I have to give it to Haga-Haga Hotel. Last night I had the most delectable, spicy, fragrant, flavourful cauliflower and chickpea curry I’ve ever eaten. And the chef was Zimbabwean! Go figure. In the morning, we started with 9°C temps as we drove into pretty wooded rolling hills, lots of buzzards planing above us. Then…
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This is how close we are to the crashing waves. Other than a small party from Durban who left this morning, we are the only guests in the hotel. We have the entire place to ourselves. And most of the time, the long stretch of rocky sands too. This morning a short, intense 5 km…
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For us it was moody skies, bald-headed mountains lined with a sparse bristle of blasted pines, many many double-length cargo trucks to pass, and Ozzie Osbourne and Deep Purple on the iPod. No kwaito, trance or rap for us. Then cart-wheeling blades of the wind turbines doing their lethal air-slicing. We chuckled when Hirsh said,…
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Did you know that Kruger National Park is about 360 kilometres in length? That’s what we’re going to be doing in a few days, trawling up slowly from south to north, bush camp to bush camp, a few of which we haven’t yet tried. A New Adventure awaits. So, just to whet your appetite for…
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Yes, we are back from our five-week adventure in New York, Prague and Berlin . . . and it is wonderful to be home and into some, sort of, kind of, semblance of a routine again. But the experiences, the art and architecture, and the spirit of each place will still live on for a…
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Now that it’s time to become introspective, Berlin has been an interesting experience. More grunge than I expected, less 1920s nostalgia than I’d hoped for. Maybe I’m being naive. (No comments.) The city has less elegance than Madrid, less panache than Prague. Berliners in the service industry are also not that polite. Café owners bark…
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According to the guidebooks, the East side of Berlin is where the cool, hip dudes hang out. Think decayed grunge areas that are now attracting artists and creatives and young free-thinking individuals to settle in and do their thing. Of course we couldn’t leave Berlin without saying we’d been there. Also, there’s the East Side…
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Considering Berlin’s history, there is not an enormous amount of charm to the city’s buildings, even while it is constantly transforming with more and more modern architecture grazing the skyline. Make no mistake, construction is BIG business right now. You can’t land in any of Berlin’s many different neighbourhoods without encountering the cranes and the…
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Museumsinsel, or Museum Island, really is an island created by two arms of the Spree River which runs right through the city of Berlin. It has a whole assemblage of art and archaeological museums, and the one that piqued our interest the most was Pergamon, built between 1909 and 1930 and filled with ancient art…
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Hard to believe that this grand palatial complex was built as a summer residence for the wife of a 17th-century ruler. It is so lavish and opulent, filled with Rococo-style gilt, mythological ceiling frescoes, tapestries, gorgeous silver and gold objets d’art, statues and cherubs, exquisite painted porcelain from China and Japan, as well as lacquered…
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