I thought I'd vanquished the beast, but insomnia has come back to battle me over the last three nights. I toss and I turn in my hermetically sealed hotel room. My head is full of thoughts that I can't quiet. My chest is full of emotions that are equally noisy. I tried to walk myself... Continue Reading →

It's weird being back in my old Singapore neighbourhood. So much is the same, but so much has changed. All the market and food stalls still cluster around the surrounding streets. The pungent scent of durian still wafts through the air. The same waiters still grimly take my order at Fatty's as my old apartment... Continue Reading →

Much like the rest of our holiday, we crammed a bloody lot into our last day together. DD rested his weary head for 12 HOURS until I started going mad with boredom and slammed the bathroom door. Then he sent me out in search of coffee - he doesn't cope well without caffeine and isn't... Continue Reading →

Hello from Singapore! We booked a stopover in the city when DD thought he had a conference there ... But it got cancelled. Damn! So he's flying home today and I'm hanging around until Friday. I wish he could stay, but it's his son's 18th birthday and he wants to be there to give him... Continue Reading →

Today's post is an educational one. It's about ways to avoid being bankrupted by a stay in Switzerland. I discovered most of the tips retrospectively. Bummer. Switzerland is a very beautiful country, but also a VERY expensive one. Very, very, very expensive. You know how your local pub has a $10 schnitty special on Tuesdays?... Continue Reading →

Our Italian adventure ended spectacularly yesterday with a UNESCO listed train journey through the Swiss Alps aboard the Bernina Express. Before we headed to the border train station in Tirano we squeezed in a quick ride on the funicular that transports residents and tourists between Como and Brunate. It takes 7 minutes on a track... Continue Reading →

Our delight in yesterday crept up and caught us by surprise. We weren't expecting much from the day: a long freeway trek from Villa Campestri to Brunate, a hilltop town overlooking Lake Como. But it became one of our favourite experiences of the trip. First we stopped for cappuccinos in the UNESCO listed town square... Continue Reading →

Now, don't get me wrong, Florence is absolutely gorgeous. But I didn't fall in love with the city. Sacrilege! I think I've become a smaller town girl. Perhaps my expectations were too high. So many people told me how amazing it was. Maybe it's like seeing too many previews of a movie and the real... Continue Reading →

We had the most unexpectedly lovely afternoon in Lucca yesterday. The town was once the hub of silk production in Italy and is filled with churches and rich merchants' towers. The merchants built the towers with single rooms on each floor: bottom commercial, second living, third bedroom, etc and kitchen at the top with a... Continue Reading →

There are waaaaaay worse places to be lost than Tuscany, so I'm not complaining (too much) about how many times we misplaced our route yesterday. But let me start at the beginning. Our gorgeous country retreat does everything so so well. Breakfast even includes a huge honeycomb dispensing the local sticky stuff. Classy! After brekkie... Continue Reading →