In Bruges

Recently I was at my mums house, my brother Si was also there and he told us about "mini cruises" whereby you could take a ferry to a chosen northern European city overnight, which would then take you back again the following day, he also mentioned how there was a deal on where 2 people could go on one for the not so princely sum of £75.

As it turned out Si was so well informed on matters of mini cruising because he had been on one before and had been looking to go on another at some point near his birthday, this time probably to Bruges, unfortunately it seemed that no-one else had any available holidays remaining to use to join him on this trip, I asked if that was an invitation, as it turned out it was.

This would be my first trip abroad without Rachael for over 5 years, I had a decision to make, a very important decision, one that would potentially shape things to come, that decision was obviously: What colour pin was I going to use for this trip when I added it to the map? Would I have to start a whole new colour or would an existing one suffice? Green and Blue were out, they are for trips with specific individuals, what about red? Madrid in 2007 remained red when I met up with and stayed with Si, how is this any different? Well it is extremely different, I would be going with him to Bruges, not meeting him on one of the stops during a single trip, to indicate in colour terms that I went alone would be a complete lie, what about purple then? That was used once in 2009 to indicate that I went with my family, Si is family, could I use purple for this trip? Yes. Yes I definitely could.

The title of the post on the other hand was never realistically up for debate.

So, on a Tuesday afternoon, we set off on the road to Hull, or rather we set of to my house to collect my passport as I had seemingly forgotten you needed one to leave the country and that they're not just for plane journeys, who knew?

I had never travelled anywhere by ferry, having usually opted for air or land based modes of transport, but it is quite enjoyable, the boat takes about 15 hours to do a journey a plane could do in about 1 hour, but the ferry is a lot less stressful and you get a tiny bunk-bed cabin in which to sleep at night. It is a lot like booking into a floating hotel what with the resident entertainers and the expensive food (so THAT's how they make the money then).

Except of course you can't walk outside until the morning, most hotels would struggle to drum up business with that sort of policy.

The morning after setting off from Hull, we landed in Zeebrugge, where we were transferred by coach to the non "Zee" Brugge (Or Bruges to us English speaking types). We were dropped on a nondescript road across a bridge from a park at the edge of the city centre.

It's only a small place and is centred  around the square, which was in the process of being turned into a Christmas market with an ice rink, we were a bit too early, so it was just a collection of sheds with a large white rectangle in the middle.

I remember quite enjoying the architecture in Brussels when I was there, not for any sort of artistic merit it might have (though I'm sure it does) but because of how odd it seems, often seeming  as though  the buildings have just been tacked on to each other as neighbouring buildings seem to be so different, it didn't seem as pronounced  in Bruges, but it is still noticeable, like in this photo I took from the top of the clock tower.

The "Manneken Pis" in Brussels  only added to the impression I had of Belgium, but a little pissing boy seems completely normal compared to this fountain. Now I know we have to suspend reality slightly when we're looking at a fountain with a mermaid in it, but the projectile lactation seems a step too far, why did the water need to be coming from there? At least the pissing boy was doing something biologically possible, mermaids are supposed to be women from the waist up and I don't think women can do that (not to self, confirm detail with a woman). Also the water pouring from her mouth seems uncomfortable in itself, someone should help her!

Our day included a museum, a clock tower climb and a canal boat trip (as we had apparently not had enough time on a boat already) before we returned in the late afternoon to the coach taking us back to the ferry.

The journey home was much like the journey there, since it was in the same vessel, doing the same journey in reverse and we were staying in the same cabin room.

Though I did remember to take a photo of my sat-nav on the way back as it turns out that if you're far enough away from a road, rather than getting confused and assuming you are on the nearest road, it just shows where you are in the world, so when on the boat, it shows you floating around in the sea, on setting the view to 2d, I could see exactly where we were and how fast we were travelling. My favourite part has to be the instruction at the bottom: "Go to nearest road" It isn't going to concern itself with how I came to be floating around in the sea or even how I am going to get back out of this predicament, "Just return yourself to a road, then I will help you again, until then you're on your own".

The Red Bag

It lands upon the beach, a sense of accomplishment is felt for it has made it to shore, now it seems is the time to rest.

The rest is quickly interrupted by the very same water that brought it to where it lay, bringing it back out to the mercy of the  waves.

Back and forth it now floats, being granted its temporary freedom, then having it taken away in the same stroke.

