10 latest experiences http://www.hereorthere.com/members/ollisoff en-us I completely reccommend travelling by train to Italy. It's brilliant, it's easy and it's guilt free. We Eurostarred it to Paris, then Palatinoed it overnight to Florence from there. You could do it straight but we overnighted it in Paris, which felt right. (see www.seat61.com to get anywhere in the world without going on no plane.) Arriving in Florence at 5.30 in the morning is perhaps not the perfect introduction to this legendary city. Arriving in Florence at 5.30 in the morning in the pouring rain is doubly tiresome. We trudged the streets, running along back alleys and all sorts, searching for somewhere to shelter us and feed us coffee and croissants (we didn't know or care at this stage what the Italian equivalent might be.) We found one fairly lacklustre place open to the elements. The warmth garnered around our thimble-espressos didn't make too big an impression so we hailed a passing street-seller and bought a 4euro brolly (presumably these street sellers react to t... Florence, Italy Ollisoff Thu, 10 Jan 2008 10:14:04 +0000 http://www.hereorthere.com/members/ollisoff/experience/1240 http://www.hereorthere.com/experiences/1240 We were supposed to be going to Cheddar Gorge to follow a suggested hike from 'Pub Walks around Bristol and Bath'... but I'm a learner driver so we ended up in Wells. I suppose it might equally be said that my driving instructor is a learner navigator but the point is we were bored of not getting where we wanted to be so we flicked through our guidebook for the nearest walk and quickly found ourselves at Wookey! Wookey, United Kingdom Ollisoff Thu, 03 Jan 2008 12:19:08 +0000 http://www.hereorthere.com/members/ollisoff/experience/1239 http://www.hereorthere.com/experiences/1239 Within easy striking distance for a day trip from Paris, Fontainebleau is worth visiting several times! The incredible chateau - a conglomerate of design improvements as a series of kings made their mark of grandueur - is a day in itself. You have to be on your best behaviour to go inside - the attendants are surly and uncooperative at best - and you have to have a head for numbers to get around the various successions, but the anecdotadal accounts of various Loius at play are hilarious. Fontainebleau, France Ollisoff Fri, 14 Dec 2007 16:12:01 +0000 http://www.hereorthere.com/members/ollisoff/experience/1205 http://www.hereorthere.com/experiences/1205 It was high time for a weekend away so we hopped in the car and sped about an hour down the road to a place we'd always meant to visit and never really got around to. Stone Henge. Hundreds of thousands of people pass it everyday and kids crane their necks out the back windows of cars as the busy 303 whips right by across the plains. Recent withdrawals of Government funding to tunnel means this is going to go on happening for many years to come. Fine, more people get to witness this international treasure but there is truly nothing that compares to stopping, putting on your waterproofs and yomping out to greet the stones in person. They are more magnificent and potent in the flesh than you can possibly imagine, especially on a day when the wind whips across the flat fields and the rain comes at you sideways, drowning out the sound of traffic and focussing your energies inwards. Theories abound as to the genesis of the henge and the site is now armed with an audio tour to tal... Salisbury, United Kingdom Ollisoff Thu, 13 Dec 2007 11:57:19 +0000 http://www.hereorthere.com/members/ollisoff/experience/1204 http://www.hereorthere.com/experiences/1204 The title of this piece is really only to steal the brilliant pun from the Supergrass album of the same name - the best way to get to Rouen from Paris is by train. People have been flocking in this direction on pilgrimmages for over 800 years so we thought we'd follow suit to see what's what. We were bowled over with indifference, arriving in thick fog to stumble blindly through the legendary cobbled streets past the exposed timber houses. But that's not why people come to Rouen. By peering closely for signs to The Catedral de Notre Dame (as the dedicated must have done for centuries before us) we eventually found the the mighty