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I have very fond memories of Boston with the last time I went here, now, almost eight years ago. I’m not sure what it was exactly. Perhaps it was the strong college town feel with big names like Havard, MIT, and Boston University located right in the centre, or perhaps the blend of confusing English-style streets that creates hidden pockets of culture to be discovered. Either way, I had another great time visiting all the different sights that Boston has to see, to make a bit of a change to all the attractions New York has.

Eight years ago, I remember taking a Duck Tour (that unfortunately don’t operate in winter), and only got to see the Cambridge side of the river when the bus was operating in boat mode. This time, I made an effort to get over to that side and walk around the campuses of both MIT and Havard. Both have amazing campuses, particularly all their buildings, and we made a special trip to visit the Gehry building, though beautiful on the outside, apparently had some flaws that the institute sued him for. Havard Square was fairly bustling when we arrived, particularly considering it was the holiday season, and in the middle of winter so I can only imagine the life it would have at the height of spring or autumn when the school is in full tilt.

Cambridge isn’t the only side with nice buildings, with the Boston skyline dominated by small high rises, all very different and interesting buildings. With everything from the super reflective mirror windows of the John Hancock tower (pictured above), to the Prudential Tower (pictured below), all of them really stand out when you’re by the water at night time. We paid for the Top of the Hub skywalk, in order to get the views of Boston from above, and complete with audio guide for adults and children, it was fairly great value.

Nearby to the Prudential Tower, was the Mary Baker Eddy Library, home to apparently the world’s only Mapperium, a three story glass sphere containing maps of the world. Though you pay about $US6 for a brief video, tour and admission, it’s definitely strange to stand inside it as it echoes everything almost perfectly. You can hear literally hear a whisper from across the room as the glass and spherical shape echoes it all around. Unfortunately we weren’t allowed to take photos, as the inside is a lot more spectacular than the photo shown below, taken from the area you end up waiting in.

One of the better free things to do in Boston is the State House tour, a free guided tour that operates fairly frequently in the building with the only gold leaf gilded domes. The public are welcome at attend, and it is still an active building with all the politicians required to meet, I think it was, at least twice a week. They have some amazing rooms, and plenty of history to talk about and I found it quite fascinating thinking about all the paintings, murals and statues all throughout.

One of my favourite places last time to visit was the bustling area of Quincy Market. Admittedly it caters for the tourist, but it just always seemed to have a busy atmosphere, and decorated with the Christmas lights really shines at night time. It’s also a place where you can grab small bites to eat from all of the different eateries, and indulge in the famous New England Clam Chowder (or Chowda! as a local) served in a sourdough bread bowl.

We were really lucky with the weather that we had, since the day we left it was snowing heavily and combined with the ferocious winds, was difficult to walk around without starting to feel the icy chill. Clear blue skies heralded over all of the hours we walked around, and even though it was cold and windy, having the sun out made a huge difference to us enjoying our time there. Check out the rest of the photos from the trip here.

In an endeavour to escape the bitter cold of England, I’d booked to travel to Barcelona a couple of weekends ago with my mate Nikhil. Unfortunately we didn’t escape the cold as we’d expected with temperatures on par with the near zero degrees but at least we had perfectly blue skies for almost the entire weekend. We stayed in a small hotel just one street away from the main tourist drag, La Ramblas, full of touts and tourist traps. They even had an excessive number of questionable ladies of the night, who were, frankly, rather direct in their approach with people walking up and down the street. Other than that, everything else made me think that Barcelona is a wonderfully liveable city.

Barcelona has plenty of sights to see if you’re visiting for the weekend, with plenty of amazing Gaudi buildings sprawled throughout the city, and his influence still affecting many designs today. I think we managed to visit pretty much all of the buildings, at least from the outside, since each cost at least €8 to walk around inside and would have cost us over fifty quid each time. Casa Milà is an amazing building, full of rounded edges and strange looking balconies. Fortunately they also have a free museum at the bottom that allows you small glimpses of the interior of one of Gaudi’s buildings. We also visited the, never to be finished for another hundred years, Sagrada Familia, an impressive gothic church, the outdoor area with a great view of the city Park Guell, and the George and the Dragon tribute Casa Batlló. I also made a special trip out to see Barcelona’s version of the Gherkin, the Torre Agbar that appeared much more luminescent though is also not as tall.

