Louise Lives London

Bogota - Colombia

2012-01-30T05:52:00.000-08:00

This was the second time we had purchased tickets to Colombia, but this time we were actually going to get there! Though it wasnt without a bit of stress-the taxi we had ordered didnt turn up at the requested time (4.45am) and when Rich rung the guy- he woke him up! He arrived at our door half an hour later and Rich was stressed to the max by this time, panicking that we were going to miss our flight. But I had allowed 30mins grace time in our journey so he neednt not have worried...though telling him this did no good at all..

We were fortunate enough that Rich´s friend from English school in London a few years back now lived in Bogota and could show us around. Cindy and Miguel picked us up from the airport and drove us to her apartment to drop off the bags.

The city was a bit run down looking and I was surprised to see so much wrought iron and barbed wire surrounding buildings.

In places there werent any lines at all on the roads and a wide road that could encorporate the width of 4 or 5 cars was a chaotic mess of vehicles weaving in and out of each other. Necissitating one to drive with 1 hand on the horn! I was glad neither of us were at the wheel!

After a rest in the arpartment - since we had been up since 4am and both had colds, we went out for some dinner. It was supposed to be a night of dancing but there was no way I had the energy levels for that. We went into the centre that had their favourite food court.

As we drove to the underground carpark, a security guard and his sniffer dog checked out the car and even investigated the contents of the boot...Apparently they look for bombs.

The food court didnt disappoint. 4 stories above the city there was food for all. Salads, crepes and of course typical Colombian fare. Rich ordered a frypan of meat, plus a plate of various sausages and a plantain covered in cheese and what I assumed to be tomato sauce but was actually guava jam. I was to learn that Colombians love to mix cheese with sweet things..The best part of the meal was the fresh fruit milkshake. I had a guanabana one..not too sure what that is but it tasted good!

After dinner we walked around the center a bit. There were police everywhere but this is normal for Bogota. Being a Sat night the clubs were blaring out reggaeton and pop music but there didnt look to be too many people dancing. There were quite a few people milling around, including groups of 20 something girls with their false boobs and butts on display! A few touts tried to entice us into their clubs but I just shook my head and said I dont speak spanish. We didnt stay long as in London time it was 4am and I was shattered!

The next day Cindy and Miguel bought us tomales, pan de yucca and traditional Colombian breakfast food. A tomale is a ball consisting of chicken, corn, chickpeas and spices wrapped and cooked in plantain leaf (like banana leaf). It was quite tasty but I wasnt used to having a huge dinner for breakfast!

We drove into the city to check out the Sunday flea market. On the way there was loads of traffic because they close some of the roads on Sundays to allow people to use them for recreation. How weird is that! Entire roads were closed to traffic so people could rollerblade, ride their bike, run, walk their dog and anything they liked on a road with traffic driving the other direction. Bizarre!

The sun had come out and we were stipping layers but were still hot in our jeans and long sleeved tops. But after 4 degrees in London Im not complaining about the heat! Large speakers on the hilltop blared out latin music attracting visitors to the area. The markets were quite interesting selling the usual fares of jewellery, art and crafts. There didnt seem to be much junk about and the prices reflected it - 20 pounds for a set of 4 coasters? I thought this was a third world country!

Though we were both full of tomal, Cindy fed us more fresh fruit from a fruit vendor and I couldnt say no to trying a fruit Id never seen in my life. And then it was another fresh fruit juice.

On the hill outside the market with Cindy and Miguel

And we simply had to try Cindys favourite bakery of ´Roscas´ A kind of cross between a pretzel and a doughnut filled with your choice of filling. I got berries and meringue and Rich got guava and cheese (weird!) but there was also Baileys and Milky way on offer. Each individually packaged in their own heart patterened box, they didnt disappoint! Colombia is not the place to come to lose weight! And there arent many skinny people around!

After the markets we went to see another part of the city -Candelleria. With all the traffic it took us almost an hour to get there! On the way, Cindy pointed out the window to a shanty town to the right saying - that area is super dodgey you dont go in there...Suddenly in front of us, the road was closed and we were forced to drive through said area! Rich turned to me and said ´quick, wind up your window´! It was just like scenes you see in movies, rubbish everywhere, half naked kids playing with rubbish in the streets, small groups of people congregating together and staring at you as you drove past... Fortunately it didnt take long till we were through and the car didnt break down!

Cant remember what this bizarre fruit is - but tastes good!

Candelleria was a pretty area, filled with government buildings and the likes. The main square had people selling their goods and even offering rides on a llama! One lady had put little shoes on her animal -it was so cute. I think it was the first time I had seen one outside of a zoo.

I felt safe enough to get out my giant SLR but I did notice that everyone looked at it inquisitively- even the Police! There were more police here than in Capital Hill in Washington- and all armed with weapons. It seemed there were 2 on every corner..

We spent the afternoon walking around looking at the buildings, a beautiful restored church and took a look inside the Military museum and the art of Botero; - some famous artist who was known for the way all his art depicted fat people. He even painted a fat Moana Lisa!

Rich looks excited about his order of cheese, guava jam and caramel waffle sandwhich!

Overall this part of the city was clean and quite pretty and well worth a look around. Bad sadly it was time to head to the airport for our internal flight to Neiva.

Paris/Orleans and Update

2011-11-20T01:42:00.001-08:00

Hiya

Well as usual its been forever since I posted an update. I've just finished the entry from when I went to visit my friend Michelle in Paris last year.click here for link to Paris blog

Well another summer has come and gone in London -we were lucky enough to get a week's 'Indian Summer' in October with the hottest October on record. But the rest of summer was a bit dismal - lucky we had our week in Ibiza/Valencia with temperatures of 37 C otherwise I would have felt like I missed out on summer again.

We of course went to NZ and Thailand in Feb but I havent even started writitng about that- so the update will probably also be a year away!

Malaga Update

2011-07-14T13:33:00.000-07:00

Hiya!

Finally published my post from me and Crystal's trip to Malaga last year. Reading it has made me reminisce on what a great time we had so I hope we get to have another holiday together one day - even better if Lian and Jac could come too!

Crystal was 3 months pregnant when we did this trip, and now the baby is 4 months old! I did warn her I was behind on my blogging!

We've just booked a trip to Spain which will include a few days in Ibiza for August. Although I had to twist Richard's arm for the Ibiza part of the trip, now he cant wait! Neither can I, because as usual, the English summer is all too disappointing and lacking in sun.

Scroll down for the Malaga blog under Sept, 2010. :-)

Lanzarote - Canary Island Update

2011-05-30T11:13:00.000-07:00

Hi folks! Yup Im still quite useless at blogging - still a year behind in updates. This one is from March 2010 when I got my freedom back and we went to the Canary Islands to celebrate.

Life is good in our own flat here in Ealing. Its taking Rich longer to get to work - 1hr, but its practically all the same line on the tube so he uses it as sleep time! As for me - Im loving my 50 minute commute to work with no tube at all!

We're full swing into hunting for an investment property at the moment so that is taking up a lot of our spare time, but should be worth it. As long as there is still time for a weeks holiday in Spain over summer then I'm happy!

Here's the link to the Lanzarote post

Click me to check Lanzarote blog

Stockholm and update

2011-03-19T14:51:00.000-07:00

Click me to check Stockholm blog

Im a bit behind on my blogging - I went to Stockholm with Jac a year ago! I've just posted it now under March 2010 so the link is above.

There's a lot more blog entries to come since we just came back from 5 weeks in New Zealand and Thailand. We had a fab time and loved it. It was so good to see all the family again too.

Richard is now working full time so now that he's got a bit more money, we decided to give up on sharing a flat and have a nice 1brm place of our own in Ealing. We're looking forward to the independent living; no crazy flatmates throwing your stuff in the rubbish, no waking up to your flatmates alarm clock, no arguing about who has to do the cleaning!

Paris & Orleans

2010-11-18T08:20:00.000-08:00

I thought it was fantastic news that my friend Michelle was moving to France for a year and we talked about how we would be able to go on trips together. When summer came she invited me to go with them to La Rochelle in south of France but looking 3 weeks in advance even Ryan Air was charging £200 return – which seemed a bit much for a weekend in France.

The rest of summer was taken up with our trip to Turkey then 4 days in Spain, so it would have to be a weekend in Paris towards the end of year instead. So what started with grand plans to travel together, ended with 1 weekend visit 2 weeks before she left France!

I got up at 5am on Sat to get my early morning Eurostar which got me into Paris at 10:25 where Michelle was waiting for me at the exit. Fotunately the Eurostar is so comfortable I managed to catch up on some sleep from that horrendously early start.

We put my bag in a locker and went out to explore. The weather forecast said 7 degrees, cloudy with a chance of rain. But it was 10 degrees with sun and beautiful blue skies. Its not often that the weather turns in my favour! We headed out to Montatre as that's the only area Warren and I didnt get to last time we visited. Michelle had this really good book that gave you a guided walking tour telling you where to stop and look and gave tidbits of information about the places.

Montmatre is the area of Paris where the artists, writers and musicians populated in the 19^th century. With their influx a bohemian culture built up with bars and brothels to cater to their needs.

We walked up to Sacre Cour where it looked magnificent – its layered white structure standing out against the crisp blue sky. The sun had bought people out in their droves and they were all crowded around and sitting on the steps, applauding to the busker who entertained with his violin playing to a back up tape. A few feet away a clown in a red nose and black and white striped shirt used his hands and arms to skillfully move a clear plastic sphere around as if it was floating. Handbags, toy dancing dogs and miniature eiffel towers were out on display and if you dared stare too long at them the Carribean owners would try and bring you in for a sale. They were out with their coloured threads too – ready to pounce on your wrist and whip you up a little bracelet before you could protest that you didnt want one. This time – I knew their ways..

By the crowds, it was obvious that the Sacre Cour was indeed the 2^nd most popular tourist attraction (to the eiffel tour). Surprisingly it was free to enter, and the queue wasnt that long so we went inside. I think this was the first time I'd been inside a bailica/cathedral when there was a service going. It gave it a reverent feeling and it felt a bit odd to be walking around when prayers were being said and hymns sung. An angelic soprano sung solo and was followed by the nuns on stage. I was certain the fist voice was a choir boy but I couldnt spot him. Candles were burning all around the church and I guess they made up for the free entrance by charging 2Euro to light one. Colourful stain glass windows lit up the basilica and when the sun streaming through, I guess the view was too much for some tourists to obey the no photos signs.

From here we wondered down to the Place du Tertre where artists sat out with their easels drawing portraits on the spot and selling their previous works of art. Michelle and I thought their work was cool and some of the pieces were really pretty but the book said it was just a place for low talent artists to overcharge for their work. There was a guy doing the usual carticatures and a lady cutting out detailed silhoutte profiles. The square was alive with activity and on the perimeters people sat at outdoor restaurants to observe the goings on.

We then walked past the Dali musuem where neither of us had much interest of going inside and onto the oldest house in Montmatre which now served as a museum. At many of the spots we went to were little signs saying Historical Paris with a french description of what was signifcant about that spot. Someone famous in the art world lived at the oldest house, but neither Michelle or I knew who he was.

Round the corner was one of only 2 surviving vineyards in Paris which apparently produced 700 bottles of much sought after strong red each year. It didnt look much bigger than a large back yard so we were surprised how such a small plot generated so much.

The book pointed out a few cafes that Picasso and his mates would frequent in their days and not too far away was the ex piano factory where Pablo and his artist friends lived, sharing rooms in a giant building which also had studio space.

After eating lunch on a park bench we continued our journey but had a bit of trouble reading the map and veered off our walking route (I was no help whatsoever and left the map reading in Michelle's capable hands).

After seeing a few more statues (one of an old duke holding his decapatated head in his hands- who was one of the 3 gents who gave the area its name Montmartre = Mount Matyre) we had reached the end of our walk. I was keen to check out the Moulin Rouge area so we walked along the seedy K Road of Paris to get there. Neon lights in all directions advertised Sex shops, sex toys and live shows. Plastic boobies and peckers were on display in shop windows and as a man walked along the street holding his daughter's hand, I said to Michelle – if I had a kid, there is no way I'd walk along this street with them. Imagine all the questions!

The Moulin Rouge theatre – over 100 years old, still had 2 shows a night to packed crowds and tourists flocked to have their picture taken outside it. We took a look inside where 3D screen showed scenes of topless women doing the can can. Apparently the Queen and Charles were guests at one show- though I found it hard to imagine the Queen being impressed with a stage full of bouncing boobies. Charles probably was though. I had no idea the show was so expensive -90Euro a ticket – going up with 190 if you wanted a meal and champagne with it. We have some fantastic theatre in London and none of them charge that much, and if they did, you could always sit at the back for a fraction of the price, so I had difficulty understanding how it could be so expensive. Gary (Michelle's husband) had taken his parents to see the show when they visited and said it was great, but even he wasnt sure it was worth the pricetag.

Michelle had read that there was going to be a giant xmas tree at Nostra Dame, so we tubed it there but it wasnt up yet. There were a few lights and things over Champs Elysee area so we headed that way. The sun was setting so I took quite a few photos. There is no denying that Paris an absolutey beautiful city and a photographer's dream and I had come prepared with my tripod..but it was safely in the lockers at Gare du Nord on the other side of Paris. I guess if I was more of a dedicated photographer I would have carried it around all day. So I made do using rubbish bins and benches wherever I could- there was a full moon too so it was quite a cool scene.

There were Xmas Markets up along the champs Elysee with a ferris wheel. Michelle got a mulled wine while I got my much anticipated chocolate crepe. But I had spent so long taking pics that we didnt have a lot of time to meander through the markets. I did find a xmas present for Mum though- but I wont say what it is just in case she actually reads this entry.

We headed to Orleans at about 8pm and by this time I was starving. It was an hour on the train and fortunately Gary is well trained and had some hot soup and french baguette ready for us. Even better was the nicely wrapped chocolate wafer mousse dessert he'd picked up from the boulangerie. Michelle sensibly stopped half way through the slice, but Gary and I endured to the end then suffered the chocolate overdose afterwards. It was delish though!

Two beautiful days in France would have been too much to ask for so the next day it was back to the familiar grey skies and drizzle. It didnt overly intice you to get out there and look around. The day started well with a fresh pain au chocolat from next door – it was golden, giant and puffy but could have done with some more 'chocolat' inside!

Poor Gary had to head off to work so Michelle and I stayed in, drinking tea and chatting. She showed me the book she had of all the nearby French castles – most of which she had seen. I was quite surprised – I had seen my fair share of castles now, but these were amazing and were set in some magnificent gardens. She also showed me the photos of her recent canal boat holiday with her parents where they transversed 200km of picturesque french countryside, going through multiple locks and staying overnight on the boat 'anchored up' at remote little villages. Looked like an experience!

From the apartment window we could see all the people walking back from the bakery with their french sticks in hand. Its cliched but true – French people walk around carrying baguettes! I saw a few on the underground too and couldnt help but find it mildly amusing.

Some other observations about Paris; the people dont obey the 'let people out of the tube first before you try to get in' rule. At one stop there was a lady with a pram by the door and trying to get past her and out of the tube while people were simultaneously try to push their way in – is chaos! Michelle confirmed my observation and the fact that Parisians dont queue very well either.

The exits from the underground consist of thiegh heigh doors which were no match to the homeless and other ticket dodgers who leapt over them in a single bound – right in front of the ticket offices!

Mum told me that Paris was on a high security alert for terrorist attacks and it was clear they were taking this seriously as there were guys walking around with guns everywhere- especially around the tubes and the train stations. The only other place Ive seen like that is Washington DC!

As it started to get dark, we ventured out to explore Michelle's city 'Orleans'. It was cold and raining lightly so wasnt the most pleasant of walks, but the city was pretty and christmas trees and lights were starting to adorn the streets. I took my tripod and took night photos of the Joan of Arc statue, a carousel and the Cathedral. Being a Sunday, all the shops were closed but we passed a small grocery store where I got a few goodies for the guys at work. As I perused the aisles of french biscuits and cheese snacks a drunk/crazy guy let loose at me, eying my tripod and waving his arms. I smiled and said 'I cant understand a word you are saying' but this didnt stop him. I guess there are crazies everywhere in the world.

Gary came to meet us after work and we killed another hour by walking around the streets in the rain taking pics. The streets were deserted now but a few months back in summer, people were out in their droves, dining outside in the wamth. But summer felt like a distant memory now and by the time the restaurant opened at 7pm, we were chilled to the bone!

It must have been a pretty popular place as there was a small huddle of people waiting for it to open up. The 'Marmite' (not to be confused with the yeast spread – its actually french for casserole dish) was a quaint authentic french restaurant which was offering a 3 course meal for 25E. I was starving by this time and was pretty confident I could get through 3 courses no worries – but I was wrong.

I saw the guy at the next table eating snails, I had missed this on the menu. Possibly because when the waiter spoke to me I answered with 'si' instead of 'oui' and so he gave me a Spanish menu! But Im not sure I would have ordered the snails even if I had seen it. I got onion soup, coq au vin and lemon tart. The coq au vin (chicken in wine) was huge and I didnt even eat half of it! A few hours later, full, warm and satisfied, we all rolled home.

The next morning, I basically just got up, had breakfast, said our goodbyes and jumped on the train to Paris. The heating on the train wasnt working so it was quite an uncomfortable hour. Im so glad I dont have to endure all of this winter! I arrived into the city with just enough time to grab a few pastries to take home on the Eurostar. Au revoir Paris!

Malaga, Spain with Crystal

2010-09-20T11:55:00.000-07:00

My cousin Crystal emailed me some months ago, excited that she was coming to the UK for a conference. She had a few days spare for a trip in Europe and over the next few months our emails went back and forward over suggested destinations. Through dual searching on the net, with a long distance phone call which disconnected no fewer than 5 times – at 3am we finally booked Malaga, Spain. I had vetoed Crystal's first choice of Barcelona since I'd been there 3 times already. And she wasnt too keen on Mallorca after the series 'Sun, Sea and A&E had shown its not so appealing side on NZ television.

Apart from the fact that I couldnt get our boarding pass to print on our printer so we had to make a mad dash to the local library, become a member, then use their computer to print off the passes – the journey there was uneventful. I hadnt seen Crystal in 2 years, and dont see any of my family very often, so we had a lot of goss to catch up on. So the bus to the airport and flight passed like nothing with our constant yabbering.

Upon landing we were told there was a bus that went into the city centre – number 186. I saw a bus parked up that said ciity centre on it so we jumped on and we were on our way. A few minutes later we realised this wasnt the 186, but it still went to the centre so I figured it wouldnt matter. However, it stopped at the bus station and we were told this was the final stop. The girl sitting next to us on the bus was friendly enough and smiled when I told Crystal that tapas were horrible, so we asked if she knew how far our hotel was from the bus station. Unfortunately, it wasnt in walking distance. She went to ask about buses and was told that there was no direct service to our hotel and we needed to take 2 buses.. Hmmm I guess it did matter that we hadnt taken the 186! Opps. The girl – going above and beyond her call of duty as friendly local – then went to ask about taxis for us. And even got into an argument with the taxi driver! She asked how much roughly it would cost and he kept arguing that he couldnt give an estimate as there is a meter and it completely depends upon traffic! Yes, she said, I know, but we just want a rough idea. The guy got really annoyed, waved his arms around and left- clearly not exhibiting the Andulician friendlyness I was expecting. It was dark and we didnt feel like trying to navigate buses, without a map in a foreign city. So we were forced to take the taxi which fortunatley was only 6Euro.

The taxi stopped and pointed across the road and I think Crystal and I were both as surprised as each other 'here???' we said, looking at the blue neon sign with the hotel name right by a busy road. But when we crossed the road, the sign was actually indicating an alleyway behind the main road where our hotel awaited, clean and new. The bright white foyer with a couch, a computer, a vending machine and the receptionist checking her facebook page– looked more like a university enrolment office. We sat down and in Spanish I checked us in, handed over my passport and asked for some general directions on the map. Then at the end of it all – we realised she spoke English! The tripadvisor website had given the hotel a fairly mediocre rating based on the fact that the staff only spoke spanish but they must have recruited since then.

We were on the 6th floor with a balcony which according to the receptionist, we could see the beach from – but unless you were superman with the ability to see through buildings – that was untrue. But we did have a corker view of the bull fighting stadium. It musnt've been bull fighting season though- and even if it was, we dont condone that sort of animal cruelty so wouldnt have watched anyway.. We continued gas bagging until we could contain our hunger no more and were forced to leave the room to forage for food. The small grocery store round the corner seemed like the easiest option; so we stocked up on fresh bread, philidalphia cream cheese, cereal and yoghurt then went back to the room. We werent sure if the bread tasted so good because we were starving or if in fact it was tasty bread. But either way, we polished off a rather large baton.