Where did it come from? Has it floated across from a neighbouring island or a passing boat? Perhaps it fell from a passing helicopter? Or maybe it was the fallen fruit from a nearby rubbish tree?

Does it even know where it came from? The answer to that one is no. It is just a red plastic carrier bag and is completely incapable of sentient thought.

This year when planning our summer holiday, we more or less realised there was no point pursuing the alternating year pattern we appeared to be following, never mind the troublesome trip to Syria next year and the subsequent biennial trips to various middle eastern countries, Italy it turns out is expensive.

So when planning this trip, we thought back over our recent summer holidays and which one was the favourite. On comparison, the favourite trip was probably Crete in 2011, so we thought, maybe we should return to Greece, but perhaps visit a different Greek Island this year, Corfu perhaps?

So this year our holiday was Biograd in Croatia.

Croatia would have fitted into our pattern, but what with the intermediate countries and the other half of the pattern, we weren't due to visit until 2018, so either we're 4 years early, or this year, we chose to travel to the future. Probably the 1st one.

Biograd is a small marine town on the coast of Croatia so there are plenty of boats and pebble beaches.

During our trip we chartered our own vessel to sail across the sea. Granted it did have pedals. In 2008, I rented a pedal boat with Titch to pedal around a river in Prague (I believe - Its too much effort to check). So what made this pedal boat superior? The answer is of course, a slide.

Not only were we able to pedal around in a boat and play in the sea with somewhere to keep our stuff but... we had a slide!

Weeeee!

Could we top the pedal boat during the same trip? Well we could try, but nothing beats a pedal boat, we visited a national park (called Plitvice or if you are misheard Cliff Richard)

Cliff Richard national park is a Unesco world heritage site full of lakes and waterfalls, it's really quite impressive. Its no pedal boat with slide, but its impressive in other ways.

Almost as impressive as the size of the burger we managed to get from a fast food place when everywhere else seemed to be closed.

Now that we've broken the pattern, its anyone’s guess where we're going next. Or if we assume we just skipped a few years, we can safely assume it's going to be Iran. I'm looking forward to it already.

Internet Enabled Instrument Enhancers

For the first time in almost 6 years, I had the opportunity to update my travel blog in real time, but I blew it, I could have even written it during the holiday, just like old times. We had internet access and a tablet computer, but my priority when given free internet access is to play on my Nintendo 2DS, because apparently I am 12.

Also unlike non pill based computers, this one had no apparent way to connect a digital camera, what is this blog without photographs? Its just a man rambling on about nothing with the occasional vague reference to another country. You're only here for the photos, you wouldn't know if every post was just a single introductory sentence and then place-holder gibberish text like they have  on printer test pages and on those emails that used to sit in my junk e-mail box trying to sell me organ enhancements in pill form (I still don't understand how medicine can even enhance musical instruments, plus I feel as though they're entire target audience should have been churches) Most of it made no sense, but occasionally a few words seemed to materialise close to each other and create a meaningful phrase, much to my occasional delight.

Looking at the above paragraph, I'm not so sure this isn't all just place-holder text after all.

Pigeon!

The holiday was a few weeks ago now, this year we chose Bratislava in Slovakia.

Upon arriving at the hotel, we walked into a tall carpeted lobby, with bell boys in waist-coats, I had to double check our booking confirmation to make sure this was definitely the place we had booked and was still half expecting the receptionist to laugh in my face for about a minute, before telling me that I wanted the other Apollo Hotel, the one with the  barn door entrance, a single sleeping receptionist and a climb up 17 flights of stairs that smell distinctly of urine to get to your 8 foot x 8 foot box room where you are provided with a spade to prop the door shut while you're in.

But she accepted my print-out with a smile and a request for a 100 euro deposit, - I would have got all of that back had we not ordered room service on the first night, this was certainly a holiday of firsts for us - Did you know that in hotels, you can eat without even leaving the room? Amazing!

The biggest giveaway that I did not belong in such posh surroundings was during breakfast the following morning, on my return to the table (probably carrying pancakes) I picked up a transparent plastic cup with a yellowy swirl at the bottom, I was so proud of myself, I was going to try their Slovakian breakfast mousse. I dipped my fork and put it in my mouth to taste, it was strange, greasy and sort of salty, yes, I had grabbed myself a nice cup of butter. Out of embarrassment I had to get myself a piece of bread to go with it, I didn't want the waiting staff to know about my error.

