Foreign Perspectives

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

When I think about a vacation in Mexico, it seems to me that it’s the type of place that you need to settle into to really make the best of your time there. For me that rules out a hotel type trip as that always seems to be (often quite literally) a flying visit and doesn’t really give you the chance to settle into the local culture.

Somewhere like Rocky Point house rentals gives quite a good selection of different properties for such a holiday. In terms of Mexico, some people like to dive right into the local culture and for that you’re best going for a stand-alone villa. If you’re the type who like a lot going on around you, it’s probably best to look at the resort properties and that usually means condos. Either way, there’s quite a long list of places to choose from.

Popularity: 31% [?]

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

When it’s a clear plastic bag that’s had a knot tied in it and doesn’t have a ziploc closing mechanism.

That’s the latest nonsense to come from my travels through airport security and one that was particularly crazy. The security staff focused all their attention on that “deficiency” in my packing and managed to miss four separate items that they should have looked at including one that they very definitely should have taken off me.

So what did they miss this time around?

1. A six inch steel pin. That’s definitely on their checklist of items that aren’t allowed through security yet they missed it entirely which is worrying.
2. A rather heavy iced cake. Eh? Well, considering that it was in a sealed transparent plastic container and the icing has the same look and consistency of plastic explosive they should at the very least have rescanned it with the box open.
3. The luggage scales. These look very suspicious on the scanner thanks to the spring mechanism yet they missed them entirely.
4. The resealable plastic bottles in the above plastic bag. No tests were done of the content and they should have been.

At the moment it seems that rather than being aimed at detecting potential terrorists, the security checks are there merely to annoy honest travellers.

Popularity: 30% [?]

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

If you’re thinking of a visit to the Uffizi in Florence then you’ll find it worthwhile to have a look at the virtual Uffizi before you go.

The Uffizi is, like most major European museums, just too large to take in with a single trip and this site will help you to concentrate your visit on the works which most interest you rather than ending up trying to run around all over the museum and ending up taking nothing in properly (a trap that’s surprisingly easy to fall into).

Although the site contains photos of most of the works in the museum, you’ll still want to see the originals which are very, very different than looking at a photograph of them, no matter how well it might have been taken. If you’re aiming to see specific paintings, do bear in mind that the museum change the exhibitions from time to time so you’re not necessarily guaranteed to see all of the works that are shown on the site (although, obviously really major works are permanently on display).

To help you in planning your visit the site follows the plan of the galleries themselves but, of course, with a number of search options that you can use. In addition to that you can buy museum tickets and there’s information on a range of tours that you can take of Florence.

This is one of the most complete museum sites that I’ve come across with an almost comprehensive set of photos of the works and lots of information about each one.

Popularity: 19% [?]

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