Monkeys!

"It's crazy, no?"
This was the opinion of a Costa Rican taxi driver on the fact that the sun sets at different times throughout the year back home, because in Costa Rica, the sun sets at about 5:45. Every day. Imagine how blown his mind was when I told him there are some places that have days with no sunlight at all.

This holiday left me with a proper conundrum in relation to the blog, not one of those made up conundrums like what colour pin to use in the map, but a proper one as this holiday didn't even fit with the name of the blog. The address of the blog has always been europeanmusings.blogspot.com and the title at the top has always said "adventures in europe" having been initially created to talk about a single trip I took 10 years ago, the name and address has always remained accurate with all of the subsequent holidays as I'd still never left the continent before (Actually, technically I have as Turkey is in both Europe and Asia, but I still consider that to be Europe so that still fit).

Costa Rica isn't close to being in Europe, Not being as many people assume a part of Spain, but over 5,000 miles away in Central America. The options seemed to be, don't write about it (I don't understand what you mean), make a new non-european blog (Surely you already have enough blogs?) or change the name and address of the blog (I have no further comments on that option, that seems logical to me). Having pondered on the website issue for a moment and decided that I would just change the name of the blog, so the address is now travel.wannacorndog.co.uk and the title is changed to "A Travel Blog". Now it can be used for any holidays at all, it's so generic that I won't even have to change the name when they start selling seats on the easyrocket.

This year we decided to have a special holiday, where we not only went further away but for longer and on a chartered flight with in-flight films and everything.

We stayed in a small town on the Pacific coast of Costa Rica called Quepos, mainly chosen because the airbnb we found there had lots of pictures of monkeys on it's advert pages. As it turned out, the monkeys were not snapped on one particularly lucky day, Most days while on our balcony or in the pool we would be visited by large troops of either White Faced Capuchins (referred to by locals as the Cost Rican Mafia, one distracts you, the rest rob you) or Squirrel Monkeys.

You can't talk about Costa Rica without talking about the wildlife, it's one of the main reasons people go there and with good reason, the biodiversity is incredible. At home at the right time of year, we might occasionally see squirrels, hedgehogs or rabbits which don't get me wrong is endlessly exciting when it happens, last year when blue tits nested near our house, we were fascinated by it, but in Costa Rica you can see Monkeys and Sloths (not from our apartment but there was one we could see above the pavement next to the zip-coaster in Manuel Antonio), we saw macaws and a toucan and lizards, the lizards are so much bigger than you find in Europe, here you get Iguanas.

The next town over from Quepos is Manuel Antonio, they're both very small and incredibly close together, that it's almost pointless them being separate towns, but they are because they both contain all 4 ingredients of a town in Costa Rica (School, church, bar and a football field - obviously). Manuel Antonio is basically one big hill, so to get there it still makes sense to take the bus (plus  it only costs about 50p). We travelled here on our first Monday to visit the National Park, the parks quite small at just a few kilometres squared but it is quite well known so it's a popular tourist destination. It also turns out to be closed on Mondays, so we failed, there's quite a nice beach at the same end of the town, so it wasn't a completely wasted day, plus we decided to wander back up the hill just until we found a restaurant to get a bit of food. Unfortunately, it also turns out nothing seems to be open in the day, there is nothing like walking uphill in the blistering heat to make a couple of miles seem infinite.

On attempt 2 the following day, we actually made it inside the national park, the best bit was probably sitting in the picnic area and watching Capuchins steal people's lunches, just to live up to that Mafia comment.

It wasn't just Monkeys (though to look through the photo's on our camera you'd be forgiven for thinking it was just 12 days of hanging around with Monkeys, don't you try and pretend that doesn't sound like a great holiday). There's was loads to do while we were there and the lady that ran the apartment complex was really helpful and would help book us on to whatever activities we wanted, so we had a go at a few new things, like white-water rafting.

I nearly had a go at white-water rafting once, in 2008, me and Titch were in Bad Gastein where it was one of the available activities, we chose instead to do canyoning, which was basically the same thing, just without the boat, since then I have thought I'd like to give it a crack some, but just never got round to trying it (it's not like it's been a dream or anything, this would have been quite easy to at any time, you can do it in Wales if you really want).

