CM Travels

10/04/2025 - 15/04/2025 A church on a hill, an art gallery with Monet and Rodin, beautiful bridges over a river, cafes, restaurants, bakeries serving delicious pastries, vibrant, youthful energy filling the streets and great public transport - no it's not Paris, it's Lyon. Quite possibly my favourite city I have visited thus far. Beautiful architecture, a great geographical place for a city bordered by two rivers creating a Manhattan-like centre (much smaller however) and Roman ruins fascinated me, ticking a lot of boxes for what makes a city "cool" to me. My time in Lyon will also always be special to me given the amazing time I had with Pierre and Myriam, some new friends I made, thanks to family-friends back in NZ, Marty and Antoinette.  I arrived in Lyon from Nîmes and found my way to another shitty French hostel. Now my gripe with French hostels is not because they're dirty, uncomfortable or unsafe - thankfully. All of them I have stayed in need to pick a lan...

6/04/2025 - 9/04/2025 My skin prickled and the hairs on my arms bolted upright as 60,000 French voices chanted deafeningly "Allez L'OM, Allez L'OM, Allez L'OM" - "Come on, Marseille". Under the impression that nothing could beat the atmosphere of the Atletico Madrid home stadium a few weeks ago, I was glad to be proven wrong this Sunday night in the ancient city on the southern coast of France. The passion, noise and sheer enthusiasm of the Marseille fans was unrivalled to anything I have experienced up to this point in my life. As I drunk in the electric atmosphere pulsating through the Stade Velodrome, I felt I understood for a moment the devotion, the obsession that these people have for their team. When life is hard, and believe me, it seems difficult in parts of Marseille, you need an outlet, you need a mechanism to put aside the grind and struggle of daily life and unite with others for something bigger than yourself. Something more, something bett...

  4/04/2025 - 5/04/2025 Observing the intricacies of French neo-classical painting in Le M usée  Fabre, I sat alone on the black leather bench, pondering the direction of not only the rest of my day, but as I often do, the direction of my life in general. The past month I have spent more time by myself than any month in my life. I am used to being alone. Contemplating, reflecting, fantasising, dreaming of the future; key parts of my daily life now. While the things I glean from these long periods of time alone are incredibly powerful and significant, I cannot truly say that solitude is my preferred state of being. As much as I enjoy the time alone and often yearn for it, interactions with other humans are what gives me energy in my life. Classic extrovert behaviour it seems.  I arrived in Montpellier, my first destination in France, ready for a little alone time following a social few days in Barcelona. Wandering the wiggly, winding streets of the beautiful city in the So...

29/03/2025 - 3/04/2025 I'll admit I have cried twice on two separate train journeys this trip. This second time was again, music induced. "Sitting on this rock, spinning round this burning ball, worthless with no purpose but somehow worth it all" Tom Scott rapped through my headphones, as the tears rolled down my face. There is nothing quite like Tom's lyrics to remind me of home and hit me right to my core. I often find it hard to overcome the feeling that we are, as Tom says, just sitting on this rock, spinning around a burning ball of gas. I'm trying my best to find the purpose and meaning in my life with this adventure of mine. As I continued to the think about my home, my friends, my family, my whole life I've left behind, tears continued to well in my eyes as Barcelona beckoned.  Following my stint in Sevilla, I arrived in Cordoba following a night in the seaside town of Cadiz. Admiring the Mosque-Cathedral of the former capital of the Umayyad Caliphat...

20/03/2025 - 28/03/2025 Writing overlooking La Giralda, the magnificent Spanish-renaissance tower, at the heart of Sevilla's old town, I have realised that my time in Portugal has caught up to me. While the phenomenon of not knowing what day of the week it is, and honestly not really needing to, does enable spontaneous outings in Iberian cities, eventually this takes a toll on the body. A sore throat has plagued me for the past few days with a headache and runny nose joining the party today. Good times.  Speaking of good times, the phase of my journey in Europe's western most country, Portugal, was full of them. Prior to arriving in Portugal's second city of Porto, I spent a night in the Spanish city of Merida, or as it was called during the time of Imperial Rome, Augustus Emerita. Being the history geek that I am, this place was full of fascinating Roman artifacts, sculptures and architecture. I'm sure just a taste of what I can expect to see in Roma itself in a month...

  10/03/2025 - 19/03/2025 "The moon is up over One Tree Hill" echoed through my headphones as I gazed across a hill that was almost as far away from One Tree Hill as you can possibly get on this Earth. A weird sense of melancholy mixed with nostalgia and adventure washed over me as a tear started to well in my eye. I was a long way from home in the central plateau of Spain. I think that I have begun to recognise on this trip that there are such a wide range of emotions that we can go through as humans that aren't necessarily split into positive and negative. This moment in Segovia outside Madrid was one of those emotions that I couldn't define as either "good" or "bad", it just was what it was.  I spent my last portion of time in Thailand back in Bangkok, albeit in a different part of the city. In the end I stayed in five different places in Bangkok, which gave me a better understanding of the city than if I'd just stayed in the same place I re...

4/03/2025 - 9/03/2025 Not much can beat a New Zealand beach. This little slice of Thailand called Koh Samet has tried, but in my eyes, failed. Clear water, white sand and blistering temperatures do make the beaches of Koh Samet and surrounds picturesque, but Marahau or Hahei, those are special beaches. I suppose that I am  naïve   to the nature of many beaches across the world, meaning that any sense of commercialisation on a beach is a turn off. Give me water, sand, a bit of grass, a road, and then shops/bars/cafes etc. rather than bars and resorts right on the beach any day. Oh also there is a decent amount of rubbish on the beaches too. Not quite like back home. One of the goals of this expedition of mine is to gain some perspective and appreciation for Aotearoa. In terms of beaches, I certainly have a new found appreciation of kiwi ones.  The rest of my first stint in Bangkok was relatively uneventful, however, it was filled with some good reflection time, as well as ...