We lived in relative luxury for our two nights on Skye, in a little AirBnB granny flat. Great views that we didn’t get to appreciate that first day, because it was still reasonably dark when we left. If you wait for the sun to get up in Scotland in winter,…
Tag: travel
Glasgow and the West Coast | Scotland
We set out for Glasgow on Boxing Day. My friend K and I, that is. We took the train because, well, train travel is delightful. I was going to say “train travel in the Northern Hemisphere”, but actually, I have enjoyed trains everywhere they have been available to me. Glasgow…
Christmas in Edinburgh | Scotland
For the Christmas/New Year break, I went to Scotland. While I am not averse to spending my birthday alone, and indeed, relish a solitary period of reflection, Christmas is a different affair. Usually there is a lot of lively activity with the family, that tampers off into a sleepy evening…
What am I actually doing? | Assistant de langue
When you apply for this program, you don’t really know quite what it will look like. In the lead up, I tried to find as many different blog posts as I could done by former assistants to try to get an on-the-ground perspective. Now that I am in here, I…
Marseille Adventures
After my time in Nice, I moved on to five days in Marseille. I had expected to like it more than Nice, and so had planned to spend my birthday there. It didn’t quite go as I expected really. I did have the smoothest train catching of my time to…
Monaco
Monaco is a tiny country – called a principality. It is the home of many millionaires, for tax purposes. Citizens are not taxed on income – the country makes its money through land tax and income from the casino. Interestingly, you can only enter the casino with a foreign passport…
Nice is Nice
(Some photos feature in this post, but you can access the full gallery here.) The school holidays began only three weeks after I started my role here as an English Language Assistant. Between doing prep work for classes and studying for my end of year exams, for my French classes…
Beginnings in Normandie | The Weekly (-ish) Lookback
Well friends, I thought it was time for a bit of a chronological update, since I have been in my town in Normandie for over two weeks now. (Side note: Normandie is the French spelling, otherwise ‘Normandy’ in English generally.) I took the train from Paris and one of my…
Are the French Rude?
The titular question is not usually a question I get asked- rather it is a statement often said to me. I have heard it quite a number of times, in many ways, from many different sources. Some people dial it in and say “Parisians” instead, which is at least a…
Paris, Slowly | The Weekly Lookback
Well, my friends, a lot has happened since my last blog post. Time continues to feel like a lie. I have slept eight nights in Paris, but it feels like much longer. Starting at my layover in Doha, I have journaled 65 pages in the last nine days, not…