Author RenegadeTourist
Yesterday, Renegade Wife and I slept as long as we could to kill the jetlag, then spent the afternoon exploring Reykjavik. It’s a pretty small town for a capital city, and we didn’t see all that much. Today we headed out in our battered old rental car (the company Sad Cars that we rented from has older cars and lower prices than most other rental firms) to see the real Iceland.
We did what is commonly called the Golden Circle, a tourist rout that heads north out from Reykjavik then bends off towards the inland and comes back in a … Read the rest
It so happens that me and my girlfriend Yini got married a little while go. Not to squander the precious wedding leave the companies give us (almost two weeks added on top of the annual leave), we decided our honeymoon should be some place we wouldn’t normally go. So, in a few hours, we will fly off to Iceland, and it will be a real land travel vacation. We have booked a couple of hotels, we have a rental car, and we have the ring road round the circumference of The Land of Ice and Fire. Both me and Renegade … Read the rest
I’ve only been outside for a couple of minutes but I’m already utterly and completely drenched. My shirt clings to my back like a wet dish cloth, my jeans are heavy with water, sticking to my thighs. Every time I brake or change gear, a torrent of cold water runs down my legs and sloshes around in my shoes. When I speed up the heavy drops pound my chest like a fistful of marbles, I’m suffering unmatched levels of discomfort. I see the light turn green and the riders preceding me hit a giant puddle on the opposite side of … Read the rest
On Sunday we had more time, so me and Kevin drove out of the city to the northwest. We headed to the historical site Newgrange, but when we got there, we found out we had to buy tickets at a completely different place. So, we drove around quite a long distance (the lack of roads stopped us from taking a shortcut), and finally managed to get some tickets.
The site itself is a big stone age tomb. From a distance it looks like a big grassy knoll that kind pops out of the landscape because it is a bit too … Read the rest
I am currently on a business trip to Ireland. Since it is weekend I had some time off from work. Me and my colleague Kevin used this opportunity to take our rental car and go out explore Ireland.
I actually had to do a little bit of work on Saturday morning, so there was not really enough time to leave the city. Instead we drove to down town Dublin, parked the car near Trinity College and spent the afternoon walking around the city center.
We started with the college itself, and the very impressive library. The main room is long, … Read the rest
We are in the central chamber of a stone age tomb, a vault of crudely cut megalith blocks above us and outside that, a great mound of earth covered in grass. The guide turns off the tourist friendly electric lights and the chamber goes completely dark except for some dim light spilling in through the passageway. She turns on the light simulating the equinox sun and a golden ray shoots along the floor, filling the passage with brilliant golden light and grows in luminescence until it culminates in a thin point on a spot precisely calculated by ancient astronomers. Though … Read the rest
This weekend we are visiting Yini’s parents. Normally that means staying in their house and playing with her nephews but this time Yini and I decided to go on a small outing instead.
We started by driving to Beigang and had a late lunch nearby the kind of famous Mazu temple there. After lunch we took a stroll through the temple area and the market there. There was a big pedestrian bridge spanning the nearby river and two huge temple guard statues at the bridgehead, which was pretty impressive, but nothing overwhelming.
The bridge 
Yini taking a rest under part