Rendang

I started writing a blog about our most recent holiday almost as soon as we came back from it. Following the multi-year hiatus of this blog, I returned to it and filled in the gaps, it became obvious that the best way to write the blogs was to do it immediately, when the holiday is still fresh and I can recall specific details that otherwise get forgotten.

So, what happened? Why didn't I finish? Sure, I was busy and I needed to prioritise university work when I had time in front of a computer, then time just started to get away from me, weeks had turned into months, the year ended and we drove headfirst into the new year, before I knew it, we were halfway through it and the couple of paragraphs I had written remained in my drafts, looking odd and alien, they didn't appear to be words I had written, but some stranger who had just returned from a holiday.

That's the excuse anyway. I don't think that's the reason for the delay, or at least it's not the only reason for the delay. If I'm being honest with myself (and by writing it down here, you) the reason it never materialised was the holiday itself. How on earth could I write something that lived up to the holiday?

But I hear you say 2 things. First of all, you went to Costa Rica the previous year, it was the greatest place you had ever been and that appeared online within weeks. Second of all, this entire blog is total shit, so what makes you so up yourself that you think any of your writings could "live up" to a holiday? Wanker.

I would respond asking you to mind your language and point out that that is a very subjective matter, please stop shaking your head and tutting at me, no-ones asking you to read it. Oh, I did? Never mind then. With regards to Costa Rica, yes I agree, but I was around 18 months younger and 18 months stupider back then, I was more cavalier in my attitude towards sharing an experience. Plus, I was able to do that whole bit about the name of the blog, which gave me a good intro.

Following a career change, I had found myself working away from home during the week, only arriving home on a Friday evening, before leaving again on a Sunday evening. Obviously, we're not living in the past, due to video calling services like Skype, those weekends weren't the only times we spoke, but quality time had been compressed into those 48 hours. This had also impacted upon Rachael's ability to take time away from work, many months had passed since Romania.

The holiday had to be good. Really good. Plus 2018 saw our 10 year anniversary, so something needed to mark that too.

So where could we go to:

• Make up for a prolonged loss of quality time
• Celebrate 10 years together
• That at least matched Costa Rica in terms of quality?

Piece of cake.

Costa Rica was originally inspired by a television advert, this holiday was also inspired by TV. On new years day on a slightly obscure channel somewhere in the deeper recesses of Freeview, there was a show about Sloths in Costa Rica. We had absolutely loved Costa Rica and we had seen sloths, so we watched with great interest. Right after the sloths, was a similar show, this one was about an orangutan sanctuary. There were so many of them, being looked after, being mischievous and being released released into the wild.  It turned out to be the Sepilok Orangutan Rehabilitation Centre in Borneo.

The show stuck with us, we decided to go to Borneo to try and see some Orangutans. As a matter of fact, we went to the very same place we had seen on the TV.

Following the longest flight we had ever been on and a change in Kuala Lumpar airport, we arrived at Sandakan Airport in the Sabah region of the Malaysian part of Borneo where we were met by our tour operator and taken to the Sepilok Nature resort to begin our holiday.

In the resort, we had a Chalet right in the jungle, where on our first morning, we were treated to an Orangutan climbing over our roof and off into the trees. We also got it on video, but that's just for us.

You could see them much closer if you actually went to the Rehabilitation Centre, but that isn't quite as special.

We were in Sepilok for 2 nights, during which time, we walked around a Rainforest, we visited the Orangutan Sanctuary and before moving onto the next part of the holiday, the Bornean Sun Bear Conservation Centre.

The Bornean Sun Bear is unsurprisingly from its name, only found in Borneo, so these were somewhat special. Plus, a lady showed me how to take a photograph through the telescope things that they have.

Yes, pretty much all of the photos in this blog are going to be of animals, we were in a jungle, that's what you see in the jungle.

The Orangutan Sanctuary and the Sun Bears were on the second day of our trip, after we had already checked out of our Chalet, now we were part of a tour group and following the timetable of our tour group.

We don't normally go for "activity holidays" or even usually visit places with a tour-guide, but we wanted to see as much as we could while we were there, so it was an interesting change to spend almost every moment of the next few days with the same group of people, there was us, a couple from the Netherlands with their young son and a couple from Portugal. We set off up the kinabatangan river for the next part of the journey, the river lodge.

