

Read More · 13 June 2017

Signs of Reykjavik

Up next is the big Iceland gallery, but first, here’s a mini-gallery of Signs of Reykjavik, a collection of graffiti and street signs from our afternoon wander through the city in April. And because it doesn’t fit under that heading, here’s a bonus photo from Selfoss, east of Reykjavik, where we stayed during our trip.

1 May 2017

Icelandic Panoramas

Earlier this month my family and I spent the first week of yet another school term break in Iceland. I’d wanted to see it for years, ever since J. and I moved to Britain and even more since she visited it on her own a decade ago (I was tied up with teaching at the time, and it was her last chance before our son came along). With perfect timing we missed the brief post-2008 window when it was affordable and went for maximum post-2016 crashed-pound expense. Weighed against the cost of school holiday clubs for the kids, though, it doesn’t look so bad, with EasyJet flights and Airbnb accommodation helping offset Europe’s most expensive food prices.

I’ll write a fuller account to go with the eventual full photo gallery, but some initial photos are already up at Detail. With so many wide open spaces to photograph, I came back with a lot of panoramas...

25 April 2017

Tasman Panoramas Tasmanian Panoramas Tasmanian Panoramas Tasmanian Panoramas Tasman Panoramas

Tasman/ian Panoramas

I posted these at Detail last month, but have only now got around to linking them here. As part of this year’s gradual photo-sorting project, here are two galleries of panoramas from the Tasman Peninsula and other parts of Tasmania. The latter is a bit shorter than the former at the moment, but I’m expecting both to grow over time. There’ll be quite a few other galleries of regular photos to go with these eventually.

23 April 2017

Signos de Madrid

A month away from the blog and I have a backlog of links a mile long, not to mention a million photos. We were in Madrid for the school term break, and some souvenirs of that trip will eventually make their way here. In the meantime, here’s a Spanish-Australian-South American-tropical mashup from the Lavapiés district. And as a bonus, click through for a small gallery of graffiti signs.

Madrid, 14 February 2017

15 March 2017

An English Summer

Here’s another gallery for Detail, based on a folder of holiday snaps I’ve been meaning to turn into one for years: a few days of an English summer in Yorkshire and Lincoln.

17 January 2017

Panoramas III

Time to start adding galleries again to Detail, with a third collection of panoramas from the past few years of camping trips, mini-breaks and outings around Scotland. I have some international ones in the wings as well.

16 January 2017

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