Back in the golden days of dirt-cheap budget air travel, when Ryanair wasn’t yet the dreaded last-resort carrier it is now, you could fly from Glasgow Prestwick to Milan Bergamo for around £30 return, including taxes, with no extra baggage fee, no check-in fee, no nothing. Those days are sadly long-gone, and with Prestwick Airport on the verge of bankruptcy – seemingly being kept afloat solely through … Continue reading 86 Hours in Milan
Having spent 6 months in the Netherlands so far, I can tell you with a fair amount of conviction that the Dutch are not the most reserved people you will encounter. This is generally. You know, average everyday dutchness… the type that occurs about 360 days a year. Of the 5 days not included in this figure one is Queen’s day, where everybody dresses from … Continue reading Carnaval Madness!
It seems like I had barely arrived back home from Maastricht when I was back at the airport again boarding another flight to another European airport. With another joyous layover at Heathrow Terminal 5. My parents have rented an apartment in Nice for the festive season and we’re all going over to see if the French are any good at doing Christmas. I have high hopes. Even though I moved … Continue reading A Riviera Christmas
First set of MSc exams FINISHED! I won’t say they were easy, but I’m pretty confident I didn’t do too dreadfully. Naturally, the whole MPP cohort celebrated with a massive piss-up at the Highlander bar where we drank them out of both gin and tequila. It’s a lovely, crisp, sunny October day, and I’m feeling surprisingly non-hungover considering last night’s antics. Just as well, really, … Continue reading Parental Visitation
So our program, and we shall be known from this post onwards as MPP (Master of Public Policy), is very nationally diverse. From about 100 students in total, there are about 45 different nationalities represented. To celebrate this diversity, and so that we can all get to know a bit about each others’ cultures, there will be “international dinners” held sporadically throughout the year, where we … Continue reading First International Dinner
We are in Maastricht and it is beautiful! So my fantastic parents decided to take the “any excuse for a holiday” approach to me moving abroad, so we basically just loaded up the car with all my junk, grabbed my sister and drove to Newcastle where we got on a ferry, had dinner, sat at the bar for a few hours, went to bed and woke … Continue reading Arrival in Maastricht
So I’ve just got back home after a mad 3-weeks running around America, and it’s pretty much only just sunk in that I’m moving to the Netherlands in less than 2 weeks and I am so not organised it’s unreal. Just before I left for the US I was accepted into a MSc program run by the United Nations University institution UNU-MERIT in conjunction with … Continue reading Can we panic yet?
It’s my last full day in New York City and I don’t have any grand plans with which to fill it. There are, however, a few things I’d still like to see. Some of them I’ve seen already, but I’d like to see again (probably because I failed to appreciate them when I was a moody 16 year old trailing after my parents), and some … Continue reading NYC: 9 of the Rest
The Beach is divine… Yep, it’s time to go to the seaside! I don’t have a bucket or spade, or a bikini, or anybody to be frivolous with… and truth be told, I’m going less for the sand and the sea and more for the sake of “going to Coney Island” like they do in the movies… but I’m still fairly excited about the ice … Continue reading Sometimes I go to Coney Island
Everyone loves a good bridge, right? Majestic, strong and really quite useful, the right bridge in the right place can become more than just a piece of infrastructure, it can become an icon. Of course, the most iconic bridge in New York City has to be the Brooklyn Bridge, a Hollywood favourite and one of the oldest suspension bridges in the US, but all good … Continue reading A Tale of Three Bridges
the lost scot 