Before we knew it, it was 4am and we were still lying in bed chatting! Well – we did have a few years of catching up to do. Maybe its because my g'friend Amy has gone back to NZ so I dont get the opportunity to have really long girly chats any more. All the girl chats must have bottled up inside me since Dec and they were all just spilling out now.

Needless to say – we didnt awake bright and early the next morning. After a cup of cereal (well 3 cups for me) we tried to get the internet working in our room (unsuccessfuly) before giving up and using the hotel computer before going out to explore. It was dissapointingly overcast – but still warm. We went to find the beach and hit the ugly marina with its cranes and rubbish. But just a short walk around the corner was sand and beach. Proper sand – fine yellow sand – not like Turkish sand. There were the usual umbrellas and chairs out but it was nowhere near as developed and crowded as some of the places in Turkey and Greece. Cherinquitas (lttle restaurants) doted the shore cooking fresh fish on open fires and offering the usual fried seafood.

It wasnt the prettiest beach – as the ugly marina was still in view and there was a busy road right behind it – but it seemed to get nicer the further we walked. Part way along there was a strange open gym with a few body weight resistance machines and a ping pong table.

It wasnt long before we got hungry so went exploring the shops behind the beach. There wasnt a lot on offer around here- they were mostly hotels and things but we did find a shop where I got a tomato and cheese empanada (havent had one of those in sooo long – sooo good).

So far – my spanish was serving us well. I was even surprised myself. They seemed to understand me without having to repeat myself and though I knew I was making loads of grammar mistakes and using the 'saber' form of 'to know' instead of 'conocer' they didnt let on. And on the most part – I was understanding most of what they were saying too.

As we sat on the bench outside munching our goodies, the shop owner started packing up – it was siesta time. He said shops would remain closed until around 6. We continued our search for something for lunch and strolled upon a big grcoery store – which seemed like the easiest option. Inside were some beautiful nectarines for cheap too – Crystal started filling up a big bag. But how do you know they're any good? I questioned. Ohh they're good – I can smell it. And she wasnt wrong. We stocked up on more fresh bread, avocado, tomato and chips then went back down to the beach to eat There was a small grass island with palm trees, just before the sand so we sat there – for pretty much the entire afternoon.

Every city has its share of crazy people and Malaga showed us its first offender. What is that lady doing – Crystal exclaimed as watcing a woman swing a bird round and round in circles by its feet. It must be a rubber bird, I said. But no, as she got closer, we could see the bird was very much alive, and without means of escape as she had a jacket around its wings so it couldnt fly. She held it up in the air and waved it around then even took it to the showers for an involuntary blast of water where it gasped for air. As she walked past us, both our faces showing our disgust at her, she smiled a toothless grin and pointed to the bird then to us and held up 2 fingers. What the heck that was supposed to mean I have no idea. Though I suggested we steal the bird when the lady wasnt looking, i didnt know whether I wanted to have a crazy spanish woman chasing me round the beach on my holiday.

When the sun started going down we went back to the room to get changed and go into the restaurant area of town. The walk along the wide tiled boulevard with palm trees on either side, was beautiful and there were some really pretty buildings – one of them being a bank – not sure on the others. I stopped to take some night photos and we meandered towards the cathedral. It was the first time we had seen it and it was quite a magnificent sight. Tourists surrounded it, snapping away with their cameras. I took some pics too but it was a bit dark by this time and was a bit tricky without a tripod.

It was now that we discovered – Malaga has no public toilets. One of the side effects of pregnancy is the constant need to pee (Crystal was 11 weeks pregnant) so the lack of facilities was hugely frustrating. After asking about 7 different people (including some cops) we had to accept the hard facts – though we couldnt understand how it could be possible -there really were no public toilets. Buying a drink at a bar every time we needed to pee was going to get expensive so I managed to pull the pregnancy card on a sympathetic waitress who let Crystal pass – though she did look skeptical.

The mission for tonight was tapas. Despite warning Crystal of there disappointing oily grossness- you cant go to Spain and not experience tapas. Behind the cathedral there were cobbled streets full of bars and restaurants with outdoor tables and people milling around. Using my electronic translator we managed to decipher the menu boards – basically fried seafood – calamari, squid and even anchovies.

After satisfying ourselves that we had seen a wide selection of what was on offer we went back to the first place which was in a popular but unlikely alleyway with graffitied corrageted iron walls. It was so crowded that we couldnt join the hoards outside as there werent any tables left. Inside we ordered our tapas; tortilla, deep fried calamari rings and paella. Crystal confirmed that my forewarning on tapas was correct – even adding that the fish was completely tasteless. She picked at things but neither of us could manage to finish the rings. even after adding as much lemon juice as we could to give it some flavour. I imagined Richards horror at seeing the uneaten calamari sitting on the plate as we left.

Looking out the window the next day didnt look too inviting- heavily overcast with the threat of rain hanging in the dark clouds. We ate breakfast then decided to check our emails before heading out. We both had a laugh at the Kiwis replying to Crytals Facebook status about how much they Loved Tapas! Clearly – the NZ version of tapas is nothing like the real deal.

Crystal had a lot of emails to read as her family loves her and writes to her every day...my emails consisted of one from Richard and one from Jacinda but hers doesnt count as she just wanted money (well she wanted me to sponser her in a charity event).

I also spent quite a bit of time fiddling around trying to get the internet to work in our room. A few hours later we were just about to leave when it started pouring down with rain. It had been a while since breakfast now and we were both feeling the hunger pangs so decided the best option was to go to the bakery round the corner and get some fresh bread for lunch to make into our magnificent avocado, tomato and cream cheese rolls.

So another hour or so later, we were on our way. Crystal discovered that her jandals had absolutely no grip and with the smooth streets she had slipped over about 4 times in about 100m. So she was walking around barefoot (haha barefoot and pregnant) which invoked quite a few stares from people. I didnt know what the problem was – these streets looked cleaner than at home! Crystal said that when I bent down and lay on the ground to get the best camera angles for my photos – that this also invoked a number of stares from people. The Andulucians must be quite conservative.

What better to do in the rain than visit the cathedral. I checked the website that morning and it said entrance was 1.50Euro – bargain I thought. But when we went to pay – it was actually 5Euro- I guess the website is seriously out of date. Cathedrals are pretty much non existent in NZ so despite me having seen about a dozen of them, I coudlnt deny Crystal the privilidge. And plus I love taking photos of the stain glass windows and intricate roofing anyway.

We did an audio tour which had some 30 or 40 points of interest to listen to – but I think we only managed a dozen before getting bored. The cathedral was apparently built on a site that used to be a mosque some years back but had been converted to christianity somewhere along the line. I guess I'd know a bit more if I had listened more intently to the audio tour. It was a beautiful chathedral, but as I write this some 3 weeks later, Im struggling to recall anything significant about it which makes it stand apart from other cathedrals Ive seen.

The rain had died down a bit while we were inside so we endeveared to find the 'tourist walk' that was the red line on our tourist map. But both of us were pretty useless at reading maps and the little alleyways and numerous squares made things confusing. We managed to navigate ourselves about half way along the red line then gave up and went in search of Alcazaba. Some tour guides in the square saw our hesitation about what to do and where to go and tried to coarse us into a tour sitting in the back of their bike while they pedalled around the streets. We said we wanted to find the Alcazaba but they said they couldnt take us there as there were road works in the street that way. Actually there was a lot of construction and demolished alleyways in these streets. Instead he tried to get us to do a 30min or hour tour around the vicinity but it was to places we had already seen so I didnt really see the point.

So pointed in the direction of Alcazaba which was apparently 5 mins away we continued our search but instead found the roman ampitheater- it was no Colloseum but interesting enough to attract quite a few tourists who snapped away with their cameras. While I positioned my bean bag on the floor to prop the camera up Crystal got asked to take some photos of an Austrian couple posing in front of the theatre. When they found out she was a Nzer the woman gushed 'ooohhhhhh I looooove New Zealand' and preceded to give all the details of their recent trip there. She must have been trapped there for about half an hour, politely nodding and smiling. Ah well- such is the bain of being from the best country in the world!

By now, it was me who was busting to go to the toilet so we had to abandon our search of the Alcazaba. We went round the corner to where the kind guard had allowed Crystal to use the loos at the Pablo Picasso museum. Unfortunately said kind guard was no longer at the door and his replacement was under no circumstances going to let me use the loos unless I bought a ticket.

We walked back round to the restaurants by the cathedral so I could buy something to use their toilet. We had just filled up on ice-cream (where we got the ice cream girl to give us little teaspoon tasters of all the flavours before we settled on kinder surprise -yummoooo) so I didnt want to buy any food – though ice cream was the most readily available fast restaurant food in order to buy and leave.

As we walked, Crystal decided to test me on my maori words to see if I should still be considered a Nzer. It seemed that spanish had completely replaced what little maori I had once known and she was appalled at my lack of knowledge of te reo. I had even forgotten aroha. But she filled my maori words memory bank back up again which should last me until when I go home in Feb.

Once I had relieved myself we continued with the Alcazaba mission – and finally found it! Ironically, it was right behind the roman ampitheatre only metres away from where we had been. But we had walked all the way round back through the city and out the other side, to arrive minutes after they closed! The Austrian couple came out and told us how lovely it was. Hmmm well at least we knew how to get there so we could visit it tomorrow.

It was getting kinda late so we thought we better go back to the hotel in preparation for our flamenco show that night. The receptionist at the hotel told us there was a whole street of flamenco with a few flamenco bars with spontaneous outbreaks of flamenco. She told us what number bus to take, the street name and the name of the place with the best atmoshpere. In my head I was picturing 'La Boca' the region in Buenos Aires full of Tango dancers..you could hear the music from streets away and on every corner there was a couple engaged in the passionate lock of the tango.

I asked the bus driver if he could let me know when we got to the stop for Avenida Los Guindos. If I remember, he replied. The receptionist reckoned it would be no more than 15 mins on the bus, so after about 20 mins we asked a girl on the bus if she knew where to get off. In another few minutes, we got off the bus and looked down street filled with car sale yards and industrial buildings, both thinking that this was a very unlikely venue for a happening Flamenco area. I didnt lose hope though and was fully expecting to turn a corner and be greeted by the Malagan verion of La Boca. Crystal didnt seem so optimistic. When we had walked for ages past seedy pubs and closed shops I too began losing hope and asked a lady if she knew where it was. Yes she said, its just up there and pointed back towards where we had just come. Oh but its not Flamenco anymore, its salsa. She also informed us there were no flamenco bars in this area. Feeling more than a little disappointed and grumpy, we went and got some pizza for dinner. We sat in a busy little restaurant where the wall was full of certificates of participation and awards for pizza acrobatics! Though the pizza was nice, it didnt do much to cheer us up.
We poked our heads into the salsa club on the way out, but they were having a class. 11pm seemed quite late to have a salsa class on a week night – you certainly wouldnt get that in London.

Our bus was about to stop running and we would have to catch the night bus, so rather than hang around at the salsa club, waiting for the class to finish (which Im sure Crystal wouldnt have wanted to do) we legged it back to the bus stop.

We were puzzled over how the receptionist could have been wrong on so many levels – a street full of Flamenco? We told her about our wee adventure upon our return and she couldnt believe it – apparently she sent a guest there 3 weeks ago and they came back saying how wonderful it was! But she promised to sort something out for us tomorrow.

The next day the weather finally came through for us – sun, blue skies and warmth – this was the Spain we were after. We didnt waste too much before hitting the beach – stocked up with supplies from the grocery store including another bag of nectarines and a watermelon. We gladly paid our 6 Euro for the umbrella and 2 loungers and stretched out to soak up the rays and read our books. Despite having 2 weeks of sun in Turkey, we didnt have too many afternoons of lazying around so I was all for it.

The watermelon was just as good as the necterines and though at first I thought – there is no way we are going to eat this 3kg watermelon, as we demolished it, I ended up wishing we had bought more. At least the tasty fruit made up for the tasteless tapas.

We stayed in our loungers until the sun went down then reluctantly went back to our hotel to see where the receptionist would send us on our Flamenco mission tonight. Unfortunately she informed us that there was no show tonight and it was at 11am tomorrow. I found it hard to believe that there wasnt flamenco on a fri night so I googled it; funnily enough most of the websites listed the no-longer-running place we went to last night. Others listed bars and restaurants that alternated between flamenco and salsa shows. And other places were too far away.

We thought we'd just go have dinner at a bar/restaurant with some live music and if we happened to stroll across flamenco then that would be great. There was a club on the same street as us that was listed on google as a potential flamenco joint so we went in search of that – however the number didnt seem to exist and when we asked a waiter at the restaurant he said that club was 5 mins around the corner, and didnt have flamenco.

So we headed into the cathedral where they had a live band playing the other night. But the sign informed us live music was only on Wed and Thur nights. We wandered around the streets for ages listening for music – and there was nothing! Friday night in the city and the only noise was chatter. So we gave up on looking for a venue with music and instead just looked for somewhere for dinner; the predominant option was tapas and we werent up for multiple plates of fried blandness so when we were starving and desperate – Italian seemed like the best option.

And what a bonus- they had a live accordion player on the outside tables. The music must have attracted a few other hungry tourists so we had to queue for our table. We didnt finally eat until 11pm. Though we thought we were starving -neither of us could finish our giant plate of creamy cabonara or olive oily tomato spaghetti. Our waiter looked like he was from the set of Once Were Warriors and had just put on some smart clothes and an apron. He was in fact Mexican and a nice guy – and even gave us a block of chocolate when we left, I think everyone got that though.

The next morning we were greeted with more glorious sun and I could see Crystal was mighty tempted to ditch the Flamenco show and hit the beach. But it was obligatory to see Flamenco in Andulucia – it would be like going to Argentina and not seeing Tango. We packed up and checked out, then found the Flamenco musuem without too much difficulty (despite it not having any signage to tell you it was the Flamenco museum). Once inside, it looked like a very unlikely venue and once again, we wondered if the receptionist had got it wrong. I questioned the guy who greeted us at the door and he told us, no there are no show, that was last night. Damn it – I thought, she got 11am and 11pm mixed up! I sighed....then explained that the receptionist phoned and was informed that there was a show. The guy decided he better seek a second opinion then went off to talk to a colleague. Turns out there was a show! We were about 15 mins early but they told us we could wait downstairs for the show to start. We were ushered to a room where they was a small stage at the front and 10 or so tables all around it. We were the only ones there so chose the best seats – right at the centre front. But no, he told us to move as those tables were for the tour group that was arriving. He pointed to chairs at the very back on the left hand side. But I wasnt having that so he made a little table just for us, right by the stage on the left.

Then we waited and waited. Another couple came in and sat down. After about half an hour we went and asked what was going on – we were missing out on precious sun down here! Turns out the tour bus was running late and since they were 90% of the audience, they werent starting till they arrived. We picked at the tapas they had put out – chorizo, parma ham, olives, crunchy bread cracker things..and about 15mins later the tour group arrived and filled the room. They were all Spanish and had their camcorders at the ready, even filming their decent down the stairs into the silent room. Their tour leader led a toast and introduced the act as enthusiastically as if he were welcoming Robbie Williams to the stage.

Minutes later we were listening to the strumming of the guitar, clapping of hands and the passionate wailing of the lead singers voice; her eyes closed as she drew emotion from deep within.

A few songs in and a guy got up to dance – stamping his feet and clapping his hands. As he demonstrated his skill on the dance floor he magically became more handsome and transformed to Brad Pitt! His partner got up to join him and in her blue flowery dress she swirled around the stage beating her feet and clasping the cassinets.

When the guy sat down his shirt was more wet than dry. He slumped in his seat, sweat dripping down his brow and I wondering if I should pass him some water – he didnt look to good. Maybe he was nursing a hangover – it was Sat morning after all.

The show went for 45mins – a tad shorter than I expected. Afterwards the other non tour group couple came and chatted to us and said they loved the show. They were real flamenco junkies and had seen at least 10 shows all over Andulucia and said this was one of the best. It was good to know that we hadnt sacrificed our day in the sun for nothing. Afterwards we got to see the group in their normal attire and got a photo with them (because they thought we wanted to take one, when in fact Crystal was telling me to show them some of the pictures I had taken). They were well impressed that we were from New Zealand.

This was our last day in Spain so we spent the next while browsing through the shops trying to find gifts to take back home. There were some cool flamenco dress cooking aprons which I reckoned would have been cool for Lian. I went in search of a t-shirt for Richard. But not a naff touristy one because if your from Spain do you really want a Spanish tourist shirt? Crystal got a couple of postcards then we went in search of lunch.

There werent too many fast food options apart from a baked potato kiosk. I wouldnt have picked hot spuds as a popular choice in 30degree heat but it was actually really popular. There was a bowl full of white creamy liquid which we both assumed was sour cream but was in fact mayonnaise. I watched them make a few of these taters and I'd have to say they would probably surpass Big Macs in their calorific value. Olive oil got poured in, followed by about 1/3 c mayonnaise, cheese, ham and topped with another good wallops of mayonnaise. Heart attacks – here we come! Needless to say – we ordered a bespoke weight watchers version while the potato making woman looked at us like we were weird.

We then headed to the beach – but sadly our mornings escapads had eaten into our beach time and we only had 2.5hrs before we had to leave. As smoke from the nearby fire where they were cooking fish kept wafting by, we lay under the shade of a palm tree, reading our books and chatting – soaking in the sun as this would probably be my last opportunity until Feb next year. Crystal was in awe of all the boobs on display – big, small, young, old – they were all there. New Zealand doesnt really do topless sunbathing so it some what of a novelty for us. I still found it odd though that a group of topless girls could have a normal conversation with a guy who came by to sell jewellery. Why is that sand suddenly makes it socially acceptable to be half naked!

And there were no shortage of beach salespeople – drinks, jewellery, food. Some of them were young and looked like they should have been in school though. But I think the chinese beach massueses were the most popular.

It was with great trepidation that we packed up our stuff and headed to the hotel. I tried to convince Crystal to take the bus to the airport 30mins later but we agreed to be extra cautious this time and go early. Probably just as well as after getting to the front of the check in queue we discovered we had to join another queue to get our tickets stamped since we were non-EU. And this second queue was not moving for a looong time (and caused people to get a bit uptight about a suspected queue jumper)!

When we arrived into London it was raining and about 10 degrees. As soon as we stepped off the plane Crystal's teeth started chattering. She was to learn what a luxury it is to be picked up at the airport in NZ when you arrive back from holiday – because we had a 1hr bus to get to London followed by 2 night buses to get to our house. Actually 2 night buses would have been nice, as we ended up taking 1 and walking the last stretch as being a Sat night the N6 drove right past us- fill to the brim with drunk and dozy passangers. It might be an ordeal but its still worth it!

Day 14- Fethiye to Kos Greek Island

2010-09-08T14:32:00.000-07:00

We got up early, finshed packing our bags (I had a mild panic the previous night that I had lost the camera's memory card and demolished all our bags in the process of looking for it) then stuffed down our boiled egg, tomato and bread in about 5 mins flat. Then legged it to the wharf – spending our last Turkish Lira at the awesome 24hr bakery at the end of the street on some chocolatey crumble slice and fresh bread.

Most people just do day trips to Kos and annoyingly it is the same price for 1 way on the ferry as it is for return. We sat on the top deck and enjoyed the ride in the sun, gazing out at the islands and bidding farewell to Turkey. The refreshing breeze soon turned into a goose bump inducing wind as we reached top speed and a lady's hat when flying into the ocean. In less than an hour we were in Kos.

But what sounds like a quick and easy journey is ruined by immigration. I guess you cant expect much for a small Greek island. The line was massive and there were only 2 people on the desk. I guess we got through in about 40 mins but instead of simply walking out the other end of the building – we were instructed to go and wait in a a side room with our luggage. The

was another couple in there- an Aussi with his kitesurf and his moaning english g'friend. We werent told what we were waiting for, or for how long and bit by bit the room was fulling up. We passed the time by pointing out people in the queue who we thought would be sent to the room with us. A dreadlocked, tattooed guy got to the counter 'he's in here for sure' we all said..and minutes later, he too joined us. The trend seemed to be young passengers with bags – the older patrons and americans, even with bags, were passing right through. The english girl went and told them they had a bus to catch and can we go please, but predictably she was told to go back and wait in the room. Another boat arrived and the line doubled – we all groaned at the prospect that they may be waiting till they process all the passengers before they come and 'see to us'.

I guess we waited about 30 or 40 mins before we were instructed to line all our bags up in a straight line in the middle of the room. A dog was bought out who gave them all a good sniff- and we were released!
As we walked into town a few people touted for their hotels but we werent bombarded. We made it to our hotel without too much trouble. I had read in reviews that it was 10-15min walk from the centre, but it was more like 20 – and with heavy backpacks 20mins is a long time!

