A river trip to Greenwich - in London

Although we were reluctant to leave the artistic delights of the V & A museum in London, my friend and I had decided to continue our day out in London with a trip down the river to Greenwich.



We emerged from the tube at Embankment tube station to find the pier for the river boat just across the road. The service from here is designed for commuters as well as tourists and leaves every 20 minutes to take you up and down the river, making may stops along the way. The trip to Greenwich cost around £8 return which was not unreasonable considering that the boat was very comfortable and we got an excellent view of some key sites from the river.

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Down by the river in Richmond

Richmond has changed a lot since I grew up there but I still enjoy going back to catch up with family and friends. I always saw it as a pretty regular kind of place, where normal families went about their business and took it's pleasures for granted.



These days it's the kind of place that you can only afford to live if you have a well paid job in the city and is a favourite with business people moving from overseas with their families to spend a few years working in London.

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An artistic lunch at the V & A - in London

If you're visiting London and want a haven to pause from sightseeing or shopping for coffee or a light lunch, there's a cafe I'd like to recommend to you.



The Victoria and Albert Museum in South Kensington is a stone's throw from Knightsbridge where every tourist visits Harrods to buy a tin of Earl Grey tea to take home for their mother and self respecting fashionistas check out the designers at Harvey Nichols. I was there to meet a friend for coffee before a spot of sightseeing in Greenwich (more of that later).

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Friday photo - the view from Richmond Hill

Today I've travelled back to my childhood home of Richmond on the outskirts of London. I'm joining in with Delicious Baby to bring you a Friday photo with a story behind it.

As I walked along the terrace above Richmond Hill to admire the famous view, I paused to chat with an artist who had set up his easel there.




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A hotel with a view at Monte Maccione - in Sardinia

For the last two nights of our holiday in Sardinia this August, we decided to move inland to enjoy some of the mountain scenery that Sardinia has to offer. You only have to drive half an hour away from the coast to be in the mountains in Sardinia and in less than an hour we were at Oliena, close to the town of Nuoro.



We followed the signs through the village, up a steep and winding track to arrive at the hotel of Coop Enis at Monte Maccione, which overlooks the valley below. This is the perfect place for treking and mountain walking especially if you are interested in the natural habitat of the National Park that surrounds the hotel. As it was so hot, and my teenagers are allergic to walking, we used it as a base for visiting the town of Nuoro and the murals at Orgosolo nearby.

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Friday photo - A Wika tattoo in Ecuador

Today I'm joining in the Friday photo, hosted by Debbie at Delicious Baby, to bring you a photo with a story behind it.



Here you see me having a snake tattoo painted on my arm by the children in the village of Sarayacu in Ecuador, on my Amazon river trip last October. The black dye is made by roasting a local fruit in the embers of the fire and grinding up the pulp to make a black ink called Wika, which is painted on with a palm stalk.


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Cool kerbstone in Nuoro - in Sardinia

Here's the last of the cool things I found in the unassuming town of Nuoro, in Eastern Sardinia. Do you ever get the feeling that someone is watching you?



We'd just finished our gelato on a hot August afternoon after visiting the town and were walking back to the car. Then my eagle-eyed daughter chanced to look down and spotted these little faces carved into the kerb-stone. When we looked closer, there were four faces all together. Now who'd go to the trouble of carving a kerb stone?

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A cool Gelateria in Nuoro - in Sardinia

My cool thing No 4 from the town of Nuoro in Eastern Sardinia can be taken literally as it's a Gelateria or Ice Cream shop that we found.

We'd been passing the hot afternoon with our picnic in the main Piazza Vittorio Emmanuelle, in the hours between 1 and 4pm when all the shops close in Sardinia. I was all for a shady bench in front of the Duomo but my children decided that we would place ourselves strategically in the square close to the local Gelateria called Peter Pan.


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Some cool sculpture in Nuoro - in Sardinia

Here's cool thing No 3 in my series of things worth looking out for if you visit the town of Nuoro in eastern Sardinia.

Underneath it's unassuming exterior, Nuoro has apparently been a hotbed of cultural and artistic activity in the last century, with writers, poets and scultors working in the area. If you walk a few minutes up the hill from the main street, Corso Garibaldi, you arrive at Piazza Satta, named after the famous poet Sebastiano Satta who was born in this neighbourhood.



