I Travel To London Every Year

Visiting London at least once a year is something that I make sure I do. I first visited London in 1999 on a working holiday visa. It is from my time in London that I discovered my career in travel and became the traveller that I am today.

Every year since then I have been in London at least once. It’s a city I’ll never tire of visiting anyway. I have friends in London, and it is a handy entrance point for travels to the rest of Europe. Part of this tradition though is also a yearly homage to a city that has made me who I am today.

When a man is tired of London, he is tired of life.

I Visit The Same Restaurant in London Once a Year

As well as visiting London once a year, the most consistent thing I have done in my travels is to go to the same restaurant in London at least once a year. The restaurant is Pacifico in Covent Garden, which is perhaps the greatest Mexican restaurant in the Eastern Hemisphere.

Cafe Pacifico Covent Garden – the greatest Mexican restaurant in the Eastern Hemisphere.

I first went to Pacifico in 1999 when I met a friend from Australia there. He used to travel to London on business four times a year, so I would meet him there whenever we were in London at the same time. As a one time Los Angeles resident he had aquired a taste for Mexican, and had been coming here for years to get his Mexican fix.

He has since retired from his business but I continue the tradition in his absense, and I am compelled to text message my presence to him whenever I am there.

I Visit Germany Every Year

Now this is a hoodoo I can do without. I thought only Germans and people on business visit Germany every year, but I too am a yearly visitor to Germany. This was completely unintended of course. It started out innocently enough. When I was living in Dublin I got a free airline ticket to Germany in a newspaper giveaway. It was to Dussefdorf, in February. Not the first idea for most people when planning a day trip to a European city. It was free and I hadn’t been there so I went, and it was a good day out.

The following year it was a 1 pound Ryanair fare. Then I drove through it going somewhere else another year. A World Cup here, visiting friends there, and next thing you know I’ve been there every year since 2003.

I was quite happy in my ignorance of this fact, but in 2009 I realised this travel run had occured, and I accommodated my travel plans to continue the run. I was in the Netherlands near the German border, so it wasn’t a big deal, but now I find myself wondering if I can accommodate my travel plans around a trip through Germany.

I must say that during this unlikely run, I have discovered that I like Germany more than I ever thought I would.

Mainz – Just another amazing German city that hardly anyone goes to.

I Have A Pre Take-Off Prayer

It’s not so much a prayer, rather a reflection on a good life. I love flying, so when I’m sitting in an airline seat taxiing to the runway, I find myself grateful to be flying again.

Tarmac ponderings. Here we go again – thanks be to the travel gods.

I Have An International Currency Wallet

I have a wallet dedicated to foreign currency. I have Euros, GBP, USD, RMB and other currencies in small notes, as well as a coin purse with Euro and Pound coins. Part of this is just practicality. As I am in the UK and Eurozone at least once a year it is handy to have the small stuff for when you arrive. Whether it be for bus ticket vending machines or for something to eat upon arrival, having small change beats trying to break a 50 euro note at a kiosk.

So this is one part practicality, but there is also some travel voodoo involved as well. I figure if I have a small reserve of a currency I will return to this place eventually. This theory is partly modelled on Ernest Hemingway’s method of writing. He said to avoid writers block he always left something in the well to return to the next day. I apply the same principal with my currency. I also have useful currencies to me such as Thai Baht, Malaysian Ringgit and Swiss Francs.

The total amount wouldn’t add up to $100, so the $5 a year in lost interest is more than made up for in good travel energy.

I Have A Patron Buddha In Bangkok

I picked up this habit from a convicted drug smuggler actually. Go to any second hand book shop in Bangkok and you will always see a copy of Mr Nice by Howard Marks. In the book he mentions his love for Bangkok and how he had picked out a Buddha at a Wat, which he then visited every time he was back in the city.

I too love Bangkok, and I like the ritual of visiting a Buddha in thanks for being in Bangkok once again. I have modified this tradition to visit a Buddha according to what Wats motto would best help me at the time.

Need some calmness? Wat Pho will sort you out.

I Always Have A Ticket To Somewhere

Being a travel addict I feel better knowing there is an unused flight to somewhere in my travel documents file. This is similar to my international currency stash theory. Always leave something in the well. As I write this I have six unconsumed flights for the rest of the year. I can’t remember the last time I didn’t have a live ticket available. I don’t know if it would be bad luck for me to not have a flight somewhere booked, but I’m not in a hurry to find out.

I’m sure I have other travel habits, rituals and superstitions which I’m not aware that I am doing. I know people who always pack a lucky trinket on their travels, and people who always light a candle in cathedral of a visited city.

What travel habits, rituals and superstitions do you have?

