Travel Philosophy Number 9 - Get an apartment

I recently went to Paris for a few days..3 short hours door to door on the Eurostar to a cute little apartment in Le Marais. I love the apartment thing for a city stay. Its not for the kitchen,who wants to cook on holiday.Though, being able to have a cold drink in the fridge and some stuff for an impromputu breakfast is convenient and saves a bob or two. No.. its that feeling of pretending you live somewhere just for a little bit. Theres something a bit special about not having a reception with people knowing your comings and going or having the maids trolley and hoovers thundering past your door in the morning when your having a sneaky lie in. This place was in a lovely old very French building in the cobbled Rue des Rosiers, buzzing with cafes, I had a security code to get in to a courtyard and a typicaly French tiny little lift to take me up to a 3rd floor studio, with a window overlooking the street below and the rooftops of my favourite area in Paris.



Ive done this elsewhere too, that week in the 'Cher' apartment in Buenos Aires at the start of my travels last year - see previous post . And there was a lovely little place in Krakow last year with my parents. Something about that home from home in a city, with a slightly less formulaic style than a hotel room, and an individual touch and flavour of the place adds something to your stay

Even better if more than 2 of you and you get a 2 bedroom place - costs per person usually fall dramatically below 2 hotel rooms

Heres two shots taken from my window - Jour et Nuit

Travel Philosophy Number 8 - A Thirst for Knowledge

Broken Jewish Tomb Stones - Kazimerz Cemetary


Without trying to be too preachy, not everyone has the opportunity to get out and see stuff in the world, sometimes people have not been able to travel outside their own town, and perhaps due to the media they are fed by which ever governement they live under (North Korea's been popping up on BBC World alot in the last few days), they may have a pretty limited understanding of the larger world around them. I always feel a certain responsibility to myself to learn as much as I can while I'm traveling. A good day is a day that sends you to Google to research something further.

Without setting out for it to be that way, this trip has been quite a religeous education for me. As I've said previously, I dont hold any strong religious beliefs, but at the same time, the concept, culutural traditions, shared beliefs and historical backgounds of the major religions is fascinating and learning more gives you a much deeper understanding of the world today. It just so happened that Ive ended up travelling through Biblical lands and Muslim countries and now in Krakow I am in what was once one of the most important centres of Jewish culture in Europe. I say 'was' in that there are now only approximately 200 practicing Jews in the city following the devastation of the war, but then it is still a major site of Jewish pilgrimage and has the grave of a prominent Jewish holy man. We hired our own local guide to give us a walking tour of Kazimerz, the historical Jewish disctrict. We visited Synagogues and learned alot about Jewish culture and traditions.


Learning stuff is not neccesarily always a fun experience either - our next stop was the site of the wartime ghetto, where the local Jewish population were moved into and literally walled in - a starting indication of the deliberate cruelty was the fact that the ghetto walls were made in the shape of Jewish tombstones. Close to there was the Oscar Schindler factory. with an excellent newly completed exhibition on Nazi occupied Krakow. Not an easy exhibition to go around, even though it was housed in a place linked to an uplifting message - i.e the thousand or so jews on 'Schindlers List' who he managed to save.

Finaly an experience which is hard to describe and whilst certainly not being enjoyable, was profoundly moving and again a travel experience to learn and take something away from - Auschwitz.

I found the diverging train tracks at Auschwitz II - Birkenau, where someone had left flowers at the junction quite symbolic as essentially when people arrived at the camp and got down from the trains the first thing that happened was the 'selection' where they would either go to the left if deemed fit enough to work or to the right - straight to the gas chambers and cremetoria if not.

Also very effective for putting things into perspective were the collections of possessions found in warehouses on liberation of the camps. When you look at the piles of shoes, shaving brushes or suitcases and really imagine each one belonging to a different person, and that these were just a tiny proportion found there at the end, it gives you some idea of just how many people passed through these camps where in the words of Rudolph Hess, the only way out was through the cremetoria chimneys. And then of course this collection of 3 camps was not the only one in operation in Europe.

