75 posts tagged “travel”
I've lived in four cities over the last 35 years:
- London;
- Birmingham;
- Amsterdam; and
- Brussels
I've stayed at a lot of hotels over the last few years and they all have a rubbish bin in the room so guests can dispose of empty bottles and so on. A busy hotel must generate a huge amount of rubbish each year and most of it can probably be recycled at very little cost to anyone. So I was surprised when I saw this recycling bin in my hotel room in Helsinki. Not because it was a strange thing in itself but because it makes it so obvious that everyone else should be doing this.
As I write this I'm sitting in a pub in Oslo with a bottle of beer. In front of me are a couple of locals who seem to have just got off a flight as they still have luggage tags on their bags. The man has his back towards me and I can't help noticing that he has a tattoo on his neck that looks very similar to the tattoos worn by the owned humans employed by the vampires in one of the Blade movies.
I assume the Blade movies are completely fictitious but I wonder whether they inspired a fashion for kids to label themselves with tattoos?
I've just returned from an unsuccessful attempt to get my vaccinations for an upcoming trip. But the travel clinic has moved and no longer does a walk-in service. I now have an appointment to visit them at their new premises tomorrow morning.
- Black pague, more commonly known as the bubonic plague;
- Green fever, or anaemia;
- Pink eye, more commonly known as conjunctivitis;
- Rose cold, or hayfever;
- Scarlet fever, a kind of strep throat that can progress to rheumatic fever; and
- White swelling, or tuberculosis of the bone
After one of the most surreal two days I've spent in rooms of men wearing suits I was looking forward to sitting down at home and enjoying a couple of nutty brown ales.
Today was a good day. The three DVDs I ordered from Go Faster Strip arrived, along with some Richard Herring bonus material. This is the second time I've ordered from them and they seem very reliable and they aren't at all expensive. Three DVDs may seem a lot but I have a 33 hour journey to Christchurch on Thursday - assuming all the planes travel to schedule - so three DVDs and a good long book (Miss Marple Omnibus) are definite requirements.
Show us something frustrating.
I rarely see dead pigeons. I know this must be true as I remember each one I've seen over the last decade. I'm not sure why this is. Perhaps they tend to die on rooftops, or perhaps foxes and other carrion eaters are so quick off the mark they spend precious few minutes on the streets and squares of our cities. Whatever the reason - they are a rare sight in my experience.
I used to work next door to the Palace of Westminster. It was a pretty cool place to spend some time while I was at university. There were TV screens in the corridors showing who was speaking; there were divisions bells that rang occasionally, calling members to vote; and it was pretty great to walk through Westminster Hall, which dates back to the 11th century.