We were pretty happy with our self catering apartment; it was pretty sparse on extras like salt n pepper and cooking pots and pans but we were only spending 2 nights here so it didnt matter. The pool was really nice and we were far enough out that it was quiet and almost sounded like the country with cows moo-ing in the distance.That's a picture of the place at night above.

My agenda for these last 2 days was simple – relax! I wanted lazy pool and beach time! But this was difficult for Rich to comprehend and he suggested we hire a motorbike and cruise round the island. Turns out I didnt get too much relaxation time; when you're in a new place you tend to walk around and look at the sites, browse the shops and meander. I did get 2hrs by the pool and a few hours at the beach but it wasnt the hard core relaxation I was aiming for.

Greece was a bit colder than Turkey, not that you could say 28 degrees is cold, and the Euro made things more expensive than the Lira. But we still enjoyed our time here. Mostly we cooked for ourselves using food from the grocery store nearby but we did go out for dinner one night when Rich was immensley satisfied with his plate full of kebab meat. Other food highlights were the nutella crepes and the enormous ice creams at the bakery down the road- which we sampled a few times. Turkish kebabs were swapped for the 'gyros' which came with chips on the top and were probably a bit tastier than the kebab, but on par in the likelihood of getting food poisoning.

The beach was packed with loungers and umbrellas which appeared to be free and sponsered by the bars on the beachfront in the hopes that you would spend all your money on their booze. They belted out music too so it wasnt an overly quiet place.

Again, Rich insisted that we go and experience the night life but when we came home for a little rest – he fell asleep and didnt wake up! I wasnt fussed – Id rather read my book – I guess Im getting old!

Our last afternoon was spent wondering how the heck we were going to get to the airport. Taxis quoted 60Euro, travel agents didnt have shuttle services, the tourist office was closed and according to (incorrect) travel webistes, there was no public transport! After asking maybe the 6th person, we finally found out that there was a bus. We were a bit worried that it might run to 'greek time' but quite the opposite- it left about 5mins early! That morning was a mission. We allowed half an hour to walk to the bus stop but as we were walking we wondered if that was enough time so Rich started running! I cannot run with 25kg on my bag and kinda scuttled after him. We were both panting, exhausted and sweating profusely when we made it to the bus stop – 10 mins early!!

We got to the airport in plenty of time, but there was chaos similar to when we flew out of Rhodes, queues that went almost out of the aiport and lines which merged into each other. We had a bit of an issue getting through immigration as they couldnt find the stamp to show when we came into the country. Their english wasnt great so trying to explain that we came over on a boat and they didnt stamp our passport was a bit of a challenge. If our Ryan Air flight hadnt have been delayed by an hour, we might have missed our flight!

So that was our 15 days in Turkey/Kos. Fabulous fun and a beautiful country. We'll be back!

Turkey Day 13- Fethiye

2010-09-08T07:14:00.000-07:00

The next day we spent the morning walking around the beach and exploring a bit more before we headed into Fethiye city. Rich bargained with a guy to get a few boxes of Turkish delight and some apple tea. The boxed stuff was way cheaper than what you get behind the counter by weight but we were suspicious the boxed stuff was the crap stuff so bought and tried 1 box before commiting to a further 3. As we guessed, they were a different calibre from the stuff we bought at the grocery store – but they were just gifts for people at work so they would do! Interestingly the pictures on the box didnt look at all like the product inside but when I pointed this out to the shopkeeper he didnt seem to see what the problem was.

By some magic Richard's phone's GPS guided us to our hotel through mazes of alleyways and what seemed like people's back yards. We never would have found the place without his phone. Carrying all the bags in the heat, we were melting so it was great to have air con in the room and we veged out for a while before heading out to explore.

It was much less British and touristy here so would have made a better base. We chose the beach resort as reviewers said Fethiye didnt have a beach – but that wasnt true! While the beach wasnt huge or spectacular, it was sandy and right by the shops so would've been perfect (although it was more expensive to stay here than in Gumbet).

There were quite a few shops and we browsed for a while. I like to buy a piece of jewellery in the countries I visit but couldnt really find anything that took my fancy so instead bought Richard a necklace- a manly one of course.

I was intstructed by work colleagues not to bring back Turkish Delight but I was struggling to find an alternative. There was this other sweet called Halva made with almonds but I didnt want to risk buying the box when I didnt know if it was foul or not – and nobody sold small bars to try it first.

We had our last turkish kebab (Richard's upset stomach the other night still hadnt put him off the kebabs). A chicken kebab was 3L. I went up and asked for a kebab but without the meat – 4.50Lira he said. What?? I looked at the guy incredulously – how can it be more expensive to take the meat out?? 'OK -we do you special price – 3Lira' he said. Sometimes these guys just take the p**!!

We stumbled upon a fruit market and got a big back of juicy purple grapes and some giant necteranes – so cheap too. Then found a place selling authentic bubble gum consistency ice cream- which we would have to come back for as I was too full.

Fethiye had a beautiful harbour and a castle on the waterfront. But we were done with exploring cultural sites and were content to just wander around the luxury yachts with their red and white flags proudly lined up in a row, flapping in the breeze.

We went back to our room (about a 10-15min walk) and had a bit of a rest while searching on line for our accomodation in Kos tomorrow. I preferred to stay somewhere in Kos town so we could go straight there after arriving on the ferry- but there wasnt much to chose from – at least not in our price range.

At around 10pm we headed out for our ice cream and not faced with any alternative – I risked it and bought the Halva (which turned out to be quite nice). Richard was adament that we were going out to experience the lightlife for the last night in Turkey. Nothing much was happening as we walked around though – despite the fact that Fethiye is meant to be famous for its raging nightlife. It took quite some persuading but I managed to convince him to stay in- which was the sensible thing to do seeing we had a 9am ferry to catch.

Day 12- Turkey Aquapark

2010-09-07T07:08:00.000-07:00

After about 5 hours sleep – we awoke for breakfast and bought some snacks from the shop to make our lunch to smuggle into the aquapark. With half a loaf of bread, peaches, dorritos and a 1L coke wrapped up in our towels – we hoped they wouldnt extent their 'no food from outside' policy far enough to do bag searches. Lucky for us they didnt.

I hadnt been to an aquapark since the age of 14 in Australia – so I reckoned it was about time I went again. This was the biggest one in the area and supposedly had 30 waterslides. But it was more like 7 when you considered that one slide had 4 lanes.

Our package included transfers to and from the park and we got dropped off so early that the park was open- but none of the slides were actually going. After about 40mins wait – lounging on one of the many sun loungers – we were off!

First up- the 2 seater inflatable raft down the 'crazy river'. That was cool – no sharp, steep turns, a mellow initiation to the day. We did that a couple of times then Richard went in search of more adventure. Straight to the Kamakazi slides he went.

I studied them from the bottom -there were 3, each getting slightly steeper and more adventurous till the 3^rd one was an enclosed tube with an almost 90 degree drop.

I watched a girl go down; she didnt scream and didnt seem very shaken as she emerged from the pool. Hmm cant be that bad, I thought. So with Richard's coxing, we made our way up. I have to admit, my heart was pounding as I stood in that line. Im such a wimp! Even though my last waterpark was 16 years ago – I still remember the fear of the ride my sister convinced me to go on with her at WetnWild. It was a narrow enclosed tube which twisted and turned you at high speeds in the dark so you had no idea where you were going. I hated every second of it and it took about 10 minutes afer being spat out of the tube before my legs stopped shaking.

At least with this one I could see wehre I was going – straight down! The rush of the first steep dip hit me and I opened my mouth to scream – only for buckets of water to pour inside so I had to fight for breath. At least now I understood why everyone slid silently down the kamakazi slides. I spent the rest of the time spluttering out water and unconsciously must have put my elbows out against the edges in a futile attempt to slow down. It was one of the longest 10 seconds of my life and I remember thinking 'surely I must be at the end by now?? Upon erupting from the tube I met Rich who had felt brave and went down the 90 degree inclosed tube. He thought it was great and was edging me to have a go at that one -nooooo way! After the adrenalin wore off, I noticed my elbows hurting and saw that they were cut and bleeding as if I had just walked through broken glass on my elbows. The other wounded kamakazi victims all then seemed to appear and everywhere around the park there were people with plasters on and bleeding elbows.

That was enough excitement for me and it was to the sun loungers I headed, leaving Richard to explore on his own. I ended up falling asleep for about 3 hours (forunately I was in the half shade so didnt wake up a lobster). In that time Rich had made friends with a group of Russians and all the life guards and and been on every ride in the park.

We took some pics, went on the wild river a few more times and walked around the grounds. I was most disappointed that the 3 wide open tube rides and the wave pool were closed all day. Back when I was a kid – every birthday I would request a day at Te Rapa pools in Hamilton where I would spend hours going down the wide warm water tube on my yellow rubber mat until the pebbled ramps had worn my feet red raw.

The shuttle back to the hotel left at the undescript time of 'between 4.30 and 5.30' and though we went out at 4.30 and waited where directed in the car park – frustratingly we were forced to wait an hour while the driver waited for every single person to arrive.

Though our appartment was advertised as having WIFI, we couldnt get it to work. Richard's phone can pick up every network so he was suspicious that they didnt actually have internet and just said they did to aid in their marketing. The staff werent exactly helpful at trying to get it to work so maybe he was right. But there were plenty of internet cafes and restaurants with WIFI in the area so we took the laptop and settled in for some homemade chips. The restaurant was definitely catering to the local clientelle here. They played X-Factor on the big screen and served hamburgers, chips and other english delicacies. When the waiter came over I said 'do you actually have any Turkish food?' 'English people dont like Turkish food' he answered.

While I searched for accomodation, Rich got increasingly uncomfortable and complained he had a sore stomach. He ran off to the toilet a couple of times and blamed it on the turkish beer he was drinking. I reckon the dodgey kebabs had finally caught up on him! So he wasnt up for any nightlife tonight- but still we went to sleep at about 1 or 2am to the sounds of bad karaoke.

Turkey Day 11 Gumbet and Turkish Baths

2010-09-06T10:37:00.000-07:00

Gumbet was the extreme of Cadiz. This was England with sun. 'Bar Street' yes that was actually the name of the st) formed a loop and was lined with Karaoke bars, restaurants, clothes shops and holiday tattoo parlours. Our hotel was only 150m from the main drag which meant we stuffed pillows over our head to try and sleep through the tuneless singing of Robbie Williams Angels 'And through it aaaaalllllllll she offers me proteeeeection, a lot of love and aaafffeeection!....I think I would rather have the 5 am mosque prayers...at least they are kind of melodic.

After breakfast we went exploring the shops and things. Richard managed to make a shop owner agro by trying to bargain too hard over his fake Tommy and Dolce and Gabbana shirts. Then we chatted to a tour agent and booked a trip to the Turkish baths that evening.

Beach time. Gumba beach wasnt overly spacious, or overly pretty. But it wins for comfort. Nowhere had we encountered free hammocks, cushions and comfy loungers laid out ready for our relaxation pleasure. Richard went to the water but found the rocks too uncomfortable to swim and chose to have a nap in a hammock instead. I read my Jodi Picoutt book in the hammock next to him and before we knew it, it was Turkish Bath time.

I was hoping this would be an authentic experience and was told that Turkish people use these baths too but Im not so sure of that- we all looke d like tourists. And I think the traditional baths dont allow mixing of sexes. Apparently, the bath tradition dates back to the times when houses didnt have bathrooms and people would come to bath communually in public baths. We were directed into the sauna first. As if we hadnt sweated enough in the past week! But we sweated some more – within minutes we were both drenched.

From there, it was into a large polygonal shaped room with benches all around the outside and a large marble slab in the middle. It was warm and smelt of herbal bath salts. There were taps and little marble sinks in every corner with copper trays inside. Two Turkish men, both wearing what can only be descried as a small red checkered table cloths wrapped around their waists, were using the trays to pour water over 2 girls in their bikinis. One of the men grabbed a girl by the hand and her and her friend giggled as they all left the room together. So there we were alone in this room, wondering what was supposed to happen next. Nobody came so we used the little sinks to pour trayfulls of warm water over each other. After about half an hour, still nobody had come and we wondered if with the excitement of the bikini girls, they had forgotten about us. Richard went to investigate and was told just to carry on waiting.

Finally the table clothed Turks came back. They were both in their early 30s, one with a hairy chest, one without. Neither of them ugly, nor overly good looking. I was grateful they werent the pot bellied, hairy Pavarotti lookalikes I saw in the brochure. Richard was disappointed they werent bikini wearing Turkish women. They hummed as they scrubbed us down with a giant loffah glove and we grossed out seeing our skin (and tans) roll up and get washed away. I think my guy purposely set the water temperature to cold to see me give a little squeal as he poured water over me. Next up was the foam bath. We lay on the marble slabs as they filled foamy pillowslips with air to form a giant pillow which was rubbed all over us. They remained expressionless as they gave us a short, firm massage too. I couldnt help but think that these guys must have the best jobs in the world – rubbing down bikini clad women. But then I saw the beer gutted Brit waiting in the room next door- so maybe not. I wondered if when pairs came in, the Turks played paper-rock-scissors to see who had to massage the man. They talked and laughed to each other as we got massaged on the opposite sides of the slab. I wish I understood Turkish as I got the feeling we were the subject of their conversation.

That was all that was included in our turkish bath visit but we upgraded to the full works – after some intense bargaining on the price of course! I got a 'hair treatment'. Which was in fact the Turkish guy shampooing my hair, then combing a conditioning treatiment through. Judging by the Pantene and Head and Shoulders bottles lying on the bench, I would say there was nothing special about my 'special hair treatment'.

Next up was our arometherapy massage. There were 5 of laying face down on massage tables in slightly cool, ugly room with a 1960s tapestry picture on the wall. The massues talked to each other as they worked their hands over us. The cream she used smelled divine and left its scent on me for the rest of the day; but I dont think she was a trained masseus as it didnt feel any different from the massages Richard gives me.

Richard again was disappionted he was being massaged by another Turkish man and I wasnt too worried mine was being done by a Turkish woman. Especially when she pulled my bikini bottoms to the middle and massaged my butt cheeks! I was wondering if she would do the same to my top! But she didnt...And no, Richard's guy didnt give him the butt check massage.

The massage lasted for 30 minutes before a mineral mud mask was painted onto our faces. We lay there in the ugly room, waiting for it to dry for about 15 mintues before we were directed to a sink to wash it off ourselves.

So that was our Turkish bath experience, it cost us 90Lira for both. Roughly £40. There is no way youd get 2 thrity minute massaged in London for that price..and it was the first time I'd ever paid for a massage. But the difference is that in London; you'd be in the most beautiful room, peaceful music would be playing softly in the background, candles would be burning and the the beatuticians certainly wouldnt be talking to each other! But of course, you would pay about £100 each for the pleasure of it. After days of chlorine and sun exposure, I think our skin was thanking us for this.

Seeing as the night life was so close to us, we thought we better check it out. Bar Street was pumping like Vegas – every bar and club was pounding out the music in an effort to drown out the club next door. Standing on the street, they all mixed together in a deafning overlap of bass that made me want to turn around and go home. The first place we passed had the 2 club promotors dancing like crazy on the balcony but when you looked passed them you realised there was actually nobody else there. Club number 2 was Molly Malones and the promotor pounced upon us as we walked passed. Promising fire dancing, a male dance competition, break dancing and a free shot. Well, how do you say no to that? So we went up and yes as expected, it was full of white irishmen and Brits – the only Turks being the ones that worked there. The music was good to start with and then got whacky. Playing really old theme songs and songs that you hear to ads. But we stayed for a bit as they did a male belly dancing show. Featuring 2 of their staff – shirtless but wearing a little skirt over their shorts with attached bells which jingled as they wiggled their hips. It was quite amusing – and in fact was the only belly dance we saw in our entire trip.

Some time after was the fire dancing. Which wasnt dancing at all – just a guy breathing a flammable vapour onto some sort of sparkler which turned it into a giant fire ball as he breathed out and ran backwards. I was impressed – Richard wasnt. The heat was so intense we could feel it from about 5 metres away.

When the music got too much we went in search of improvements. The annoying thing about the bars was as soon as you walk in someone rushes up to take your drinks order – and they arent too happy when you say you dont want anything. I guess 'normal' drinkers woudlnt find that annoying at all – in fact they would probably welcome it as a nice change to having to queue in a London bar and battle for the bartenders attention for 30 minutes to try and get a drink.

Turkey Day 10 - Selcuk/Ephesus to Gumbet (Fethiye)

2010-09-02T10:32:00.000-07:00

Knowing we had a big day ahead of us, I awoke early, showered and got ready for our day. By 10am we still hadnt heard from Julian, so Richard went next door to find him still fast asleep in bed. We gave him some time to get ready while we withdrew some cash and called Richard's Dad to wish him Happy Birthday.

Selcuk had a lot to see; Ephesus alone could apparently take the whole day. Then there was St John's basilica, a Mosque, the Temple of Artemis which was one of the wonders of the ancient world, a castle and the house of Mary of Magdalane.

We started with Ephesus. Taxi, taxi- the drivers yelled at us as we began our journey. 'No, we are walking' we replied. 'Its 4km!' they yelled back at us in disbelief as if we were about to impart on an epic marathon.

Ephesus is the King of Ancient Ruins. It was like a little town, complete with a stunning Library, Temple, 2 theatres and numerous other buildings we had no idea of their function. Knowing that we had no knowledge of such a place we went to buy an audio guide but the sign said 'gone, back soon'. Who knows how long soon is, so we wondered on in ignorance. -occassionally catching little snipet of information from tour groups as they passed us by. The numbers on the rocks were from the excavation, when the archaeologists pieced together the parts. There was a brothel beside the library, and the face at the top of the temple was Madussa with her hair full of snakes.

The marble street was lovely, as was the small street with mosiacs pictures as the floor. Apparently it was 3km from one end of the site to the other. It certainly didnt feel like it...maybe looking at all the ancient buildings made time and distance surreal, or maybe we missed half of it... As amazing as it was I get the feeling we didnt understand the full signifance of this place.

We walked another 3km back towards Selcuk to find the ancient Temple of Artemis. What was once a wonder of the ancient world, is now no more than a giant pillar standing tall in the middle of a swampy field. This was once the biggest temple in Europe, larger than a football field and contained more than 130 columns. The entire thing was made of marble. It was so difficult to imagine when all you see is a white column with a birds nest on top. The only hint to its former granduer was the other column I spotted in the water some 150metres away.

Next up was the church of St John – who suprisingly Julian didnt have a clue about. An apostle – he baptised Jesus, we suggested.. But no...I guess they dont have 'Bible in Schools' in Argentina. Though the grounds supposedly housed some impressive frescos – we were too exhausted to pay money to trapse around in the hot sun looking at more buildings from the past. So we took a few pics from the outside and went into the mosque which was just around the corner. I dont think I've ever been inside a mosque before. The floor in the main room was laid out with coloured matts, ready for prayer time. The grounds were lovely and manicured. A familiar crackling came out of the speaker – and seconds later the chanting prayer began...but nobody went to the room to pray.

While there was still much to see, we were starving and tired so instead went to get some lunch/dinner. We figured Selcuk would be our last opportunity for authentic Turkish food before we hit the Tourist traps of Bodrum, so went to find a decent meal in a restaurant. We found the recommendation from our guide book, but it was no longer a restaurant – just a cafe. So we went to the place we went last night where we got a monsterous, delicious, donar sandwhich. I remember Cafe Istanbul in Wellington and how it was one of my favourite restaurants. I remember the cafe at Mt Maunganui where the mixed mezze plate was to die for. Isnt it funny how the imitations sometimes far exceed what they are imitating.

Though the photo of what we ordered showed a plate of meat, with salad and other side dishes. It came as a plate of greasy meat with a grilled tomato, with a side plate of fried onions. And mixed mezze was nowhere to be seen on any menu.

The house of Mary of Magdalane was some 10km from the centre and apparently the taxis charged 60Lira to take you there. So that was off the agenda. There was also a cute little wine vilage Sincere where the english teacher from the bus recommended we see, but we were out of time and energy to do any more exploring today.

Instead we visited a bakery to sample the local 'backlava' and some little fried ball they gave us to try. The backlava was quite expensive, but perhaps we got charged the tourist price instead of the local price. Layers of pastry dripping in honey, sprinkled with nuts and fried..it sounds potentially nice, but it wasnt. Too greasy and sickly.

We then had a few hours to kill before our evening bus to Bodrum. I occupied myself by putting the telephoto lens on and snapping away at the unsuspecting locals. I suspected this would be the last place we would see authentic Turkey before we hit the tourist spots - and I was right.

We didnt know you could bargain for your bus tickets, but apparently so. We knocked 10Lira off the price and rode for 3 hours in style in a Mercedes Benz bus with individual tv screens and reclining seats.