We did everything together, we would awake first thing in the morning for boat rides and we would eat every meal together. During evening meals it was compulsory to wear the traditional Malayan Sarong, as you can see, I could not pull it off.

While out on the river, the main objective was to see as much wildlife as we could, our tour guide seeming to have an incredible knack for spotting animals almost completely hidden from view.

On the way, we were able to see some Pygmy Elephants (Surprisingly, by their name, not actually small), we saw birds, snakes, crocodiles and a lot of Monkeys, the most interesting of which is probably the Proboscis Monkey.

Around this river, the Proboscis Monkey is very common, so we saw a lot of them, but they are interesting for a couple of reasons. For one, however common they are in Borneo, that is the only place in the world they can be found. But also, they are interesting because of their large noses.

It's not completely clear in this image, but they have large protruding noses, Males tend to be larger, with the largest noses being the most attractive to the females, but the monkeys having large noses like they do, gives them a sort of human quality, it makes them look like little old men climbing around in the trees.

After 2 nights on the river, it was time to return to dry land and separate from our tour group for the final part of our trip. We flew from Sandakan airport over to Kota Kinabalu.

The whole trip was booked in one go through a travel agency, we didn't pay a huge amount of attention to the specifics, we just wanted the Jungle bit at the start, then a resort bit afterwards to have a relaxing summer break, so it was something of a surprise that the resort bit was a little bit different to what we're used to.

We're used to an apartment, somewhere to sleep, relax and a base from which to visit the places we want to go. This place was pure luxury, it had everything you could need on site, restaurants, shops and the like, as well as everything you absolutely don't want on holiday (a gym).

And the food. Now there were a couple of different restaurants, for instance, on our first night, we ate at a Teppanyaki restaurant, where you can watch in fascination as someone cooks your food in-front of you. Have you ever watched someone make egg-fried rice? It's amazing.

But the most amazing place was the buffet restaurant, which also happened to be where breakfast was served. This is the seafood section. If I remember correctly, after that is sushi, carry on around and there are different meats waiting to be carved for you, different currys (plus the Rendang, oh my god, Beef Rendang) a desert section and almost anything you can think of.

It's a little different for breakfast, they take away the chocolate fountains and add omelette chefs and beef bacon. You may not think you want to eat curry for breakfast, but believe me. You do.

Now that I've finished salivating, I should probably talk about some of the things we could do there, despite the comfort and luxury, we managed to fill lots of time on activities on this part of the island too, there was a night time walk, where I saw what turned out to be a deadly python and we went canoeing, which was hard work.

And we played Jenga and ended up with a stupidly large tower, look at that, the bottom is ridiculous and there is maybe one possible move left. Unsurprisingly, this fell on the next turn.

And then we came home (Malaysian airlines helpfully providing a visual representation of the journey there for me) with only our memories, our photographs, and a real hankering for more Beef Rendang.

Escape Room Mania

While planning this holiday, Rachael really wanted to go somewhere with snow, obviously that is rarely a cast-iron guarantee, so originally we were going to look for somewhere mountainous, we were even seconds away from booking a trip to Finland until we realised that our flights didn't get there until midnight and the only accommodation was an airbnb, meaning we have to meet the owners before we could go inside and we would need to make our own way there (when public transport has stopped and transfer companies are a bit funny about taking you to non hotels).

On our return to the drawing board (please imagine us standing over a large map covered in pins and post-it notes possibly some pieces of string held between the pins to signify possible routes) we realised that for the days we wanted if we were going to be able to book anything (by this point it was only a couple of weeks away... I have never claimed that we were organised) we would have to drop the snow requirement.

This opened up the map significantly, though not so secretly, I had my own agenda. I have a scratch map on my wall at home where I can scratch off the countries I have visited, it is great, except that it makes you want to visit quite large places to make any obvious change to the map. It was a source of great disappointment how last year we went on the greatest holiday of our lives to Costa Rica which was like a different world, yet when I came to scratch it off the map it barely made a dent, I have a tiny barely noticeable purple mark surrounded by masses of unscratched golden lands, why could we not have visited Brazil instead?

The other recent holidays haven't helped much either, we had Madeira (a tiny speck in the ocean), Ireland (already scratched off) and Corfu (looks like it could have been scratched off by accident), the biggest dent we have made in the map was Denmark, the smallest Scandinavian country we could have chosen. Sure, they own Greenland, but that isn't attached, I can't scratch off that massive landmass because we haven't been there!

