Category Archive: TRAVEL
Nearly On Top of the World
(August/September 2025) [Thanks to M, our Guest Reviewer, who boldly travels to places nowhere near a four star hotel…Instead, she goes to windswept, bleakly romantic locations of the kind memorialized by Sir Walter Scott and Robert Burns.] Scotland First, over the sea to the Isle of Skye. It was absolutely beautiful. We did a guided tour of the island. Highlights, apart from the general misty loveliness, included a Highland cow grazing in a peat bog, the magical Fairy Falls… …and the lighthouse at Ness Point, where I truly nearly got blown-over by the wind, trying to take a photo (see main…
Continue Reading →Art Gallery of Western Australia Has a Problem
(Perth, November 2025) Western Australia’s art collection was once housed in the lovely Byzantine-style Jubilee Building but in the 1970s, it was moved to the present Bauhaus/Brutalist pile, having fewer windows than a casino, and designed by someone from the Public Works Department. The treasures within are even more depressing, although, in fairness, when we visited (the second time – we arrived on Tuesday, when it was not open), quite a number of the galleries were closed, for reasons unclear. There was virtually nothing on show that might hearken back to days when artists knew how to draw, but we’ll…
Continue Reading →Perth Mint
(November, 2025) Australia’s official bullion mint (est. 1899) is at 310 Hay Street (conveniently near the Grosvenor Hotel), built in a style known as Federation Romanesque. Established to handle the West’s gold rush by refining gold nuggets and producing gold sovereigns for the Empire, the Mint continues a roaring trade, as gold continues to out-perform tech stocks and U.S. Bonds. There is a venerable coin press, and visitors taking the organised tour can strike their own token: The Mint is the oldest still producing coins of legal tender, along with collection-pieces, such as the Australian Lunar Silver Series II (2010)…
Continue Reading →Egypt (Part Three): Farewell
24 April to 1 May 2025 The Nile River The Nile Valley has been sustaining life since Paleolithic times and for the last 6,000 years or more, has become Monument Valley to the World. The river stretches the entire length of Egypt (and more), a country crossing of some 1,600 kilometres, providing irrigation, agriculture, transport, settlement and even galvanising civilisation itself, before branching out in the flat alluvial Delta and emptying into the Mediterranean. After an evening at the markets in Aswan, we clambered aboard the M.S. Grand Rose, a venerable Nile cruiser which, while showing its age, was nevertheless…
Continue Reading →Egypt (Part 2)
21 April to 23 April, 2025 Philae Temple We flew to Aswan, on the upper Nile, and took a boat to the Isle of Philae, where the Egyptian authorities moved the Philae Temple, lock stock and barrel (!) to avoid its immersion in Lake Nasser that formed after the building of the Aswan High Dam. From Philae to Agilkia. Dedicated to Isis, Goddess of healing, magic and birth, it was built during the Ptolemaic period… ..and thus has Egyptian, Greek and later-added Roman characteristics. The main motifs however, have Ptolemy XII bashing enemies’ brains out, under the approving gaze of…
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