Foreign Perspectives

If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!

Although it’s actually possible to see all the highlights in a single, very hectic, day, it’s much better to spread the trip out over about a week as there’s an awful lot to be seen.

What we did was very much the whistle-stop tour with an early morning flight over then a short bus tour of some of the highlights which were mainly the Colosseum that you see here and the Trevi fountain. However, we needed to part company with the bus at that point as they were heading off to the shops whilst we wanted to see the Sistine chapel and as much as we could fit in after that which turned out to be quite a lot as we managed all but the Spanish Steps on our list and could have fitted in that too if I’d not been vetoed (”We’ll miss the bus!”).

However, that’s the crazy way to see Rome. Much more sensible is to do the above over three or four days and spend the rest of the week checking out some of the other wonders of the city. For most people that means staying in a hotel but to really get the most of your time it’s better to look towards Rome vacation rental as that’ll give you a much more Italian feel to your holiday.

Although you’d think from the name that VacationRentalRome.com only runs to vacation rentals, in fact they run to B&Bs too which is potentially an even better way to see the city.

Popularity: 18% [?]

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!

There’s a solar eclipse coming up this Friday morning though I’ll not be at this one or at least not at totality basically because the path is crossing a whole bunch of places that are pretty difficult and/or expensive to get to.

At our last one in Turkey in 2006 the plan was for a group of those at that one to organise a trip to see this one in Novosibirsk in Siberia but it proved to be a touch too complex to organise both travel and accommodation to such a relatively isolated spot. The most viable way seemed to be by means of the Trans-Siberian Express but I suspect that the expense of that proved to be a touch high to swing it with the rest of the family for many people.

Still, at least we’ll see a partial eclipse on Friday morning. For most of Europe that’s between about 9.30am to 11am (8.30am to 10am in the UK/Ireland) when you’ll see the sun going dark for the couple of hours as the moon passes across it.

Don’t forget that you can’t look directly at the sun for more than a very short time with your eyes and not at all with binoculars, telescopes or similar. It’s OK to view it via the screen on cameras though but don’t point the camera towards the sun too long or you’ll be needing a new one as it’ll burn out various components with the heat.

You’ll find lots more info on this on NASA’s solar eclipse site.

Popularity: 19% [?]

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!

When this first became available I figured that mobile broadband was going to be one of those products that received loads of promotion but was actually used by very few people in practice.

But, it’s turned out that’s not the case and increasing numbers of people are finding it rather useful. For example, we’re finding that a surprising number of people are using it to book accommodation while they’re actually on holiday. That might sound crazy but this coming weekend is one of the busiest in Europe and taking the chance that you’ll find accommodation on Friday night is just asking for trouble so rather than take that chance people are checking out the accommodation listing sites during the day and booking online.

Not only that, but you can often avoid lugging around a large out of date guidebook and look up the places you’re going to online which I’m sure is even more popular if less visible from our end.

So don’t be surprised when you find you’re using it yourself!

Popularity: 25% [?]

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!