I've been joined in Krakow by my 80 year old parents who were in their early teens during the war. My mother found the Auschwitz camp experience particularly unsettling I think, as she remembers very strongly feeling petrified as a girl of the Germans being succesful in their attempt to invade Britain and what would happen to her if they did. As it was they lived through the air raids and remember the bombs. It does make you think how lucky you were to be born in a certain place though - i.e on an Island as opposed to just over the border from Nazi Germany.

Travel Philosophy Number 7 - 2 Tears in a Bucket, Mother F*&K it!

This ones on a similar theme to an earlier one saying just do it, dont worry about the money, its the experience youll remember. But there are also so many other reasons why you might not get up and do the thing you always wanted to. Dont cry about it and say I always wished i'd been to such and such a place, dont say in a few years, or when x y or z has happened. If your looking at the photos on this blog and thinking you cant do it, think again..

Ok so maybe you have a family and kids and commitments, maybe you cant just take off for a few months, but make getting to that one place you always wanted to a goal, its not as hard as it seems, where there is a will theres a way - perhaps the place you wanted to visit is doable in a much shorter trip, maybe you can farm out the nippers on their own local holiday for a week or two while you escape, maybe they could come with you on that once in a lifetime journey and you will set them up for a world of exploration in later life. Maybe your kids have left home, nows your time to shine again!. At least encourage your kids to go out and see stuff when theyre old enough. I have my mother saying 'do it while your young' and her mother before that to thank.


No one to go with? - go anyway, either do bits and pieces on your own (you will have your most mind blowing moments in your own company), perhaps a short trip to start, or join a small group adventure tour. You dont have to be on a big nasty tourist coach to do something where the tough parts are taken out of your experience.

Partner isnt interested in going anywhere? - screw em, do it anyway - dont let anyone hold you back, plenty of couples I know have 'me-time' trips away from their partners and come back feeling refreshed.

Maybe your working hard and thinking youd never find the funds - youd be surprised what you can achieve if its a priority and if your smart taking off travelling never has to look bad on your CV. This is my 5th Round the World / extended travel trip, if you can find a way to do it at least once and distance yourself from your routine life for a decent period of time you wont regret being abe to put the world in perspective.

Even if you cant do this, make sure you are seeing something you have always wanted to at least once a year. Life is too short, dont look back and regret the things you always wanted to do but didnt get round to it.

Take a post it now - write down one thing in the world you always wanted to see, stick it on your mirror and work out how its going to happen.

Watching the sunset over Santorini was one of mine...



p.s Get me being all preachy and life-sorted! dont worry theres plenty of other life areas Ive struggled with where im sure many of you have been successful, but seeing the places I always wanted to is not one of the ones ive found hard! Everyone has their strong points. I certainly won't be looking back thinking I never went anywhere. The trouble is the more you see the more you want to see *sighs*

If you really genuinely are quite happy in your own town, in your own environment and have no desires to stray from it, thats fine also - you can just look at my pictures from the comfort of your own home!

Travel Philosophy Number 6 - Your'e Never Alone with a book

Perfect Dinner for one in Santorini


If you want to travel alone and you dont want to feel like a muppet when you go out to dinner, take up reading!. Its amazing the difference it makes, you can disappear behind your book and surreptitiously people watch, enjoy your food, enjoy your book and feel comfortable sat there all alone, without feeling like you've got no friends. Who knows...maybe you will even make some new ones when they see what you are reading! I think I said in a much earlier post that I went to a Tango show in Buenos Aires early and didnt take my book. 45 mins of awkwardness sat at a table nursing a drink surrounded by couples eating, no book = feel like muppet! Have book = find cosy corner anywhere and feel at home.