When we arrived in Bodrum, we showed 4 different people the name of our hotel and location but they all sent us to other people to ask. In the end, a guy phoned the hotel for us to find out where it was. Fortunaltey, it was only a dolmus ride away – 3km in Gumbet....I think we both feared we had booked something miles away by accident.

Turkey Day 9 - Pammukale & HIeropolis

2010-09-01T10:26:00.000-07:00

Pammukale is home of the ancient ruins of Hieropolis and the white Terraces. I guess it would be similar to what the pink and white terraces of NZ would have looked like before Mt Tauwera errupted – which is a shame as it would be great to have some of these to add to NZ's collection of natural sites.

They are supposedly 17 000 years old and formed from calcium carbonate precipitating out of the mineral rich water which flows over the taverins. The water doesnt naturally flow anymore, but they direct it over them to keep the terraces white and they reckon a pebble or leaf only takes a day before it also turns white.

The water flows all the way down the terraces and there were areas where beautiful blue pools of ankle deep water had formed. It really was an amazingly beatufiul site and my words will not do it any justice so I will leave that to my photos.

You had to walk in bare feet as it was too slippery to go with shoes on with the water streaming down. While it was fine walking on the textured white terraces, walking on the hard white pebbles – which were difficult to avoid – was horible. There must have been a good couple of hundred people there when we were there and their were rows of tour buses in the parking lot.

Legend has it that the water is supposed to heal everything from warts to obesity, and also to beautify. Suppposedly in the day, a young woman tried to commit suicide because she was so ugly that nobody wanted to marry her. She threw herself off the top terrace but landed in the sacred water. But she didnt die and came out so beautiful that she married a nobelman.

I went for a dip in the ankle deep water – not because I believed it would cure me of ailments – just because I wanted to cool down. And Richard wedged himself in the crack down the edge of the mountain where water was gushing down.

I wonder if it some sort of Japanese or Asian legend thing too as we had never seen any Asian tourists in Turkey until now. Even the town had menus of miso soup, noodles and signs up in Japanese.

After slowly making our way up the terraces, pausing to take hundreds of photos, we reached the Hierapolis ruins at the top. They were in various states of excavation and some had been cordined off with rope with string gridboards marked out ready for an archaologist to do a dig.

The Holy City Hieropolis was flattened in an earthquake in AD17 but was rebuilt. The Apostle Philip lived there up to 80AD. Over the dry, flat earth we could see ancient rubble littering the fields- pieces of a 2000 year old jigsaw that could perhaps never be put back together.

By now the wind had picked up and threw dust in all directions. For the first time on our trip, clouds filled the sky and the temperature dropped.

Near the taverines was the 'sacred pool' where you could swim in warm, effervescent waters in amongst the ruins for a cost of £10. And there was no shortage of tourists lining up to do this.

We raced back down the taverines as the rain started coming in. Trying to walk on those hard white pebbles while in a hurry was killing my feet. But to put your jandals on invoked the whistle of the patrolling guards.

We got back to the little town as the shop owners were quickly bringing in their outside cushions in from the rain. We went back to the same diner as yesterday and I got a gozmele (pancake) dripping with honey, made by grandma. As we left the waiter (the son) asked if he could take a photo of us together with his mobile phone and put his arm around me and extended his other arm at length, holding the old Nokia toward his grinning face. Richard came over after paying the bill and offered to take the photo, 'she's beautiful isn't she' he said to the kid – 'yes, more beautiful' he nodded back.

From there it was a 3 hour bus to Selcuk. At the beginning it was just us and another guy on the large bus. He looked like a backpacker too. Tanned skin, longish black hair and rainbow coloured tatoo sun on his ankle. He opened a packet of chocolate biscuits and turned to offer us some. And from then on, we talked for the entire bus journey- much to the annoyance of the woman who came up to us and gave us the 'zip it' action! We quietened down for a few minutes...then carried on chatting. 25 year old Julian was from Argentina and was on a 2 month trip travelling around Israel, Petra, Turkey and then on to Greece. As we shared our stories of travelling the world, the bus drive passed like nothing.

We found a room in the Pansiyon next door to Julian's 15Lira basic room and arranged to meet the next morning to explore the town.

As we checked into our room Richard looked up and saw a framed picture of Ataturk (General Mustafa Kemal Pasa – Father of Turkey) proudly displayed on the wall. Who's that? Is that your Dad? Richard asked. The guy looked up with an expression of disgust on his face. Do you not know who that is? Do they not teach you history in school? Yes, we replied, we learn some world history, but not Turkish history. The guy shook his head in disbelief as if we told him we didnt know who Adolf Hitler was. Turkish history is world history he arrogantly replied. And the man you think is my Father created Turkey. It was obvious that we had lost all his respect. He then told us about all the sites in Selcuk, their entry fees and how we would be better off to do a day tour that no doubt his friend ran – for a price of 80Lira (40 Euro each).

Selcuk was not a touristy place- despite being the home to Ephesus, the most visited tourist attraction of Turkey. This was real Turkey with locals going about their business; hooning around with 2 or 3 of them on a scotter, selling trailers full of watermelons on the side of the street, drinking tea out of the little beakers with their friends, or playing a boardgame in the shade (kinda looked like backgammon or maybe it was cribbage). And this meant normal prices – we were glad to find the 2Lira kebab again! After getting dinner, bargaining with fruit vendors over watermelon and booking our accomodation for the next few days – it ended up being a very late night.

The sacred healing pools of Pammukale had backfired on me and I was now coming down with a cold with a runny nose and scrachy throat. It was quite a restless night. We were right back in the thick of the 5 am mosques again and our room was right by a busy road with mopeds buzzing by all night. More puzzling though was the 2am drummer outside the guesthouse though...

Backpacking across Turkey - Days 7 & 8

2010-08-31T06:01:00.000-07:00

Day 7 -Oludeniz

Oludeniz – the home of blue lagoon and reputably the most beautiful beach of Turkey – was some 14km over the hill. After our traditional turkish breakfast which we were now familiar with (boiled eggs, tomatos, cucumbers, olives, cheese and bread) we took 2 dolmuses out to the infamous beach. Inside the van was a picture of a cigarette with the red circle and line crossing through it. That's pretty universal – everyone knows it means no smoking. But what the hell did a picture of red heart with a line going through it mean? No love? No being nice? No kissing perhaps? It was too late for that – Richard and I had already kissed at the back of the bus before I noticed the sign.

Blaring out of megaphones from several different places along the way there was some strange music playing; kind of like a Turkish version of the old music that accompanies the propaganda videos from the war. It wasnt a Sunday so it wasnt anything religious – maybe it was some kind of war rememberance day? There was nobody around with good enough english to ask what it was all about.

Along the way we stopped at Helliosi to pick up people in the vans. In terms of being a tacky british resort – Cadiz beach had nothing on this place. It appeared to be stripped of all things Turkish and could have been any part of England. The lads at the back of the bus even commented that it looked like a sunnier version of Brigton.

Oludeniz wasnt as bad, but there is still no escaping the catering to the British tourist. As soon as we stepped off the bus we had guys trying to sell as paragliding trips and tours of the butterfly valley.

The beach lived up to its name – it was definitely beautiful. The waters were so clear and blue. To go to the 'blue lagoon' part you had to pay and there was rope forming a border and someone on patrol to make sure you didnt cross the boundary.

We lay our towels down on the free part. It was a sweltering hot day so it didnt take much persuasion for me to get in the water. The beach was made of large granules of sand which turned to large stones at the water. So it was quite uncomfortable walkiing into the water but it got deep very quickly – about chest height in only 5 metres, so you could float and take your feet off the horrible stones.

We spent all afternoon at the beach – alternating between the sand and the water as soon as we needed to cool off. Richard – being the cheeky Colombian he is – thought he'd go check out the blue lagoon the cheaters way. By going via the sea where there was nobody on patrol when you crossed the border. He reported that it was very similar to where we were but with no waves and way more people crammed into a smaller space. So we didnt make the move.

There were quite a few boats in the water – ready to give tours or give tourists rides on banana boats. I guess that was the cause of slicks of oil and muck we saw in the water and ended up swimming in. At first we tried to swim around it, but sometimes there was so much you couldnt avoid it. Maybe its at all beaches but you only notice it here because the water is so clear and blue. In any case, it put you off swimming.

On the shore there were also things to put you off. The biggest ants I had ever seen. These things were the size of the top segment of your little finger. They were like little spiders and were freakin me out!

After a while I was craving a comfortable lounger and a pool (we are too budget to pay for chairs and umbrellas at the beach). Yesterday on our tour, one of the guys we met was staying at Oludeniz and said to us 'what you wanna do, is go to the lagoon then go into a hotel and have a swim in their pool.' I looked at him incredulousy 'yeah but you cant do that unless you are staying at that hotel.' 'How are they going to know if you are staying there or not? The pool staff would have no idea' he replied. Just go and buy a drink then go relax by the pool – he added. So with his words in mind, we went to the first place we saw. It had a lovely pool with nobody swimming in it, and nobody on the loungers either. There were just a couple of people perched at the bar. We casually walked on over and bought an ice cream then headed towards the loungers before we were stopped short in our tracks 'excuse me – thats for hotel guests only' Damn – so much for that. So with our tails between our legs we left. How did he know? I guess we should have selected our hotel better – we chose a small one with nobody there – yet across the road was one with a maaasive pool and at least 40 or 50 people laying out on their towels. Surely the couldnt recognise all of those people? We lingered around the borders – checking out all the points of entry like criminals planning a robbery. Richard reckoned we should scale the back fence, but the people on their loungers on the opposite side might get a bit of shock to see 2 people jump over the fence. I reckoned we should just walk in the front entrance. But in the end – we had both had our confidence knocked by our first rejection that we were too chicken to try again and opted instead to go back to our own hotel swimming pool.

We did a quick circuit of Oludeniz township first. Much the same as the Cadiz beach – perhaps a bit nicer. They were offering a free cocktail to people who sang 3 Karaoke songs at one place. We went to the supermaket to get a few supplies and found ourselves gazing at the sweets on display under the glass cabinets. There were all sorts of square and rolled up candies. I asked what they were 'Turkish delight' the girl answered. Yes- the squares dusted in icing sugar are turkish delight, but what are those ones – we poinetd to lemon, orange and rose lollies – long cylinders of rolled up candy in layers of fruti and whatever the white substance was. Apparently it was all turkish delight. You couldnt go to Turkey and not have Turkish Delight – even though its always the last flavour left in the box of Cadbury Roses. We got a small stick of lemon– about the length of a finger for around £1.20. We were expecting it to be yuck – but it was nice! Kinda soft and squishy with a gelatinous texture and stong lemon flavour.

By the time we took our 2 buses back to the hotel – the sun had gone down behind the buildings. Richard went for a swim and I lay on the lounger anyway. While we lay there the smell of dinner cooking wafted over. It was a buffet and appeared to be typical Turkish food – Richard's mouth was watering, but I convinced him that the hotel food would be crap and we should save our money for a decent meal somewhere non touristy and more aunthentic.

I felt like some fruit so we went into the resort centre to get some. What the hell – 4 lira for a banana and an apple?! Some things in this country are an absolute bargain – 1.5L of bottled water for 40p, a kebab for 60p – but the fruit was a rip off! And how can it be that grapes are cheaper than bananas?! So we ditched the fruit in favour of our staple – chicken kebab.

Day 8 – Fethiye to Pammukale
Check out wasnt until 12 – so we had enough time for breakfast and a swim in the pool. We were the only ones using it and the hotel was even good enough to supply lilos. Its been years since Ive floated on a lilo in a pool!

When it came time to leave our resort in Cadiz beach I suddenly realised that we hadnt seen anything of Fethiye city. We had the choice of taking the bags with us, or leaving them at the hotel and coming back to get them. Not wanting to spend the time and money on the buses for the return trip to the city, we decided to take all our stuff with us.

Looking out the window as we drove along in the dolmus – we spotted what looked like a market which we had read about in our guide book. It was on once a week and was supposedly a big event. We asked to be dropped off and went in to check it out. It was in sections – the first section was devoted to fruit and veg, then nuts and spices and then it went to clothes, bags, shoes. The book said it wasnt a touristy market but when there is a Turkish guy yelling 'everything half price – Turkish Prime Ark – its good innit! You have to wonder... You didnt dare look twice at a stall owner or they were out in a flash – come in – look, I got shoes- bags – you want?

With our enormous bags we didnt stay wandering through the crowds for long and went in search of the mariner. There were loads of boats offering tours and a few restaurants offeriing 'fish n chips' and one boasting they had 'PG tips'. One breakfast sign made me laugh 'Heinz baked beans, tesco bacon and HP sauce' it read. I hated seeing signs like this – wasnt the whole point of travelling to experience another culture? But whose fault was it that it turned out this way – the Turks for serving it up or the British who kept buying it?

There was a war monument at the mariner and line up of war type photos depicting famous Turkish men in heroic poses. None of whom I knew.

After a short break we walked back to the bus station – not really knowing how far it was but people were pointing us in the direction of the 'Otogar'. We must have walked for an hour with those damn backpacks on. A bit of forward thinking could have avoided that by checking out Fethiye while we were still staying at the hotel – oh well – I guess that was our gym work out for the day.

Before long we were on our way to Pammukale – the first time we had ventured away from the shore. It was meant to take 4 hours but it was more like 5 and a bit. I didnt catch up on much sleep as the roads were really windy and the stupid guy across from me had the noisest text message alert tone. The buses were actually quite nice but not made for long legged individuals so my knees hit the seat infront.

These long distance buses were amusing. You would expect it to only drop people off and pick them up at the bus stop of each city but no. They were almost like a taxi in the fact that it would still pick people up who waved it down and would drop people off wherever they wanted it to. And some people chose to be dropped off in the middle of nowhere; a field with a dirt road running off into the distance.

We appeared to be the only tourists on the bus and it was interesting to get out of the resorty areas and see the real turkish people. We got to witness that a bit on our safari tour too as we took loads of little back roads through tiny villages with concrete shacks. The women wore long skirts or baggy trousers and long sleeved tops. Normally in dark colours with a small repeating print on it of flowers or dots.. They wore hard scarves too – a practise I also adopted when I felt my hair start turing to straw and my highlights turn yellow. I found their ensemble peculiar, it definitley wasnt fashionable and wasnt exactly funcionable either as who would wear long sleeves in this heat! But maybe there were religious reasons for this as 90% of the population is Muslim.

We arrived at Pammukale at about 8pm and took the fist room we were shown. The town was across the road from the terraces and consisted of a handful of hotels, restaurants and pansiyons. You could see the whole place in about 10mins. I was craving some healthy food so we went to a restaurant – well more like a diner really as it was nothing flash – and I got a giant freshly made salad which was delicious and Richard got 2 hamburgers – obviously he wasnt craving healthy food! It was obviously a family run business, the son was the waiter, Mum made the food, Dad tried to get the customers in the door and Grandma was on pancake duties. We sat on the low cushions which we so loved and read guide books on the area which they had left on the table The son tried chatting to us about things; his english wasnt great but he was telling Richard about some Colombian footballer who plays for Turkey. Funnily enough he didnt have anything to say about NZ; I dont even think he had heard of it.

Out of the blue – a 12 year old girl sitting in her togs and towel a few tables across from us- yelled out 'Hello'. 'Hello' we said back. And asked how she was. You could see her mentally running through words in her mind and pausing at great length before she replied. 'I am good'. Thinking to practise her english – she pointed at a man and said 'Mother'. Then asked where we were from. She repeated after me, but I think it was the fist time her mouth had ever formed the words – New Zealand before. She then enquired if Richard and I were family. She wasnt the first person who had asked this; which I thought was odd as we look alike about as much as Beyonce and Eminem. Wouldnt you first assume we were a couple before assuming we were family?

Turkey- Days 5 and 6 Kas to Fethiye and Jeep Safari Tour

2010-08-28T13:06:00.000-07:00

Day 5 – Kas to Fethiye
The next morning we spent a few hours booking a hotel for that night in Cadiz beach in Fethiye. A quick look on travelsupermarket revealed that you could get it much cheaper than what we have been paying in pansiyons. We booked a place for £13 a night including breakfast which we thought was an absolute bargain!

Richard went to pay for our room at 10.20. The lady pointed to the clock and indicated to him that we had to be out by 11. At 10.30 they turned the power off in our room – just to clear us out I spose. We thought it was quite odd since Turks were normally quite hospitable.

After our cereal on the balcony we headed out to explore Kas by day. It was just as pretty, but way hotter! By the harbour. there were wooden crates placed over the rocks to give people a seat. There were a few people swimming in the water, and laid out with cushions on their crates.

Our guidebook said that Kas had a few tombs of its own so we asked the guy at the grocery store where they were (as he was one of the few people we had encountered who spoke decent english). It was only a few minutes walk to a 2 story tomb with ancient Lycian script in the side. It appeared to be in the middle of a cobbled intersection with streets on both sides and people eating their lunch in what could have been their back yard.

It was only a few more minutes walk to a few tombs that were carved into the cliffs -we got to actually walk up close to these ones, and even poke our head inside. But they werent nearly as eleborate or well preserved as those of Myra.

With our cultural exploring over, we ate a melon on the rocks of the harbour, bought a few Turkish crackers and biscuits, and headed off to our next destination. Fethiye was 2.75hrs away in a large air conditioned bus. Then we caught a little minivan that drove with the door open (air conditioning?) at a speed of about 20kph to get to Cadiz beach.

As we drove in, I could see the signs 'Irish pub', 'English breakfast' and I knew- we were no longer in authentic Turkey! We were expecting our hotel to be a bit run down and shody (you cant expect much for £13!) but it was nice! We were so estatic and couldnt believe our luck!

We wasted no time in getting in our togs and rushing down to the beach – which was only 2mins walk away. But first we needed food. Along the beachfront was lined with restaurants and tour agencies. We had the same problem as Kas – no fast food in sight! When we did eventually find a donar kebab place – it was double the price of what we had been paying and they took almost half an hour to make this 'fast food' -which was crap! Thin flat-bread that wasnt even home made.

We only got about an hour on the beach before the sun started going down. But what a spectacular sun set it was – just like the ones in Greece; bright crimson to shell pink to pale blue to azul. I had to run back to the hotel to get the camera and we spent ages posing in front of the bright pink sky. As amazing as they are to us, I think sunsets are an every-day occurance to these folk.

When it got dark, we strolled along the waterfront and little town. We went to have a nosy at what the tour companies were offerering and ended up booking a tour for Saklikent gorge and a few other places for £15 – including lunch at a restaurant!

Day 6- Jeep Safari Tour of Saklikent Gorge

We got picked up at 8.30am – the earliest we had been up all holiday- and drove off in our jeep to a reunion point full of other jeeps. There must have been 50 or 60 of us divided between 4 jeeps; mostly British but with a few Turks sprinkled in. Our guide was Samih – a crazy Turkish guy with piercings in his face, chest and arms. When I say piercings I mean safety pins stuck through his skin in the most bizarre places with tukish beads hanging from them. He had thick eyeliner and a Maori tattoo on his arm (which he got done in Turkey). He may have been a nutter but he was great fun – and spoke english so well he even knew the local lingo.

Have you been to the mud baths in Daylan he asked us? It's mingin' innit?! He said – to the amusement of the group.

Before we began our journey, we were warned to put our cameras away as you never know where the water could come from. Thinking that we might drive through some creeks, I wrapped my camera in a plastic bag. We hadnt been driving for long when a guy on the side of the road threw an entire bucket of cold water at us as we drove past. I was saturated! This continued the whole day- out of the blue, kids would squirt the hose at you, a drink bottle would be splayed at you, or when you were really unlucky, you would get the brunt of a full bucket. None of us escaped it. The hose would be quite refreshing, but the entire bucket was horrible – it might be hot, but when you are soaking wet and driving along in the open air with the wind whipping at you – its cold!

Some of the jeeps even had their own ammunition in the way of water pistols, which were squirted at us whenever we stopped at an intersection. After a while, these werent enough for them and they also added buckets of water to their artilary.

Our first stop was at Tlos. We didnt look around though, they just pointed at some ruins on a hill and told us a bit about them. Apparently it was one of some 40 or 50 ancient cities around the area. But as Samhi said 'this aint no history tour, its a jeep safari so if you wanna know more – google it!'

From there it was on to Yaka Park. This was a natural area, surrounded by trees and small waterfalls where restaurants had set up amongst the trees. It was surprisingly green for such a dry, hot, country. The cool thing here was the bar that had a shallow stream of water running along the counter with fish swimming in it! Fish in Turkish is pronounced bollock – so Samhi had great fun telling us all to come and tickle the bollocks! Which I did – how weird to come and pat a fish like it is a dog. I wonder if they like it and wag their fins?

