Europe – lonesojourns

Full-length Feature: Tracing the Mediterranean (Part 3) – A Heart Full of Rome (Part 1 of 2)

Rome is drop-dead beautiful!!

I’m lost for descriptions every time I look at the Rome skyline at sunset. A plethora of emotions goes through your heart as you gaze and admire. Everywhere you look, all 360 degrees, there’s something that draws out from you a sigh of contentment, of admiration, of awe and wonder.

I’m not going to describe or go into detail about the sights I have seen in my one week stay in Rome. For these, you have a host of travel guides or blogs that will do these sights more justice than me.

Instead, I shall focus on my experiences and thoughts on what I’ve seen and felt in Rome.

DSC00098_copy — View from Victor Emmanuel II

I have to admit, I didn’t know where to start my exploration of Rome when I first arrived. I mean, I already had some kind of an itinerary in mind, but there seems to me, so much to see and do in the Eternal City.

For the first two days, I decided to follow closely a walking guide called Romewise.com by Elyssa Bernard, that was suggested to me by a young Polish girl, who bunked in the same room as me during my stay in Naples. She recommended the website because she and her sister had relied on it for their three-day tour of Rome and found it to be quite beneficial.

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Note: This post features only photographs taken from the first day of my walking tour in Rome. More photographs of Rome will be featured in Part 2.

March 5, 2019April 5, 2021 by lonesojourns Categories: TravelTags: Arts, Culture, Europe, History, Italy, Lifestyle, Museums, Parks, Rome, Sightseeing, Travel Leave a comment

Full-length Feature: Tracing the Mediterranean (Part 1)

I promised to leave Japan when I wrote my last post for 2018. As some of you might know, I failed to do so. This time, it’s for real.

This is a trip that has been four years in the making. I first had the idea of tracing the cities along the Mediterranean coastline in 2016, because I’ve always been fascinated with the Mediterranean region.

Countries like Italy, the south of France, Spain and Portugal are so rich in history, cuisine and culture. I had always been interested in ancient civilizations, in particular the Greek and Roman Empires.

Of course, to visit every major city in the Mediterranean region in one trip is almost impossible. I originally planned to spend four and a half months covering the coastline from Central Italy to Portugal, but due to my sheer ignorance of the Schengen ruling, I was forced to cut Portugal (and a side trip to Morocco) altogether and scale down the plan to meet the 90-day allowance for non-European Union citizens.

Still, three months of traveling nonetheless looks a bit daunting, given the longest I’ve continuously been on the road (not including my two-year stay in Japan) was a 24-day solo trip to Central and Eastern Europe (Germany, Czech Republic, Poland, Hungary, and Austria) back in June, 2012.

*Central & Eastern Europe Trip – June 2012*

This time, I would spend almost three weeks to slightly over a month in each of the Mediterranean countries I planned to visit, starting with Italy, then to the south of France, and finally ending in Spain.

My first stop?

Naples, Italy. LS

Featured header image © https://www.123rf.com

February 23, 2019February 25, 2019 by lonesojourns Categories: TravelTags: Culture, Europe, France, History, Italy, Mediterranean, Portugal, Spain, Travel Leave a comment

Nous sommes unis

I’m sorry for going on such a long hiatus. And to be honest, it could have been longer if not for what happened in the wee hours of yesterday morning. I woke up to the shocking news of the terrorist attacks in Paris.

I’m sure many of you out there feel as indignant as me. Whether you hate or love Paris (or Parisians or the French) for that matter – one thing is certain! This is not an attack on Paris, or the French per se. It is an attack on humanity.

An attack caused by a collective of monsters. A group of cowards who hide behind masks and machetes and machine guns. Scums! Idiots! Bloody s***heads!

You who fight so hard for your cause, are alienating your fellow brothers and sisters in Islam.

You who claim to uphold the name of Islam through your acts, have instead succeeded in smearing its name even further.

You who call upon the name of Allah, to justify every despicable act you commit, will burn in Hell for eternity!

You who cry for blood and spill the blood of others, will yourselves be slain in cold blood. And no one will give a s*** if it happens, when it happens, and how it happens.

You who seek to spread fear through your acts of intimidation, have instead strengthened our resolve to rid the world of this malevolent scourge.

Today we stand in solidarity with the Parisians. And together we grieve, we pray and we unite. No forces of evil shall enshroud the City of Lights, nor diminish its lustre.

Nous sommes unis

November 15, 2015November 15, 2015 by lonesojourns Categories: TravelTags: Europe, France, Paris Leave a comment

Wien is the Life?

Sometimes you’ve got to call a spade a spade. Cast aside all the superlatives dangled in Lonely Planet, ditch the romanticism that hangs like a spectre over this once charming city. Yes, I said “once”. Because Vienna (or “Wien” in German) has, sadly, become as uninspiring as the dry and crummy sachertorte on my plate. Did I mention that I’m trying to chomp down this brick of a cake in the opulence of the Hotel Sacher? The home of THE creator of the original sachertorte. I ditched my original plan to lug three kilos of these chocolate monsters back home as mementoes.