Travel Habits, Rituals and Superstitions I Have Acquired Over The Years from Nomadic Notes Travel Blog

I have since been to WH Smith at Stansted and Gatwick and sure enough it’s all DK and Roughguides.

WH Smith Travel Guides

I am usually more organised than to buy a guidebook at the airport, but this deal has put me off buying anything at WH Smith.

The big shops were meant to bring more choice, but sometimes they actually provide less choice. I went into a Tesco Express to get a can of soft drink. The only cans they had available were Coke and Diet Coke. I then went to an independent off licence and they had about 20 types of canned drinks.

Unfortunately this is a growing trend in the UK. Go to any town in Britain and every High St has the same shops selling the same stuff. This phenomenon has been coined clone town.

You can have any guidebook you want, as long as it's DK or Rough Guides from Nomadic Notes Travel Blog

I was looking at a sale from V Australia for airfares between Australia and the US. The ads for the US show the price of the fare without the taxes, but at least show the approximate additionals underneath.

The Australian ad is also excluding government-imposed taxes and fees, but there is not even any indication of what amount that might be before you book.

European Parliament has agreed to ban airlines from advertising fares that do not include the taxes and charges passengers have to pay. There was talk of it happening in Australia and the US but it hasn’t happened yet.

Advertising airfares that don't include taxes and charges from Nomadic Notes Travel Blog

Here is a compilation of secret service departments around the world and how to go about getting a job as an international man (or woman) of mystery.

Secret Intelligence Service

Secret Intelligence Service is the official department of international spies in the UK, better known locally as MI6.

The MI6 name isn’t as famous as the CIA, but it has the most famous fictional character in James Bond.

MI6 can also claim Austin Powers as its own as well.

British citizens (and budding double-agents) can take this online test to see if they have what it takes to be an MI6 Officer.

CIA

The CIA is an institution that needs no introduction. Thanks to Hollywood it is a household name around the world.

In the fictional world the CIA doesn’t have a character of the same brand power of James Bond. CIA agents are usually portrayed as conservative men in bad suits. Jason Bourne has recently become as popular a character as Bond, but playing a CIA operative gone wrong wouldn’t be the CIA’s dream fictional character.

I had always assumed that you would become a CIA spy by being found rather than by simply applying, but the CIA are pro-active in publicly recruiting new employees. You can view all jobs on offer at the CIA website. If you are wanting to be an international spy then the Clandestine Service will be your department.

This is how The Clandestine Life is described on the CIA website:

Operations Officers and Collection Management Officers spend a significant portion of their time abroad. Typically, Operations Officers will serve 60% to 70% of their careers overseas, while Collection Management Officers will be overseas for 30% to 40% of their careers.

Plenty of opportunity for travel in the CIA.

CSIS/SCRS

For Canadians, you can apply at the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) or the Service Canadien du Renseignement de Sécurité (SCRS). CSIS is a boring acronym that doesn’t roll off the tongue nicely at all. No one outside of Canada has heard of it either so they must be doing a good job.

There are possibilities for travel with this job. The website states that “Intelligence Officers must be willing to relocate periodically throughout their careers”. Further details at the careers page on the CSIS website.

It would be the perfect agency for American double agents as well. It’s probably already stacked with Americans disguised as Canadians with Canadian flags on their backpacks.

Mossad

For Israeli’s there is the world famous Mossad. Duties include “bringing Jews home from countries where official Aliya agencies are not allowed to operate” and “planning and carrying out special operations beyond Israel’s borders”. Ahem, enough said.

ASIO

After reading the US and UK’s secret service job possibilities, working at Australia’s ASIO seems dull in comparison.

In Australia you occasionally see announcements in the press that ASIO jobs are available. The ASIO website has a ASIO Careers section, but the jobs on offer are more in the way of administrative duties. Doesn’t look like there is much on offer in the way of travel. Maybe the international spy jobs come via the way of the traditional tap on the shoulder.

NZSIS

This must be one of the most chilled out jobs in the secret service industry. The island nation at the bottom of the world has no known enemies, and slipping between countries would be a breeze as a New Zealand passport has one of the most unrestricted visa access in the world.

I don’t know what a New Zealand spy would actually do. Perhaps the biggest job of the NZSIS is planting agents in Australia to spy on the national rugby team. This might explain why there is a picture of people playing rugby the the NZSIS website.

Further details for Kiwi’s at NZSIS Careers.

SASS

South African Secret Service has a how to apply section on the SASS website. Fake passports would be a must for these spies as a South African passport is useless for international travel.

Irish Secret Service

The Irish Secret Service are a special branch of the Gardai Siochana (the Irish Police). They don’t have a website and not much else is known about them. In fact the Irish Secret Service is so secret, it doesn’t even exist.

