Travel Blog
We set up our travel blog to keep a journal of our holidays and travels, it is easy to forget details. As we Travel around the world we want to visit as many countries as possible following the sun. Europe, Asia, Africa, Australasia and the Americas are all on our list to explore more
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Almost Jamaica Time
As a major football (soccer) fan, I’ve always avidly watched each and every World Cup since the first one I remember, the great days of 1966. In fact, through all my years of working, I would watch every match which fitted in to my work schedule and rued having to miss any at all – dreaming of the days when I retired and could gorge every single match. And guess what. Here it is, the first World Cup where I’ve had the opportunity to watch every moment, and I’m choosing to travel and so will miss nearly all of it! My first chance to make that particular wish come true…
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Sometimes It’s The Little Things…..
Travel may bring once-in-a-lifetime experiences, give us memories we will treasure for ever, but if you keep a journal, or, indeed, a blog, you also build up a collection of those funny little moments….. He appears out of nowhere as we walk across the sand dunes. “Guten tag. Wie geht es dir?”, he asks “Wir sind Englisch, nicht Deutsch”. “Oh you are from England. Where from? London, Manchester? Let me tell you one thing, this place is so much better with guide. A guide who knows.” “We don’t need a guide. Thank you. We are OK”, says Michaela. “OK. You need to know way to beach? I can show you”.…
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Things That Shape Our Lives
So how exactly do you end up like us, retired but always content to be away from home, still always looking for new places and new experiences. Well, there’s **MICHAELA’S STORY** and there’s **PHIL’S STORY** but there’s probably other factors too. You become reflective as you get older, it’s one of life’s great truths. A different perspective starts to descend, one which enables us to look more objectively at the moments and events which shaped our lives and forged our character. Some such moments seemed immaterial at the time yet had an impact which reverberated through the years; others were more blatantly influential. September 1975. My brother, seven years older…
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Dreadlock Holiday
Not the first time we’ve used a 10cc song title as the header for a blog post, let’s just hope it never has to be “Rubber Bullets” or, especially, “I’m Not In Love”. Isn’t planning the next trip just one of the absolute joys of being a traveller. It doesn’t pass us by just how lucky we are, in so many ways, as we open books entitled “Where To Go When” and “The Travel Book”, knowing that the world, almost in its entirety, is our proverbial oyster. Although using a snot-like seafood which needs lemon and tabasco just to be edible for such a positive metaphor is a bit of…
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These Cornish Things
In our last blog post we discussed how unseasonable the current weather is, feeling far too mild to be cusp November. After over four decades of visiting Cornwall I really should have known better, for my comeuppance arrives swiftly and with a vengeance, in the form of howling gales and unforgiving hailstorms. Walking from Rock to Polzeath is a doddle, the morning clouds banished by the strong winds which, coming from behind, propel us along the coast path at roughly twice our normal walking speed. The return walk couldn’t be more different. Just in time for reaching the part of the path furthest from shelter, those winds, now head on…
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Changing Times, Different Moods
It definitely didn’t used to be like this, not when we were kids. Growing up in the Midlands – Michaela in the West Midlands and me in Derbyshire – it was cold by now and it had been so for weeks. October got progressively colder, frosts a regular morning feature, whitened cobwebs draped like lace across rockery plants and garden shrubs, the walk to school taking place with the protection of coats, hats, scarves, gloves. Hallowe’en was a non-event, just another night in the build up to Guy Fawkes Night aka Bonfire Night, but by the time we were standing back and watching the pyrotechnics light up the night sky,…
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Mystique & Magic In Avalon
The alarm clock is sounding, dragging me out of the vivid dreams which have no doubt been triggered by the need to rise early. Funny, for most of my working life a 5:10 alarm after about five hours’ sleep was the norm for 25 years or more – now, after three years of retirement, 6:30 feels like early morning and there is a glue holding my eyelids in place. Cold water on the face, caffeine in the gut, and we’re off. We’re up and about for a reason, not only are we travelling down to our beloved Cornwall for a week, but we’re detouring en route to Glastonbury, just over…
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Borderline Ridiculous
I think it’s fair to say that my relationship with technology is an unsteady one. Machines and gadgets which work perfectly well in the hands of others quickly malfunction once I get involved. It’s not just technology either: for instance, hand driers in public toilets often don’t respond to my presence and I’ve sometimes had to ask some mystified stranger to put his hands under the sensor in order to get the damn thing to work. Touch screens, even at cashpoints, are unpredictable, iphones and ipads pass into mysterious phases which only Michaela can dispel, and when I was working, my ability to bring any machine or IT gadget to…
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Concluding Rome & Heading Home
The sun continues to shine from cloudless skies – as we enter the second half of October and near the end of this short Italian sojourn, temperatures of up to 29 degrees surprise and delight us. We had hoped for sunshine but this warmth has been a big bonus, so perfect for exploring the two wonderful cities of Bologna and Rome. Tucked into the tight streets between the Trevi fountain and Piazza Navona, The Pantheon is a remarkable and beautiful building, boasting the widest masonry dome in Europe which in turn houses the oculus through which sunlight cascades in spectacular shafts. The whole place is fabulous. The walls are adorned…
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Stories And Histories: More Days In Rome
On our previous travels we have visited the Jewish quarter of Kazimierz in Krakow and walked through the chilling and horrific histories at Auschwitz and Birkenau, wandered through the former ghettoes of Venice, Thessaloniki and others, visited Jewish museums in several cities as well as Ann Frank’s House in Amsterdam, learning again and again of the bigoted persecution of people of that faith. Even so, there is a different element to Rome’s equivalent, the former ghetto now known as Communita Ebraico, knowing that creation of this particular ghetto took place under the watchful eye and direct personal instruction of the Pope, who ensured that, as with all other ghettoes, the…
