I recently went to the David Bowie exhibition at ACMI and the Melbourne Aquarium, and for both of them I bought my tickets online and got an e-Ticket on my phone. That meant I didn’t get actual paper tickets, which was a pity because I like tickets. I keep all my entrance tickets when I’m travelling and I’ve got a shoebox full of them – from museums and galleries to temples and towers. Read more →
It’s time to dig into my shoeboxes again. So far on my Travels in my Shoebox blogs I have dragged out my beer coaster collection, boarding passes and bank notes. My largest collection, however (filling up an impressive three whole shoeboxes), is my collection of city maps. Remember them? Why I say that is because you don’t really need a city map anymore. On my last couple of trips I simply used the map on my phone. I’m not sure exactly when it happened, but the map on my iPhone didn’t work without wi-fi and now it does. Once you hit the streets the map stopped working, but now you can follow the little blue dot as you traipse around the city. I have since navigated my way around San Francisco, Phnom Penh and Ubud without a city map. Read more →
It’s time to rummage through my shoeboxes again for another episode of Travels in my Shoebox. I have an incredibly large collection of foreign notes and coins, but for a long time I didn’t go out of my way to collect them – I just always seemed to be stuck with a pile of money when I left a country. Yes, I’d try to buy stuff at airports or before I crossed borders, but there is a limit to how many packs of chewing gum you really need to buy. I’d been throwing stashes of foreign cash into my shoeboxes for years before I decided to skip the chewing gum buying frenzy and not only start collecting foreign notes and coins, but even have a dedicated shoebox for them. I reckon if you added them all up (and converted them to Australian dollars of course) I’d probably have a quite a few hundred dollars (or 742 packs of chewing gum). Here are some of my favourites from my collection: Read more →
It’s Part Two of Travels in my Shoebox and I’ve dragged out a few coasters from my impressive and, some may say, worryingly large collection of beer coasters (it’s so large that I need two shoeboxes). Coasters are one of the few souvenirs that I actually collect in my travels – okay, and maybe that has a lot to do with the fact that they are FREE. I’ve picked my way through them (or should that be pickled my way) and pulled out the coasters that have a story behind them (mind you, there are many that I can’t remember the stories – and the beer brand on the coasters may have something to do with that). So, pull up a bar stool and enjoy… Read more →
I have a cupboard full of shoeboxes. But they’re not filled with shoes. They are filled with mementos from my travels. Inside are maps, coasters, matches, restaurant and hotel receipts, napkins, badges, stickers and… well, all kinds of crap. I’m so organised (or have a good dose of OCD) that I even have allocated separate boxes for certain items including beer coasters, bank notes and boarding passes. There’s all kinds of interesting bit and pieces in my boxes, so I’ve decided to do a semi-regular blogisode on the contents of my travelling shoeboxes. And I’m starting with my boarding passes. Yes, it may be a little sad, but I collect my boarding passes and I have a rather impressive collection even if I do say so myself. I won’t show them all (the Jetstar flight from Melbourne to Sydney isn’t that exciting), but these are either interesting airlines or have interesting stories that accompanied that flight… Read more →