Travelling on New Zealand’s TranzAlpine Train

Travelling on New Zealand's TranzAlpine train

There’s something magical for me about getting on a train for a long journey. You get to see how the landscape gradually changes around you, you can walk around and the sound of a train on the tracks is one I have always found comforting. I feel like flying is sometimes too fast and airports are hectic in a way that train stations aren’t for me. Long journeys have a...

Alcobaça and the Dead Queen

Monastery of Alcobaça

There are two people buried in the monastery of Alcobaça and it was them who first brought me to Portugal. I was fifteen and had just won a writing competition organised by the Portuguese Ministry of Education. My entry was a re-telling of the story of Ines and Pedro, written in diary format from the point of view of Pedro. I called it “The Dead Queen”. Don Pedro and Ines...