Apparently a few days later, different colours appeared in the plastic cups and they had started to serve breakfast mousse, as though I had been seen and the chef had been ordered to prepare some, like they now assumed we must eat in England. But it was too late, I had already been stung, I could no longer trust the little plastic cups.

Pigeon!

In the lobby of the hotel, was a slight indication of how the city of Bratislava sees itself, On the counter was a list of local taxi prices, you had the usual choices, city centre, shopping mall, train station, then the rest were prices to different countries (namely Austria, Czech Republic and Hungary) - Bratislava is usually just a stopover, somewhere you're supposed to pass through on the way to where you're really going.

But we would not stand for that, Bratislava was our holiday and we were going to enjoy what it had to offer, for starters, 1 90c bus ticket could get you anywhere in the city as long as the journey took under an hour, and it wasn't limited to buses, it included trams and those electric buses connected to  wires hung over the road... Probably have a name... I won't go all public transport anorak... Not again.

It's a very small city, but it looks nice to walk around, in the main city centre there are no cars and it has all the requisite nice buildings for you to look at, take a photograph of, eat a calzone nearby and then leave again. Here is one of them.

I don't think Bratislava has had any proper famous people, there are 2 statues quite close together, one of a very nice local man who used to give flowers to ladies and so on and... this man. I didn't actually take this photo, I just this minute took it off the internet, but I wanted to mention it as we found some information about it in our free tourist guide, this is a "Manual worker who preferred to look up women’s skirts than to do his job" - A local pervert gets a statue, that's what it takes to be immortalised in bronze in place!

Here's Rachael behind a tree.

On the Friday, we decided to visit one of the neighbouring countries, by train, Vienna was only an hour away.

I remember being in Vienna with Titch and going to a nice indoor zoo, I wanted to go back on this day, but had absolutely no idea where it was. Apart from that and a night out with a drinking tour, I remember Vienna being pretty dull, it was this time too, there just wasn't anything to do, though we did find a nice park to while away the afternoon.

Austrian Pigeon!

Automatic Awe Generator

I'm sorry, there isn't a new holiday in the blog today.

 

I had a notification in my Gmail account telling me that one of my photo's had been 'Auto Awesomed'. Apparently, not only do all photos I add to my blog end up in a picasa album, but they're linked to the Google+ account Google makes you have.

I decided that since I put all this stuff publicly on my blog anyway, this wasn't really something to become bothered about, also this picture from Lithuania looks pretty cool with snow effects:

Lets all just enjoy the falling snow.

Being Turkish

For those of you who haven't yet worked out the pattern, 2013's Summer holiday was to Turkey.

The pattern wasn't intentional, but it happened - From 2010  with our Summer holidays we have been moving East one country at a time on alternating years. Starting in Portugal in 2010 we moved East to Spain in 2012, Starting in Greece in 2011 we moved East to Turkey in 2013. I don't mind that we now have to go to Italy later this year, but I'm not really looking forward to Syria next year, things are a bit tense at the moment... Might have some nice wild hamsters though.

Specifically our holiday took us to Alanya near Antalya and significantly...

This was the first time in 5 years that while in a different country I was sporting face furniture.

Apparently the most interesting thing I can ever think to tell the world is how hairy my face is at any particular time. There is at least one post in this blog pretty much dedicated to it - This one - We were on holiday, surely there is something else I could talk about?

Well there is, for example, there was a big long walk up a hill to find a castle. I just couldn't find it here, where the hell is it?
This walk was followed by a meal at the top overlooking the harbour and a similar (but reversed) walk taking us back down to the bottom.

I'm pretty sure hill walks have featured in this blog before as  well, but I'm not going to go find that one - Was moving on to activities really worth it? I bet you wish we were back on beards now don't you? But no, that's it, Beard time is over, you've ruined it now.

After we had already checked out on the last day  we were waiting outside the apartment building for a coach to arrive to take us back to the airport.

This cat walked over and joined us on our little couch, we had seen him (I will continue assuming the cat was male, so I don't have to refer to him/her as an it - I'm sure he/she won't mind) about while we were eating or swimming on previous days, but it was the first time he actually came and sat next to us. He may have been wild, but he could just have easily have belonged to a neighbouring house.

He was wary of me at first, but after I tickled him he decided that I not only wasn't a threat, but that I was a friend that he should curl up on and make himself comfortable.