Tour De Buerre (as it is known for some inexplicable reason) disappearing into the clouds. Rouen, France Ollisoff Thu, 13 Dec 2007 11:09:42 +0000 http://www.hereorthere.com/members/ollisoff/experience/1200 http://www.hereorthere.com/experiences/1200 The sign in the estate agent window says We Love Forest Hill. And I think we probably do... or maybe we will. In the same way that Ebbsfleet has become a by-word for Europe with the new Eurostar route dropping in, so Forest Hill represents New London. You’ll have to be quick to move in there ahead of the lemmings. As soon as London Transport announce their plans to extend the tube network to this neck of the forest, house prices will rocket (if we can imagine such a thing in the current climate). For now it’s one of those unlikely suburbs that houses wily businessmen and truly impoverished artistes. Forest Hill, London, United Kingdom Ollisoff Thu, 06 Dec 2007 11:10:09 +0000 http://www.hereorthere.com/members/ollisoff/experience/1187 http://www.hereorthere.com/experiences/1187 Bath is invariably manic with tourists and its easy to get sucked into the trail, laid out neatly to bleed all your currency and whisk you round all the very oldest things we've got in the space of a few hours visit. You probably should do it once in your life. Visit the remarkable Baths, visit the Abbey and the Jane Austen Centre with a Sally Lunn Bun sitting heavy in your stomach... But if you ever come back to Bath and arrive in the city by train, go out the back of the station, cross over the river and turn left into Widcombe. Set yourself up for a hike with a coffee and fish-finger butty at the brilliant Kindling Coffee then head on down to Ralph Allan Drive on your right. 15 minutes walk from the centre of swarming Bath city-centre is the gloriously forgotten Bath Abbey Cemtery, designed and laid out in 1843 by John Augustus Laudon as a place for recreation and education (as well as burial presumably!). The gate is always unlocked and there's hardly ever anybody ... Bath, United Kingdom Ollisoff Fri, 16 Nov 2007 16:15:34 +0000 http://www.hereorthere.com/members/ollisoff/experience/1137 http://www.hereorthere.com/experiences/1137 It looked pretty unlikely that I'd get there at all with the whole of England grinding to a halt in the mid-summer floods. Somehow, miraculously, the Bristol to Plymouth trainline was unimpeded and I shuttled through on schedule. Recognised at Plymouth as a festival-goer with my give-away back-pack and welly boots I was ushered into a taxi to take me directly onto site due to "any inconvenience I may have experienced." (I did tell them I hadn't experienced any inconvenience but you can only deter west-country hospitality so much!) It's a tiny festival at Port Elliot that isn't quite like any other I've been to. There's music but it's low-key and lyrical, playing second fiddle to a deluge of performance poets of varying skill. The programme the weekend I was there was a bit thinner than published as a number of novelists had decided they couldn't swim past Gloucester but this gave the whole place a blitz spirit vibe that only served to intensify the experience (as if we weren'... Port Eliot, United Kingdom Ollisoff Thu, 15 Nov 2007 11:34:18 +0000 http://www.hereorthere.com/members/ollisoff/experience/1136 http://www.hereorthere.com/experiences/1136 It's one of those cheesy idyllic romantic images innit, riding on the beach on a crisp clear autumnal day. Ogmore, South Wales, United Kingdom Ollisoff Fri, 09 Nov 2007 10:11:47 +0000 http://www.hereorthere.com/members/ollisoff/experience/1123 http://www.hereorthere.com/experiences/1123 The only way to see any european city a mon avis is on foot and Paris is no exception. I spent a whole year walking from the Bois de Bologne to the Bois de Versailles and back again; from Montmartre to Montparnasse and beyond. If occasionally, I took my decrepit racing-green and rusted bike, it was when I had somewhere in particular to go but without a destination, by far the best way is to set off and see what happens... I came out of my house and turned right... Paris, France Ollisoff Thu, 08 Nov 2007 17:15:44 +0000 http://www.hereorthere.com/members/ollisoff/experience/1120 http://www.hereorthere.com/experiences/1120