{"id":533,"date":"2007-06-24T07:51:02","date_gmt":"2007-06-24T06:51:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/wordpress\/?p=533"},"modified":"2007-06-24T07:51:02","modified_gmt":"2007-06-24T06:51:02","slug":"me-and-my-travels","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/?p=533","title":{"rendered":"Me and my travels"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Each weekend, the Travel supplement of the &#8220;Observer&#8221; newspaper invites a well-known person to answer a set of questions headed &#8220;Me And My Travels&#8221;. I thought that this Sunday I&#8217;d put those questions to myself for this blog.<br \/>\n<b>My favourite hotel is &#8230;<\/b><br \/>\nThe Royal Livingstone Hotel on the Zambian side of Victoria Falls [more information <a href=\"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/SouthernAfrica.html#Falls\">here<\/a>]. The location is stunning and the service superlative.<br \/>\n<b>My last trip was to &#8230;<\/b><br \/>\nIsrael [more information <a href=\"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/Israel.html\">here<\/a>]. We travelled with a friend who had lived there for 18 years and had a fascinating insight into this amazing country.<br \/>\n<b>My secret to successful travelling is &#8230;<\/b><br \/>\nBeing open to new experiences. Try new things, meet new people, go to new places.<br \/>\n<b>The thing I hate about travel is &#8230;<\/b><br \/>\nTourists who do not respect local people and local cultures.<br \/>\n<b>My favourite hidden gem is &#8230;<\/b><br \/>\nSainte-Chapelle in Paris [more information <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Sainte-Chapelle\">here<\/a>]. It is tucked out of sight and yet the stained glass windows are breathtaking.<br \/>\n<b>I&#8217;d never go back to &#8230;<\/b><br \/>\nTashkent [more information <a href=\"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/Uzbekistan.html#Tashkent\">here<\/a>]. The city was destroyed by an earthquake in 1966 and the communist-era reconstruction has nothing to commend it.<br \/>\n<b>I never travel without &#8230;<\/b><br \/>\nA notebook. I note down everything: details of all the places we visit and all the people we meet and all the information we learn &#8211; and then I write it up for a travelogue on my web site.<br \/>\n<b>My ideal travelling companion is &#8230;<\/b><br \/>\nMy wife Vee. She is always up for anything whether it is being photographed with a snake round her neck in Marrakesh or hang gliding off a mountain in Rio de Janeiro or doing the highest bungee jump in the world off a bridge in South Africa.<br \/>\n<b>My idea of paradise is &#8230;<\/b><br \/>\nA round the world trip &#8211; but Vee isn&#8217;t keen.<br \/>\n<b>My first trip was to &#8230;<\/b><br \/>\nNaples in Italy. I went there when I was four and when I was 14 &#8211; the only foreign trips of my childhood &#8211; because my mother was from there.<br \/>\n<b>One of the best trips I&#8217;ve ever been on was &#8230;<\/b><br \/>\nThe China odyssey [more information <a href=\"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/China.html\">here<\/a>]. We visited nine cities, each utterly fascinating, and saw fabulous sites such as the terracotta warriors, the Great Wall and the Forbidden City. Furthermore, on the flight back, we befriended a young Chinese woman called Hua who has lived in Britain ever since and subsequently married and had a baby son. The three of them are like our own family.<br \/>\n<b>Travel is &#8230;<\/b><br \/>\nLife-changing. One learns so much and looks at the world so differently.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Each weekend, the Travel supplement of the &#8220;Observer&#8221; newspaper invites a well-known person to answer a set of questions headed &#8220;Me And My Travels&#8221;. I thought that this Sunday I&#8217;d put those questions to myself for this blog. My favourite hotel is &#8230; The Royal Livingstone Hotel on the Zambian side of Victoria Falls [more [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-533","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-my-life-thoughts"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/533","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=533"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/533\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=533"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=533"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=533"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}