He stayed there for quite a while, until we actually got up to leave - at which point he seemed quite put out. Hopefully he forgives me.

That's all of the holidays up to date now, future holidays will be added with the normal irregularity that they occur. The next one will be Bratislava, so if anyone can work out the pattern that goes:
Germany
Ireland
Lithuania
Slovakia

That would be very useful to help work out where we'll end up going next year.

There's also now a pins in a map page to go along with this blog which I'll continue to add to.

Back in the (former) USSR

Snow can be nice. If we look past the cold and wet and forget about all the disruption, then I think most people can enjoy a bit of fluffy ice - Even if you don't want to go outside, build snowmen, have snowball fights or slide down a local hill on your favourite bin lid, you can at least look at it and admit that it makes the world look like a postcard... Until it all turns brown or it melts and floods your house - You're allowed to be bored of it then.

I like that really satisfying crunch when you first step into a particularly deep bit of snow, that’s good, unless your foot gets wet.

In Lithuania, during the winter, you have a very good chance of snow, usually between November and February it is a guarantee - 2013 was definitely no exception when our plane tickets took us all the way to Vilnius.

- Infrastructure will be marvelled at in the following paragraph

The first thing you are (ok, I am) likely to
notice is how much everything just keeps on going with all this snow. Back home, I remember a time when it was snowing for a week, no-one could get to work, the roads were unusable and the entire country ground to a halt. Here, it just didn't, nothing stopped, it was just normal, this was just how things were. It probably helps that they have snow for a 3rd of the year, for us its so rare that it just causes the councils to curl up into little council balls and weep their council sized tears... Which does nothing for the subsequent flooding issues.

I wonder if anyone marvels at the way Britain just copes with the near constant rain? Probably not, its not that impressive really... and the fact that we're currently so close to losing Somerset probably doesn't fill the rest of the world with awe.

It was so cold on this holiday, even the trees were wearing jumpers! Temperatures were in the early minuses, but it was pretty manageable as it wasn't windy... Except that one day when there was a street market going on, that one seemed to challenge the stall holders, so I don't think that’s normal weather.

And the crowds gathered to watch the giant man dive into the small pile of snow, secretly hoping that the horse would butt him in first... If I actually looked things up, I wouldn't have to make things up - As good a reason as any to never look anything up.

We could not go to Vilnius without visiting the bust of Frank Zappa, because it is just so odd, he is not from here or has even been here, but they have a statue of him, apparently a group of artists petitioned the government after the fall of communism, presumable just to test how much of a democracy they now had. Apparently enough to get a Frank Zappa bust on a large metal pole.

We were in Lithuania for almost a week, we accidentally stole breakfast, we learnt we liked Lithuanian food and we came home with an ocarina and a set of matryoshka dolls. All in all a successful trip.

Port of Adventure

We go to Alton Towers at least once a year, usually by saving up coupons out of the Sun newspaper - Unfortunately this means we have to buy The Sun for a few weeks a year, but it is worth putting ourselves through that to get our tickets. Plus the rabbits don't really mind what we line their house with. They might seem a bit angrier with us, but that is most likely just in my head.

The point is theme parks are fun, especially the rides - Wait the rides ARE the fun part, I don't think anyone goes to stand in queues and eat overpriced food, I can do that at home, I just need to go to Marks & Spencer close to Christmas.

Ooh penny arcades, they have them too, they're good! That reminds me of something else that happened in Ireland... But we're not on Ireland now, that was the last entry, now we're in the summery part of 2012 and we're building a holiday based around the enjoyment of roller-coasters, we're going to Port Aventura in Salou, Spain.

As it turned out going to a theme park didn't constitute a complete holiday plan, so we decided we would spend a few days in Barcelona before continuing on to Salou, now Barcelona has a really good public transport... wait I think I've covered public transport systems once before.

It rained a bit while we were in Barcelona, which dampened our enjoyment a little bit (no pun intended), but we still managed to get around to see all the important bits, like the Sagrada Família, will they ever finish this thing?
And this giant glass penis, that’s one of Barcelona's main tourist attractions right?

After a few days of drizzle and phallic buildings, we felt we had seen enough of this historic city and it was time to move on to the 2nd part of the holiday, we took the train to Salou, where unfortunately it was also raining, absolutely pouring down, you could barely look outside without getting soaked. On the end of that first day, it seemed like it was never going to dry up, it looked like Port Aventura was going to have to wait.