We decided to just do the more gentle rafting course, so there was very little of falling out the boat (there was just one occasion where that almost happened) but it was fun, the guide would try and make us surf the waves (which we were not good at) and ride down while spinning like a washing machine (which we were). They had a professional photographer out taking photographs, which we had to pay for if we wanted them, it's probably not a big reveal to say that we did buy them as I've probably already put at least one next to this block of text. We decided that we would probably miss having the photos more than the money, we could get more money, it's much harder to make copies of photos you don't have...

Then 2 days later we had a go at horseback riding in the town of London (named after a small little known English city), riding horses takes some getting used to, but it can be immensely satisfying when he does what you want him to.

What was quite good about the trips we went on, was how they all included food as part of it, it was generally the same thing, for breakfast it would be Gallo-pinto, which is rice and beans, usually with scrambled egg, then for lunch, it would be Cassado, which is... rice and beans, plus veg and chicken or fish, there are a lot of rice and beans in Costa Rica.

On our way back to the airport, we decided to fly from Quepos airport back to San Jose as it took about 20 minutes rather than the 3 hour taxi and actually cost about the same. It wasn't an option on the way in as the flights had stopped by the time we arrived because it is only a tiny airport and it only operates during the day because (and this is true you can look it up) there are no lights on the runway.

The British Airways flight that brought us to Costa Rica was the largest plane we had ever been in, but in flying back to the airport, we also rode in the smallest one we had ever been in during this holiday, it was a tiny 12 seater where the only crew is the 2 pilots, one of who sits momentarily in an empty seat for the brief safety talk "Remain seated, No smoking, enjoy the flight" just before lift off. Oh and the empty seats, it turned out that we were actually the only people on the plane, so for the price of 2 relatively cheap tickets, it was like we had hired a private plane.

We could see Quepos from the sky, easily recognisable by the harbour, I found the most striking thing about the view to be just how little there was around it, that's how the whole place is, nothing but trees and mountains. Leaving this holiday was harder than most, we had literally just spent 12 days in paradise.

Finally, did anyone know that this is how pineapples grow? For some reason I'd always envisioned them hanging from some sort of tree.

The Tree of Hearts

Winter rolled around as it normally does at this time of year, but this year for a change, we had a bonus 3rd holiday, just before Christmas, but hold on you may say:
"Didn't you have a 3rd holiday a couple of years back?"
Well, sort of...
"Yes I remember, you went to Bruges, you titled the Blog 'In Bruges'"
Yes, rather witty I thought.
"No, Not really."
A Little bit witty?
"No, not at all."
Well forget you then.
No, that was more of a day trip I went on with my brother, this one was a proper multi-day holiday, with a hotel and everything. I went on this one with Rachael, so it gets a green pin in the map.
We decided that the week before Christmas we should go away somewhere nice, somewhere we had never been before, we decided to take that Scandinavian trip we had been promising ourselves for a while and go to Copenhagen in Denmark.
Before I get into the holiday properly (Look at me, all business, I mean apart from that bit above where I converse with myself, but I could have dragged that out for a lot longer, I must be maturing...) I'll just talk a little bit about how this was the easiest start to a holiday ever, we hit absolutely no traffic on the way to the airport (despite being told that we were going on one of the busiest days of the year), we had one of those tunnels where you walk straight on or off the plane, at both ends! (normally you have at least one walk down to the tarmac and often you have to take one of those buses) The Plane ride was the best plane ride ever (This may just be my bias, but I say to anyone with the opportunity to fly Scandinavian Airlines to do so... You get a free cup of tea on board. Yes, that is worth the ticket price alone), the train station was right in the airport and following a 12 minute train ride, our hotel was pretty much right outside.

Also, what made a nice change was that on giving my name at reception, I was not asked to repeat or spell my name - Just to clarify, this isn't some borderline racist rant about language barriers, this happens all the time in the UK, but there is a benefit to being in Denmark with a Danish sounding name.

December is a nice time to be in any European city, wherever you go, there are going to be Christmas Markets and Copenhagen is no different, the little sheds selling festive trinkets and nice smelling foods were all over the place, including a little ramshackle recycled one.

While walking one day, we overheard a tour-guide complaining that the Christmas Markets were closed on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day, he suggested that this made the whole enterprise a bit of a Christmas cash-in, his argument being that tourists might be around over Christmas and might be upset that nothing was open. We obviously didn't confront this man about the comments, but I'm going to argue about this now via the medium of blog.
First of all, who are these tourists going away over Christmas and getting upset that nothing is open? Where people celebrate Christmas, things tend to be closed, you have to be a special kind of selfish to expect other people to forego their Christmas just because you're there. Second, surely by your own argument regarding the tourists, being open over Christmas would be the Cash-in, the fact that they're not open shows that the people running them actually want to celebrate Christmas.
Those comments annoyed me.

