I’ve been back just over a week now after my holiday to San Francisco. It took probably about three years worth of spending but the flight I took was thanks to redeeming frequent flyer points for Virgin Atlantic. My sister ended up coming along because they had a 2-4-1 deal and we both only had to pay the taxes for the flights. Amazing at how much tax you actually end up paying with both of our flights still costing a few hundred quid even with the tax. I wonder how the airlines make any money after all.

Fortunately the rest of the trip was relatively inexpensive since we crashed at our cousin’s place in San Francisco where it was pretty easy to get around by bus. The weather forecast looked ominous from the day we left with heavy rains and grey clouds scheduled all week. What a surprise when we turned up and had blue skies for almost the entire stay. The day we left was cold and drizzly but everything else was perfect. We even spent enough time walking around in the sun that I ended up slightly sunburnt (yes, I’m officially British now!)

Although we had both been to San Francisco before we still did almost all of the things a tourist should do including visiting the Golden Gate Bridge, heading up for a great view to Coit Tower, getting lost in the great expanse of the official Chinatown area and riding one of the cable car trams from the downtown area to the built up tourist hot spot of Fisherman’s Wharf.

We bought a Citypass that gave us entry to some of the sights around town including the amazingly large Science Museum, a cruise around the Bay area and access to the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art that was definitely worth visiting.

We also took a segway tour of San Francisco that lasted a good three hours standing upright and a little bit of training to get used to the strange vehicle. The vehicle is classified as a bicycle according to the local laws, so we had a little bit of safety training before being unleashed on the streets as a group where our tour guide took us to see a number of interesting sights around the coastline area. We only had a couple of people falling off their segways but more due to the fact they were playing around than anything about the vehicle itself.

The other significant trip we took was when we hired a car and drove up to Napa Valley where my sister had snagged an elusive booking for the famous French Laundry restaurant. Consistently up in the Top 100 restaurants of the world, the French Laundry is a very well known restaurant and a purveyor of very fine dining also requiring that I bring along a coat for our lunch time meal.

The drive up to wine country was fun. Being a Sunday we encountered little traffic and was a great little road trip. I can’t believe how quickly a single week goes, particularly when you are busy sight seeing and having fun.

I spent the last week of January in Munich, where I was presenting at one of Germany’s largest conferences, OOP Conference. It’s the first time that I’d been to Munich as I haven’t been for any of the crazy Oktoberfest antics and figured I would get there one day. It’s a relatively small town, or at least felt like it to me in comparison to Berlin. One of the things to see there though is the BMW World and museum. I even booked in a plant tour that was well worth it but you’re not allowed to take any photographs.

BMW World sits at the same UBahn station as the Olympic site. It’s very well signed posted and when you emerge from the correct UBahn, it’s literally right in front of you, so you shouldn’t get lost. It’s a really amazing building on the outside. Twisted, curved metal – appropriate for a car marker but softened up in a way you wouldn’t really expect. The BMW World showcases a lot of the cars they sell with a few interactive exhibits and showcasing some of the older cars like the tiny Isetta (pictured below) where people would emerge from the front of the car.

You can sit in many of the cars, except for all the limousine or really high end editions and they even have offers when you can rent a car (for a number of hours), or a number of days right there from the centre.

Munich is also home to the BMW 3, and if you get a chance, make sure you book the factory tour. Seeing the insides of a car manufacturing plant running so efficiently is quite extraordinary. Even though you think that the factory takes up a lot of space, when you look at what they accomplish with it, and how closely some of the robots move relative to fixed ceilings, or other robots, I find it extremely impressive.

Even though I’m not the biggest car fan in the world, I’d still recommend taking a visit out to the BMW Museum that lies across the road from the BMW World. It records the history of the company, from its original roots as an engine manufacturer for aircraft, to being honest about its involvement during the world wars and how its managed to thrive when so many other car manufacturers struggle. It also has a few concept cars that make it very interesting to visit as well as a number of beautifully kept cars you need to locate in the basement such as this BMW 328 Touring Spider car above.

With some holiday to burn before the end of the year, my initial thoughts of simply staying in London and being a local tourist went out the door and found myself on yet another plane trip. This time, to my first trip to Morocco, destined for the warm and friendly city of Marrakech.

When arriving in Marrakech, it’s not long before you realise you’re in a different part of the world. Motorcycles ride next to bicycles, cars overtake randomly though with some amount of order. I even saw one local riding unicycle on his motorbike though guessing that even he was not a common sight by the way that people looked.

I had organised with my Riad, an apparently popular way to stay in Morocco a taxi to pick me up. A good thing too as they are often hidden away from the main drag. This can be a strange experience for some, and one that I was puzzled with at first. Winding corridors under dark corners with potential for dangerous actually provide a certain amount of privacy and solace from the busy, dusty main streets.