The light seeping in around the curtains the following morning told a different story though, it was glorious and clear, like the rain had never happened, so after a chance discovery of the children’s cartoon Phineas and Ferb, this would become day 1 at the theme park.

Probably the highlight was the new ride 'Shambala' which is meant to be like the Himalayas, so is an up and down sort of roller-coaster, the most interesting part being the first time we went on, we sat down, this little disk came down over our laps and we wondered where the rest of our harness was, the bit you normally have over the upper part of your body, making you feel safe and secure, what the hell were these?

What was quite nice was they had all the halloween stuff out, so there were giant pumpkins, skeleton horses and costumed characters all around who walked through the park in a halloween parade at the end of the day.

After the 2 days at Port Aventura, we had few more days in Salou, where there was sunshine, a bit of seaside and a load of bats.

We're almost up to date now, the next holidays to write about took place in 2013, maybe I'll be able to properly remember them. Lets find out.

Potatoes

I watched Home Alone as a child (and probably every year since then when it airs before Christmas) in both home alone films (I am glad they decided that 2 films was plenty and that there was no reason to make any more) there are scenes where the family has to run through the airport as they are extremely late. Haha, what a scene, it would NEVER happen in real life though.

2012 now and rather than a city break, this time we were having more of a countryside break, part of my family harks from Ireland (this obviously makes me Irish - As any racist or any person with Scottish or Irish parents will tell you, nationality is genetic and not based on anything silly like where you're born) and I had never been to Ireland (this point is irrelevant in the above nationality claim), so that was the plan. We booked the flights to Knock, my dad and Gill made reservations at a B&B in Ballaghaderreen (I think).

We always make sure to get to the airport nice and early, it doesn't matter if we have to wait a little bit in the airport. As it turned out, the same was not necessarily true of our travelling companions, who were working and sleeping in the morning while we packed our bags and watched the clock creep ever closer to the time of the flight. There was about an hour left when they arrived to take us all to the airport, since we didn't have any checked bags, we could still make it in time provided there were no more delays.

Unfortunately, there were to be many more delays. It turned out that on this day, the grass in the middle of the road was being cut near the airport, which is all well and good, except that they have to close a lane, which causes queues in the other lanes. Upon arriving at the airport, the first task was to park the car, finding where needed to happen, parking and returning all passengers to the airport was a good way to bleed away most of the remaining minutes just to make sure it was almost impossible to get on that plane.

But we were certainly going to try. We hurried up the escalators and towards the airport security, hopefully there wouldn't be a queue! Ha! As if it would have been that easy, of course there was a queue, a huge queue! Well that was it, no chance of making it through that, never mind we did try.

Wait, express tickets, for £4 a piece we could jump to the front of this queue, most of the time, this seems like a cockish thing to do, just wait it out with everyone else, but these were extenuating circumstances, this was our one hope, there wasn't even enough time to figure out the ticket barriers for it, just push on through with the alarms blaring. There were annoyed people in the queue who thought we were pushing in, they were right of course, but we had paid for the privilege.

"Manders, Morris, Finn and Finn, please go to gate **" We were being called, we were so close, but we were still on our way through the security checkpoint, where the man using the manual metal detector did not feel the same urgency as us to get us through. My dad and Gill went ahead in an effort to hold the plane for us, while I waited for my bag to come through the scanner, it did where it was separated from the other bags waiting for a manual check in an area I could not reach, where there was a member of staff refusing to react to this new object in her work area, as our names were called again, I felt the need to ask her to hurry, which went completely unappreciated.

Eventually my belongings were returned and we were given the opportunity to step into the part of the buildings with the gates at almost exactly the moment the aircraft was supposed to taxi-ing towards the runway, we were out of time, but we felt there had to still be a chance, cue the recreation of Home Alone as we ran through the airport towards the gate... Well towards a gate anyway, the wrong gate, meaning we had to turn around and run even further, we arrived at the gate just as our entire party was about to be completely turned away for good, but they did allow it, they opened the gate and let us through, we had made it, it was touch and go, but we made it, the staff were trying to hurry us, but we had made it this far, they were already waiting for us to board and we were outside, they weren't about to turn us away now.

As part of the lineage tour of the area, we came to this house, I believe it was where my Grandmother grew up and I am also of the belief it has seen better days, though I think they were quite a long time ago now.