Anyway, Right next to the train station is Tivoli, a really old theme park, it still has a couple of rides and at this time of year, it becomes a winter wonderland, it's all decorated and lit up and nice to see in the evening, this is a Tree of Hearts which I hadn't realised before but Hearts are a really Danish thing at Christmas (I think they are the rest of the time too), they have Christmas traditions such as making paper hearts or crocheting hearts and out in the streets there are hearts everywhere, above the streets and here in the tree.

Although, if you look at the tree full of hearts, if you imagine that they are real, human hearts the picture becomes a lot more gruesome, something sat at the bottom of a serial killers garden where he collects the hearts of his victims and they sit there, shrivelled and in various states of decay, you know, until someone looks into his garden and notices his heart tree and he goes to jail.
For the sake of honesty, I should point out that the heart tree bit was from Rachael.

ΣΙΔΑΡΙ

Aren't digital camera's great? Time was you would bring your camera on holiday, with your roll of 22 photos available on the film and every shot you took would have to meticulously planned, you would need to ensure all of the pieces of scenery you wanted were visible in the shot, everyone would practice the smiles they would have on their faces and you would carefully select a trustworthy looking passer-by to take the photo (this was also before the invention of the outstretched arm). Obviously it goes without saying that you would also need to make sure you had wound the camera back to take the next photo, a self winding camera being an unattainable dream achieved only by the ultra rich.

This time I am referring to is a long time ago now, it even pre-dates this blog and this blog will be celebrating it's 10th birthday next year, look back at the start, I am so fresh faced, full of hope and in need of a slap (it's so hard not to hate your younger self), over the years the destinations and the travelling companions have changed, but even back then in pre-medieval 2007 all of the photo's were digital, there was never any need for the winding and the trustworthy stranger.

The point of this is that photo taking habits have changed, rather than taking the 22 perfect photos (well 20 and the 2 that don't come out due to over-exposure) you now take hundreds of holiday photo's in the hope that a couple come out ok, the ones that you tell yourself you will one day make use of that snapfish voucher you got that time to get them printed out, but really they are just going to sit on that memory card, probably forever. If you're me, there will be a handful that you put on your blog too, but they're never the good ones, somehow I seem to be drawn almost exclusively to the worst  ones, just because they accentuate the point I am trying to make. I believe several people share pictures on Facebook too? I think I prefer the sitting on the memory card thing.

Where am I going with this? Difficult to say. The point I am slowly labouring my way towards is that of the quality of photographs, that even among those crappy photos there are some photographs that go that extra mile, that seem to directly question you as to why they are allocated any megabytes to exist in the first place (Re-insert your own reference back to this blog 2007 – present).

After all that build-up you probably expected something worse? You're probably wondering why this is the worst example of a holiday photo I could find? At least it's clear and hey, you have taken far worse photographs before, surely you have something worse than this to show us? you sicken me (Internal monologue may differ from person to person). I will defend my choice forthwith, I feel that the clarity of the photo makes this much worse, at least the blurry ones only exist as a mistake or from some attempt to capture a better photograph, someone took this photograph on purpose, the camera was switched on and pointed at a sign to capture it forever (I realise that I am the on that has ensured it's longevity by putting it here, but I will ignore that). This isn't even the best sign there was for Jim's Bikes, there was one that said "Jim's Rent Bikes" which at least conjured up some seedy imagery that I could have got some good mileage out had we photographed that one, but we didn't so I can't even do that. We didn't even rent one of Jim's Bikes, so I can't even use this as a jumping off point for that particular adventure. We did see people on their Jim Bikes riding around the place, but really, why on earth would you rent a bike, when it's also possible to rent a boat? You can drive on the roads any time, how often do you get to drive on the sea? You don't even need a boating license.

I suppose that did work as a jumping off point for an activity after all, yes we hired a boat, so obviously that is going to be the main thing I talk about, but first I suppose we should get some other things out the way, meet you after a couple of obligatory filler paragraphs for the discussion about boat rental. Also, I told you I only include the worst photo's here.

This year, our holiday was in Sidari in North Corfu (or ΣΙΔΑΡΙ if you're using the Greek Alphabet) it's not a very old town, a taverna nearby boasted it was the first and oldest taverna in Sidari, built in 1959 (again probably a better sign to have a picture of).

