Category Travel

A few Sundays back I battled freakishly horrendous traffic (even for Auckland) to get to Quarry Bar on the North Shore, temporary home of Bareknuckle BBQ’s pop up restaurant. The stressful congestion of the northern motorway gave way to an…

  Picture this – waking up at 6 in the morning, you pull back the curtains, outside it’s pour down with rain, wind gusting and oh by the way it’s the day you organised to go to the Otara market…

I’m writing this post on a train as I leave the light-studded apartment blocks of Tokyo behind me, on my way north to Narita airport. I am also leaving with fond memories of food, family, pottery and footbal. 

In all my thirty years I had never, until last week, set foot in any one of our Pacific Island nations.  To me it was a world undiscovered, a world which despite our geographic proximity and our close connections, I…

I love how a collection of words strung together in a certain order can paint such a vivid picture and stir such strong emotions.  Mushroom picking in the Swedish countryside…..to me those six words are full of romanticism; trees twisted…

Although my sister and I did eat a heck load of beans and rice on our two month journey around South and Central America, it was a culinary journey with a few stand out experiences.

Chao Long marked the end of my travels around China. In contrast to the bustling metropolis that is Beijing, Chao Long’s dusty roads lead to rice paddies and rivers, to thatched pergolas on the edge of orchards where we ate meals served straight from surrounding vegetable gardens and nearby rivers.

After having spent 2 weeks in rural China I was hesitant about travelling to Beijing, favouring instead the slow life to which I had (surprisingly quickly) grown accustomed.  A light summer rain fell as we first emerged from the underground…

Given that I have a love for tea which boarders on obsession, it is almost redundant to point out that the mere thought of travelling to a place which boasts tea as its main export was almost too much for…

For years I had felt a compulsion to visit China, for what reason exactly I am unsure.  Certainly it is a country rich in history, in art and in culture, all things for which I have a fascination.  And of…

The other day I opened my bright red diary and sifted through its sketch-filled pages searching for a recipe I knew I had scribbled down in haste, somewhere back when the days were longer and certainly warmer than they are…