Well luckily for me, there was a pair of flights that suited our timetable to Bucharest, Romania is a decent sized country that I had yet to visit, sure I had passed through there in 2008 and been woken up by border guards with massive guns, but I think that unless you actually get off the train and visit the place, it doesn't count, so yes, this holiday I got to scratch off Romania! (also go there, which I suppose is just as important. Maybe next holiday we should go to Antarctica, then I can scratch off the bottom half of the map)

So aside from the important business of scratch maps we had a holiday in there somewhere too.

Bucharest like many places has a pedestrianised old town where we were staying, it wasn't huge, but it took a little bit of getting used to navigating it. Luckily for us, judging by the people that we met, Romanians are incredibly nice, ridiculously so. When we arrived, looking a bit lost, an old man asked us where we were going and offered to show us the way, just because he was out for a walk anyway so he didn't mind where he walked and he walked with us all the way until we found the hotel. He didn't even try to rob us, which I thought was nice of him.

Speaking of the pedestrianised area, I feel it is worth pointing out how much they made up for it in the surrounding roads with this road with (count them) 9 lanes of traffic in 1 direction!


Imagine approaching this and realising that you're in the wrong lane. I saw someone run across this road without waiting for the green man, I thought that man was crazy.

Now I suppose I should probably get onto the activities, I think I already gave that away in the title of the post, because as well as containing a clever homophone of Romania, it also contains 'Escape Room' which makes it even cleverer. Since we did 4 of them (over only 3 full days), you could also say that we were swept up with Escape Room Mania. I know how much people love to have things explained to them in great detail as though they were a child, but had I not, there was always a risk that it would be missed and you would never know just how clever I was being.

We love escape rooms, I couldn't even tell you how many we had done (I could probably work it out, but it sounds like a lot of effort), but we try and find them whenever we are on holiday now as well as one every year on my birthday and any others that we think look good or there is a decent Groupon offer for. I'm not saying that we're any good at them still, but we're always getting better and they're a lot of fun.

In Bucharest, the most expensive one we did was 120 Grandads (That's not what the currency is called, but that is what we called it. I will explain this no further. Also there are about 5 Grandads to a pound so that is about £24) total which is cheap for escape rooms. The cheapest was half that price, so we thought best to take advantage of it. There was a Dracula themed one (of course), one where you're trapped backstage at a rock show, a scientist themed one where you're trying to save the world from a deadly virus and a really bizarre one that was like being in a really strange dream.
We won them all, so hooray for us.

Before we came we had a look online to see what there was to do in Bucharest (aside from escape rooms) and came upon the Opera House. We don't particularly have an interest in the opera, though we did go to a show in Riga's opera house called Igudesman and Joo, though that was more of a comedy music show. It turned out that there was an opera on while we were there, Verdi's Don Carlos and when we looked at the tickets, we assumed it was some sort of mistake when we found that it would only cost £5. Total! For that price, it didn't matter whether we enjoyed it or not, it cost £5 for a night out.
The main thing I learned while watching the show that I didn't know before was that the Opera is subtitled! (actually they are called supertitles) so that it's possible to follow the plot by reading the words. I never knew that (probably because I couldn't go to the Opera for £5 here, since the opera is primarily the reserve of rich snobs here). It's a shame that I don't understand Romanian either, but it was nice to know.

And finally, I avoided pointing it out at the top as It seemed like a nice way to end it to point out that we got our snow anyway, here I am at the outdoor village museum that we visited. On the coldest day when we were there. I felt as though the ticket lady was looking at us like we were crazy for wanting to visit when it was so cold, but there were at least 2 other groups of people visiting that day.

Tunnels

Ever wondered how Madeira produces so much wine? It's the grapes! Look at the size of them, just hanging there over the streets, a single grape can fill 2 bottles.

Did you know that experts have warned people not to use hotel kettles to clean their underwear? That means that not only is that actually a thing, but it happens enough that experts have needed to warn people not to. Seriously, how does someone even think to do that? And why not just fill up a sink with the already boiled water? I didn't even know that putting things into a boiling kettle was a thing until someone said that you shouldn't boil eggs in a kettle a few years ago. That one surprised me and also seemed a little bit ingenious if it works, but this one disgusted me.

