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.

Plasticine face and other evolved lemurs

So just because I'm no longer sleeping in hostels and travelling between countries in various planes, trains and (unable to accurately include the rest of that film title here) buses it means this blog has to end?  Who decided that? Well I guess that would have been me, Yes this blog was set up to keep my family up to date on what I was doing after I had quit my job and decided to be in other countries until the money dried up (twice).

That was over 5 years ago and I recently thought, I go to Europe - I live in Europe in fact but that’s beside the point, the point is I travel to other countries, generally one at a time, then I come back and return to my day job. My thought is, I can write about those here, I like writing and 1-2 blogs a year is a commitment I think I can manage, not that anyone will read it, but its more of a writing exercise for me anyway.

There are some gaps to fill in, at first count there are 8 gaps, which I will fill in one at a time as and when I can, obviously none are currently fresh in my memory, but I do have photographs which I will root through (they're obviously all in digital form, but I like to act as though I'm sifting through dusty boxes of physical photographs like off of the past) hopefully I'm all up to date by the time I come to  do my first live post holiday blog. Speaking of photographs, I like to include pictures in blogs, so heres one of me made out of plasticine. Expect everything that follows to be just as relevant.