Islamic Art at the Topkapi Palace

Following our end of tour breakfast and before our rooms were ready at the hotel, Nat and I still bleary eyed from the train took ourselves off to the Topkapi palace, home of the Ottoman Sultans for over 400 years. We got the audio tour which has been a welcome addition to Turkish museum attractions and to my mind adds a lot to a visit to anywhere unless you have an excellent personal guide. I often cant be bothered to read all the English signs and its nice to have someone explain things to you, occasinaly you get bonus amusing musical introductions to each piece or mispronounced words to keep you entertained. Perhaps that should be a travel philosophy...yes...lets, i think thats um, Travel Philosophy Number 5 - Fork out the extra for the audio guide if there is one!. 5 Philosophies in all this travel, thats not much is it - I will have to get my thinking cap on,

Apart from the musuem collections in the Palace, containing all the treasures and some fantastic Sultans Kaftans which were perfectly preserved, the most interesting part of the palace was the Harem. A big labyrinth of rooms reserved for the wives and concubines, the entrance strictly guarded in both directions by the highly influential Black Chief Eunuchs. The only males allowed in there were the Sultan and his brothers and sons, the latter mostly being kept locked up in there both for their own protection and for the protection of the Sultan as everyone of them was essentially a threat to his power. Amongst the females the main power base was the Queen Mother and the Mother of the legitimate male heirs. It reminded me a lot of the descriptions of the Zenana in Indu Sundaresans novels of Mughal Indian court life and harem politics. Nat coincidentally had been reading a non-fiction account of a French woman who had wound up in the harem and ended up being the mother of a sultan and a powerful figure who brought a French influence to the court and told her story afterwards. Actually it was interesting to note that allot of the wives were abducted from the West, so there would have been few 100% Turkish Sultans.

I had cause to think of my Mother a fair amount walking round the palace - She used to be a ceramics teacher with a love of Islamic designs and in fact we very nearly had a holiday to Istanbul when I was in my teens and had a period of spending a week a year in a European city and taking day trips out. I would have liked her to see the beautiful Iznik tiles everywhere - Mum if your reading, I was thinking of you when i took those tile shots. I always remember her explaining to me that theres few depictions of people or animals in traditional Islamic art, as it was frowned upon to re create the image of something only God could. Hence the traditions for creating intricate patterns as the basis of their art instead. That said Nat did spot one or two animals depicted in the tiles, theres plenty of floral designs and they certainly did depict people in portraiture. The Sultans often had minatures of themselves.

I really love the Islamic style - its very tasteful and invokes a peaceful atmosphere with gentle arches and often water trickling from fountains. The detail on the walls and ceilings is stunning.

Travel Philosophy Number 4 - Find a walking tour

"Where they have burned books, they will end in burning human beings." Heinrich Heine 1820

This quote is on a plaque on the ground, in the square where they burned 20,000 banned books one night on the order of Hitlers propoganda minister, the quote predates the Nazis by over 100 years, but just look at the eventual outcome of that book burning,

Just one of the many moving and interesting facts learned on a walking tour of Berlin took offered by Insider Tours. A great was of orientating yourself in a city and putting things in perspective and really not in the least bit touristy as compared to one of those ghastly coach tours. Slow paced with time to let thinks sink in, these are often specialist to a certain aspect of a city. I liked this one so much, im going to do one focusing on the cold war and Soviet Berlin tomorrow, which ties in nicely to the Le Carre im reading. Ive done similar tours in London, for example the Jack the Ripper tour, oh and a ghost walking tour in Edinborough, all very good.

I chalked up the first of 3 blissed out travel moments on this tour, wandering and marvelling at the grandeur of a square and the various phases of history it had witnessed. What a unique city, few other places have experienced such turmoil, from the Electors, to the Kaisers, the Weimar republic, the Nazis, the division of the city and the Cold War and what a vibrant stylish up beat and cosmopolitain place it is now.

Take a look at some pictures ..remember you can make full screen using the icon on bottom right



Incidentaly my other 2 blissed out moments, were randomly eating a hamburger at a corner place id discovered late at night when ón and on' by Abba came on and another today standing in front of the Nefertiti bust in the Egyptian musuem that id always wanted to see - you never know what random moment its going to hit you!

At the end of my walking tour i wandered off past the Reichstag into an area of impressive post reunification government buildings which were the inspiration for more photography. Ive grouped these together with some others of the memorial to the murdered jews in the holocaust. Ive shared my doors and windows and bold colour photographic fetishes with you.. another passion is light play, abstract angles, reflectionslines and converging perspectives, these all seemed to fit within this theme. I hope you enjoy and just like Alfred Hitchcock if you look closely you might see me pop up somewhere in these images!