We stayed at the Megali Luxuries Apartments, a small apartment complex with only 10 apartments, chosen mainly due to them being maisonettes with  spiral staircases.

But this place was also very close to a beach and only about 5 minutes to the centre of Sidari so it was handy too.

If you've ever been on a beach resort holiday, you will probably be familiar with how they usually go, so I don't feel it necessary to write in any great detail about any time spent in the pool or swimming in the sea (Though actually, it could be interesting to point out just how shallow the sea is and how far out you need to go to do any swimming, but I won't), but luckily we probably did enough other things so I don't need to stop right here.

The Canal D'Amour is probably the most interesting part of the coastline, a natural rocky area, full of little rocky islands and tiny caves all still being eroded away by the sea all the time, we would later come to walk around the Canal D'amour, though having learned a lesson from Portugal, we stayed away from any coastal paths that we could not see how to progress, so there is no interesting near death experience to share this time.

The photo above was taken from a boat, not the boat we rented, but from an excursion we had gone on early in the holiday, before we had even thought about renting our own boat. Canal D'Amour means "Tunnel of Love" and here is the tunnel itself, the excursion boat  went in... then reversed back out, the tunnel part is a little bit small to pass through completely in a boat.

We took a day to go to Corfu Town itself, where we visited an old fortress and... Yea, that was about it, I mean we walked around the town a bit, watched some Turtles in a fountain and stopped for some food, it was a nice day, but there's not really much else I can say, I'm not really sure why I started talking about it, but there you go.

I've obviously become so focussed on the idea of talking about a boat, that nothing else holds enough of an interest for me now. So, Let's do that.

"Go past that big boat, when passing the beach stay on the other side of the buoys and stay about 100 feet away from the rocks. This lever makes it go faster (try not to use up all of the petrol) and there’s your steering wheel. See you in 2 hours"

That is the extent of the instruction as you are given a boat, following that intensive training, you are free to head out to sea all by yourselves.
Regular readers of this blog (who am I kidding?) may recall previous tales of rented seafaring vessels, which were all good fun, but those had pedals, this one had an engine and incredibly, we were allowed to drive it.

On the way out, we followed his instructions to the letter, we turned near the big boat and we stayed on the other side of the buoys, right next to the buoys. We were cautious, maintaining a steady speed, keeping that 100 yards from the coast, feeling every dip and rise, constantly nervous that the next wave would be a big one and would knock us out of the boat (spoilers: none did). But the nervous cautiousness soon passed, our return journey was much speedier, we were moving around the boat and swapping drivers with greater ease and we pushed the boat to it's full speed, even doing a few doughnuts (well we drove it in a a few circles).

When we were heading back to the beach, it was quite hard to tell if it was the right one, the buoys we had followed so fastidiously on the way out were impossible to see, even the big boat was a speck in the distance, we were having fun and had absent-mindedly drifted quite far out.

Since we didn't have to bring it back yet, we decided to switch off the engine and bob around for a little bit. Either that or by this point I was a bit TOO relaxed about the whole boat driving thing.

I think if this is an option on future holidays, there will be many more boat rentals in the future, it's so much fun, so I'm afraid in blog terms, this may mean future blogs will become quite samey (What do you mean it already is? Why are you reading it if you don't really like it? Oh right, because I asked you to, sorry Rachael, please still read my blogs)

I feel like this particular entry deserves an "And Finally" section to finish it off, while I talk a bit about animals. Obviously I chose some photo's that showed whatever I was talking about, but if you looked through the camera yourself, you might be forgiven for thinking we had holidayed on a farm or some sort of animal sanctuary, there were Donkeys, Ponies, Horses, Goats and obviously lots of Lizards (what's a summer holiday without lizards?), on the camera they will stay for now, but I have decided that I should share one, a picture of a puppy found down near the beach, in this particular photo, he is caught mid gambol and if it does not make you smile, you are dead inside.

My new found interest in Cartography

Welcome to this, the second  in the series I like to call "Returning with Rachael to places I've been with Titch" there is probably a catchier title in there somewhere, but I'll be damned if I can find it, so just like with the 2011 trip to Berlin I can copy and paste a 2008 post, replace Titch's name with Rachael's and then job done, you can read about me and Rachael crawling around caves underneath Budapest, walking up hills and sitting practically naked in some sort of bath house, so here goes...

