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Charleston: Charm and Cheer with a Challenging History
“In Xanadau did Kubla Khan A stately pleasure dome decree: Where Alph, the sacred river, ran Through caverns measureless to man Down to a sunless sea.” Kubla Khan – Samuel Taylor Coleridge I don’t know where Xanadau is, but I wouldn’t be surprised to hear that it is nestled somewhere along the harbour of South Carolina’s magnificent Charleston. It is almost suspicious how gorgeous Charleston is. Each wood paneled home is pristine, the public buildings magnificent, domineering and reminiscent of Santorini at sunset. It is as if even the sun itself has been painted in the sky, so perfectly do its rays cascade down the cobblestoned street which in turn…
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Athens – Mythology, Democracy – and Souvlaki
According to Greek Mythology, Athena was the goddess of skill and the arts (among other things) and was worshipped for her cunning, creativity and craft. However, this reverence was not universal. Arachne, a maid from northern Greece, was a weaver of prodigious precision and her ability was matched only by her conceit and hubris. She quickly amassed an army of acolytes convinced that her abilities represented the apogee of human endeavour but such acclaim was not enough for Arachne. Awash with arrogance, she ultimately challenged Athena herself to a weaving competition. Athena readily accepted and both set about weaving the most stunning work they could. While Athena wove a picture…
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Rome: Meditations from the Eternal City
Reading ‘Meditations’ by Marcus Aurelius is deceptively time consuming. Accounting for all of its nuts and bolts my copy amounts to a slender 256 pages – detailing a year of Harry Potter’s adolescent antics routinely fells more than double the amount of trees. However, so laden are each of its credos, so drenched are its assertions with moral implications that range from the subtle to the seismic that my reading of it became something of an ordeal. Aurelius himself won wars in less time than it took me to actually finish it, but I recommend doing so sincerely and unreservedly. He remains among the world’s most influential philosophers and one…
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A Tale of Two Cities
New Delhi is a city of 30 million people and is the capital of India. It is the second most populated city in the world. Butter Chicken is among New Delhi’s world famous dishes and you can expect a bowl of it for 300 Rupees. Less than €3.50. It is estimated that over 2 million of the city’s residents live in slums. This is a map of its metro rail system; Tokyo, the capital of Japan, has a population of 37 million and is the largest city in the world. Sushi is among the city’s famous culinary exports and you would be set back at least 3,000 Yen to get…
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Wallabies, Waterfalls and the Uffizi of Ubirr: Kakadu National Park
“There is no fundamental difference between man and animals in their ability to feel pleasure and pain, happiness, and misery.” Charles Darwin Darwin, perched on the north coast of Australia’s Northern Territory, is perhaps the perfect city to be named after the British naturalist. With Litchfield National park to its south west, it is just a short hop to a wild menagerie of kangaroos, possums and even flying foxes to say nothing of the gamut of exotic birds that call Litchfield home. However, it is the roaming expanses to its south east that garner more interest. Kakadu National Park. It is a remarkable place. Expanses extend beyond every horizon, incredible…
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Anatomy of an Aussie Road Trip
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Anatomy of an Aussie Road Trip
I love inter-railing. Waking up in one city, with its history, cuisine and traditions and retiring in another complete with contrasting cultures and conventions is invigorating. Indeed, its sufficiently rousing to dispel the fatigue fostered by the sparse sleeping hours such a holiday affords. The maelstrom of currencies, customs officers and cantankerous train station clerks is both wearying but oddly ingratiating. Prime among the appeal is variety. Beginning your week sipping an espresso in Milan only to end it eating Goulash by the Danube or savouring Cevapi at Lake Bled has an appeal so enticing it borders on mesmeric. So what to make of an Aussie Road trip? Could moving…
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Wallabies, Waterfalls and the Uffizi of Ubirr: Kakadu National Park
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Leagues Apart: The Competing Codes of Rugby
In 2015, Australia and New Zealand locked horns in the Rugby World Cup Final. To that date, both nations had won 2 world cups although they were yet to face-off in a decider. Both countries are rugby crazy and had shown impressive form throughout the tournament. It was a fixture guaranteed to not just hop aboard the hype-train but rather charter its own hype-jumbo-jet to circumnavigate the rugby world before landing at Twickenham. Right? Well, it depends who you ask. Stats for that world cup state that 1 in 7 Australians ‘occasionally or always’ watched the Rugby World Cup. The same was true of 2 out of 5 Kiwis making…
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Tennis: A Sport Apart in a Fractured World
What does the term ‘football’ mean to you? If you hail from much of Ireland it refers to Gaelic Football while to those that call the USA home it denotes ‘American Football’ (the ‘foot’ syllable as redundant as the asinine war-paint the players insist on). Things are just as blurred Down-Under, Rugby League being synonymous with the term in NSW and Queensland while the rest of the country reserve it for the more obviously antipodean Australian Rules Football. Most ubiquitous of all, across vast swathes of the globe it refers to the game known in the relevant vernacular as futbal. Or calcio. Or, of course, soccer. Evidently, while we are…
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The Tyranny of the Wealthy – The USA and the Great Equality Lie
I’ve always said that New York City is my favourite place in the world. It is sensational. Mesmeric and beguiling. Anarchic and unique. No other city feels as sentient, as if the essence of life itself courses up its streets and down its avenues. Citizens and streets alike are instantaneously imbued with an energy that makes the Duracell bunny look like a wet plastic bag. However, regardless of its fantastic criss-cross of cultures and creeds, NYC remains an exceedingly American city. Such a melting pot could not be fostered anywhere else in the world, where market capitalism and open borders have historically allowed people the world over to arrive, strive…
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Turn Left At The Iron Curtain: The 4 Worst Hostels I’ve Stayed In
“Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way”. Leo Tolstoy The opening line of Leo Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina is one of the most famous in literature. The Russian’s point was that there are myriad qualities that must exist for a family to be happy. And every unhappy family falls short in a different way, each as unique and lachrymose as the next. Two families may be equally despairing, but that despair will be rooted in a different tragedy each and every time. At the risk of contriving this insight to the point of contortion, I believe this wisdom to be equally applicable to the…