Food is a huge part of the Spanish lifestyle and with plenty of cafes, bars and restaurants to whittle the time away it was almost too hard to choose which ones to go to. Unfortunately one of the things that I couldn’t quite get used to was the siesta period that means that all of these places shut from early afternoon to about 8 in the evening when they start to reopen. On one evening, to avoid freezing in the cold outside, we even stopped at an Irish bar until we thought some of the restaurants would be open again. I’d highly recommend people visit the La Boqueria market, off a side street from La Ramblas, where all the locals go to buy all their local produce and plenty of quick, cheap and amazing quality lunchtime foods.

On the Saturday night we went out to battle the only rain that we had for the entire weekend, to watch the Barcelona vs Madrid football match. We had hoped to find a bar full of local supporters to watch the game with plenty of places with TV screens but all we could find was a whole heap of other foreigners trying to do the same. Fortunately it was a great match with with the first goal of the evening falling in the last ten minutes against Madrid, shortly followed by the finishing second goal that stirred everyone in the audience to celebrate.

I got a good sense walking around the city that Barcelona has a wonderful life and work balance. I’d definitely like to return (though this time in the summer) and just relax into the Spanish lifestyle, complete with siesta and all. Find the photos from the weekend here.

The combination of commuting a fairly long distance for work, and several weekends away means that I haven’t had a chance to catch up on the blog. Fortunately the weekends away have all been put to good use, and that means anything not related to work. Three weekends ago now, I ended up in Frankfurt for a long weekend. The combination of cheap flights with Ryanair, and an offer to stay at my mate, Martin’s place meant that there was little reason not to go.

Frankfurt is home to the “financial capital” of Europe, and is also the place where I believe the Euro is minted. Like most financial cities, it’s chock full of commuters, since why would bankers want to live in the city where they work when they can afford many other places to live? This means that strangely enough, when I got there Thursday evening, it seemed much busier than the rest of the weekend. I’d have to recommend anyone flying for the weekend to avoid flying Ryanair to Frankfurt. Firstly, they fly in the inappropriately named Frankfurt-Hahn airport that is actually in Hahn, and is two hours away from Frankfurt. Of course, there is a bus (which is additional) but it only departs every hour. Fortunately I wasn’t so much so in a rush.

I don’t know what it is, but I really enjoyed my time in Frankfurt. Despite the terrible weather where it seemed to rain more on than off, the area really seemed very liveable to me, and I think I really liked the thought of that. I wandered around many different parts, and even stopped in one of the many museums they had all around. I think the museum was one of modern art that had a exhibition showcasing the works of Takashi Murakami. Some of the works were amazing, with large statues built out of his drawings to be more than lifesize simply breathtaking, whilst a number of others slightly odd and definitely much more risque (NSFW). Funnily it wasn’t at all hard to remember that I was in Germany with so many attendants all over the place making it impossible to take any pictures. One even shouted at me in German as I leant forward to take a closer look at some figurines behind glass. I’m guessing she was saying to not touch it, but for that particular display, I couldn’t see how I would have been able to.

Of course, one of the great things about visiting Germany at this time of year is all the Christmas markets, crammed with loads of tourists and locals buying Christmas decorations and memorabilia and tucking into all the grilled sausages, fried potato mixtures and the must have Gluwein (mulled wine), perfect when surrounded by tons of people in the cold and needing just that little bit extra to keep you warm.

I have to thank my wonderful host, Martin for letting me crash at his awesome pad – something you’d never ever be able to afford in, or around London and its great location made it easy to get in and out of Frankfurt, and had an ever better night in Mainz with his girlfriend, Kerstin, at the much larger Christmas markets practicing what little German I knew and just enjoying the overall Christmas spirit. Check out the rest of the photos from the weekend here.