Wait, that isn't going to work, quite aside from the fact that we didn't do any of these things (photoshop can easily make it look like Rachael is emerging from a hole beneath the earth, it doesn't matter if I lie to a blog), there is a major plot-hole in the story that will reveal itself much more obviously, that bath house was men only.

It looks like I'm going to have to write a new one, I think once I've gone through the effort to unpick the bath-house bit from the story, I might as well have just remembered back to a few days ago to the holiday we just took. Besides, I've already done my favourite part of the blog, which is the stupid meandering bit at the start where I ramble on seemingly endlessly while resolutely refusing to talk about the holiday itself, if you don't know which bit I mean, I'm talking about this bit right here, the bit that you're still reading and I'm still writing, you see it, the bit that's now become all self referential so it even now still hasn't ended and I have now referred to the fact that it has become self referential, potentially creating an endless reference loop to allow me to keep writing this bit forever referring to the fact that I have referred to the fact that I... and so on.

This trip started a little bit differently as we went down to London for a day 1st and flew out from there after completely failing to attend some VR zombie thing, though it turned out it was just a demo for a new video game anyway...

Not including the 2 flying days we spent 3 full days in Budapest and during that time we did 5 room escape games, 5! that was the total number of games we had played in total up until that point, If you scroll down 2 posts (or just remember), you can see that we did 2 last year in Riga, but Budapest is full of them, they started there due to the large number of unusually shaped buildings with really low rents.

The first was called Claustrophilia (apparently the first one) unlike with UK ones, they don't seem to take photos of their participants in Budapest, so I don't have a victory / failure photo to share (this was a victory) but I do have the map I drew to get there. I am perfectly aware that there are real maps available and that nowadays with this new fangled internet thing, I could easily show you a real map, but this one is better, way better, this is quite a simple one to follow, not as complicated  as say the map for the invisible exhibition.

The invisible exhibition was a museum about blindness, there’s not much to show as the whole thing was in complete darkness, we were led around by a blind man through different rooms, across pretend streets (where I presume I was hit by a car and am absolutely certain I walked into a traffic light) Not being able to see anything was confusing, disorientating and terrifying, even though logically I know I'm not going to get lost, I just kept on expecting my eyes to adjust to something or wishing that they would just put on a light so I can get my bearings, but obviously, that isn't the experience, so that doesn't happen.

What I do have pictures of is the Braille we learned to type beforehand and because now I feel bad that all of the pictures so far have been of pieces of paper (however tempting it is to include nothing but pictures of pieces of paper in this particular post, mmm don't they make you feel like you're there? All of these were created there so they should...) a picture of the ducks we watched for probably close to an hour before we went in.

There were several ducks on the pond, but these 2 were the 2 we adopted as Rachael and James duck that sat lazily by the side of the pond around which the soap opera that was the life of the ducks on the pond, this show had it all, relationships, the one lonely duck, fights and the bully duck going around trying to chase the other ducks out of the pond. Rachael and James duck mostly just sat by the side or they would float about 3 feet to the left and sit there, not even swimming across the pond to the humans delivering occasional gifts of bread, we became so engrossed in this drama that we actually felt proud of James duck, when the bully (nicknamed "bad duck" our names were great) came over and tried to chase them out of the pond and James duck fought back and managed to chase him away.

Yes, that duck story did just happen.

Back to the escape rooms, we did 5 and won 4 of them, they were very well made and themed and they made good use of the spaces with the games opening out into new rooms, there was a good Egyptian one with no padlocks just push blocks, rotating disks other Indiana Jones-esque puzzles.

What else, well we did visit a rock, well it had once been a rock, but it had been converted into a hospital, well it had once (actually twice) been a hospital, but it has been converted into a museum, to get there we had to climb up all of these stairs, oh sorry, that's too visual, these stairs:

The hospital in the rock was used during the siege of Budapest when they were invaded by soviet forces near the end of world war 2 between 1944 - 1945 (oh yea, they were on that side!) and again in 1956 during an unsuccessful revolution.

I did not take this picture.

Deák Ferenc tér, where Metro lines 1-3 meet, there is something magical in the air, we passed through a few times before investigating what that something magical was, it turns out the something magical was the smell of the Kürtőskalács or chimney cakes being sold, pleasingly they were just as nice as they smelled as well, I don't think a picture will do it justice, so here is a nice smell file.

Mmm isn't that nice!