Presumably the people doing it don't also use it for it's intended purpose, so it seems like a totally self centred thing to do. "Well I don't drink tea or coffee, so this can just be a tiny underwear washing machine", no consideration for the people who might need to use it in the future. Apparently it doesn't even do a good job of cleaning the underwear, so all you have is hot wet pants out of the bargain.

We have a tiny travel kettle that we bring on holiday if we don't think we're going to have a kettle. It just about fills 2 mugs when it's full, but it's enough for a short period (Not drinking tea is not an option, I feel like I need it to live!). In light of these revelations, that policy has been updated to include every holiday. Leaving the hotel kettle free to wash my underwear.

So this year, we thought we would go on an island holiday, after a bit of shopping around, we settled on the Portuguese island of Madeira and in doing so, single handedly reduced the average age of people on the island of Madeira for 1 week. That's only a half joke, we were asked by a couple in a cable car if we weren't a bit young to be in Madeira. We were also in the cable car, we weren't just passing underneath and looked so out of place that we prompted a shouted question from the sky. That would have been pretty aggressive and may have made us feel unwelcome.

The cable car was taking us up a hill at the time, Madeira is pretty much just hills, walk for a couple of minutes in any direction and the road either becomes almost impossibly steep for anyone not actually out for a hike, or it leads to a tunnel through the hills that you cannot actually see the end of. Of course you are going to walk through the tunnel because that is a much more appealing prospect than turning around and demonstrating to any passersby that you don't know where you're actually going and you will squeal with delight when the sunlight starts to pour in as you round the curve and you realise that the tunnel doesn't continue across the entire island for some reason. Even though there was no indication at the entrance that the tunnel was almost infinite, you still weren't sure until you saw the other end. Of course that tunnel will just lead to a big road junction and the only logical direction to take is through another seemingly endless tunnel and although this one will have signs on the wall indicating the length of the tunnel, you will still wonder if for some reason the 'M' stands for Miles instead of Metres and if the other end of the tunnel just leads to another road junction and you will be forced to walk through another tunnel and then another for the rest of your lives because you can't work out how to leave the unending maze of tunnels and you only saw other pedestrians in the first tunnel and the cars are going by too fast to stop anyone and ask for directions, which of course you would never do anyway because in spite of the evidence to the contrary you will still believe in your own sense of direction winning through and delivering you back to civilisation eventually.

Or not, I don't know how you spend your holidays.

The cable cars brought us up to Monte, Monte has a Botanical gardens, which you can see pictured where I have just crossed some little stepping stones to get to a tiny room which had absolutely nothing in, the room seems to exist purely to be at the other side when you cross the stepping stones. I'm not entirely sure what I had hoped would be over there, but what you can see in the picture is pretty much all there is to it.

The best thing about Monte though and the main reason for taking the cable car up there (and not purchasing the return journey even though the return journey is less than 50% more than the one way journey) is the optional mode of transport back down the hill, the apparently quite famous toboggan ride! (Here's a link: http://www.madeira-web.com/PagesUK/monte-toboggan.html). You get to sit in a basket and be dragged down a hill by 2 men dressed for a game of boules. The toboggan brings you down about half way and there is a choice of a taxi down the rest of the way or just walk down the rest of the way. Naturally we walked, it was downhill, how hard could it be? Quite hard as it turns out, but we made it.

The other main activity of note (apart from the Kakuro puzzle book I bought especially) was the Catamaran trip, we've done Catamaran trips before, but this was the first time we actually saw Dolphins.

The Drive

What the crap is this? How do I move the lever? And can anyone tell me what the L stands for?
Also, my left foot and to a lesser extent, my left hand feel a bit lost, what are they supposed to do?

These were all questions I asked myself when climbing into my shiny new rental car. I hadn’t specified a transmission type, so I guess that gives you an automatic as standard. I was genuinely a bit flummoxed as to how to move the lever at first (as it turned out, I had to hold in the foot brake to move it). The L is a low gear for steep hills and towing and the left limbs just needed to relax and let their opposite number do all the work for once, except for you, you should be up here too, 10 and 2 my friend.

A bonus mid-year trip for us, we tried and failed to get Glastonbury tickets and found ourselves with a surplus of holiday days. After a bit of shopping around we found a couple of cheap flights to Dublin, which was perfect by virtue of being so close.