At the same time, I’m suffering from “church fatigue”. At first, you just snapped at every single one you see. You admired the ornate interiors, the intricate carvings, the awe-inspiring sculptures of Jesus and his disciples. By this time, however, even the majesty of St Stephen’s Cathedral has lost its draw on me. I just stood in front of the cathedral, wilting in the Viennese summer heat. I decided I needed another round of iced coffee.

Part of me blamed Budapest – because it’s difficult not to draw comparisons. Part of me blamed the Austrian national football team. Had they been a bit more adventurous, the streets of Vienna would have been enraptured in football fever. Instead, while the rest of Europe were chugging beer hops and partying to the wee hours, it was business as usual here.

Boring.

So I did something very Austrian. I plonked myself on the grass in Stadtpark – Vienna’s first public park constructed in 1862 – and took snaps of other locals frolicking / making out / reading / chatting on the greens. Then I swear I dozed off for five seconds.

*Yawns*

Fortunately I found Naschmarkt, a place that reminds me of the good old “Newton hawker centre” in Singapore. More than 120 restaurants and market stalls squeezed into an area the size of a football field, offering cuisines from authentic Viennese to traditional Vietnamese. In other words, paradise! LS

September 8, 2015November 19, 2015 by lonesojourns Categories: UncategorizedTags: Austria, Culture, Europe, Lifestyle, Travel, Vienna Leave a comment

Hungry For More

No other city on this trip filled me with more regrets than Budapest. Regrets of the positive kind, that is. Because there were so many sights to see, so many dishes to savour, and so many pubs to bar-hop that I almost fell into a near depressive state while packing my bags on the first (and my last) night in this beautiful city.

Did I say “beautiful”? That was an understatement!

Budapest is probably one of the most magnificent but understated (and under-rated) cities in Europe. Relatively a newbie compared to its ex-communist brethren (Poland and Czech Republic), Budapest has grown exponentially in the last decade. In the streets, Michelin-starred restaurants, local artisan stores and luxury hotel chains and designer ateliers are sprouting like moss after a springtime rain. Fortunately, a relatively depressed forint means that you get more bang for your buck.

There’s one thing that the Hungarians and Japanese share in common – their love for baths. Although the number of baths here pale in comparison to its Japanese counterparts, the tradition dates back to the Romans and there’s nothing more “local” than to spend a day at one of the dozen public baths that dot the city. Of course, as you may have guessed, this tradition is more like a graying pastime in modern Budapest. If you ask me, picking up some words of wisdom or being regaled by tales from Hungary’s Iron Curtain past from some septuagenarians doesn’t sound like a bad idea at all. LS

August 29, 2015August 29, 2015 by lonesojourns Categories: TravelTags: Budapest, Culture, Europe, Food, Hungary, Lifestyle, Sightseeing, Travel 2 Comments

Poles Apart

For a city that was completely flattened by Nazi bombing during the Second World War, Warsaw (or more affectionately known to the locals as Warszawa) has come a long way. Although remnants of its post-war Soviet Cold War era still survived (most notably the inappropriately named Palace of Culture and Science – a Stalinist monstrosity which turned 60 this year by the way) across from the Warszawa Centralna Railway Station, Warszawa is changing so fast that six months would seem like a decade.

The Old Town Market Square (Rynek Starego Miasta) overlooking the Vistula is the heart of Warsaw and probably any traveller’s first stop. However, when the sun goes down, hipsters and well-heeled Poles flock to Nowy Świat, a cosmopolitan F&B thoroughfare that boasts some of Warsaw’s swankiest cafes and fine dining restaurants. Here, you can spend hours just people watching or bar-hop to find your ideal poison. Luckily for me, they still count in zlotys. So go ahead, indulge your inner demons! LS

August 13, 2015 by lonesojourns Categories: TravelTags: Culture, Europe, Poland, Sightseeing, Travel, Warsaw, Warszawa 9 Comments

A Bungling Makeover

You don’t need to remind Berliners of their dark past during the Second World War or of Adolf Hitler and Nazi Germany – because these reminders are scattered all around Berlin. The city is chock full of these poignant epitaphs. Interestingly though, these are the same reasons why tourists are drawn to this historic city built out of swampland. A wave of optimism now surrounds Berlin as numerous construction projects are transforming the city.

The greatest transformation, though, is in the arts and entertainment scene. The city’s clubbing scene draws exuberant crowds from all over Europe. On the streets, artists / artisans are a thriving (and blooming) species in Berlin, and the streets are their open canvas.

Along certain sections of what remains of the infamous Wall, the government is having a hard time trying to preserve a historical blight (a major tourist draw) that Berliners from both sides zealously sought to tear down a little more than a quarter century ago. Desperate to shed its post-war shackles, Berliners have indeed come a long way. Today’s Berliners are progressive, liberal and they know how to have fun!

However, the city’s ever-evolving physical landscape seems to be struggling to keep pace with its cultural evolution. As we speak, the new Berlin Brandenburg Airport – intended to replace both the Schönefeld and Tegel Airport – has become somewhat of a misnomer for German efficiency. Plagued by numerous delays, poor planning and mismanagement, the airport’s opening has been pushed back to 2018 or 2019 from its original schedule of 2010. Until the afore-mentioned construction projects are completed, these now serve more as distractions than attractions. Berlin can best be described as a “city in transition”. LS