In that it is actually colder, thus more chill, and this allowed me to relax more. I left myself with plenty of time to get to the train station (King’s Cross), so I had time to kill, which I spent sitting…

By pure fluke, I managed to be paying attention at the right time to (I think) get a picture of Southend Pier. Unlike last time, I actually remember getting through Heathrow. (checking back to my diary of a couple of years…

For this one, I’m going to start at the end, then double back to explain how I got there. At the end of day one in Dubai, I wanted nothing to do with the place; Too chaotic, too noisy, too…

Complimentary in the sense of no charge, not in the says nice things sense. Checking out was mostly done the night before, so it was really only handing over my key cards that needed to happen. Naturally, I slept crappily,…

Getting to Arthur’s Pass involved a trip through the now-standard South Island scenic grandeur, which my cellphone is not really capable of capturing, as demonstrated here; Got in as darkness happened, which is why the other backpacker getting off at…

It was an early departure from Nelson. Like, 7am or something similar? Naturally, I woke up super-early, so I had time to kill, as I walked through rain which wasn’t quite bad enough to warrant pausing under a tree to get…

Out of cleverness, I put various TV shows on my phone, so that I could watch them if the scenery got dull. It didn’t, and indeed the road was sufficiently winding that looking out the windows was the only option; Nausea…

It seems worth mentioning, to me at least, that I’m post-dating these … posts. Rather than doing a day-by-day, like I’ve done for past trips, I’m trying a thing where I do a post for each place, and set it…

This one’s mostly pictures. There’s not a huge amount to say about the trip. The passenger areas of the ferry are quite nice, a lot of folks seem to stake out seats by a window and then immediately fall asleep, which…