Travel, Technology, Thoughts
We awoke in Hakodate to a winter wonderland. It had snowed a lot overnight and the city was blanketed in white.
For breakfast we headed to the Hakodate Morning Market, where among all the variety of seafood, squid was very much the central theme.
Read moreAfter a week in Tokyo it was time to travel north to the island of Hokkaido.
From Tokyo we caught the Shinkansen and to Shin-Hakodate-Hokuto and then a local train to the centre of Hakodate itself.
When we arrived in Hakodate it was very cold, and lightly snowing right at sea level.
Read moreMy notes from my sixth day in Tokyo simply read: “Shrines – lots of old ones and a cool random walk”.
Looking back over my photos from the day, that essentially sums up the day, we went to many different shrines across Tokyo.
Tokyo DisneySea is a unique Disney Theme Park. I very much enjoyed the day, despite the overcast and cold drizzle we had a few times across the day.
Our trip to see Mount Fuji was not planned. Much like the rest of our trip, we decided what to do each day, while eating breakfast. By the time we had decided we were going to go to Mount Fuji it was around midday and we quickly hoped on a train from Tokyo to Hakone-Yumoto.
Tokyo is big. Very big. Unlike other cities it doesn’t have a clear bounds of either the CBD or the city itself. It’s simply a sprawling metropolis with many different areas to explore.
We began our second day in Tokyo by walking along the shopping strip of Omotesandō, and then exploring the grounds of Meiji Jingū.
In December 2019 I went for a two week trip to Japan. At the time I had no idea it would be the last overseas trip I would take for more than two years and just how much things would begin to change only a month later.
On the morning of my first day in Tokyo I explored the area around Ginza, the Tsukiji Fish Market and the Hama-rikyū Gardens.
The final leg of my trip was to visit Lisbon. Getting to Lisbon was meant to be a “quick” train ride from Porto. Unfortunately, the train drivers decided to go on strike, so I ended up in a very long queue, for a very long bus trip for the 300km+ journey. When I arrived in Lisbon it was night instead of the originally planned mid-Afternoon
Read moreTo wrap up this European Trip I spent the last few days in Portugal.
My first stop was Porto, and to get there from Mannheim, Germany I caught a train to Frankfurt Airport and then a flight directly to Porto. This flight was the first of two rather eventful travel events in the last few days of the trip.
Read moreA few years ago I randomly stumbled on the Technik Museum Speyer while travelling in the Rhine region. Since that trip I’ve wanted to visit the sister museum Technik Museum Sensheim, and fortunately, I was able to convince my friends on a very cold and wet day that it was a good place to visit as well.
Overall the museum was excellent, with an incredibly large collection of planes, cars, tanks and trains. In particular, I enjoyed seeing the Concorde and the North Africa WWII military displays. Although I did leave thinking that the Speyer museum was slightly better (it has more variety – including space craft).
To wrap up the very cold day, and to see off my last full day in Germany we ate and drank traditional food in nearby Weinheim.
