Marjan

If you keep walk­ing out of Split you end up on the Marjan penin­sula. The first time I visited I made the mistake of climb­ing up to the peak in 35c heat. After that I sens­ibly took the coast road.

Low stress travel on the cheap

I love to travel, but I don’t have much money. Although long-haul flights and luxury holi­days are out of my reach at the moment I’ve managed to see a fair bit of the world for not very much, and perhaps my budget limit­a­tions have meant that I’ve seen some inter­est­ing places I might have other­wise missed out on.

I find online budget travel tips not that great though. They seem to swing from “save money by only eating ityer­eal bars and sleep­ing on trains on your trip” to “cram in thirty museums in one day with this special tick­et” to “get this special Air Miles cred­it card only avail­able in Flor­ida, and book your flights at 3am on Thursdays Alaska time”. I want to eat nice food from the cuisine of the coun­try in ques­tion; sleep in a clean, safe and comfort­able hotel room in a conveni­ent loca­tion; and get a chance to explore and see things prop­erly, not treat­ing sights like a tick list to complete as quickly as possible. I don’t want to be cold, hungry, exhausted, or put myself in danger; this is supposed to be fun. I just don’t have a lot of money to spend.

Wander­ing along the canal

I often like to get some fresh air in my lunch break by walk­ing along the canal near my work. There’s not a lot there, just some house­boats and a small lock, and a lot of lunch­time joggers and the odd person eating sand­wiches on a sunny day. I’m a big fan of canals, and I think I’ve walked along pretty much the whole length of this one at vari­ous points.

En train de flân­er. Aucun train-train.

Here’s some more photos from Paris (again taken with a Pentax ME super and expired Pound­land film with a strange red cast), from my gener­al wander­ing around. Wander­ing is one of my favour­ite things to do. In French it’s flân­er, and someone who wanders around a city, observing things and casu­ally explor­ing is a flâneur or a flâneuse, much celeb­rated in liter­at­ure. I did a lot of that on my recent trip, both because I was on such a tight budget, and also because I was on my own, so I was free to spend my time as I liked. I’m in the middle of writ­ing a new zine about the trip. Hope­fully I’ll have it finished by the Shef­field Zine Fest next week­end.

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