Behind the scenes at the Metropolitan Museum of Art

A rare glimpse at how one of the world’s top museums does its restoration work on art and artifacts. On the Thursday before the TBEX travel blogging conference, I joined a small group of travel bloggers on a special tour with Context Travel. Context offers walking tours in a few cities around the world – [...]

Video: Street pianos in New York

Manhattan, NY; June 2010 I can’t help myself – when I see a piano, I want to play with it. I say with because my rudimentary skills mean that I am not really playing the piano, just fooling around. I can peck out part of Beethoven’s Ode to Joy with my right hand and that’s [...]

Driving Highway 1 in California: Hearst Castle

Willliam Randolph Hearst was inspired to build Hearst Castle after travelling to Europe. Yet his tribute to the Old World is quintessentially American. Hearst Castle at San Simeon was one of the highlights of our trip down California’s Highway 1. But I suspect the fact I lived in Europe for five years made it impossible [...]

Photo Friday: Gandhi in San Francisco

San Francisco; February 2010 This is a statue of Indian statesman Mahatma Gandhi behind the San Francisco Ferry Building. From this angle it looks like he is gazing out at the reflected sunset and full moon rising over the Bay Bridge. I took this with my new digital SLR and I’m particularly pleased with the [...]

Photo Friday: La Monstrosa – the Prado’s fat Spanish princess

Madrid, Spain; October 2008 I stumbled across his pair of oil paintings upstairs at the famous Prado Museum in Madrid, Spain. It was quite a contrast immediately after perusing the rooms full of Spanish royal portraits, mainly by Velazquez. There was quite a striking family resemblance between fathers, sons, grandsons and brothers and also sisters [...]

Photo Friday: Labyrinth at Land’s End in San Francisco

San Francisco, USA; July 2009 On a foggy July day, we hiked from Cliff House to Baker Beach in San Francisco and back. Our route there was via Land’s End and the cliffs and our route back was through the Presidio. Along the way we stopped and saw this cool stone Labyrinth at Land’s End. [...]

Best of the Web: Carnival of travel and art

Last week the theme was food and travel, this week I have focused on art. Exhibitions and museums Sydney. Dee at Babel at Bedlam says the Art Gallery of NSW in Sydney is “venerable yet hip”. I know it well – it’s certainly a great place to check out Australian art and the main galleries [...]

Steinbeck country: The Carmel Valley Road

Back roads are often the best. Given the choice I will always take the byway, not the highway. And so it was on our California road trip. We planned to drive south from Monterey to San Simeon and then explore the scenic Big Sur stretch of coast line. My mother-in-law was not keen on taking [...]

Photo Friday: Standing Pebbles in Orkney

Orkney; June 2009 My friend and I were sightseeing around mainland Orkney when we stumbled across this circle of Standing Stones – or rather, Standing Pebbles! I don’t know who did this but it tickled my fancy as a joyful and creative response to the environment. I could imagine doing this with a child – [...]

Best of the Web – Roaming Tales: Travel links for 31 August

Collating these links collections takes up quite a lot of time but I also enjoy it as there is so much great travel content out there. In this week’s edition we have everything from the Ghibli Museum in Tokyo to expensive farm stays in upstate New York. I hope you enjoy it! Part of the [...]

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