Before we left we had a visit to the Zoo Cafe as well, which is amazing, while you sit there and have your food and drinks, the staff bring you animals, such as chameleons, snakes, guinea pigs and rabbits, oh and these guys.

That was a nice way to spend a few hours, much nicer than when we got home and searched for our escaped hamster.

Lemons

How did it happen? How did I let it happen? How did you let me let it happen?

You probably didn't, you probably didn't know it was happening, I didn't even put the pieces together until it was pointed out to me. 2 consecutive blog posts with pretty much the same joke at the start, the "we were looking at holidays in 'X' so this year our holiday was in 'Y'" joke, go on, go back and look.

I didn't mean to, but now I feel as though I should be writing these things more carefully to avoid any glaring repetition. - I'm not going to, it's too much effort, the start of this one is probably very similar to several others if I look back, possibly that one where I apologise for forgetting about a holiday.

Anyway, the point I was probably circling my way back round to was that it wasn't included in the last 2 posts just for a quick subversion of expectations joke, they both genuinely started with a search for holidays in a different place.

So this year we thought it might be nice to go to Italy, so this year our holiday was in... yea it was Italy. Sometimes by identifying a new expectation, the most logical outcome can become the surprise.

The destination we chose was Sorrento which is near Naples at around about the ankle of Italy. Before I continue, I want to talk a little bit about airport transfers, now before you get bored and skip straight to the next paragraph when I'll have stopped, I'm not being an anorak.

We usually buy airport transfers when we go on holiday, it just makes things easier, rather than trying to work out how to travel around in a different country after a flight, you just show a piece of paper to a person at a desk and you get taken to your hotel. Almost without fail the journey goes the same way, 1st a couple will be dropped off at a really posh looking hotel, then a family at an apartment complex, then maybe a couple of groups at the next one, this will continue until we're the only ones on the bus, then (possibly after the driver has taken a 10 minute smoke break) we'll be driven into a rougher looking area then dropped off.

This time was no different except this time the driver made us walk though that rough looking area, oh and there was still someone still on the bus, I cannot imagine where she was going. Ok, the area we had to walk through was quite nice really, but it's easy to be down on a place that you've been forced to walk through, he said it was 2 minutes away, it was.. Not.

To be fair the "rough" looking area always does turn out to be quite nice.

So, we finally got there, checked in and collapsed on the bed... Or we would have done if there hadn't been an unexpected incident involving the previous occupants, a towel and the toilet rendering our apartment unusable, so in a moment our entire holiday was shifted from the marina to the centre near the piazza.

The new apartment was on the main Roman road in the centre  and still had original 16th century pillars between the rooms, 2 (2!) bathrooms, a kitchen bigger than ours at home, with all the amenities you would expect, and a load more you wouldn't. Usually a place of accomodation will call itself an apartment if they give you a hotplate, this place had a proper oven and fridge freezer, a washing machine and a dishwasher.

Naturally we used it, only an idiot washes their own dishes under those circumstances.

So, holiday, lets cover some of the activities quickly  so I can get on with the exciting task of regaling you at length about the quality of Naples airport, I don't know about you, but my favourite part of any of my travel blogs is the bit where I discuss logistics, so if you're as excited as I am, lets get this next bit over with.

Sorrento was a nice place and being situated near the centre was probably better in the end, the marina was nice and we took a couple of trips there and witnessed a lady having some fish delivered to her basket on a rope, there were other things there, but that was my highlight, all things should be delivered via rope basket, it probably wouldn't make much sense since our house includes a ground floor, but I wonder if a Tesco delivery man would hang around slowly loading things into a basket for me... It would be incredibly inconvenient for both of us in all honesty, the novelty would probably wear off after the 2nd or 3rd basket, but that doesn't mean I could stop, as far as the delivery man knows at this point, my house is actually flats and there is some unknown reason as to why I cannot come downstairs to let him in, so I cannot suddenly drop the charade because I am bored of it, it must continue until the last bottle of Lemon Fanta has been hauled up into my window, we'll both be annoyed and tired, he will leave and continue his shift (which will probably end much later now thanks to me) but that doesn't mean I am finished, all of my shopping is now upstairs and I have to carry it all back downstairs because obviously that is where my fridge lives, and naturally I did not want to pay a bag charge so it's all loose. I think I've just put myself off this new scheme.