Next up was Saklikkent Gorge – the 2nd longest gorge in Europe to Crete. The drive there was through dirt roads so the dust kicked up by the jeeps (not helped by the fact that they did some donuts in an open park) coated our mouths, skin and hair so we all aged 20 years by our apparent greyness.

Blue water rushed through the steep cliffs and made for some beautiful scenery. We walked along a wooden path till we got to a clearing where to go any further required actually getting into the water. With a waterfall in the background, we posed for a few pictures. The water was soooo cold that it actually was causing me pain to stand in it – it must have been only 1 or 2 degrees. There were some tour groups with ropes and hard hats that were going the full trek of the gorge. Im glad I didnt sign up for that as I couldnt withstand the cold for more than a few mins.

Richard went upstream to explore while I stayed on warm ground. He said it was really cool and stayed longer than he should have as we were already supposed to be back on the jeep. I had visions of them all strapped in, engines reeving waiting for us, or worse still – gone without us. So we ran back to the jeeps to find everyone casually laying about, swimming, throwing water at each other and generally unconcerned of our whereabouts.

Now was lunch time – we were taken to an outdoor restaurant with seats by the river. Another delicous meal of salads, rice, chicken shish kebabs and of course bread. Turks have bread for breakfast, lunch and dinner. Its nice bread but you get a bit of a carb overload after a while and me and Rich both craved some cereal!

We went and sat on the cushions by the river and got chatting to a couple from Bristol but after a few minutes one of the tour guides said to us- your jeep is going! We watched as they threw buckets of freezing cold river water on them and then went to get in; but the driver didnt see us and kept on driving. I ran alongside the car (lucky it was going slow) and banged on the window to get him to stop.

We then picked up the people who chose to raft down the river in a tire. They werent raging rapids or anything but according to one woman, they still took a bit of skill to steer.

Next up was the mud baths – I was looking forward to this and even considered going to Daylan – 2hrs up the coast to experince it. Wearing shorts and bikinis, the group formed a big circle in the giant mud bath puddle. The water was warm and only about 40cm deep. The feeling of the soft warm mud squishing between your toes and the thought of all the unidentified objects that could be floating in there bought a chorus of 'ewwww, erghhhh' sounds from the group, But once you were in and the childhood memories came flooding back – it was great!

Samih lead us in mud covering exercises, where we picked up handfulls of mud from the floor of the puddle and covered our bodies. Our neighbours rubbed it into our backs and hair. Unfortuantely we didnt have time to let the sun bake it into our bodies and let it crack and dry as we were ordered into the freezing cold waters of the river to wash off. The guides seemed to get a kick out of pouring buckets of the frigid water over me while until I was clean. They reckoned this mud made you look 10 years younger – we joked that Richard shouldnt go in or he'd come out looking like a primary school kid! Iit did make your skin feel quite nice actually..

From there we went to Patara beach.- the longest beach in all of Turkey-17km. Its protected because the turtles come and lay their eggs under the sand so its one of the only beaches you find in Turkey where its not developed – no beach umbrellas and loungers here. You cant go there at night either- apparently the hatching turtles got confused with the lights and would walk towards the land instead of the sea.

The beach also had a cold water river feeding into it. Richard prefered this to the 'annoying' sea and went for a swim with all the local kids. As I took phtoos of him diving into the water – a little kid came up to me, held out his hand and said 'money' Cheeky little tike! Well dressed, he didnt exactly look like a street kid either.

On the way home, the jeep broke down and we got transferred to a shuttle bus. Without the wind rushing in our hair we both fell asleep straight away.

The last stop was a petrol station where they washed down the jeeps and the photographer showed us all the photos he took during the day. We waited here quite a while – it even had a swimming pool – who's ever heard of a petrol station with a swimming pool! I was tempted to buy the CD with the photos of the trip as he had some great ones of me and Rich playing in the mud – but it cost more than the tour itself.

Backpacking the Med coast of Turkey - Days 3 and 4

2010-08-27T00:15:00.000-07:00

Day 3- Antalya to Olympos

After talking at length about what to do today we still couldnt decide. It was either expensive or a hassel to get out to the ancient sites. At breakfast we questioned an Austrian couple about where they had been. Like the english teacher on the bus- they recommended Olympos and said it was pretty easy to get there. So thats what we did. As we waited for the tram with our bags the temperature displayed 41 degrees and we were feeling it! Its amazing how much your body can sweat. We were both constantly sweaty and thirsty. As Richard said – I think we are spending more on water than food!

We wearily arrived at the bus station (Otogar) to be directed straight onto the minibus to Olympos. We had run out of water and didnt like the prospect of dehyrating in the bus for the next few hours, but fortunately it made many stops – sometimes for 20mins so there was always a chance to duck out for some replenishments.

As we got on the dolmus (van) for the last 11km to Olympos we began to be a little worried about where it was we were going. This place was definitely no developed resort area – which wasnt a problem except we only had a little bit of cash and there was no ATM in sight! It was basically a dirt road in amongst the mountains and trees with pansiyons all along one side. They were all tree houses with their own diners and comfy cushioned low tables where people were sitting relaxing and driking. Some of them had ping pong tables. It was unlike any place Ive seen and was full of hippie types and young people. We walked along trying to find somewhere to stay. The first one was very nice – with its own bathroom and air con, but 80TL was out of budget. We asked about 5 different places until we found the cheapest 50TL which was 2 mattresses on the floor in a little room above the communal low tabled lounge area. No private bathroom or air con here- but there was a fan. Happy to be rid of our bags, we headed off to the beach.

All the pansiyons were selling drinks and snacks but there was only one that had fruit. We pointed at some giant peaches the size of your fist and was shocked at the price (about £1.30 for 2) but bought them anyway since they looked so good – and they were. You had to pay to go to the beach too but we calculated how much cash we needed to get the bus out and made sure we saved this amount. We walked through the trees along the path to the beach where unexcavated roman ruins lay about on either side. There was a little river/stream running alongside too. The beach itself had large coarse pebbles with a couple of hundred people laying out on their towels and swimming. The huge cliffs provided a bit of shade; which we needed since I had left the sunscreen back in our room. Richard didnt wait a second to get in that water and I followed suit grimacing at the pain of walking on the hot, hard pebbles. The water was beautiful and warm – I dont think you can beat the med for that!

A guy came and gave us a pamphlet for a club that night and we asked him how to get to the chimera (an unexplained natural phenomenon of fire coming from rocks which has been going for centuries and mentioned in many ancient books). His english wasnt great but we gathered it was about 3km walk from where we were. After relaxing a little while longer we contemplated making the journey by foot but didnt want to risk missing dinner which was included in our stay. Considering the price we were paying, we werent expecting much but were pleasantly surprised. The food was delicious! Salad, some wrapped up rice and vegetable things, a pastry triangle with cheese, a bowl of chickpea soup and watermelon for dessert. I thought there was also a pasta salad, but it turned out it was hot chips in a sour cream, garlic sauce – wierd!

After dinner we sat at our cushioned table and chatted and planned the next leg of our journey. The people here were mainly Turkish and I didnt hear hardly anyone speaking english at all in Olympos.

I enquired about the Chimera – there were tours for 20TL but we didnt have enough cash for that. I got chatting to a hippy Istanbul guy (who had just finished his PhD in veternary surgery!) who suggested hiring a push bike from the next town and biking there. It took 50min to bike (or maybe he said 15?) and then there were 300 stairs up. This is what he did, and took some food to roast on the flames! Well – it would have been cool to see this natural phenomenon but with no money – and a fear of being lost in the Turkish wilderness at night time – it wasnt going to happen!

At midnight we thought we'd check out the Olympos party scene- directly across the dried up river from us was Orange Bar. Neon lights strung across hand rails guided you there – along with the loud dance music and spotlights lighting up the cliffs. It looked promisng, but infact was empty! Maybe it was too early, or maiybe this crowd doesnt like to party. We walked to the other bar, where the sign said 'for people like us'...they had a guy playing live some pretty crap music. So in the end we bought some turkish chocolate and headed back to our tree hut. Richard wanted to check out the Orange Bar again but his old, nana girlfriend was too tired!

Day 4- Olympos to Kas

As we expected, we didnt have the best sleep in our tree hut. Being just above the communal area you could hear people talking, which got very noisy in the morning and surprisingly it got quite cold in the night. But at least there was no 5am prayer bellowing out from a mosque – and Im sure we slept better than the couple we met who said they were going to sleep on the beach! Those stones would not have made a good mattress!

We had eaten breakfast and were packed up ready to go by about 11am but had just missed the hourly bus to the top of the hill. Olympos is not the place to be in a rush, so we stretched out on the cushions and decided where to head to next. We really wanted to see the tombs in Myra but they were 5km from the towm of Demre. 5km in 40 degree heat is too far even without backpacks. We downloaded a few phrases in Turkish onto Richards phone 'where can we leave our bags?' and 'can we hire a bike here'? According to our guide book Demre is a small town but it seemed kinda big- maybe it was just all the noise from the hundreds of people buzzing around on scooters. They were everywhere but there was nowhere to hire them!

I was in need of a toilet after our bus trip and headed to the WC sign when a man sitting at a little desk in front said I had to pay 1L. To put that into perspective- 1L buys you 1.5L of cold bottled water. I thought that was a bit steep but when you gotta go, you gotta go. A Turkish lady came to use it too and put her 30cents on the counter- and then I knew I was getting ripped off! She saw how much change he gave me for my 5lira note and said a few things to the guy- but he wasnt budging. I wouldnt have minded paying that for a nice toilet- but this was literally a ceramic hole in the ground with a hose to use as the flush!

Our only option of getting to the tombs was to take a taxi and get the driver to wait with our bags in the boot till we had seen them. They said they would take us whereve we wanted to go and wait while we looked around for up to 2 hours. For this they wanted 20Lira. This was dirt cheap compared to England (about £8) but Richard thought in Turkish prices it was a bit expensive. So he went to see what another taxi driver would do – this guy offered

the same price. Richard then asked if he would aslo take us to see St Nicholas church for that. They said yes, so thinking we were onto a winner – we accepted. All during this negotiation the original taxi driver was waving his arms at us then even came over and had some harsh words to the other driver.

It was only like a 5min drive to Myra tombs; we left the taxi with our bags in the boot and went off to explore – both hoping that the driver wasnt going to take off with our bags. You had to pay to see the tombs – the same amount we had just negotiated our taxi for!

But it was worth it; the tombs were etched out of the cliff faces above and dated from centuries before chirst. Unfortunatley there were no signs in english or english speaking guides so we didnt know much about what was before us. The tombs were carved with temple pillar facades and apparently when they were first discovered had colours of blue and red.

To the side of the tombs was an ancient ampitheatre like the one we missed at Asspendos. It was still in really good condition and you were able to walk around and up and down the stairs. They think it was used for gladiator style animal fights. At the bottom were seats carved with elaborate sides – the best preserved one had a fish. Centuries ago, some noble person would have sat in that very same seat as me; it's a strange thought. At the bottom of the ampitheatre, pieces of pillars and broken stonework lay strewn about with carved open mouthed faces. It was like an open air museum!

From here the taxi took us to St Nicholas church – the man who created the legend of santa clause. We had to laugh to ourselves though when we saw that the church was only 2 mins walk from the centre of town! No wonder the taxi driver didnt have any hesitation to add this to our tour! It is supposed to be a beautiful church also dating back before christ but you had to pay to get in, so we just looked at it from the outside – which wasnt all that inspiring!

From here we jumped on the bus and headed to Kas – a 1hr drive. We were treated to some beautiful scenery along the coast, but Richard slept through it all. When we arrived he said 'phewww that was a long trip – what was that – like 3 hrs?

At the bus station we were greeting by a pension owner who wanted to take us to his place. He wanted 60TL a night and though we told him it was out of our budget, he insisted on showing us. So he drove along on his scooter while we followed behind. We trekked up the 3 flights of stairs with the bags and saw the upstairs balcony, the computer, the room and then had to repeat that yes it was very nice but it was too much for us. He said that a dorm room in a hostel will cost us 50TL and left us on our way. We walked around the corner, saw a place with a line of small flags across the balcony and went to inquire. The guy offered 40TL without b'fast and we were happy with that. His place was just as nice as the last one too!

Upstairs was a balcony with a view right out over the ocean as the sun set. We took some photos then went out to explore the town. There was a buzz in the centre, with loads of cu

te little alleyways filled with restaurants with tables out in the open, and shops selling everything from jewellery to clothing. It still seemed predominantly Turkish but we could now see and hear the odd person speaking English.

The harbour was full of boats advertising their tours and with the hillside dotted with lights from the restaurants, it made for a very pretty little town; no longer the sleepy fishing village it once was.

Unfortunately, being full of restaurants, meant there was nothing in the way of street food to be found. No 3Lira donar kebabs here! After much searching, we did find one – the rolled meat on the skewer was sitting out on the open with no heat on it, so I opted for a salad one. He then put the salad in a heated up bread roll. Who has ever heard of a kebab in a bread roll? He used his bare hands to break open the roll, add the salad then plopped it on the counter- not on a serviette or anything. I winced a little but with no other option – ate it. Geeze I hope that guy washed his hands after going to the bathroom!

As we paused to read a menu board, a waiter came up to Richard, rabbiting on in Turkish for a while before he saw his puzzled face. Hello? Richard replied. The guys mouth dropped open and he circled Rich, studying his face. Then said 'You're playing with me - you're Turkish!' It was something we got used to. Everyone assumed Richard was Turkish and immediately spoke to him in Turkish then looked perturbed at why he didnt reply.

Still hungry after the bread roll kebab - we went to a restaurant and ordered takeaway; some turkish bread (pide) with mince and cheese on. And no they dont give you a discount for takeaway. At almost £4- it wasnt exactly the cheap food we were after but was reasonably tasty, but a bit spicy. We went back to our pansiyon to eat from the balcony where there was a Turkish family up there having dinner. They came and gave us a plate of melon and 2 figs – how nice! They couldnt speak english though so we couldnt really chat to them. So we ended our day eating melon and turkish bread with a view of the ocean, listening to a Turkish family play Taboo.

Backpacking across the coast of Turkey- Days 1&2

2010-08-25T12:26:00.000-07:00

Im trying something a little different here - writing my blog as I travel- with 15 days of adventure, I fear I wont remember it all when I get home. It does mean however that the photos are only the budget ones taken with the phone. My spectacular masterpieces will have to wait till I get home to get uploaded.

During my passportless year – my colleagues asked me where I would go first one I was free again. When I said Turkey they looked at me like I was crazy but having heard so many great travel stories of Turkey – it had climbed to the top of my list.

Initially the plan was to do the fez bus hop on hop off tour across the whole of the country – but with only 14 days this was ambitious and involved overnight buses and days where 7 hours was spent on the bus. So we ditched that idea and decided to do our thing across the mediterranean and aegaen coasts. With nothing but our flights booked, we packed our backpacks and were off!

Day 1.
We landed into Antalya airport at around 4.30pm. As I walked through immigration the guy at the counter looked at my passport and said 'ahhh Nayo Zayland! We like peoples from Nayo Zayland! Welome – and had a wee chat to me. The same guy didnt say a word to Richard and his Spanish passport!

It didnt take too much effort to find the bus into the city. Richard was still wearing his sweatshirt (the airport was air conditioned) and I asked if he wanted to go and change before we left. He insisted he was fine, but upon leaving the comfort of the air conditioning we were hit with a heat wave and wished we werent wearing our London-suitable clothing!

It became apparent early on that Turkish people didnt really speak a lot of english. We pointed to the name of our desired destination – Kaluci (old town) and a guy on the bus told us where to get off – using sign language. Using the same technique of pointing to the map- we eventually found the old town. But walking around with 2 backpacks in 40 degree heat is tiring and in minutes we were both dripping in sweat. That was when we saw the orange juice vendor outside a shop selling freshly squeezed juice. That was the sweetest, tastiest juice ever and we didnt even care that it appeared to be filled in a used bottle! The juice charged us up to keep looking for somewhere to stay. An old guy saw us and said the words 'pensiyon?' to which I said 'yes!' and he led us down the alleyways of the old town to where all the accomodation was. We had already seen 1 place; up 4 flights of stairs, it was a very basic room- just a bed reallly and a small bathroom – for 40 lira (about £18). The guy lead us to a place which was nice but we werent willing to pay 80 lira – with 15 days staying in pansiyons we were on a budget. Growing weary of walking up and down stairs in the heat, we settled for the third place we saw. 45 lira gets you a small room with an adjoining bathroom with a broken toilet seat with a cigarrette floating in the water and a shower hose attached to a tap for the shower. But there was air conditioning!! It was in a converted old house and had character and we couldnt be bothered looking anymore though there were loads of other places around.

Relieved to be able to put the bags down we went out to explore. The streets of the old city were the labryinth types you see in Greece and were very clean and pretty. The people were friendly and tried to beckon you into their shops with a smile on their face and without being overly pushy. It was quite funny when the shoe polishers tried to get you to have a shoe polish when you wearing sandals though...maybe they intended to polish the 2 little straps!

We stubmled upon Hadrian's gate by accident – an entrance from 130AD built to commemorate some famous emperors visit. It was still in good order for that old and people gathered around it to take photos. From there it was a short walk to the shops where the ubiquitous kebab shops were on every corner. Richard bravely got a doner kebab and the speciality Turkish drink – ayera. The kebab was good but the drink was horrible! Who thought it would be good idea to drink watered down salty yoghurt! We reckoned it would be OK to dip your chips or carrot sticks in – but not to drink! I ordered a salad and bread to go from a nearby restaurant and that was so nice. The tomatoes, cucumbers and herbs were bursting with flavour. Delish!

That evening we sat outside with a few of the other guests and got chatting to John- a Canadian backpacker who must've been in his 60s! He had been on the road wih his bike since April (4 months). We talked about everything from the collapse of economies, religion, living on the streets and investing in gold. Its amazing who you meet when you go travelling!

Day 2.
We had been awake since 5am yesterday, and got woken up again at 5am by the prayers at the nearby Mosque being transmitted by loud speaker to wake up every living soul in a 20 mile radius. They prey 5 times a day and it sure give you a hullava fright the first time you hear it when your standing right outside the mosque!

At breakfast we chatted to the pansiyon owner while we ate our breakfast of bread, a hard boiled egg, tomato, cucumber and olives. Turkish people smoke a lot! He thought nothing of lighting up right next to us as we ate. Him, his wife and family were constantly smoking as did a lot of people out on the street and with the heat it really gave me a headache. He recommended we do a tour of Perge (ancient ruins) Aspendos (ancient theatre like Collosuem except its still in use!) and Side (modern city in amongst ancient ruins). We liked the sound of that but not when he told us it would cost £100! Visitng a few tourist places confirmed the price. Public transport would take all day to get to 1 place (3 changes necessary) and motobike hire was risky as accidents were quite frequent and nobody did insurance with the bike hire. Car hire was about £75 including petrol for 1 day so we were in a bit of a quandry about what to do.

But the first mission was to get some cash. I had ordered a mastercard to withdraw cash overseas for free and Richard and I both memorised the PIN – incorrectly! So with our few remaining turkish coins we looked for a coin phone. They didnt exist. So we had to exchange more pounds in order to buy a card to phone the bank and get our PIN number. It was with some relief that an hour later we finally had some cold hard lira filling my new little Turkish purse.

The Pansiyon owner gave us a few sites to go and visit so we began to look for those. First – the broken minulet. We pointed at the picture of it on the map to 2 people in the street who both shrugged. But guy number 3 knew where it was – about 50 meters behind us! Even when we were right underneath it – we still werent sure if this was it. It didnt look broken and it wasnt exactly spectacular. We took a photo anyway and went in search of the marina. We found the cliff overlooking the marina and eventually the steps leading down – but we were too hot and tired to walk down knowing we would have to walk back up again and would have to pay to have a swim in the water. So after taking a few photos around the old castle, we went back to the Pansyon to head out to Lara beach – at the recommendation of our host. I assumed this was the beach 3km away but it turns out it was 15km away. We were fortunate enough to chat to a Turkish english teacher on the bus who gave us a few tips and things and told us to expect 40mins on the bus- which came as a shock to us when we thought we were only going 3km! The bus had no display and no voice saying 'the next stop is Lara Beach' so we were a bit clueless about when the heck we were supposed to get off. Richard reckoned he saw the ocean so instructed me to go and ask the bus driver. I said 'Lara Beach' and a lady next to him said 'past – gone' and pointed to where we had come then pointed to a bus on the other side of the road and said '5 mins' So the bus stopped and we got off. Just to confirm this information we went and asked the lady at the bus stop by saying 'Lara Plajita (we had learnt the word for beach now). Richard added actions of swimming to this just to make sure. She spoke Turkish very clearly and loudly to us but funnily enough – we didnt understand a word! So then she took us to the corner and pointed down the street. We gathered she meant to walk to the end – so we did. Yes – there was the ocean! About 100m down the cliff below us! Fortunately there was a hotel across the road and the guy spoke some english. Enough to inform us we were still 8km away and needed to take another bus. As we walked along the main road wondering where the heck the bus stops were – a bus that was driving along stopped in the middle of the road, honked at us then opened its door! It was like food falling from the sky to a man wondering starving in the desert! We thought it was trully bizarre but as we drove along – it did the same to other people. Did bus drivers have an uncanny knowledge of who was looking for a bus? It was also bizarre that this bus cost more than the first bus, yet we were closer.