I also found where duplicates of me were being grown in pots. That one looks about ready for picking.

Greasy fingers

Following my unresearched assumption that the concrete play area was some sort of modern art, Rachael did what I would never have done and looked it up, turns out its some sort of memorial, now I wonder if it was offensive to just make a wrong assumption and call it art, after all when you assume, you make an ass out of some guy name Ume, poor Ume, always being made into an ass.

Continuing the pattern of moving forwards in time, one foreign holiday at a time, we now come to the end of Summer 2011, allow me to take you to Amoudara, Crete. Wait, let me rephrase that, I don't know that I want to take you anywhere, what if you have just come across my little blog by clicking the button that’s sometimes at the top of blogspots to jump to a random blog? Don't get me wrong, I have no problem with you being here, its a free internet, read all you like, though I'm not sure how much interest there is in reading about the occasional holidays of someone you've never even met... The point I'm trying to make is I don't want to feel obligated to take everyone who reads this on a holiday to Greece, at the current rate, I would probably only have to take one or two people away, but what if it gets out that you get a free holiday  just by reading a blog post I wrote about a holiday from over 2 years in the past? It might be free for you reader, but I would have to pay for it, At best, my entire working life would probably be geared towards paying for these holidays, though I don't think any job gives you enough holiday days to take all these trips. I suppose the sudden influx in traffic could mean I could add adverts to this blog, but even then, I don't think the numbers will land in my favour - I think a single click on a sponsored link is worth a few pence at best, a holiday to Crete is probably about £400, Even with adverts I am losing about £399.95 a visit. That's only if you as a visitor to this blog clicks the adverts, you're probably using some sort of ad blocker, yet you still expect your free holiday, you disgust me. This is a totally unsustainable business model and I will no longer be pitching it on Dragons Den.

Thats the last time I use confusing language as it seems to get me into trouble, to be clear, we went to Amoudara (that holiday I'm not just going to take you on for nothing - Freeloader) which apparently means 'long sandy beach' which is quite a good way of describing it, if not quite a lazy way of describing it since it is right there in the name and takes no effort whatsoever to point it out once again. This is the beach in question, shot on our newly fixed camera, which we are obviously putting at risk of damage from the sand all around us, but that’s just the kind of daring people we are.

We stayed at the Uncle George Apartments in Crete, the Apartment was nice and clean but by itself was not really noteworthy enough to warrant a mention, the part that does need to be mentioned though is downstairs, below the apartments is the Restaurant run by Costas and his wife, the nicest people in the world with really nice local food cooked by Costas's mother. We did not actually meet her, but apparently she liked us because we ate everything she made us, but how could we not? As stated above, it was all really nice.

I cannot say whether they would remember us, and due to the number of people that would stay and eat there, my guess would be no, but Costas treated us as if we were old friends and amusingly would apologise for the weather, it was never even so much as cold out, just a little bit cloudy, the kind of weather you would be delighted to get while holidaying at the end of summer. But if he does remember us, he might be quite confused if I took someone else with me on the next holiday and in fact several different people in close succession to each other. But that doesn't matter, remember the offer is not on the table, so stop asking.

I think that at every available opportunity, you should photograph Turtles swimming, I seem to recall having similar photographs from Bulgaria at some point, so it seemed apt to include it here too.

Speaking of animals...

 

Oh, now I'm sad... Bye sand Dagless

Rabbits from the future

After that last cliffhanger (hehe) I know all of my reader was on tenterhooks to see whether or not we would survive. There was a clue hidden in the last post, you may have missed it because it was outside of the body of the blog post, but it was there.


Ok, I'll help, here it was, yes this blog was posted in 2014, more than 3 years after the event,  also the tense of the post was something you could have used for a clue, I was not in fact writing this while wandering around a cliff edge in Portugal. 

Sorry to be so anticlimactic but yes, we did survive Albufeira, we survived long into 2011, long enough to go on our next holiday. This time it was winter and we decided that for this time of year, the best kind of holiday was a city break.

When deciding on a city break destination, what is the single most important thing you would look for? Is it some sort of culture and history? Do you perhaps travel to them only during some sort of street festival?

The main deciding factor when choosing a city for a city break above all else is of course an excellent public transport system.

We wanted underground trains, overground trains, trams and buses that you can travel on with a single ticket. We wanted to go somewhere with an alluring mystery surrounding line S6. We wanted somewhere named after a rabbit (who was named after what or vice versa may be up for debate) yes for 2011s winter city break, we wanted to go to Berlin.