I got distracted by the basket there, the point I was starting to make was that being closer to the centre meant we could spend the nights out around the town, obviously we could have done the same if we wanted to while staying at the marina, but the long return journey would be hanging over us for the whole evening [insert some sort of generic night time photograph here in order to accentuate the point being made]

There were lots of tourist shops around Sorrento offering day trips to nearby places, one of the most common being offered was a trip to Pompeii, they started from about €40, but one thing I noticed was that not one of them included entrance to Pompeii itself, so they were effectively a seat on a coach and a tour guide once you were in there, we decided to see if there was any other way to get there, as it turned out, Pompeii has a train station right opposite the entrance and a round trip was less than €5, which is quite a saving. As for a tour guide... You don't actually need to get one, who actually likes following around a large group at the pace of the slowest member, having the dullest parts explained to you at incredible lengths and being unable to just stop and sit at the point you feel tired, so we just paid the entrance fee and wandered around on our own.

It's amazing how huge the place is when you're there, you obviously already know it is an ancient city, so it should be obvious that it's going to be roughly city sized, but for some reason when walking around ruins, I still don't expect them to be big enough to house, employ and entertain entire populations.

It's also incredible how well preserved the place is, a lot of work does go into restoring it and keeping it that way, but it's only all still here because it was buried under mountains of ash for thousands of years, that's not even a time-scale I can comprehend, my eternity to date has been 28 years and if I'm lucky I've got maybe 60 odd left, so I can only comfortably imagine one lifetimes worth of time passing by, multiply it by 10 and I'm still nowhere near how long ago this was destroyed. And the only reason any of this place is still here is because of the way it was destroyed all in 1 go all those years ago.

Speaking of comprehending, one of the most powerful parts is the structure with all of the casts of the people who were killed and buried in the ash, what thoughts are going through someone’s mind while that's going on?

As it turns out, the whole area including places like Sorrento is still at high risk if Vesuvius erupts again, what people will risk to live somewhere they like.

We also went to Naples on another day, my 1 piece of advice to anyone thinking of doing the same would probably be not to bother. Here's a photograph anyway.

That would probably be a good place to end the blog, at 1,480 words (before I started this sentence, which has undoubtedly boosted the count even further due to the nature of basic maths) it's probably already the longest post I have ever written, putting the word limit of early university essays to shame (so I'm told, I have no university education to speak of or to communicate via any non verbal medium)

I digress, I have promised you a discussion of Naples airport, you read all the way down here without giving up so I have to deliver on my promise (or threat for those of you that feel as though you have already devoted too much time to reading this to give up now, for that, I'm sorry for being dexter).

I have been to more than 20 different airports in my life, so I'm fairly used to long queues and tedious waits in sterile environments and some airports are better than others, but Naples gave a bad impression from almost the moment we hit the tarmac when the pilot had to taxi the plane around for about 1/2 an hour because he didn't have a gate he could take us to, when he was finally able to park, we were still unable to leave the plane for another hour as there was no bus to take us from there to the terminal building, but while heading through passport control we thought that should at least mean we won't have to wait for our bags before heading to our transfer, what a wonderfully hopeful utopian vision we had for the world, it must have been even harder to source a luggage trolley because it was at least another hour before anything joined the 2 suitcases and the cardboard box we all watched circle the baggage claim countless times that didn't belong to anyone, the whole crowd was hopeful by their arrival at first, but that hope quickly drained from everyone’s face, then it became funny, then tedious, then funny again when they seemingly changed order, like someone through those plastic curtains was just messing with us.


But we thought surely that is just a blip, Naples Airport has more than 100,000 passengers a year, surely most of the time it is well run, surely?

Well onto the return journey, when we got there we had to step into the 1 long queue for about 3 different flights which took about 45 minutes and that was before the 1 queue got forcibly split into 3 different queues, you know, just to make things extra fair. There was another queue at the security gates that similarly refused to move onwards so that took another 40  minutes or so.

Once past security we had about 45 minutes left until our flight so Rachael thought we should get something to eat, but I suggested we find our gate first, then get something, so we followed the signs to our gate, which led on to (you guessed it, possibly, what do I know) a third queue, just as long as the last 2, this time for passport control. That one didn't even make sense to me, all these people are leaving, why do you care Italy? They're someone else's problem now.

This left us past the gates so we had to struggle past large crowds to make our way backwards towards ours, while in this crowd someone mentioned that his plane was leaving soon, I joked that he was being daft and that none of these planes were leaving on time, it was supposed to be a joke, but it was another long wait for the bus, then the Pilot announced that we were waiting for a couple of groups of people, presumably known to already be in the middle of the mess of queues the rest of us had been lucky enough to wade through n time. Once the missing passengers joined use, we had a couple of minutes to wait before the new departure window, but when that arrived a further announcement told us that we could not leave, because for reasons they were still trying to ascertain, the ground crew had re-oponed the baggage area, because of course they did.

