Santa Skate 2007

It was great having our friend Jann from Amsterdam as he is a skater and was keen to come out on the Santa Skate. Picture 400 Santas skating down the major shopping streets of London like Kings Road and Oxford Street. Lots of silliness and lots of fun 0 much like last year. Jann and [...]

Life is good

We have a friend, Jann, staying with us at the moment. We know him from Australia but he has been living in Amsterdam for almost four years now. He is in London for some exams but his last one was today so now it’s play time! It’s been great catching up with him. Last weekend [...]

What’s hot for 2008?

The New York Times has published a list of 53 hot destinations for 2008. I have been to the following places on the list: Laos, Tunisia, Prague, Tuscany, Oslo, Lombok, San Francisco, Detroit, Kilimanjaro, London, Las Vegas, New York. There is only one Australian destination on the list – the Barossa Valley – and I [...]

Recipe: Buttermilk pancakes

Since the pitta bread was so successful, I thought I would continue the theme of flat round things and share my favourite pancake recipe. I’m lucky enough that this is something I often have made for me but I’ve seen it done enough times to know how it works. If you want to know how [...]

5 Things Meme

5 Things I was doing 10 years ago: Starting my first journalism job at The Village Voice, a local newspaper in inner-western Sydney, helping them launch the Leichhardt, Glebe and Annandale edition Growing my hair after having it shaved for charity Camping at music festivals in Byron Bay and Woodford Volunteering with Youth Challenge Australia [...]

Lessons learned from NaNoWriMo

NaNoWriMo taught me a huge amount about the writing process and illuminated my own particular writing strengths and weaknesses. If you are interested, I have written a series of guest posts for Natasha’s writing website web stuff 4 writers. Check it out!

Should tourists visit Peru’s Incan ruins?

Peru has always held an enormous fascination for me and climbing Machu Picchu has long been on my list of things to do. But archaeologists are warning that Peru’s Incan ruins, including Machu Picchu, are straining under a tourist boom. For a long time, travelling to Peru was complicated by the continuing struggle with the [...]

Navel gazing

I find it endlessly fascinating to see what search terms people use to find my blog. The majority of people are looking for me – the top search term right now is “niltiac” followed by “caitlin fitzsimmons” and then the actual URL of my new travel blog. Below that it starts to get a bit [...]

Recipe road test: Pitta bread

The recipe is from Leith’s Baking Bible by Susan Spaull and Fiona Burrell. Pitta Bread MAKES 8 15g / 1/2 oz fresh yeast (If using fast-action or dried yeast, see below) 1 teaspoon caster sugar 150ml / 5 fl oz lukewarm water 250g / 9 oz strong white flour 1 teaspoon salt 2 tablespoons olive [...]

Christmas in New York and Washington

I have lived in London for three and a half years but it’s almost become a tradition not to spend Christmas here. The first year we wanted a traditional, white Christmas, a prospect that seemed fairly unlikely in England, so we went to the the Austrian Alps to ensure we had our quota of white [...]

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