Phyl's Blog

I was reading this on the BBC yesterday. I found it interesting that the correspondent found the noise off-putting at times. When I finally ...

Don't you just love the effects you can achieve by stitching photos together ? I felt that Manhattan lent itself particularly well to th...

I guess this has to be the final New York topic, there is no avoiding it. I had known from I touched down in New Jersey that whatever else I...

Almost finished on the topic of NY for now, you'll be relieved to hear but I still have two final topics. The Brooklyn Bridge being one ...

These are two aspects of New York that none of the films or TV capture. The traffic, the taxi horns, the many different languages you hear a...

Another rant about prices: if I had known how much I would have to pay for T-shirts in NY, especially baby T-shirts like this one I bought m...

So here it is in Manhattan - large coffee with a bagel, just $1-25. So why do we numpties in Scotland pay 4 times that much here for the sam...

I don't know what it was about Times Square. I assumed with all that hustle and bustle and neons, Léon would find it fascinating. Howeve...

I went into a chemist on 5th avenue an hour after arriving in Manhattan. It looked spookily familiar - it could have been Superdrug. The lay...

Straight after lunch one day in Manhattan I passed this place near Times Square. I was full and Pudge was asleep so I noted it mentally (eve...

Another astouding thing I found about America is how cheap everything was - the food, the drink, the clothes, the gas. WHY exactly do we p...

One thing I really loved in NY was those food places where you could go in and fill a little plastic tub (or even a big plastic tub) with ev...

Léon tried his hardest to reach them earlier but still couldn't so unless we get a ladder or a broom there is soon going to be a cider f...

You can't go to New York without eating bagels so for my first bagel I opted for the veggie special: cream cheese, lettuce, onions, slic...

Got you worried there - you thought I was going to rant madly about missing ones, didn't you? ;-) No - just thought you'd like to s...

When I was a student I backpacked all around Europe alone, interrailing, bussing, even hitchhiking (though not alone). No one ever commente...

The first thing that struck me when I reached Manhattan was that shade of yellow used for the taxis. Everyone has seen movies set in New Yor...

You have to feel a tiny bit apprehensive when you are faced by 14 hours on a plane in 4 days with a baby sitting on your knee. A baby who do...

Eastern Canada looked quite different from I expected. It was very flat, very empty and covered in little ponds and lakes (photo to follow o...

I fly a lot. I fly all over Europe, but that means I always fly above land. Last Saturday I flew across the Atlantic for the first time on a...