I don’t know how an Irishman/woman goes about applying for a job but it would be an easy enough job once you got it. You could just work under cover at any one of the million Irish pubs which can be found in every corner of the world.

Travel the world as a spy from Nomadic Notes Travel Blog

Sometimes the film can become big enough that the city becomes synonymous with the film. Perhaps the greatest example of this is Casablanca.

I would hazard a guess that unless you are a Moroccan or a travel and geography nerd (like myself), most people surveyed would associate Casablanca with the movie before the port city in North Africa.

Here are some other films that have a city or town as the title. I am including fims that only have the name in the title, so no “Escape from New York” or “2 Days in Paris” in this list. Not even Paris, Texas.

Naming a movie after a city usually works best for lesser known places. Elizabethtown the movie put Elizabethtown the small city in Kentucky on the map.

Fargo the movie put the city of Fargo in North Dakota on the map, but not in a nice romantic comedy kind of way. For me when I think of Fargo I think of inappropriate usage of wood chippers.

Sometimes movies are named after big well known cities. Philadelphia is probably the most successful city titled film, winning three Academy Awards.

Some other big name cities as film titles include Chicago, Barcelona, Bangkok and London, though that one isn’t about London at all.

For big cities a suburb of the city might work better, like Notting Hill in West London.

Some cities are too big to ever become associated with an eponymously title film – good or bad. Paris opened to less than average reviews, but not even a Rasberry of Battlefield Earth proportions could sully the brand power of Paris.

If it’s a film named after a German city, you can be certain that it won’t be a cheery number. For example Dresden, Munich and Nuremberg (TV Movie). You don’t even have to see the synopsis to know that the plot will somehow involve saturation bombing, Olympic terrorism and war crimes court drama.

German cinema has become more vibrant since the fall of the wall but it might be a while before we see such title as Berlin – a romantic comedy.

If you know of any other notable movies named after a city or town feel free to leave a comment.

Movies named after cities from Nomadic Notes Travel Blog

I can’t think of many movies that are named purely after a country with nothing else in the title. The DreamWorks Animated Madagascar is probably the highest profile movie named after a country. Brazil is another one that springs to mind, though it is not set in or about Brazil.

Australia: The movie and the branding opportunity from Nomadic Notes Travel Blog

I don’t know enough about the game to tell the difference between the quality of the national leagues of Europe, but whenever I meet a football purist they will tell you about how the Italian or Spanish league is better quality than the English league. This may or may not be so, but in terms of popularity English football is miles ahead.

Here is a good article about English Football at Time Magazine.

[English Football Live]

[Knock-off Football Shirts - English Clubs Dominate.]

English footballs cultural hegemony from Nomadic Notes Travel Blog

It is a common tradition worldwide to name an airport after a local hero. Here is a list of some of the best airport names in the world.

UK

- Liverpool John Lennon Airport.
An obvious choice for Liverpool, though Paul probably thought he should get the honour. A small consolation prize to John for being the first Beatle to die.

- George Best Belfast City Airport.
A name that wouldn’t mean much in the US, but in the rest of the world where football is followed he is known as one of the greats of the game. He was also one of the worlds first celebrity footballers. A man’s man, he was just as well known for his off-field antics as a hard drinking playboy.

- Robin Hood Airport Doncaster/Sheffield.
This airport name raised controversy as Robin Hood is more often associated with Nottingham. It turns out that Robin Hood was not from Nottinghamshire but from South Yorkshire. Nottingham is served by the prosaically named East Midlands Airport.

Europe

Why is Italy shaped like a boot? Because there is too much stuff to fit in a shoe. It is also overflowing with famous people to name airports after. The best Italian airport names:
- Rimini Federico Fellini International Airport
- Rome Leonardo Da Vinci International Airport
- Venice Marco Polo International Airport
- Genoa Cristoforo Colombo Airport
- Pisa Galileo Galilei Airport

- Saint-Exupéry International Airport Lyon France
Saint-Exupéry was best known for his childrens book The Little Prince. He was also, appropriately, an Aviator.

- Tirana International Airport Mother Teresa Albania
Mother Teresa was Albanian. Who knew? I don’t think I ever stopped to think about where Mother Teresa was from.

- Franz Josef Strauss International Airport Munich Germany

- Alexander the Great Airport Kavala Greece

- Krakow John Paul II International Airport Poland

- Warsaw Frederic Chopin Airport Poland

- WA Mozart Salzburg Airport Austria

- Malaga Airport Spain
Half points to Malaga for their terminal named after Pablo Picasso (terminal 2).