Just while I mention the flights, I thought I should mention Ryanair, who unsurprisingly due to it being Ireland, had the cheapest flights, so were who we had booked with.
A few years ago, it became law that all passengers had to be allocated seats when they checked in for their flight (prior to this, on budget airlines it was a bit of a free-for-all and in some cases a mad scramble to get in the queue by people trying to make sure they sat together). All in all, the change is quite positive as you have the safety reasons I presume they did it for (to balance the plane) and that mad scramble to get in a queue has gone as everyone already has a seat.
Because of this change, most airlines now have an early check-in option where you can pay a bit more to pick your seat if you want to guarantee you sit together or you can wait for the free check-in and your seats will be randomly allocated, but they cannot guarantee they will be together if the plane is already pretty full. That’s how it works with most airlines nowadays, Ryanair has a slightly different policy to everyone else, in that if you don’t pay to pick your seats, you definitely will be separated, it’s not that they don’t have any seats together, because after the allocate the seats a planes length apart, they once again offer to let you buy the neighbouring seat. So Ryanair have actually put a price on sitting together. That price is only a few pounds, but after the underhanded tactics, that becomes a few pounds too many (also, for a 40 minute flight, I think I can handle being by myself). I wasn’t the only one, no-one near me seemed to know their neighbours either (and there are stories of parties of 15 being separated across an aircraft: http://www.moneysavingexpert.com/news/travel/2017/06/ryanair-sits-hen-party-in-fifteen-separate-rows-as-outrage-over-seating-policy-grows-)
It shouldn’t really be surprising, Ryanair were the masters of the hidden fee before they were banned and I have heard of them wanting to introduce a toilet charge and an extra charge for heavy people. I just wonder if this policy differs at all with families and if their booking processes would ever leave by themselves too? Possibly it is different, but it wouldn’t surprise me.

So, Ireland and that rental car, we went with the rental car just due to the price of accommodation in Dublin, at the cheapest end of the scale was about £200 a night, but about ½ an hours drive north is Laytown where we found a great little B&B called Tara House for less than ½ that (which we actually forgot to pay due to arriving really late and leaving really early – You will be glad to know we have since settled that debt, it would be a little strange to be sharing the story if we hadn’t), also, in Ireland they drive on the right (by which I mean the left) side of the road, so I knew I could drive there without confusion. OK, I admit, there is nothing inherently wrong with driving on the right, lots of people do it and probably find us really strange, but the left (by which I mean… wait, no I was already using the direction then, carry on) is the right side for me.

Having the car (however confusing the automatic transmission was to start off with, and you, leftie, what did I say? Get back on that wheel! 10 and 2!) was great as it meant we didn’t just have to spend our time in 1 city and in fact only actually went into Dublin City Centre once, here’s me in Dublin Castle to prove it (I’m not that pair of girls on the right or that couple sat in the distance, I’m on the left of this picture. Though one of those girls does seem to be looking at the person taking the photo, as if wondering why they are being photographed, you’re not! It’s me, over here. It’s really hard to get pictures with no-one else in them, though now I have put a focus on them, I’m wondering if I am supposed to have blurred the faces since I don’t have their permission to put the photo online? If they get in touch, I’ll take it off or blur it (the chances of that happening since I know they aren’t one of the one people I know to read this thing are almost astronomical, but just in case they do find it somehow, Hi! I hope you had a nice holiday / trip / day out)

There are lots of nice places to go and things to do nearby, we went to a place called GoQuest, which is a bit like a cross between the escape games we love so much (see Riga, Budapest and my last 3 birthdays – not blogged about – for proof) and the crystal maze, where there are loads of games and a 90 minute time limit, there were some games we couldn’t do as we there were only 2 of us, but we were Team Corndogs (of course) and we scored 19 points (quite respectable for a 2 person team they said).

There are some nice little towns nearby as well, like Swords, where there is a castle that is slowly being restored back to how it was built, they have rebuilt the front wall and a chapel and… actually, you know what, I’m going to allow this picture to pass without comment.

There’s also Malahide, which really we just used as a place to park the car while we took the train into Dublin, but it’s a nice little seaside town with a harbour and we came back to Malahide for our evening meal that day too. And Howth, which is a nice quiet little place, where (excitingly) it is free to park, obviously (I pretend) that’s not the main reason to spend a day there.

So we were free to explore and see the area at our own leisure, which was nice and we visited Ireland without any home alone-esque running for the plane, which was also nice. But when we came back, I was faced with this. What the crap is this?

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.