When we finally arrived at the beach some 2 hours later – the sun was setting! But there was hardly anyone around so we had free access to some beautiful comfy 4 poster beach beds – complete with chiffon like curtains. We relaxed here a while, watched the sunset and took pictures until the mozzies started feasting. Then we strolled along the promenade which was full of restaurants and a few go cart tracks. We could see bright lights and loud music up ahead, so went to check it out. There we found a raging club; well it would have been if it had some people!

By now it was about 9pm and we were a little worried about what time the last bus would be. We asked some guys at the club who pointed us across the road. But asking the bus number was too much of a challenge. In the end – this friendly bouncer took us across the road, waved down a bus for us and told the driver where we wanted to go. We were the only ones on the bus; whether or not this meant the driver thought he could exercise more freedom or whether he exhibitied normal driver behavious- I dont know. But as he drove that bus he munched away on his sandwhich, had a cigarette and talked on his mobile. at one point he leaned down to pick up a coin and we started driving off the road towards the bushes. I even wondered if he was drunk. He stopped and picked up more people; normally stopping in the middle of the street. One hour later he stopped the bus – signalled down the street and said Kaluci. We obediently got off but were both suspicious as to where the heck we were. It didnt at all look like our starting destination. But we got distracted by the fountain and light display – like the fountains of Belagio in Vegas they had couloured fountains of water dancing to music. It attracted quite a crowd and was very entertaining and clever. It was really cool too that they had used the water as a wall to project images onto.

From there we walked around the town square, drunk a freshly squeezed orange juice and explored the alleyways of shops.

Stockholme Sweden

2010-03-15T11:05:00.000-07:00

Jac was going to Sweden for her last IUSY meeting and suggested that I meet up with her after the conference. I had never been to Scandanavia and had some airpoints to use up, so thought – why not?

Upon our return from the Canary Islands the week previously, I was about to pack away my summer skirts and t-shirts then thought – hang on, what if I need these for Sweden? Imagine my shock when I did a quick weather search and saw it was 0 degrees and snowing!! I was feeling a bit ripped off – how could Jac not tell me it was going to be freezing! I dont do winter travelling! But according to friends, I was an idiot for not knowing that Sweden would still be in the midst of winter at the end of March.

Memories of Belgium in the winter of 2006 came flooding back. I had the remnants of the flu and it was -3 degrees and snowing with a bone chilling wind. That was when I swore I'd never travel in winter again.

But this time I would be prepared. Armed with long johns, thermals and a bag full of woolens, I was off. Flying into the city I was shocked to see the countryside was all still white with snow; which shouldnt have surprised me, but it was 15 degrees in England and with London as my cold-standard, I found it difficult to fathom places could be colder. And that people would choose to live in places that were!

Upon landing in the airport one of the first things I noticed was a giant banner sprawled across the roof proudly announcing an upcoming royal wedding. Their white teeth and diamond crowns sparkled while the giant LCD counter announced their were 82 more days to go. The town confirmed the royal mania with royal postcards, cups, teatowels and tea trays. This was one wedding they wouldnt be able to back out of! A local told us that while the Royals dont really serve much perpose, the Swedes still loved them.

Jac got a bit delayed in her conference so wasnt able to meet me at the centre, so we arranged to meet at the hotel. The train was a hasty 20mins straight to the heart of Stockholm. It wasnt till later when I had worked out the exchange rate - £48 for a return journey on the train was more expensive than the flight (on Ryan Air that is) I was warned of how expesive the country is and yes it was costly, but after living in London the prices here were no longer heart attack inducing.

So upon arriving in the centre I picked up a map and attempted to locate myself on it. Being lost in a foreign country with absurd street names always makes it so much more complicated. As I searched for the corner of Klarabergsviadukteh Klaraergsg and Klarastandsl a kiwi accent said 'Do you need some help?' A kiwi guardian angel had seen my NZ bag and came to my rescue! I shall never travel without it again. Turns out she lived quite happily there in Sweden and sent me on the path to the hotel.

Within a few minutes I was marvelling at how tiny our room was – 2 beds so close together it might as well have been a double bed and barely enough room to walk around the edges of the beds. Oh well, it was very centrally located and had a fantastic breakfast. Jacinda turned up some 20mins l

ater and after dropping off the bags we went to the loby to meet Peter and Jessica, Jac's friends from IUSY. We wandered the streets trying to find a good place for a few drinks, but in the end gave up and waited for Johan the Swedish local to take us somewhere. He took us to a bar overlooking a square where they served Jac a glass of vinegar flavoured red wine and seemed to be the senior citizen hang out. Jac said she knew it would be a great drink when she asked for red wine and they didnt even ask what kind, but just passed a pre-filled glass her way!

They chatted about the conference and filled me in on Swedish culture. They are a socialist democratic society with high taxes. Which meant things were expensive but there is a cleanliness and order about their world. The murder rate is very low and theft didnt seem a big problem. The bars and restauants were non-smoking adding to the clean feeling and apart from a few cigarrette butts, the streets were free from rubbish and tidy. You didnt see much graffiti and there were certainly no alleyways with the stench of urine. There were loads of mothers pushing prams and Jessica commented on how everyone could afford space aged- top of the line prams in this country. Turns out they all got a child allowance.

Peter left shortly after for his flight home to Denmark then the rest of us followed Johan's lead to a restaurant for dinner. Jac and I requested meatballs but it wasnt on the menu- that would have to wait till tomorrow. Four or 5 other IUSY delegates turned up and I got to hear the intricacies of American politics for a full 2 hours. Fortunatley for me; Jac was coming down wit

h a cold and wasn't feeling up to joining them for after dinner drinks! Phew..! But I got some consultation on my 5 min tourist list from the Lonely Planet.I was feeling pretty tired too after daylight savings robbed me of an hour's sleep; which meant I only got 5 the previous night as I was talking to Mum on MSN for a few hours. Im still a nervous flyer after the Rome storm flight, so that ruled out any sleep on the plane too.

So we managed to get an earlyish night but Jac was feeling pretty rotten and was still jetlagged, so woke me up at 8:45am. At least then we had plenty of time to hit breakfast.

Breakfast was impressive; cereals and a wide selection of cheeses, hams and pickles. The rye bread was tasty and dense; filling you up on just a couple of bits. And the goey topped brownie also deserves a mention; which apparently we were lucky to have as Johan told us Swedish arent big on their sweets and it never usually features as part of a breakfast. And the restaurant the next night didnt even have a desert menu – how absurd?!

Our room came with the complimentary use of an umbrella – which I guess is quite indicative of the weather in the country. But it looked OK out the window so we braved it without it and headed to Djurgarden. I had my long johns and 6 layers on..I felt like Michelen-Man and was uncomfortably weighed down by my clothing and camera. But there was no way the cold was permeating through my protective barriers! Well actually my face was pretty cold but you can hardly walk around the steets with a balaclava on can you? The steet was lined with stately buildings; so impressive in their granduer they could have all been consular buildings. They overlooked the water; which still had giant pieces of ice floating around it. I found Stockholm to be very pretty and photogenic. There wasnt a lot of greenery, probably because it was winter, but it certainly wasnt drab as the buildings were peach, yellow, apricot, red; everything other than grey!

Djurgarden was home of the first open air musuem and had a miniture world. But they were both closed, as were most of the tourist related activities in stockholm. I think Jac was secretly happy, she didnt seem too enthusiastic about seeing miniature buildings and native animals of Sweden.

The buildings here – whatever they were- were just as colourful and surrounded by snowy parklands. I was happy just to snap away but the cold air was draining my camera batteries in no time. I had left the spares at the hotel so had to restrict my trigger happy finger.

We hadnt gone far when Jac managed to sniff out a cafe. We walked past the parking lot of space aged prams at the entrance and sat amongst the mothers and babies for our cuppa in this quirky cafe which was so reputable as to have a page dedicated to it in the coffee table book of great Swedish cafes. Well the book was in Swedish so we can only guess that was what it was about. It turned out to be a well timed stop as it started raining outside.

I noticed the lady at the counter said 'Hey' as a greeting to the guy in front of me and I thought..oh OK this is kind of a casual place. But it turns out 'Hey' is hello in Swedish..that was the only word I picked up. It was quite bizarre – normally in a foreign place you slowly and tentatively ask 'do you speak english?' Not here. Jac just bowled up and confidently asked

for her soy latte and they understood her perfectly. You didnt even have to bother fumbling your way through strings of unpronouncable words beginning with K- everyone spoke perfect english. It felt a bit inconsiderate – but hey! But I actually liked the fact that here you looked like a local as I was just as white and

pasty as the rest of them! So everyone would immediately speak Swedish to you; maybe it's just the fact that they dont get many tourists there. It drove me a bit nuts in the Canaries that I wanted to practise my spanish but everyone would immediately speak english to you – even with Richard on my arm who looks anything but english!

Jac spent a good half hour in a Pharmacy trying to find codein which they didnt have and wasnt too impressed when they tried to offer her herbal treatments for her ailments. The presciption section of the pharmacy was very 19^th century with shelves lined with chemicals in neatly labelled tinted flasks. Im

sure it was just for display as I sat there for 20mins and didnt see any of the Pharmacists reach up for the bottle of salicilyic acid. If it was for display then they could have put some formaldehye preserved deformed animals or something to make it a bit more interesing.

We then charged on to meet Johan our Swedish guide in the o

ld city – Gamla Stan. It didnt seem very old to me; I guess because all the buildings and everything were in such good condition. It was equally as colourful and bright as the new city with streets of souveneir shops selling the royal paraphenalia of Princess Victoria and her country beau who Jac thought was quite dapple . There were also quite a few little colourful wooden horses for sale – not sure what that was about. Oh and the decorative theme everywhere was coloured feathers on sticks. Sometimes in the form of feather stick Xmas tree...apparently that was in celebration of easter.

Then it was on to the shopping area where we browsed a swedish functional design shop for a while. They had some quirky yet useful things in here – like a banana holder. I always get squashed bananas in my bag so thought this was a great idea; although I would have improved upon the design by adding a soft interior. There was also a memory game of pairs of boobs; not so functional – but interesting nonetheless.

From here it was dinner time in what Johan assured us was a local authentic Swedish restaurant where the football team would hang out. There was no english menu so that reassured us that this was the real deal. There were 3 starters; one with shrimp, one with herring and the other with anchovies. Too bad if you dont like seafood! Jac ordered the herring but was horrified to find a raw egg sitting on top of her creamy roulard of herring. Johan didnt understand what the big deal was. Reminds me of when we were in Amsterdam and Jac got the raw salmon! You never really know what is acceptable as food in some countries.

We got our swedish meatballs for dinner; served with pomegranate and creamy mashed potatoes. The combination with fruit was really nice but the meatballs themselves were quite salty – not the famous swedish meatball I was anticipating. The other option on the menu was reindeer but we werent so comfortable with eating Rudolph.

Between courses Jac ducked off to the loo and upon spotting the male urinals as she washed her hands, made a hasty exit having learnt that 'HERR' should not be confused with 'HERS'.

Again, we declined evening drinks with the IUSY gang and retreated to our hotel – we had plans to work up a relaxed sweat in the hotel sauna. We had the area to our selves, and managed about 30mins in there. There was no plant bracken or sticks to beat each other with so this wasnt your traditional Swedish sauna – just a bog-standard one.

I woke up about 10 times in the night to the loud drowning of the air ventilation. So I guess its not surprising that I woke up at 10am to Jac saying 'Louise – , we've missed breakfast.' Well that was the most effective alarm ever and wihin minutes I was up, dressed and bolted for the door – determined not to miss that exhuisite start to the day. We got there as they were packing away the pickles, cheeses and hams but we still managed to get our boiled eggs, fresh bread, yoghurt and cereal – phew.

After packing up, we had about 1.5 hrs more to look around Stockholm before catching our flight home. Not really feeling like we had missed anything, or having had our hosts suggest any agenda, we just headed back to the old town and royal palace. We sampled expensive swiss chocolate, tried on viking hats and bought a ghastly royal postcard. Then as I innocently walked along, a guy came within a foot of me, tilted his lens at my face and fired the flash. We were both quite perplexed at this; especially Jac as she thought I looked like a homeless person in my tired hat and if hadnt been freezing outside, I would have been forbidden from wearing it in her presence. Admittedly the hat had been with me for 2 winters and I had caught my earrings on it a few times so there were threads sticking out here and there. But the guy obviously thought I was still worthy of photographing!

so that was Stockholm- I have now been to Scandanavia!

Canary Islands- Lanzarote

2010-03-10T10:40:00.000-08:00

After 1 year and 4 months without leaving the country – I was in desperate need for sun. The previous 2 British summers had been no shows so sun and sand was top on the priority list for my first trip on the new passport. One week wasnt long enough to squeeze Egypt in and there arent too many other places that are close and still sunny in March- except the Canary Islands!

My friend Shanaka had gone to Lanzarote for a week in January and said it was beautiful. I wish he hadn't told me he got all inclusive (all food and drinks) in a 5 star hotel including flights for £260 a week. I spent hours trying to find a similar bargain and one didnt exist! Instead we settled for £230 in a 3 star apartment, self catering. When we went to Greece we got caught out with the self catering as food on the island was so expensive - £5 for a box of cereal! A bit of research suggested that Lanzarote would be similar so we paid for an extra suitcase and filled it with groceries. Of course we later discovered that our resort had grocery shops on every corner with prices practically the same as London. (Except Heinz baked beans which were E1.50 a can!)

With our 2 cases stuffed with clothes, food and my camera gear – we were filled with fear at the airport upon discovering Ryan Air were charging £20 for every kilo overweight your bag was. Our bags were 4kg overweight and it took layering of clothing and very clever repacking of the cabin bags (thank goodness they didnt weigh those!) to get them within range.

Our resort was meant to be a fairly lively one and was located fairly close to the airport. I read that you could easily take a bus there...but it actually turned out you had to take 2 buses, one of them in the opposite direction. It took us close to 2 hours to get there -and only 3Euro! But we opted for a shuttle back and that took less than 15 minutes!

We arrived in the early evening, it was a pleasant temperature in the low 20s and walking up the massive hill with our suitcases meant we were both pretty warm when we arrived. We were both pleasantly surprised with our apartment – it was massive. With an open plan kitchen and large lounge overlooking the ocean and a large bedroom. You had to pay for TV but who wants to watch tv on an island anyway. We had bought cards, books, a couple of movies and my ipod to listen to music through the mini laptop.

Problem was – we had bought the wrong charger for the laptop! So with my ability to read my e-books and evening music potentially down the drain, we went in search of a charger in the town. Things were looking hopefull at shop number one, but try as he might, the shop owner couldnt get his multi-charger with variable voltage to work. We were almost expecting smoke to come out of the laptop as he kept cranking up the voltage wiating for some signs of life. Finally – success in shop number 4 but his travel adapted was 70Euro! As we walked out of the shop he bargained hard, dropping the price every few seconds as we inched away from him. We finally got our charger the next day when Richard had the brainstorm that we offer to hire it from him for the week.

The bedroom of the apartment was right by a main road so we awoke quite early to the sound of trucks driving past – and not getting any sun during the day, it was a little chilly too. So the following day we dragged the mattresses out into the lounge and slept there instead. When the maids came to clean the room they looked at each other in shock and muttered under their breaths – no doubt thinking we were freaks. And explaining that the bedroom was too noisy didnt seem to alleviate the strange looks. But apart from that – we thought our apartment was great. Some people on trip advisor had complained about the cockroaches and yes there were some but I guess thats just part of living in a tropical environment. There was certainly no shortage of them in Hawaii. Its not like they were crawling everywhere though– we only saw 5 in the flat during the week. Normally they were on their backs – legs desperately swimming the air in a failed attempt to flip over. One night I was brushing my teeth and heard a crunch beneath my feet – I glanced down to see the squished bug with obtusely angled legs sticking out from under my shoe. I was so glad I handnt yet taken my heels off and always made sure I wore my jandals inside from then on!

Our first day we orientated ourselves with our little area, walking around the town, playa chica (a small beach where lots of divers were having lessons) then a further 15 minutes to playa grande (the big beach with all the umbrellas and deck chairs). We caught some rays on the beach for a little while until it started to rain (it wouldnt be a holiday of mine unless it rained once!) and then visited the tourist office. Armed with pamphlets on the sites of the volcanic island we tried to put some kind of itenerary together, although its difficult when your itenarary is 'to see everything'! It was obvious that we would need a car, unless we wanted to pay the hefty tour prices. It had been 3.5yrs since I had driven and 15 years since I had driven a manual...and that was on the left hand side of the road...so I wasnt feeling overly confident of my abilities to drive a stick on the opposite side of the road. Richard had passed his theoretical test and was given a british restricted drivers license. We asked around and surprisingly they would all let him hire a car on a restricted license – we even checked with a cop! So happy days- I didnt have to drive!

Our reseort was quite busy considering it was off season, but there was still not a raging night life...I guess its not Mykonos! The place was mainly full of retired spaniards, germans and english families on holiday. So there were loads of people pushing wheelchairs, zimmer frames or prams.

There was a long strip of restaurants and pubs..but surprisingly the most prevalent entertainment type on offer was the Irish Pub. We couldnt understand it – why would the Canary Islands have an Irish pub on every corner – at least 10 of them within 5 mins walk from our apartment! They werent even rocking on St Paddys day so what hope is there for the rest of the year? There was a shiny bright open mall and shops that extended for a half an hour walk with the usual souveniers and loads of perfume shops,

Our resort Belcon del Mar appeared to mainly be full of English. I dont quite understand how English are fairly conservative by nature and would never go topless in their own country – but get to Spain and they practically walk around naked! And obviously, these arent the body types you want to see semi naked. There was one middle aged overweight english women that I never saw with a top on for the entire week! The spaniards on the beaches were equally as carelfree and we saw a fair share of wrinkled raisins on display.

They catered to the English population with English Breakfast signs proudly displaying cheap eats or the 'best breakfast in town' at the front of each restaurant. But being a Spanish colony, you would have to put up with someone smoking a ciggy right beside you while you chomped down on your greasy fried egg. We made our own english breakfast at the apartment and enjoyed it overlooking the ocean without annoying smokers and knowing it didnt contain an entire day's calories in one fried egg. And Spain's version of Heinz beans werent bad either – especially for quarter the price!

Despite having only had 5 hours sleep the night before our flight (and no sleep on the flight) Richard was still rearing to go and experience the nightlife. I agreed, if I were allowed a nana nap. We awoke at almost 1am and my assumption that it would be too late to go out now was dismissed when I saw Richard get up and start doing his hair. So I reluctantly dragged myself out of bed and joined him. The real night life area was about 30mins walk away and we were too lazy for that so settled for the couple of clubs on the harbour. The first one tried to leur us in with their happy hour buy one get one free drink specials. Who's heard of a happy hour at 2am on a Friday night?? But there was nobody dancing there so we moved on to bar number 2. No happy hour here but it was more crowded and had a dance floor. The music was an interesting variety of salsa, spanish folk pop (which was pretty crap), reggaeton and pop. The music kept the English away and it mainly appeared to be full of spaniards. But that meant there was a cigarrette smoker no more than 2ft away from you and we came home smelling like an ashtray. There were a few people doing salsa but they probably shouldnt have been as there wasnt really enough room for that and we both copped a few elbows and got whipped by flying long hair. We called it a night at around 3am and made the trek in heels (well Richard wasnt in heels) up the giant hill home.

And yes, we did have to pick the car up at 9am the next morning. We grabbed a fresh baguette from the grocery store, made some beautiful bocadillos and set off on our wee adventure. Richard may only have his theory license but he assured me he could drive- which was fortunately true.

We drove down to Playa Blanca another resort area further south of the island. It was pretty but it wasnt any better than our resort I didnt think. We stayed a while at the little beach by the shops and walked around the town wondering why on earth they needed a perfume shop every 5 meters? We then drove out of the town to check out their nearby beaches. The first one we came across was beside a lovely 5 star hotel (which I later had to sneak into to use their toilets) and was quite poplular. We chilled here for a couple of hours then drove on to the nearby marina to dangle our feet in the water, absorb the amazing view and eat our 'riccisimo' bocadillos.