U.S.A

In the USA they love to name things after Presidents, including airports:

- Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport VA
- Houston George Bush Airport TX
- Abraham Lincoln Capital Airport Springfield IL
- Gerald R. Ford International Airport Grand Rapids MI

Kennedy has two airports named after him:
- John F Kennedy International (JFK) New York NY
- John F. Kennedy Memorial Airport Ashland WI

The US also has an interesting selection of airports named after entertainers:
- Bob Hope Airport Burbank CA
- John Wayne Airport Orange County CA
- Louis Armstrong New Orleans International Airport LA
- Indiana County-Jimmy Stewart Airport Indiana PA
- Will Rogers World Airport Oklahoma City OK

Airport Name Suggestions

Australia is lacking in good airport names. While Sydney’s Kingsford Smith Airport is fittingly named after a pioneering aviator (who was actually from Brisbane), the rest of Australia’s airports aren’t doing their job to showcase Australia’s favourite sons and daughters. Perhaps Brisbane could get the ball rolling with Steve Irvin Brisbane International Airport.

In Europe Belgium is often mocked for not having any famous people. Brussels is home to Herge, who created one of the worlds most famous cartoon characters – Tintin. Brussels International could become Tintin International, which would be appropriate as he was always trotting around the globe.

America has a good selection of airport names but there are some glaring omissions. Can you believe Memphis International Airport is not named Elvis Presley Memphis International Airport. It would thus become Elvis International for short, a name that rolls off the tongue as smoothly as New York’s JFK. And like JFK everyone would know where Elvis International is without having to mention the city name. The only problem might be that Tupelo Regional Airport might have something to say about the name, seeing Elvis was born in Tupelo.

Most people know that Jim Morrison lived in LA and died in Paris, but did you know he was born in Melbourne Florida. A great opportunity for their no name airport.

Seattle has a small airport named after Boeing – Boeing Field – and it would be wrong not to. Seattle-Tacoma International Airport remains nameless. I propose Jimi Hendrix International Airport.

LAX Los Angeles International has no name. Perhaps they have too many names to choose from. Do you have a suggestion for a name for LAX, or any other airport in the world?

The world's best airport names from Nomadic Notes Travel Blog

Can you say you have been to a country if you only spent a few hours in one of its cities? Changing planes at international airports doesn’t count (of course), but what about a weekend or day trip to one place? Technically you can, but do you?

I was thinking about this question when filling in one of those where have you been maps that you might have seen doing the rounds.

I had a go at one of these maps when someone sent me a link, and I found that large countries lit up because I had been to one of its cities. I felt like a British colonial cartographer, trying to shade the world red.

[British Empire Map (from wikipedia.org]

I wasn’t going count some countries, but then I thought I should just to illustrate this train of thought. This is the map of the world of the countries that I’ve technically been to. (This map of Visited Countries by VirtualTourist).

Notice how all of Turkey is coloured in. I did a day trip from Rhodes in Greece to Marmaris in Turkey. Marmaris has a large expat beach scene and the 4 hours I was there didn’t really feel like Turkey.

I once spent a weekend in Mexico at Puerto Penasco (Rocky Point), about 60 miles from the US border on the Gulf of California. I went with some friends from Arizona. Rocky Point is a beach resort town and it is the closest beach to Phoenix. I didn’t feel like I was in Mexico (except for those mariachi buskers with the oversized hats) and back then you didn’t even need a passport to go there. So when I’m asked if I have been to Mexico I usually say no. I guess you could say I’ve been there, but I haven’t done it.

I have been to the capitals of every Scandinavian country but I have never seen the Fjords of Norway or the Wilderness of Lapland, so I don’t usually say I’ve been to Norway or Sweden either. I have though beaten myself with birch branches in a sauna in a small town in Finland, so I don’t beat myself up about that one and proclaim Finland as done.

With these sort of maps at least they break down the states and territories of the US and Canada. Even so, some of these areas can be vast. The territory of Ontario has been lit up on my map because of a weekend I spent, mostly indoors, at a convention in Toronto.

I have lived in a few different countries and I have found my preference is to base myself in one place and get to know a country. I feel confident in saying that I have done England, Ireland, Switzerland and Hungary.

Australia is my home country so I have to say I’ve been there but so far I have only done the East Coast.

When do you say you have been to a country?

When can you say you've been to a country? from Nomadic Notes Travel Blog

[A shady tree in Deira - Dubai]

A good example of a green city in a hot and dry climate is Madrid. The Spanish capital in the middle of the Iberian Peninsula is one of the greenest cities in Europe. The shady elm trees make the summer days bearable.

Los Angeles has realised the benefit of urban trees and have embarked on a campaign to green the city by launching the Million Trees LA project.

Trees For Cities is another site about beautifying our cities through tree planting.

Having greenery is one thing, but it needs to be usable as well. I found this park near the creek only to find that you can’t use it.

[Don't sit on the grass - Dubai]

Greenery makes great cities from Nomadic Notes Travel Blog