Flying Aubergine

I recently stayed overnight in a temple during a trip to Japan. It was located in a temple village on Mount Koya, or Koyasan in Japanese, south of Osaka. Probably no need to mention the majority of the overnight places in this village were temples, and therefore the amount of tourists was also quite high. To get to the top of Mount Koya, we took a 5 minute cable car ride from the train station where the train dropped us off. The train ride from Osaka was really scenic, passing plenty of small villages on our way to the cable car. When we arrived to the top we had to get on a 10 minute bus ride to get to the village. We weren't allowed to walk from there as the road was quite narrow and not safe for pedestrians. Arriving at the temple the first thing we had to do before entering was to take of our shoes as they're not allowed inside. The receptionist, who of course was a monk, greeted us in fluent English in a tiny room full of paperwork, books and documents in a charming

A few years ago, I spent the summer on the Faroe Islands working at a small guesthouse on a remote island called Mykines. It was one of the greatest experiences I have had, and staying with a local family gave me the opportunity to see how the locals live. The Faroe Islands is a group of islands in the Atlantic Ocean, located halfway between Iceland and Scotland. The islands belong to Denmark, but they are self-governed. They also have their own language, Faroese, which descends from Old Norse but they learn Danish and English at school and many of them are comfortable speaking Norwegian and Swedish as well. There are about 50.000 inhabitants on the Faroe Islands, but less than 10 of them are living in Mykines village, which is the only village on Mykines. The village does have quite a few houses which are mainly used as summer houses, so the village is quite lively in the summer which was the case when I was there. To get to and from Mykines, I had to take a boat which onl

During a trip to Amsterdam together with a friend last spring, we visited the lovely flower garden Keukenhof, located in Lisse not too far from Amsterdam. The garden, which opened up to public in 1950, is only open to visitors during spring from around mid-March to mid-May when the flowers are blooming. It's full of spring flowers, mostly tulips, of all the colours and colour combinations you can imagine... To get there we took a public bus directly from the airport in the morning, which took us about 50 minutes. There's also public transport from Amsterdam, so the garden is easy enough to reach. I would recommend to set aside a full day for this visit (that is, if you like flowers of course..). We didn't see time pass at all and didn't have any struggles spending the whole day there as there was just so much to see! In addition to strolling around in the garden and having a few stops at its cafes and restaurants, we also enjoyed a litt