From here we drove on the volcanic part of the island. It was like a maxed out version of NZ's desert road with the highway dug out of volcanic rock and massive craters and volcanoes (hopefully not active) all around. We sat in the car at the entrance to the volcanic park 'Timanfaya National Park' wondering if we allowed to drive any further. Our question was answered when a car raced under the raised barrier arm and the park attendant lept after it shaking his fist. So we paid our 16Euro and drove on. The temperature was certainly a lot lower up here and there was a raging wind. So strong that I couldnt open the car door against it! We jumped on the bus and did a circuit of the volcanic area while a recorded message spoke in Spanish then translated to English then German. The porous chocolate brown rock in its various craters and mountains made for some interesting scenery. A shame we couldnt get out of the bus so most of my pictures have windscreen haze in them. It was amazing to learn that locals had lived here and despite frequent volcanoes they were quite hesitant to leave! The last one was only about 100 years ago.

We were in the last tour group of the day so we didnt get to see them cooking meat on a BBQ created simply from heat in the ground. They did have open cavities that they poured water into to create a sudden noisy erruption of water bursting high into the sky though. That was pretty cool but if you didnt know it was coming it gave you a hell of a fright and you would hear the odd unsuspecting woman give a little scream. After sticking around for a while taking a few more photos, we headed back home.

On day 2 of our roadtrip we planned to go and visit the Sunday markets at Teguise and then to the attractions of Cuaves de los verdes and Jameos del Agua. The streets were teeming with people and traffic was quite busy. I spotted a park on the side of the road and said to Richard 'you know how to parallel park right?' 'yeah' he replied. But 5 minutes later with one wheel up on the footpath and peadestrians working around us with bemused looks on their faces- I began to question his answer. I got out of the car and tried to assist from the road – but Im not the best of drivers and we then ended up with 2 wheels on the footpath! An old guy stood and watched for a while and lifted his arms in turning motions - just itching to get behind the wheel. But he soon went on his way and we decided to abort the mission. There was a break in the traffic and Richard zoomed off...while I waited on the footpath – without a phone- hoping that he had the sense to park the car in a car park (ie. field) and meet me back at the same spot...which he did some 10mins or so later.

We hung out at the markets for an hour or so..and still didnt see everything. They had the usual arts and crafts, clothes, jewellery and food. We listened to a Peruvian band for a while – I was getting quite into the music after a few songs – probably would have bought the CD. But instead I bought a red and black necklace made of the volcanic rock of the island.

We had a full itenarary so moved on to the other side of the island to see the caves or the jameos del agua. We didnt have time to do both so had to choose one. Having spoken to the guide at the front of the 'Jameos del Agua' - we were informed the place had caves, so thought we'd go there as then we'd get to see the waters and the caves. But the map made it look deceptively bigger than what it was – so we were a bit disappointed. And werent quite sure what was up with the outdoor pool with the palm tree. OK so it was pretty – but was it a man made pool which was put there to make everything look a bit nicer while having absolutelly no relevance to the area at all? Or did it in fact have this purified water that had leeched through the caves and has been collected and put in the pool? Or was it just filled from a hose? Either way, it made nice pictures and we stayed at the attraction for quite a while. There was an ampitheatre for concerts constructed out of the caves but it was under repair so there were no concertss on at the time. The top floor had a volcano museum which was kind of interesting.

From here we went and sat on a private little shore at a beach not to far away. As we drove home we could see the sun beginning to set with the promise of a colourful sky. So we drove on past our resort to find a nice backdrop to the pic. We found a nearby harbour of but the sky didnt give the colours we had anticipated. Still – it was nice to explore the area a little.

Since we had the car, we thought we'd go into the 'heart' of the clubbing district and have a night on the town. It was a Sunday, but surely there would be enough people around wanting to have a dance? The area consisted of about 5 or 6 clubs and the fact that we were swarmed upon by club promotors as soon as we came in the general direction of the place, was a sure sign that they were desperate for business! We inspected each club before making our choice of where to spend the evening. Club 1: 5 people sitting on bar stools, nobody dancing. Club 2: 6 people standing around – nobody dancing. Club 3: 10 people milling about, 2 people dancing – bad music. We settled on club 4 – which had a few dozen people- although they were all english, even the DJ. But the music was decent and there were a few people dancing. We hadnt been dancing for long when a young english guy came up behind me and touched me around the waist while dancing. Apparently just noticing Richard he said 'ohh is this your girl? She's well fit – can I dance with her?' Obviously Richard was not impressed by this and gave him a few harsh words which I shall not repeat. This guy was a bit of a trouble maker and a while later he came up to Richard and said 'give me a cigarette' – again Richard was not impressed and I could see that latin temper fire up! The lad wisely went on his way. But we stayed here a while and even did some salsa/merengue to a Shakira song. Afterwards a guy came up to us and shoke both our hands and thanked us- telling us how great we were! How cool is that!?

After they played Lady Gaga – Poker Face for the third time- I got bored and we went to check out the other clubs. They hadnt livened up at all but we stayed at one for maybe 20mins. It had more local people but the music was quite electro, not really our thing, so we went back to the English club and listened to Lady Gaga some more. We had had enough by about 3am and headed home – glad that we had our car parked right outside so there were no big hills to walk up. Oh and we had such a primo park because I gave Rich a lesson on parallel parking (remembered perfectly from my Dad's instructions when I was 15) and he was in on his first attempt!

The following days didnt consist of anything too exciting. We went to the beach, lazed by the pool and played cards in the evening. Cards got a bit boring though since our repetoire of 2 person card games was limited to Gin Rummy and Snap! One night, I was taking a bit too long to decide which suit to go for in my straight. When I finally announced it was Richard's turn, he was passed out on the mattress. I gave up trying to wake him up and left him there. And there he slept for 14 hours!!! So much for being young and not needing sleep!

Most nights we cooked our own meals but we did go out for 2 meals. The central area of the resort along the seafront was lined with restaurants for about a mile. And of course – the promotors were all on the street beaconing you into the restaurants promising the best food and a great deal. One nice guy talked us into Italian at his restaurant – he pointed up above to a place which must have beautiful views of the ocean. But in actuality we were sitting on plastic chairs with an industrial view of air conditioning motors. The food was quite average and we had to move after an old guy lit up a smelly cigar right beside us. This could have happenned inside anyway as smoking in a restaurant is acceptable in Spain.

There were no promotors outside for the Mexican restaurant we went to the next time. It selled itself – I reckoned it looked like the most inviting place on the street. Colourful red lighting and catholic relics decorating every corner with waiters buzzing around carrying their sizzling plates of fajitas. Richard ordered cheese quasidillas which were 1inch think with half melted cheese – it was too much rich cheeseyness even for him and I could see he had food envy at my chicken fajitas- fortunatley the serving size was enormous and there was no way I was going to get through them on my own anyway.

We had about 4 days of perfect weather with sunshine and blue skies but after that it got a bit hazy. But we didnt mind as it was still warm- in the mid 20s. The day we left even got up to 30! We really enjoyed our week at Lanzarote and its comforting to know that even in the midst of a dark and depressing winter in London – sun and sand can be found only a 3 hour flight away!

Winter Update

2010-02-21T04:54:00.001-08:00

Well – with the absence of a passport, it's been a very uneventful year and this has been reflected in my lack of blogging. And with the no-show summer – I dont even have pics of Cornwall or Bournmouth to put up.

But the good news is that I have a passport and visa for the next 5 years!! It was a long and horrible wait (over a year without a passport) so now I have lots of lost time to make up for.

Canary Islands is all booked for a week in March and then I have 2 days in Stolkholm with my sister at the end of March. I'm so looking forward to some sun and sand. My last holiday was Oct 2008! We shall try and fit a Paris trip in there too in the not too distant future. I think I’m driving Richard a bit mad with all my talk of travelling and trying to plan trips. I guess I’m just like someone who has just finished a year long diet and has walked straight into a cake shop!

In keeping with the tradition of experiencing record breaking weather since I've been here; last summer was the wettest since records began; this winter has been the coldest in 30 years! The snow has been a nightmare! The first time you experience you're first heavy downfall is cool – you get the day off work, you go and have snowball fights, make snow angels and check out the neighboorhood snowmen. But it's not fun anymore, it's just a pain in the butt! I've lost a lot of pay from not being able to make it into work and on one day when I tried to go in – I was 2.5hrs into my journey when told to get off the train as it couldnt go any further! So back home I headed; that was 5 hours travelling and I didnt even make it to work! Then as the snow disappears it turns to ice. There is not a shoe in existence – except maybe an ice-skate, that you can safely walk on ice with. I saw a lot of people arse over. One lady was wearing heels- so she totally deserved it for being so stupid, but even people in gumboots were falling over! I slipped a number of times but managed to stay upright by grabbing hold of the nearest object whenever I started to slide; a wall, a pole, the guy who happened to be walking past...!

But you have to admit; the snow does majestically turn mundane scenery into a fairytale wonderland. They actually have an event in Hyde Park called Winter Wonderland so we went along to that one night. There's stalls sellings pretzels, mulled wine and hot drinks – in the style of Germany. There's an ice-skating rink, games and rides. That's where the photos from this blog entry are from. You will note that the Roller coaster above only had one carriage running on it...when it's -3°C why the hell would you want to whisk through the night and add a wind chill factor to your already numb face??

Though it looks all very pretty and there were loads of couples meandering with their arms around each other...we only lasted about an hour before the risk of frost bite sent us running home. The warmth of the underground had never been so welcoming!

But we made sure we had some overpriced snacks before we left.. I love bretzels so was happy to hand over my £3 for the cinnamon sugary goodness (would have been better if it was hot though)... A small hot chocolate in a plastic white cup was £4.50 - who are they kidding?! That's like $10NZ!

These last few pics are taken just around the corner from our flat. I went out with the camera one day when I got snowed in and couldnt get to work. Almost all the water had frozen over so there were these little patches where the birds were forced into..and even they were slipping over in the ice when they got out to try and get the bread people were throwing in...it was quite an amusing site! Poor little birds though...they cant go home to their nice warm centrally heated homes!

Well that's all for now. Canary Island Blog coming soon!!

Royal Ascot

2009-06-19T07:02:00.000-07:00

For some reason, Wellington Cup Race Day held absolutely no interest to me, but here on the other side of the world, getting all dressed up and waving to the Queen in your new hat had some grand appeal.

In my mind it was going to be a gorgeous sunny day and we would be looking fabulous in our summer dresses, knibbling on grapes and cheese, sipping on grapetise (cos I dont like wine) and yelling encouragent at our chosen horse as it gallopped past.

However, the UK weather was bound to crush my little illusion with a forecast of rain and a high of 18.

Amy, Clive, Anna (flatmate) and I went together, driven in style in Clive's Mercedes. Racing started at 2 but Clive reckoned we should leave at 10am which Amy and I thought was absurdly early and meant we had to get up at 9am. (well 8am for her). But by the time I curled my hair, put my make up on packed up the camera gear – it was more like 10.30.

Anna was going with her friends so we dropped her off at Waterloo, then realising that we were going to freeze our toshes off, we took a

nother detour to Clapham to pick up Amy's shawls. It was 11.30 by the time we actually left London.

We were meeting my friend Monika who took a train from nearby and though we tried to coordinate our

arrival time, she arrived well before us, which was no use since I had her ticket.

As we hit Ascot, the traffic built up and congested the whole town. As we crawled along, we took the time to appraise and criticise the attire of those walking past us. Why would you wear a beautiful dress and pair it with jandals??

We pulled overto pick up Monika at Starbucks but in the 30seconds it took me to phone her, a cop came over and told us to get out of the no parking zone in a authoritave don't-mess-with-me kinda way. So Monika would have towait as there was nowhere to park. We drove to the designated park areas which were spread over various fields around the area but a lot of them were full or reserved. Finally we found our park and began the 20 minute walk to the entrance where I faced the challenge of finding Monika in a sea of thousands of people with limited battery left on her phone. As I was thinking how absolutey hopeless this was, she ran up to me saying 'lucky you havent changed at all' (it had been 9 months since we had last seen each other)

As we walked to the grounds, the sun came out and I felt warm enough to remove my cardigan, which was a mistake. A girl tapped me on the shoulder and said, 'ahhh you still have your tag on your dress'. There it was, hanging right down my bare back 'Jane Norman Size 10, £43'. I laughed in embarrassement. As I was getting dressed that morning, Richard saw the tag and tried to remove it by hand, but the plastic hurt his delicate latin hands so he said he would get it later with the scissors. But I got cold, put on my cardigan and all was forgotten.

We walked around to find a spot among the other non-grandstand ticket holders. There was barely a patch of grass to be seen with everyone staking their claim with laid out picnic blankets packed with Marks n Spencers picnic snacks and bottles of wine. While not in the centre, we found a bit of a grass and soon after people were having to resort to picnicing on concrete.

We got there in time for the royal procession. The announcement was made and on mass everyone rushed to the fence to get a glimpse of old quenie. Dressed in baby blue with a matching hat, she wooshed past in her royal horse driven coach some 50m from where I stood...but didnt so much as give us the royal wave. There were a few other royal coaches but I had no idea who any of them were. I would have prefered to see Wils or Harry but Ive probably got more chance of seeing them at club in Mayfair.

None of us really had much idea how to place a bet on a horse so we went to check out the betting stands where a confusing array of betting options were laid out. The others all placed a bet more or less at random or by how fast the horses name sounded, and I used the first race to observe.

I went up to the fence for an action shot of horses galloping past at full speed. But it was impossible, my camera hadnt even focussed and then they were gone . None of the group won any money in that race. W

anting to start small, I put £2 on the next race on an australian horse (there were no NZ horses to bet on) and lost it. Crushed by the defeat, I left my betting career there. The others kept on losing but were determined to turn their luck around..but only Clive did – winning enough money so that he had a net gain of £5.

The 5 mins of sun we had while walking into the grounds soon ended and at one stage it started raining. It was pretty cold so I was glad I had some shawls to wrap up in It seems that most girls were shivering, while the guys – dressed in suits- were fine.

Having caught a glimpse of a toilet queue, I went and stood in line about 1hr before I thought Id need to go. Good idea because this was the most rediculous portaloo line Ive ever been in. We stood there for like 40mins and missed a race. Not wanting to queue again, I stopped drinking after that.

I wasnt sure of our choice of 'silver ring' tickets. While it was far cheaper, you did feel like well dressed cattle class...surrounded by people who used this as an excuse to get boozed up in a pretty dress. I imagine the grandstand would have been a different experience.

After a few hours of shivering, I had had enough and we could imagine the traffic chaos this would cause, so we left before the last race.

So that was Ascot – we came, we saw, but we definitely did not conquer!

I hope my dress is still in fashion next year, as it still hangs in my wardrope unworn some 4 months later..(yup its been another typical no-show England summer).

Canterbury and Dover UK

2009-05-26T09:51:00.000-07:00

Another Bank Holiday – another chance to escape London, and a chance I acted upon for once. Richard had 2 exams the next day so dutifully stayed behind to study while Amy and I headed east for Canterbury.

Only 1hr 40 from London, we reached our destination by 11.30am and found our hostel only 10mins after arriving. Yes I did say hostel – it's been a year and a half since I last stayed in one, but there's not the same appeal of staying in a hotel when you aren't with your boyfriend.

Kipps hostel had a 92% rating from its past occupants so that was certainly good enough for me. And it lived up to its reputation- immaculately clean, friendly and homely enough to stay for a while. We had booked beds in a 5 bed dorm but were informed that a Polish girl had had a big night out and thrown up in the room. Instead of vomit – it now had an overpowering disinfectant smell and we were given the choice of staying there or moving to the 9 person dorm room which had its own bathroom. Thinking that the room was bound to induce headaches we swayed towards the 9 person room – although I was a bit hesitant as the more people in a room the higher the chance of getting a snorer.

It was unusually warm and sunny so Amy had the idea of whipping over to Dover to check out those white cliffs. The Lonely Planet also spoke of a castle and some underground war tunnels so we thought Dover could be worthy of a visit since the weather was so great. Though it was hard to believe, tomorrows forecast was for rain so we scheduled our indoor activities for then.
Dover was about 30min away by train. We followed the signs to the tourist information centre and inquired of how to get to the cliffs. It was supposedly a 45min walk and quite a strenous one, though the girl couldnt be sure as she hadnt actually been.. (I would have thought that visiting one of the top tourist attractions in the area would be somewhat of a prerequisite for working at the local tourist office but there ya go). Feeling a bit too lazy for an uphill walk, I asked about a bus. The girl then replied 'well, since its Sunday, the next bus isnt until (looks at clock)... 2 hours'. To which Amy and I both exclaimed 'what?? 2 hours? I guess we are slightly spoiled by Londons public transport links even though I love to moan about the worst bus of them all – my local 381 which reportedly comes every 8-10 minutes despite me always waiting 20 minutes for it.
As luck would have it, while we questioned the tourist office girl, I put my sunnies on the bench and an arm fell off – I always buy cheap crappy glasses so this isnt too much of a surprise. But being the informative tourist office we were directed to Specsavers just around the corner. The high street was pretty much deserted and 2 middle aged women were in the store alone and probably quite bored. While one fixed my glasses, I enquired of them about the white cliffs. The ladies were more informative than the tourist office and told us that this weekend would be perfect to visit the castle as there was a weekend of reanactments and battles going on. They also said the underground tunnel tours were great and directed us to a taxi stand and even told us what price to expect.

We grabbed a sandwhich from Costa after I screwed my nose up at the only other food option – a sandwhich bar where the girls made you a custom made sandwhich by dipping their hands into the tomatoes and fillings then pawing your baguette to assemble it. I dont understand why nobody else in this world seems bothered by other people putting their dirty mitts all over food they are about to eat! I even told a guy off at a market when he put his hands into the grated cheese to sprinkle it on my mexican. He protested that he had washed his hands but hellooooo he had been taking money which is absolutely filthy – think off all the hands that have touched money! and then touching the cheese. Guy scratches butt then touches coin – Ecoli from butt to coin, coin to Mr Taco Maker's hand, E. Coli to Mr Taco Makers Hand, then to my grated cheese. No thanks! I guess I shouldnt have done that course on food microbiology at Otago University – I am now paranoid for life.

But I digress – back to Dover.. So we catch a cab to the castle for £6- brilliant. We knew the castle cost £10 and being the stingy tourist that I am, and having seen a fair few castles, we thought instead we'd wonder the grounds and look through the tunnels. But arriving at the top of the hill, it was all fenced off as part of the grounds of the castle and you couldnt see anything without handing over your tenner. Then more bad news – all underground tunnel tours were fully booked. Great. But we had come all this way so we went inside anyway.
There was some kind of weekend re-enactment thing going on with hoards of people dressed up in 1940s gear. There were displays of Army camps, machinery, gas masks, food and all sorts. Most of the people were in roped off areas there for people to talk to them, but occasionally you would see a lone man walk past the grounds in some very odd get-up and you had to wonder if he was part of the display...or just weird. I even spotted a tweed wearing man pushing his similarly attired young son in a toy aeroplane of the time. All part of the display I guess..

I didnt have any intelligent questions to ask and Amy's only question was why had these women given up their weekend to put on a dowdy dress and red lipstick to sit on display for the public.
We wondered round the grounds without having much clue what the castle was all about..a tour would have been helpful. The grounds were quite large and there were remains from roman times - the Roman light house from 50AD is believed to be the oldest standing building in England. (I know this because of my Lonely Planet)

The castle and underground tunnels have been around since the times of Napolean -as a defense fortress for the country's shortest sea-crossing to the continent. So short that with the days perfect weather you could actually see France! Our hostel host later told us that it took him 4 visits before he had weather good enough to see the other side.

The castle was kinda perched above the white cliffs of Dover which you could see a small segment of from certain look outs – which saved us the further 45min walk to get to the cliff viewpoint on our tourist map.

The famous 'white cliffs of Dover' song was playing through a few speakers around the grounds and despite having never realy heard the song before – it got stuck in our heads for the rest of the day. But thankfully its gone now. so gone that I cant even remember the name of the song..I think it mentions something about a bird.

Pretty much as soon as we were within the castle grounds, Amy had the idea of finding the start point of the underground tours and seeing if anybody hadnt turned up so we could join a tour group. Great idea – so we spent the next hour or so focussed on our mission but finding the start point proved quite difficult. Eventually we stumbled upon it after following the cart that drops people off around the grounds. We told the front desk man our idea to which he replied 'you could wait here till 7pm and you still wouldnt get on a tour, we are just soooo busy.' He hadnt even finished his sentence when a tour guide came up and said 'I've only got 19 on this group' so just like that, we were in. We were feeling pretty good about our lucky but it probably had more to do with the fact that a grand finale of the day in the form of a battle re-enactment was happening outside.

