I Just took the train from Galway to Dublin. Due to the fact that there were three carriages instead of five the train was over-subscribed. Of course this served to highlight the problems with Iarnroid Eireann's booking policy ( Read more... )

Apparently there's a company called Schmap which do online guides of cities and areas around the world. They've selected one of my photos for inclusion in their Galway Guide. W00t! :-)

Some in depth and personal questions courtesy of my good friend morgan303; ( Hidden behind a cut so fluffworld won't go mental at me ;-) )

They say Kyoto has over two thousand shrines. These vary in size and grandeur from the tiniest of affairs, set on the side of a path, with a faceless lump of rock dressed in a votive bib and beset with a few small candles and incense sticks to the massive temple complexes of Fushimi Inari and Murayama. Of course, the latter are visually stunning, ( Read more... )

I have returned from Japan, and I'm still processing a lot of what went on. More than anywhere else I've been, Japan is a very alien place to me in cultural terms. It's fascinating, stimulating, and above all very very beautiful ( Read more... )

Aside from kana menus being somewhat hard to read, we had no trouble navigating from the airport to the hotel - about 52 hours without sleep at that stage. Crashed out for four hours before grabbing some dinner, which due to the afore-mentioned menus meant we had to rely on my Japanese to order stuff I knew, and point-n-grunt for the pictured ( Read more... )