I remember distinctly waking to the 6AM religious chants. Marrakech is mostly Islamic so ritual prayer is a very common sight, and the chanting a very common sound. Throughout the day, you’ll hear a loudspeaker blaring in arabic tones though what they’re saying i will never really know. Unfortunately Riad’s aren’t really made to keep the noise or the air out, as I found out how chilly and noisy they can become. It’s a good thing that the Riads only allow guests and have a quiet policy to allow people to sleep. It’s so easy to hear things outside that I even woke up to one lady screaming early one morning several streets away and I’m guessing they weren’t particularly religious moments she was having.

I titled the blog doorway because I remember thinking about how interesting many of the different doors were. It’s easy to get lost in the souks and winding roads. In fact, that is what I did most of the time – simply wandering around waiting to be asked, “Where do you come from?” or more simply named, “Jackie Chan” or strangely enough the name of countries or towns. “Hey, China,” was a common one just as much as “Tokyo,” and “Osaka.” Growing up in Australia means you kind of shrug these things off although these were definitely on more friendly terms.

Besides the many souks and market places, I ate at the huge market place that is disassembled and reassembled every night. Though very touristy, it’s also where a local of the locals eat. Justice is swift and brutal in the markets as well as I noticed when a kid, who I think stole something or did something to some of the vendors, was chased down near to where I was sitting. The friendly faces of some of those enticing you to the stall darkened, and it wasn’t long before a few swings and even a kick connected with the boy who was given a telling off before running away in tears.

I even was recommended to have a local hamman – quite the experience at literally being drenched by buckets of water, covered in clay, before being steamed in a hot room and then being scrubbed down with some rough gloves to remove the dead skin. A cup of mint tea (essential Morocco flavours) and a bit of relaxing before a massage to relieve the muscles.

It was a great time to escape and I think I even got a little sunburned from the whole experience.

One of the reasons I picked the Budapest Half Marathon to run was to visit a city I was yet to actually visit. Budapest was a bit of a closer flight from Berlin and, if I ended up in London, also would have been quite an easy exercise to get there with several carriers including budget airlines like EasyJet going there more frequently.

Budapest is a beautiful city, of course, made up of the two very different sides, Buda and Pest that formed to turn into a single city sitting along the Danube River. We saw quite a lot of what there was to see, although pretty much just lazily walked around the entire city partly because the Sunday meant I wasn’t particularly energetic after the half marathon, and also because the weather was really hot.

One of the interesting things I found out about the city was how old many of the buildings and furnishings there were. Apparently, for example, the metro system was just as old as the London Underground and it kind of showed (in a good way) including the old signage to the leather straps one holds on to instead of the modern day plastic ones.

People are very patriotic about their city and you’ll often see national colours and flags in various places. I had to laugh at this particular one, with a mascot dog flying the Hungarian flag that we saw shortly after the half marathon finished.

We stayed on the Pest side of the river, where there is much more to do as a tourist, both in terms of places to walk around and just places to eat. Buda seemed to be a bit more where people lived although the stretch along the river offers much to the visitor such as their small furnicular that leads up to spectacular views over the Danube.

From the amazing vantage points you could really appreciate how many bridges Budapest had that criss-crossed the Danube back and forth.

One of the good things to do as well is to visit the Great Market Hall that offers an insight into what sort of things people eat (lots of meat!) and admittedly several touristy places where you can pick yourself up a souvenir or two. Popular things to buy include paprika, paprika paste, goulash spices, saffron and truffle oil or truffles.

Another great thing worth doing if you have a bit of time is to get to Margaret Island and enjoy the scenery or lie about in a park like many of the Hungarians would if you have the time.

Hire one of the great bikes and have fun navigating in a very old cycle for two. They are very similar to the ones you can rent in Rome for instance.

One of the hardest parts of of being a travelling consultant can be planning optimal holidays in advance. For example, I had a summer trip planned for Paris, although this meant a trip back from Berlin to London only to Eurostar it out to Paris first thing the next morning and then a reverse route to get back to Berlin on the Monday morning.

Nevertheless, it’s always great to visit the French capital, full of little boulevards, and winding streets, amazing pastries, reasonable coffee and just a great atmosphere.

I’ve noticed that when you travel for work and then go on holiday, I want to do just wander and relax rather than trying to see lots of different things and do plenty of activities. This is rather easy for nice cities that have heaps on offer that I’ve visited before.

The other great thing about Paris is knowing a few people and I got to catch up with Sat who’s living in Paris with his girlfriend telling me the whole low-down of life as an IT consultant in Paris and the difficulties of working in the rather hierarchical organisations.

Although the storm clouds threatened at times during the weekend, I was fortunate to have much better weather than both London and Berlin that had terrible storms for that weekend in particular.