There you will find some rough blocks of granite that have been made into sculptural shapes, and set into them are some smaller bronze figurines, depicting Satta at various stages of his life. They in turn are the work of another well known sculptor from Nuoro called Constantino Nivola whose work can also be found in the Museo d'Arte in Nuoro.

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Some cool biscuits in Nuoro - in Sardinia

Today I'm bringing you the second in my mini-series of cool things I found in the Sardinian town of Nuoro, a place that's a little off the normal tourist trail.

After looking round the Museum of Costume and having a drink in Caffe Tettamanzi in the centre of town I went in search of some food for our picnic lunch, mindful of the fact that everything closes in Sardinia between 1 and 4 pm.



Down the road I spotted the sign for a pasticceria or cake shop and made a beeline for it hoping to find some biscuits or pastries for lunch.

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Some cool things in Nuoro - in Sardinia

When I worked in the geeky world of IT with a load of software developers, the cool stuff was always described as 'Coolio' and the non-cool stuff was 'Lame'. As the town of Nuoro, in eastern Sardinia, is the sort of place you probably wouldn't go out of your way to visit, let alone build your honeymoon around, you might put it in the 'Lame' category.

But in the day we spent there I managed to find a few little gems that I thought were pretty cool. That's cool as in fun and interesting, not cool as in hip in trendy - if you want hip and trendy I suggest you take your holidays in Ibiza rather than Sardinia.

So I thought I'd do a little series about five cool things from Nuoro.



My starter is a great little cafe called Caffe Tettamanzi on the pedestrianised Corso Garibaldi at No 71. From the pavement it's the normal layout with outdoor tables where you can sit and watch the world go by. But when you venture in, it's got a lovely traditional mirrored interior and painted ceiling with cherubs flitting about.

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The Museum of Costume in Nuoro

There is nothing to see in Nuoro which is always a relief, wrote DH Lawrence when he visited this inland Sardinian town in 1921. You might say that nothing much has changed, and we found the place to be quiet and unremarkable when we visited one Monday morning.

There were a few things that made it worth a second glance, however, and one of them was the Museo della Vita e delle Tradizioni Sarde, otherwise known as the Museum of Costume.



It's not huge but if you enjoy fashion and costume, this could be the place for you. The first room reminded me a little of the Museum of Fashion in Bath, with a large display of the most beautiful Sardinian costumes, layers of lace, embroidery, coral and gold filigree jewellery. In cases along the side were other room-sets with rich displays of the finest textiles, carpets and household objects.

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A trick of the eye - in Sardinia

I told you that I detected a quiet sense of humour in the Sardinians and a feeling that things are not always what they seem. So take a look at these typical buildings you might find in any Sardinian town or village.


Then do a double take as I did, when you notice the tromp l'oeil effects that have been painted on to catch you out. Cool, don't you think?

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Old men just hanging around - in Sardinia

In Sardinia everything shuts between 1pm and 4pm. If you're used to the 24hr culture of most cities across the UK this can be somewhat irritating. That is, until you adopt the Italian habit of relaxing in a shady pavement cafe, enjoying a lingering lunch or taking a siesta in the heat of the day. Then you can conserve your energies for the early evening passagiata when everyone wanders round town to see and be seen.



In this quiet time of day there is one species of Sardinian that gathers in groups on the shady benches and quiet squares. He's an older man, slightly balding with a tummy that speaks of years of being well fed on pasta and the local Cannonau red wine. Where is his wife? - why at home of course, while he passes the time of day with his peers, discussing politics, local issues, setting the world to rights.


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Behind closed doors - in Sardinia

As I wandered round the older parts of the towns we visited in Sardinia, I couldn't resist photographing the carved wooden doors we saw - there was something so solid about them, so permanent when set into the old stone buildings.


But even nicer were those half open gateways, through which you catch a glimpse of a shady courtyard and wonder what stories are being played out within. These are the courtyards where you might imagine yourself to while away a lazy afternoon in a hammock or dine al fresco under the stars with the scent of jasmine in the air.

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