While searching for that piece of data from a couple of paragraphs ago about Naples Airport's footfall, I found the Naples-Airport.info website which provided this little nugget I will end with:

"Naples Airport, also known as Capodichino Airport (IATA: NAP) . It's well organized and connected to the Center of the City with public transportation." - My bold Italics.

Ideas above our station

Do you ever get a feeling like you don't belong?

We thought that we might like to go somewhere Scandinavian this year, perhaps we were leaning more towards Sweden, but there were no reasonable flights when we wanted to go, there were cheap flights to Denmark though, we could go there? Oh but as it turns out it's incredibly expensive when you get there. So we changed our minds and booked Riga in Latvia instead.

This trip started badly, everything seeming to conspire against us on the day we were setting off. I awoke early on this day in order to be sick, before spending the morning drinking ginger beer and attempting to do some last minute tasks.

Because I thought it would make our lives easier, I booked a form of airport parking where they meet you  at the airport, which didn't arrive on time meaning we had to drive around for 1/2 an hour waiting for someone to show up and take the car of our hands.

On arriving in Riga, we approached our transfer provider who advised us that the printout we had been sent did not entitle us to travel meaning we had to pay for it again (so probably don't bother using looking4transfers for this kind of thing, it appears they do nothing).

When we arrived at our hotel... we were welcomed, given our room keys and basic information and allowed upstairs. It was mildly surprising, part of me expected something to go wrong there too, if the same thing happened it would have been much more annoying, rooms tend to cost more than taxi's.

Riga's a nice city, there are lots of nice buildings, some statues, the odd park and... a cannon. There's probably a story behind the cannon, let's assume it's pirate related.

It's a fairly small city so everything's quite easy to get  to, most things seem to be either a 20 minute walk, 5 or 6 bus stops or less than €5 in a taxi away. From our experience. We didn't need to go very far though.

Day 1 took us on a walk around the old town, on a 10 minute 5d film tour of the city and up to an art installation named 'Benches'.

This is what I am choosing to share with you in picture form

Introducing the new animated segment of the blog, including 'The amazing walking Rachael' and 'The many directions of James' (4)

As you may be aware (which you probably are, because let's face it, if you are reading this, you are probably Rachael), back in January we played one of the room escape games in Warrington with Titch and Mundry, we... did not win, but we found there were a handful of them in Riga, so we decided to go on one, we found one called Mysteria, with a scientist theme to it, this time... We won.

That line would have worked better if we failed to do this one too, the brief moment of pretend suspense could be followed by the anticlimactic reveal of subsequent failure, but no, unfortunately for the quality of the blog (but fortunately for us) this time we were successful. 55minutes.

While we were here, we decided to see a show at the National Opera, they had tickets to a show called Igudesman and Joo, a mix of classical music and comedy, we arrived a little bit early for the show and this is the part of the story where we felt as though we did not belong, the part alluded to in the question right at the top of the post, which for some reason I started with even though I had no intention of writing about it yet. 
We sat in the bar beforehand in our jeans, trainers and hoodies, surrounded by men in suits, women in ball gowns and staff in waistcoats and bow-ties (possibly, didn't really pay attention). It was like we had developed ideas above our station and had our true place in society revealed to us quite quickly. The show was good though.

The following day we thought it would be good to do another room escape game, so we found another one, this was called findexit and had a Sherlock Holmes theme, unfortunately we failed at the very first puzzle. Could not find it. At all.

We walked up and down the street, asked neighbouring businesses and taxi drivers and attempted to enable roaming internet on Rachael's phone, when none of this worked, tired and annoyed we found a cafe with wifi and yes, it was far too late by then to go back, so we found another one somewhere else for a few hours later. Before this one, we had time to get something to eat.

Not only did we manage to find a restaurant we didn't seem to belong in, but one that no-one else felt like they belonged in either, it was as though the place was closed, but they decided to feed us to avoid any embarrassment.

Then we went to play our game, but not before doughnuts.

The 2nd days game was called Quest Lab and had a kind of sea captain theme, after our previous days victory, we were quite hopeful of a 2nd win and... yes, we won again, sorry about that.

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".