I had of course been there before so the challenge now is not to repeat anything in the last blog post, either that or I'll copy it word for word replacing 'Titch' with 'Rachael' I'm sure no-one would notice, lets see which one I choose (comparisons will need to be manual, I won't be telling you).

Naturally I was delighted to sample the might of the public transport system straight away, journey 1 - train from the airport into the city, beautiful and magnificent. Berlin was the first holiday with our brand new camera in tow, so you can expect either slightly higher definition photos or slightly blurry photos from using it on perhaps the wrong setting. This is an example of the 2nd one I think.

I think the appreciation of a good public transport system comes from living somewhere with a terrible one, I live in Warrington, they have a large number of bus routes and they do come pretty regularly so it seems like it should be a good system, it almost is, but only if you want to get to the town centre, that’s the only place they go, want to go from West to East? that'll be a change in the town centre, that's fair enough, want to go from East to North East? You'll have to go via the town centre. I could forgive the lack of variety in the routes if it wasn't or the payment model, you don't pay to get from A-B, you pay for the journey so thats a single to town, then another one to wherever else you are going, to make things worse, the prices just keep on rising and they pretty much demand the right change. No-one carries change any more, everyone magics money directly into companies bank accounts by telekinesis to pay for stuff, where are your telekinesis receptors Network Warrington?

To be honest I don't use it that often, I have a car and I can walk to work, but just knowing its there, a useless wasteful service clunking around near my house is bad enough. But Berlin, what a joy, you buy one ticket and you have an hour (I think) to get to where your going using whatever forms of travel you need to use, this was very useful for us as our hotel was quite far out.

5 paragraphs on the public transport system is probably enough, now maybe I can muster 1 on what we actually did, so... Some sort of modern art? Presumably, I sure didn't bother to look it up or anything, but there were a lot of these concrete pillars of varying sizes, you could go through them or over them and we spent quite a lot of time playing in and around them like all good 24 year old children would. (You are never too old to play in a large piece of art, it isn't like the wooden horses at the play area where you will get a lot of funny looks)

The trip was rounded off with a nice... broken camera, it turned everything green, this particular  shot is of a Panda in Berlin zoo (ha), look at how green it all is!

It seemed we showed up the day after a famous polar bear born in captivity named Knut had died, so we didn't actually get to see him, but we were there (almost).

Now we have a new mystery you need to wait to solve, will the new broken camera be fixed by the time we go away again? And will Rachael get her hat back from the Vietnamese restaurant?

Flip flops and the fear of sudden death

Jump forward to 2010, quite an achievable feat when you're standing in 2009 on new years eve, but something you might find difficult if you start in 2014. I can't speak for any future years when time travel may have been invented, but even then jumping forward to 2010 will still take some doing.

This happened to be the first holiday Rachael and me took together, at one point it seemed as though it could be the last....

We decided for our first holiday to go somewhere that neither of us had ever been, since we were going around the end of Summer, the options were kept limited to places on and around the Mediterranean, following 7 rolls of the dice and a tie break coin flip, we booked a week away in Albufeira, Portugal.

I remember the excitement of packing our suitcase, the careful planning to ensure we arrived at the airport in plenty of time and of course the disappointment as the Easyjet woman told us our flight had been cancelled following industrial action and that the next available flight was in 2 days time. Luckily a quick call to Sunshine allowed us to add an extra day on to the end so all was not lost.

I realise its like I'm promoting Sunshine for free, but I don't mind too much for the following reasons:
1 - It is actually a good website for booking holidays, they seemed really nice and like they wanted to help and they did really come through for us on this occasion, in fact, the apartment we stayed in on the last night was even bigger than the one we stayed in for all the other nights, had a nice balcony with a picturesque view of the surrounding area and the TV picked up far more of Portugal’s channels, meaning we could if we wanted to, watch Snoopy in Portuguese.
2 - The only other person that I know will read this blog already knows about Sunshine and in fact was on this holiday (and the subsequent 6)
- When I put it like that, it seems as though I am writing this for one person who already knows about everything I am going to write as though she needs reminding of her own holiday, her memories are probably clearer than mine, this seems pointless now, lets stop.