Kyoto, Japan. May '10

kyoto 082
Originally uploaded by jfitzsimmonds

Travel Philosophy number 3 : Just Do It. You wont remember the cost or travel times, you will remember the experience.

I had access to a very budget flight from Sydney to Kyoto via Cairns on the outbound and Gold Coast on the return and jumped at the chance of taking a long weekend there, despite 15hr journeys in each direction and having to factor in the hotel etc etc. Too good an opportunity to pass up.







As it happens, and in fact I still have only revealed this to a select few out of embarrassment at my own stupidity, I completely missed my out bound 6.00 Am flight on the Friday morning. For a whole day no one on earth really new where I was, as I lay in bed feeling like an idiot and trying to decide whether A. I went back to work 3 days later pretending I'd been to Japan,. B. Just came clean about it - after all I had been working to 10pm the night before, finished packing at 2.00 am and my taxi pick up was for 4 Am - it was understandable!. or C. just bought a brand new one way ticket over there, damn the expense and have just 2 nights away instead of the allready crazy 3.

So after some deliberation I went for C - Im not even going to go there with what that cost me, of course if I hadnt done it I still would have been wasting money as id allready paid for non-refundable tickets.

Anyway...moral of the story was. As soon as I walked outside my Kyoto hotel the next morning with that buzz of discovering something new and feeling like my life was enriched because of it, the money and drama was forgotten.

Yes I only had 2 nights away and a 30 hour journey, but i zipped around with a Kyoto travel pass, visited Zen Temples, Rock Gardenes, mingled with Stunningly Kimonoed ladies having Sunday walks in the park, wandered through the floating world at night time having my own memoirs of a Geisha experience, cracked up at the uniquely Japanese Quirkiness of heated automaticaly opening toilet seats complete with choice of bum sprays and stunning assortments of vending machine consumables on every corner.


I was overwhelmed by bowing super polite service industry staff who left me walking out of shops with a huge grin every time. I even squeezed in a blissed out 'OMG' travel moment walking stocking footed past paper screened slide doors in a labyrinth of a temple as a room full of ladies kneeling in kimono finery attended a Sunday service, while others sat and contemplated timeless intricate and exquisitely planned gardens.

Would I do it all again - absolutely! It actually cracks me up now, to look at the map at the top of this blog and see just how far I went for a weekend!.

Ubud, Bali April 10.

Travel Philosophies Number one: Me-Time is the Right Time

Have you ever noticed those absulute blissed out 'moments' where youre suddenly overwhelmed by where you are and what your doing, usually happen when your on your own? Think about it.. even if your travelling with someone, its often when you step away and have a quiet moment to your self that things sink in.

So..this April this was brought home again to me, when i took the time to have a compeltely self-indulgent me-time holiday alone treating myself to the most amazing private pool villa up in the hills surrounding Ubud, the cultural captial of Bali. I cant even begin to describe how wonderful it was to be so selfish that even having a travel partner posing questions such as 'what shall we do for dinner' 'where shall we go tomorrow' was banned. Pretty anti-social of me you could say, but it was really what I needed. I answered to absolutely no one, got up when i felt like it, ate where and when I chose, read, snoozed, soaked up the atmoshpere, skinny-dipped chilled and spoilt myself absolutley rotten. You just have to do it sometime - for YOU, dont worry about being bored or what people will think or 'what if' anything, take time out for yourself sometime.. the 5 star villa may have helped but was not essential!

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Im having a bit of a warm glow now, thinking back to wandering around that place giggling stupidly to myself like a crazy person at the shere indulgence of it all.







These were the mossy steps up to my Villa. If your tempted to go, I'ts the Pita Maha, Ubud. If slightly too much of a splurge, they also own the Tjampuhan Resort and Spa closer into town. If you're headed to Bali try to take a few days at least away from the Kuta/Legian/Seminyak scene to feel the Balinese spirit in Ubud.

Travel Philosophy Number 2 : Indulge your senses, Dont Worry about the season - Tropical Rainstorms make you feel alive and in touch with nature!