It was the challenge that started when one of my friends told me that Dunedin is dull. It spurred me to action. Dunedin is a small city (just 118 000 people) located on New Zealand’s south Island. It is a city that punches well above its weight. Dunedin scrapes into my Top 40 cities (of over 100 000 people) at number 39. It sits between Liverpool, England and Krakow, Poland with a rating of 83%. (Paris, France my number one city scores 98% and Lagos, Nigeria gets 45% from me). Dunedin is located 310km (192…
Place Reviews (Thursday)
Category Archives for Place Reviews (Thursday).
Paris Unplugged
Paris unplugged is a Blog featuring photographs of Paris through time. There are pictures of Pl d Bastille, Place de la Republique and Moulin Rouge through history, images of metro stations line by line, snapshots of the World Expos, maps of the Metro over its development and glimpses of Parisian shopping, fashion, culture and art all frozen in pictures. There are also pictures of buildings planned or imagined for Paris but never built. It is a fascinating and enjoyable wander through this amazing city.
My Favourite Places 2012
These are some of the key places I visited in 2012 (with my overall rating of that place). Reviews of a place, where available are hyperlinked. Paris (98%) Wild About Berlin (97%) San Francisco (93%) Wellington (91%) Adelaide (91%) Cornwall Captivates Me ( 90%) Beautiful Budapest (87%) Chicago (87%) Seoul at last (86%) New York(86%) Perth (86%) Incredible Istanbul (85%) Buenos Aires, Argentina (84%) Marathoning in Hobart (84%) Sydney (83%) Washington DC (83%) Hip Hamburg (80%) Philadelphia (78%) Auckland (76%) Fish Soup in Baja, Hungary London Pre Olympics Charlotte, NC (70%) Los Angeles (69%) Visiting Virginia’s Norfolk (68%) Related Posts 12 Places to…
12 Places to celebrate Christmas
Seasons Greetings from down under. If you are celebrating today, where are you doing it? Where would you like to celebrate it? Here are 12 options for next year. While, I have been to all of these places I have only had Christmas season in six of them. More on which six later! Quebec City, Canada – one of the most romantic cities in the world. At Christmas, it has a very high possibility of snow, giving you a white Christmas. New York, New York – this city does holidays well with shops full of amazing food,…
Beautiful Budapest
I first visited Budapest exactly twenty years to the day of my most recent visit. Communism had been gone for only three years and Budapest was ditching the old Socialist restrictions and emerging as a great city. Scarily, on this trip in 2012, -the agent who checked me into my hotel this trip had not even been born when I made my first visit. Today, Budapest is definitely part of a free market economy. I have now been to Budapest five times since my first starry eyed visit and this city remains one of my all time…
Incredible Istanbul
For the last few years, every year a friend of mine, Paul and I, have an extended long weekend in a new city. The rule is that the city must be new for both of us. i.e. we have never been to that city before. As a result we have been to Reykjavik (iceland), Madrid (Spain), Berlin (Germany), and Southampton, UK. We usually travel sans partners and use the time to explore, catch up and eat! This year we chose Istanbul, an immense metropolis of 13 million people which has been home to people for…
Cornwall Captivates Me
Cornwall sits at the westernmost part of the south-west of Great Britain and as a result is often left off people’s travel itineraries. I believe Cornwall needs to sit at the top of people’s lists of destinations to visit in the UK. Around five million people visit annually but most are from England. Aesthetics: 10 out of 10 Cornwall covers an area of 3,563 sq km (1,376 sq mi). It is a little bigger than Rhode Island and one and a half times the size of Australia’s ACT. Its population is 535,300 people. Some of the most stunning landscapes in…
Visiting Virginia’s Norfolk
It has been ten years between visits to Norfolk, Virginia and the city has done some improving! I stayed near the Waterside Convention Centre which is next to the Marriott Hotel and handy to transport, restaurants and Macarthur shopping center. Aesthetics: 7 out of 10 Norfolk is located at the junction of the Elizabeth River and Chesapeake Bay. The city is 237 kilometres (147.3 miles) from Washington DC. The city’s location is very pretty built around the waterways. The Norfolk downtown has had a major scrub up and the Granby Street area was unrecognisable compared to a decade…
Buffalo, New York, USA
Buffalo is New York State’s second-largest city, with just over a quarter million people in the city and just over a million in the Buffalo-Niagara Falls Metropolitan Area. The city is located in the western part of New York state on the eastern shores of Lake Erie. It is opposite, Ontario, Canada. Like many US cities it has really struggled with the stagnation and a falling population as industry moved out in a major way. Buffalo’s population is 55 per cent less than it was in the 1930s. Further, 27% of Buffalo’s residents are financially disadvantaged. Aesthetics: 6.5 out of 10 Buffalo could have…
Seoul at last
A Korean movie In Another Country at the recent Melbourne International Film Festival followed by an amazing Korean banquet with friends, reminded me I have not written about my Seoul experience. So here we go: Aesthetics: 8.5 out of 10 Seoul is built on the Han River, its plains and is bordered by eight mountains. It is easy to bike, run or walk along the riverside and there are many cafes and restaurants dotted along. In a 2011 survey, over half the population and two-thirds of “urban planning professionals” voted the river as the second most scenic place in the…
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