So carrying on, It all started ordinarily enough, we found a nice little place with a pool and crazy golf to while away the morning, I know it looks that way in the picture, but I am 98% certain that access wasn't gained by jumping the fence, we paid to be here using money and got wristbands and everything, zoom in on my hand, you'll see... what is probably that years Glastonbury wristband, the one for golf and swimming world must have been on the other wrist.

Our post pool-side frolicking and relaxation walk took us to a small pleasant beach, where we could engage in some far more serious sea-side frolicking and relaxation.


Beaches by themselves are fairly boring, they are! They are made more fun by the seas they sit next to, where you swim, jump over incoming waves and just generally lark about, once you leave the water and start to dry on the beach, the desire to re-enter the water steadily falls, in the same way, once you are dry, the desire to sit on the beach falls even faster. It was at this time that we decided that the rocky path to our left must just lead round to the other larger beach that we had been to on another day, so for a little change we thought we would walk along it and go there.



Perhaps it is worth stopping here for a moment to mention footwear, as everyone knows, the most suitable item of footwear to have with you on the beach is a pair of flip-flops, I don't think anyone will dispute that, it is also quite reasonable to expect that on any given beach based excursion, these will be the only piece of footwear you have with you. This was certainly the case for us on this particular occasion, it appears unimportant during the frolicking and relaxation parts of this story, but in the subsequent part it has slightly more significance.

As it turned out, the path did lead round to the other beach, but as it turned out it was much further away than we thought, not only that but it wasn't just a straightforward path, it meandered, at times opened out into grassy areas, but not before it completely narrowed at certain points to a tiny path no more than a foot wide with large cliff faces either side, the one on the left like a naturally occurring wall preventing us from moving any further away from the right hand sheer drop with a wonderful view of the waves crashing high on the rocks around us (pictured here on one of the wider sections) - Now might be a good time to remember the footwear thing, it turns out the appropriateness of flip-flops on the beach does not equate to appropriateness when cliff walking millimetres from a plunge to certain death.

Make sure to tune in to the next blog to find out if we survived long enough to go on any further holidays. The suspense will surely be difficult to bear

Its all Lies

There was a lie in the last blog post, I thought I could live with it, but now I feel terrible.

I come here today to atone, I hope you will forgive me.

Did you spot the lie it went like this: "At first count there were 8".

That feels good, I'm glad I got that off my chest, now we can get on with the serious business at hand.

8 was actually my 2nd count, at first count there were 7, there was also a line saying that finances restricted travel to within this country in 2009, but this had to be removed as it was a lie, I had completely forgotten about it but there was a foreign holiday.

I just can't believe I replaced the lie with another possibly even worse lie. I could go back and amend the last post, but that lie has to remain, immortalised on the internet to remind me of what happens when you don't tell the truth.

The year was 2009, my mother wanted just once to have a holiday abroad with her 4 sons before it became too late and we emerged from our cocoons as butterflies or whatever the next stage is for our species. Would she manage it? Keep reading to find out...

Well yes she did, there was never really a chance of suspense there what with this being on the travel blog, obviously we made it.

The 5 of us (a flock of Mandi if you like - I believe that would have been accurate at the time) flew to Spain for a coastal beach type summer holiday in... L'Estartit. That was more difficult than it should have been. I knew that we had flown to Girona Airport, but I had to open a map and scan the coast close by until a place name seemed familiar. Now that we've dealt with the when and the where (also the who) lets get down to the almost as important regaling of events, to do that I will need to open my photographs and see what did happen (It seems that the limits of my memory is under 5 years, we'll see how much recall improves as we get into more recent trips), It may take me some time, but as you are in the future when the completed blog post already exists, you can simply look down to the next paragraph that I haven't yet written. Its like time travel! I'll See you there.

Heres a little detail about the holiday I had forgotten, it turns out that at least for some of it, my mother was transparent, you can see her here, but you can also see the large tent we stayed in THROUGH her. She has since regained full opacity.

Also the power of the sun caused the body of one of my brothers to disintegrate and turn into sand, but don't worry, has has since made a full recovery.

As is good to do to get a little exercise while on holiday, there was a walk to the highest point we could find (and realistically walk to without the requirement of specialist equipment) where there was some sort  of stone shelter, the achievement of reaching the top being only slightly dampened by the fact the floor was completely filled with beer cans and cigarette stumps meaning that many a drunk person has made it there before us.

Afterwards I fell asleep next to the pool for so long that it closed.