Our tour took us into three layers of tunnels, one of which had been in use since Napolean's time. The tunnels were used as war headquarters and housed the men and women of the Navy, Army and Airforce. They had 8 tonnes of phone networking equipment to handle all the calls involved with the hub of activity here (the 8 tonnes necessary then can now be managed by equipment the size of a laptop.) There were also dressing stations here where soldiers had emergency surgery or were patched up before going to hospital. And the tunnels were also the site of another UK government headquarters – in case London got bombed.
Admiral Ramsay masterminded the evacuation of Dunkirk here (apparently the famous Dynamo mission) for any of you who know anything about war history.

As you imagine underground tunnels would be, they were dark, quite cold and damp...quite a depressing place to live but at least you were safe from bombs and perhaps with the thousand or so people living there some warmth and life would be injected into it.
After our tunnel tour, we walked around the grounds of the castle, took photos of the views then decided to walk back to the station to get our train back to Canterbury. Lucky Amy could read maps cos I didnt have a clue how to get back. Without getting lost and with a fast paced walk, we made it to the station in about 35mins.

Back at the hostel, we relaxed for a bit then headed out for dinner. I had read of a great sounding Mexican place so thats where we went. The hostel was ideally placed only about 10-15min walk from the centre. The high street of Canterbury was very pretty with an old charm to it. And the cathedral visible from most places. The streets were dotted with old tutor style houses reminding me somewhat of Stratford-upon-Avon.

We found our restaurant but it was packed – which is a good sign I suppose. The waitress told us she had a table for 2 but it was quite close to a large 'party'. We went to have a look and were a bit surprised at her definition of 'party'. (A family of 7 incuding 2 kids in high chairs). But we were hungry so took the table. The food was great and filling – neither of us could finish our main and we didnt even get a starter. There was a funky mexican ambience but we couldnt enjoy the latin music over the noise of the screaming high chair kid. The mother had given it utensils and it belted those things against the chair as hard as it could in an annoying spoilt brat kind of way. At one point – when Amy and I couldnt even hear ourselves talking – I turned and glared at the mother, but it didnt make any difference. They were foreign – and perhaps glaring is not an international language. As you can tell – I dont have children – but when I do, I wont take them to restaurants to spoil everybody else's evening.

When the brat brigade finally left, Amy and I enjoyed the background latin tunes, delicious food and had a good old gossip for a few hours. Then we left to see what town had to offer...which probably wouldnt be much for a Sunday night.
Upon seeing the royal blue sky, I remembered that I was going to bring my camera into town to take some photos. Too late night...so I did my best with Amy's camera but there were no manual functions and with the cathedral gates all closed there was nowhere with a decent view. So there are no night shots on this blog entry. While walking around we were amazed at the trashy Essex-like overdressed attire of the majority of girls who were out. With little skirts and dresses they tottered on high heels over the cobbled paths laughing and screaming amongst each other like drunk school girls. We found it bizarre – this was Canterbury on a Sunday night (and not a very warm one)

what were these girls doing out half naked dressed like they were going to a cocktail party. Despite that...as we wandered the streets some guys yelled out to us 'hey girls, what are you up to? Wanna come join us? Amy said 'no thanks' and he said ' owhhh they're too good for us Jordy boys' which is pretty funny considering we were in jeans and flat shoes without the one-inch mask of makeup.
We went to have a look at The Cuban – a bar/club on the high street but it was full of the aforementioned girls and we looked way underdressed in comparison. They werent playing any latin music either so we promptly left.

Back at our room we were greeted by 3 Australian girls sitting around chatting and drinking. They were also from London. After an hour or so, 2 of them left to go out (to the Cuban, though we warned them on the company they would face there) and the rest of us went to bed. No sooner had we got ready for bed than the 4 Germans arrived back. They all took forever to take turns in the one bathroom and it was after 1am till there was finally peace and quiet. But that didnt last too long as the Germans were up again at 6am; the showering and getting ready took about an hour in which time I didnt get a wink of sleep. The hostel had charm but Victorian houses means creaking floors – it was impossible to walk from one side of the room to the other without releasing the screech from a 100yr old floorboard. I even had the enjoyment of a shuddering bed every time someone walked past. But the good news was that there were no snorers! OK- so now that I've reminded you of some of the delights of staying in a hostel, I'll move on.

As we sat in the conservatory eating toast and cornflakes, the rain began to pour. Our Australian roommates were gutted as they had been to the Cathedral yesterday and were going to go for a bike ride today. We were more organized and planned our day time activities according to the weather forecast. Being a little chilly we put our jackets on and headed off.
The Australians had told us yesterday how they accidentally got caught up in a tour group and ended up getting into the Cathedral for free. As we stood outside the gate, there was only one tour group gathering and we didnt think there would be much chance of us 'accidentally' getting caught up in a tour group of black, French school students! Not that I was contemplating doing that anyway. So we handed over our £8 to get in then another £3.50 for an audioguide. Amy was not impressed that we had to pay to get into a church but I guess I've been in enough of them now to be well used to the idea.

The Cathedral definitely lives up to its reputation and contained intricate stained glass windows, gothic ribbed vaulting, tombs of passed nobels and the added piece of history with the death place of Thomas Beckit. The Archbishop of old times who was murdered by (perhaps joking) instructions of the King is commemorated with a candle which burns in a roped off square inside the cathedral. The exact spot of the murder is marked by an artpiece of 2 swords crossing which casts a shadow of another 2 swords and symbolises the 4 swords of the Kings Hitmen.
The cathedral took a good couple of hours to wonder around and was set on some beautifully landscaped grounds which could occupy another hour. In places there were remains of the old city wall half crumbled and further proclaiming the age of the area.

The sun had come out and it turned out to be a rather warm day. So we grabbed some lunch and went to one of the parks to eat. The streets were now full of tourists, many of them french. At one point, as we paused to photograph the buildings, and a schoolboy yelled out 'you are beautiful' in his french accent. Amy replied 'Im sorry – aren't you only like 10? and his school friends all laughed out loud.
Our day of intense walking yesterday had given Amy some mild shin splints so she wasnt up for any more power tourism so we took it pretty slow from this point on. A good hour in the park followed by a visit to Boots for sunscreen then meandering the cobbled steets. We were even treated to a display of morris dancing! I couldnt believe Amy had been in England for a year and this was her first display of old men in white clothing jumping around to the sound of jingling bells. Man had she missed out!
Before we knew it it was 4pm and time to head to the train station. In perfect timing, the thunder and rain started again just as we got on our train.

Update and Scotland post

2009-05-12T12:58:00.000-07:00

To my avid blog readers - ie Crystal and the random guy from the States. I have finally done another post, scroll down to see my trip to Scotland last September.

But here's an update on life in London. Well, I have to say that 2009 is shaping up to be quite pants (as the English say). It started with having to do a last minute visa application in January which meant my trip to Paris for my birthday got cancelled (along with the non refundable Eurorail tickets).

Then in March I received news that my last minute visa application was all a waste of time as my application was 'invalid' for the simple reason that I filled in version 9 of the form instead of version 10. As I had my b'day during the application time, I lost 10 points towards the application and therefore no longer had enough points to meet the requirement and could not reapply for that visa.

I was informed that I had 5 days legally left in the country. What followed was a week of stress and tears. My first cold sore in my life errupted on my lip the very next day. A visa application is a huge process involving weeks of document gathering. I had to take the whole week off work and Richard missed a couple of days of uni. We had to beg the banks for official bank statements, beg the doctor for a letter of registration, beg my company for official pay slips...nothing in this country is easy and in that week I learnt that fact more than ever. I thought I was saving the environment by receiving on-line bank statements, online pay slips etc..but that came back to bite me big time.

I was applying as a partner of Richard under his Spanish passport and for that we needed 2 letters each for every month we had been living together plus a photo of us together for each month. As well as proof of earnings, bank balances and letters from friends authenticating our relationship.

Richard also had to have his employer fill out a section of the application to say he was in full time employment. As I was taking the form to his work, he phoned to say he had just lost his job. That had to be the worst timing in the world He then had to register himself as a self employed spanish tutor in order to support the visa application.

After one of the most frustrating and stressful weeks of my life, we managed to get our application in on time and I kissed goodbye to my passport for the next 6 months.

As some of you know, we had booked tickets to Colombia in June (non refundable) and we were both miserable knowing that we had lost our holiday and £1000.

So now all there is to do is wait till September (yup the application process takes 6 months). Im struggling without my passport already.. I read the NZ travel mag every week and get depressed reading about the fantastic destinations my fellow antipodeans have been to while I am a prisoner to the UK.

I got a book out of the library on UK weekend breaks to try and perk myself up a bit but the vast majority of them require a car. So I thought it'd be a good idea to buy a car or get my license converted so I could hire a car. Then the ugly head of british beauracracy reared up again and I was informed I could not swap my license without them seeing my passport... Not giving up on my road trip idea, I investigated Richard getting his license- but there is not one car hire company in the UK who will hire cars to young drivers. So now Im feeling quite defeated and my dreams of a road trip to Cornwall are fading... it seems Im destined for the substandard pebble beach of Brighton.

Fortunately, I am able to carry on working while my application is in process, but I doubt anyone will hire someone permanently while their visa is in process so I just have to hope IBA will keep renewing my contract.

So my travel updates on this blog will become considerably less exotic..expect places like Cardiff and Aberdeen...if that.

February Snow time again!

2009-02-02T12:24:00.000-08:00

February in London doesnt exactly bring the best of weather but this year we were hit with the worst snow in 19 years. On Sunday afternoon it started and Richard came home from work with a light dusting of snow in his hair and coating his jacket. I was surprised to see that by bed time, there was a blanket of snow covering everything. Surely this wouldn't last, so I grabbed the camera and tripod and took a few snaps.

The next morning I went to work and saw London transformed to the winter winterland like Ive only ever seen in movies. Amazing! Everything was white and I was struggling to walk in snow past my ankles. I was sensible enough to wear sneakers but this stuff can get slippery and I of course slid over right by the tube - letting out a little squeal as I slid, which alerted more people to turn around and look at me. Dowhh!

On the way to the tube, I did notice a few more people than normal walking the opposite direction, and I wondered if snow had affected the tube..but how could snow affect an underground transport service? Well apparently it can, and it turns out there was no tube. Any buses? Nope. So, I guess I wouldnt be going to work today. Which normally I'd be happy about but when you are a contractor it means no pay and when you only have a job for another 3 months... you try and work as much as you can!

So around I turned and headed back home... slightly peeved that none of the people I had passed on the way there bothered to tell me about the closed tube. It took 1/2 an hour to walk there and back and I came back cold and wet. So I did my good samaritan duty and told every single person I passed walking to the tube that it was closed. They gratefuly thanked me and turned around.

So I called work to say I wasnt coming (they werent surprised as even the people living close didnt make it into work) and went back to bed for another 4 hours!

What a way to take advantage of a day off.

Richard got up to go to Uni but I advised him to check it was open, which it wasnt. So he got a day off too! So we got all our winter woolies on and checked out the transformation of London. I threw my first snow ball (at Richard) and made a couple of illformed snow angels. Then with the camera in hand we walked along to Southwark Park with Clive (after he managed to get his car stuck in the snow in the carpark).

Its weird how the snow made everyone more friendly. Just for this one day it was acceptable to talk to strangers. Clive saw some kids having a snowball fight and couldnt help but join in. Two of them were down on the ground throwing balls at others outside their balcony window one floor up. One of them even had an ice-cream scoop so he could throw perfectly rounded snow balls! Clive initiated battle with a 9 year old on the ground. Pulverising him with snow missles for about 5 minutes. We thought the battle was over and had moved on to new territory but this kid came running over and smashed Clive from behind a tree, yelling ' My Mum told me never to give up!' We were all cracking up laughing at this. I wondered if his Mum had also told him not to play with strange 40year old men! Hahah

Everyone had got into the spirit of it and were making snowmen- there was even one outside the pub that had shot glasses for ears. Some even had make-up on. But most were the standard carrot-nosed variety.

Unfortuantely Southwark park was all locked up. So we went to a smaller park across the road where there were heaps of families on makeshift tabogans riding down a hill.

Clive and Richard had a snowball battle but Im not sure who won, they were both covered in snow and puffing by the end.

I didnt actually take that many photos as it was snowing quite hard and I didnt want to damage my camera, but it really was a spectacular sight.

Life for the next week got very difficult for some. The snow caused major transportation issues and even when it started to melt, it turned into ice and it literally was like ice-skating to work in the mornings. My trains on Tuesday were sporadic, I managed to make it to work (after 2 hours) and my company was kind enough to put me up in a hotel that night.

After a week of repeatedly having near misses of slipping over on ice, long journeys home and the freezing cold - I think everyone was sick of the snow and just wished it would go!

Sicily

2009-02-01T10:06:00.000-08:00

Hi Peps,

I've just published my entry on Sicily but I post in order I did the trip so its down below under September 08.

Well life in London goes on... My news at the moment is that my passport is at the home office awaiting a new visa so Im not going anywhere for the next month or so. In fact it even prevented our pre-booked and non refundable trip to Paris. Long story but in a nutshell, I discovered I had to get my application for my visa posted in about 3 days. It took me about a month to get everything ready last time so this time it was 3 days of crazy busy nailbiting stress. I had to take a day off work to do it then Richard finished the application for me. Im quite nervous about whether I will get an extension on my visa. If I dont, then I'll have to be apply for a student visa where Im only allowed to work 20hrs a week and will have to enrol in a course of some description.

I turned 30 in Jan which was a bit depressing, especially since I wasnt in Paris where I was supposed to be. I managed to gather a few friends together for a bit of a party in town the night before then pretty much slept away my whole b'day. I will have celebrate in style next year!

The credit crunch has hit Britian hard and every day I read in the newspaper about 1000 more people losing their jobs. Its not a good time to be a contractor! But luckily for me I just got my contract extended for another 3 months. And the plan after that is to go to Colombia for a month. Cant wait! It's snowing here in London today and I hate the cold so much. I need some sun! OK thats all for now xx

Update

2008-11-18T05:59:00.000-08:00

Well last night I had a nosey at my cousin Crstal's blog and was excited to see my other cousin Lian has also started at blog. So now I can keep up to date with them in NZ. Great stuff! But they have both linked my blog which shows a last updated date of 3 months ago. Well I cant have that!

So here is my update: Since my last post in the Greek Islands I have been to Amsterdam, Rome, Sicily and Scotland..so those posts are coming soon. Have a look below because I put the post date as the date I did the trip. Amsterdam is done now.

Mum came over to London in September so we went to Rome, Sicily and Scotland with her. As well as some random English places to check out geneaology. We also hung out a lot in London so I'll put some photos up of that soon.

I arranged to finish my Scientific Auditing contract when Mum came so the timing was perfect. I was doing that for almost 6 months. It was out in Slough and was a very long 6 months sitting at a desk checking documents, looking out the window and counting down the hours till home time every day. Well at least I discovered that auditing documents is not what I want to spend the rest of my life doing!

I've just started another contract out at Guilford working as a Quality Associate helping the Quality Manager. The company manufactures a radioactive drug used to diagnose cancer. Unfortuately its another massive commute for me and it usually takes 1hr40 each way. If there are engineering works on the trains or massive torrential rain causes road closure then it has taken me over 3hours to get home. That's a picture of where I work. Its a new building in the industrial area and there are no shops within walking distance so I have to make my lunch every day.

But the job itself is interesting and Im enjoying the variety. There are only 8 of us in the company so the scope of the role is quite wide. Its definitely the smallest company Ive ever worked at.

OK thats all for now.

Scotland & Eilean Donan Castle

2008-09-26T08:12:00.000-07:00

From a young age I remember vising Nana and Grandad in Te Aroha and sitting in their cosy kitchen with the coal range burning and gazing up into a small gold framed picture perched on the wall. It was a castle nestled on a small hill with a river below. Painted in subdued pastles it didnt warrant much attention but a bored child's eyes explore all facets of their surroundings.

Years later I discovered that the castle was Eilean Donan, in the Highlands of Scotland. Nana died when I was 13 and didnt talk much of her Scottish heritage, I only remember there always being Walkers Shortbread in the kitchen and the bagbipes played at her funeral. But as you get older, you want to know something of your heritage so Jacinda and I had always planned to visit the castle while in the UK.

Our plane parked a few hundred metres from the airport and we walked to the terminal in the pouring rain; arriving at Inverness the same way we would be for the next few days; cold and wet. After a week in Italy followed by some unseasonably fabulous weather in London – we had forgotton what 12 degrees felt like. I suspect it was colder than 12 actually – especially when you add the wind chill and wet factor. Jacinda came prepared in her fancy brown laced Gumboots which served her well. While I discovered my flat boots now allowed water to seep through and while I stuffed newspaper into the bottom of them; had wet blocks of ice serving as feet for most of the time.

First drama- I'm the idiot who left my tripod on the plane. When I attempted to run back to the plane a flourescent vested security woman got pretty stroppy with me and told me I wasnt going anywhere. But after a 10min wait I was relieved to have my tripod safely retrieved.

In the meantime Jac had sussed out the hire care arrangements, so with a quick dash through the rain to the carpark, we were off. Jacinda had not forgotten how to drive with her years without a car in London, and Mum was in the front on map duty- in charge of getting us to Inverness. It was maybe a couple of hours drive and the scenery was indeed quite beautiful. The hills of the highlands with creeks streaming through the mountains reminded us of home. We could see why the Scottish fitted right in when they came to NZ. In between rain showers I stopped to take photos but it was never more than a few minutes before it came down again.

Our B&B was very Scottish – we had a family room decorated just the way you would expect an old Scotish lady to do it. She was a dear old duck and had a lengthy discussion with us the next morning at breakfast on the state of the economic situation.

After settling in, I warmed my feet in hot water, tried to stuff my shoes with newspaper and we were off to have a quick look at the town.

It was still pouring with rain and cold so we werent feeling too adventurous. The undercover Victorian market was the best option. It was called a market but was actually a collection of shops – jewellery, books, traditional clothing etc. We found a bagpipe store where the owner was all to happy to demonstrate his skills for the videocamera- on and on he went, his cheeks puffed out and turning a darker shade of red till I thought he would burst. It was enough to convince Mum and she bought Dad the stick- the blowing instrument you must master before being able to add the bags. I dont think my Dad has a musical bone in his body, but maybe he'll surprise me.

The shops closed so we were forced outside. We set off to explore the rest of the town. It was a struggle to keep the umbrellas from folding inside-out and I could see the same 'can't be bothered' look in Jacindas face as what I was feeling. I admitted that I felt obliged to explore the town since we had come all this way, but in reality, I couldnt be bothered and just wanted to be warm and dry. The feeling was mutual and we turned our exploring adventures towards finding something for dinner. Shortly after we were all happily filling up on nice warm lentil soup as the only customers in a bar/restaurant, the only downside being that the restaurant was freezing so the coats stayed on.

After dinner we decided to go for a drive and check out some castles. We found 4 of them but they were all hidden behind trees – not proudly displayed on hilltops as I had expected. Jacinda reckons thats only how they loook on biscuit tins. So my camera found no photographic subjects that night.

Upon arriving at the B&B, Mum suggessted Jac should go up the driveway and park behind the house as the old lady said..it looked sm

all but she gave it a go. It was a tight space and within a minute we heard the crunch as the front of the car grated against the stone borders of the garden. Dowhh!

Full up on our hearty Scottish breafast, we were away. Off to find the castle we go! With a few exasperated 'discussions' on map directions which I stayed completely out of- we made it to Dornie without much hassle. Apparently Jac drove too fast for Mum to be able to read the signs but Mum never told Jac that she was trying to read them. On the way we passed the Lochness Experience and stopped by to check it out. It was quite interesting – right alongside the river Loch Ness, they had built an exhibition centre in caves with videos and displays bringing to life the story of Lochy. The caves were authentically cold but it was interesting to learn the history of the legend. I can't believe how much money they have spent trying to confirm if the myth is true – they studied that river for years and found nothing. But it's hard to understand why there have been so many sightings – surely they can't all be hoaxes?..

While pondering the mystery, we continued on our journey. It was only an hour or so on that we saw a castle in the distance. We stopped the car for a better look. At first, I thought we were mistaken and this was another lesser known castle – its granduer certainly wasnt bowling us over. Perhaps because it was grey and raining, or maybe we needed to view it from another angle. So on we drove and in another 5 mins we were in quite a full carpark with tourists come to see what was indeed 'Eilean Donan Castle.'

We explored the gift shop for a very long time, buying McCrae scarves, books, shortbread whatever. I was tempted to get a McCrae tartan mini skirt...but not for £70. Mum stocked up on gifts for Dad and we chatted to the gift shop ladies for a while. I was fascinated to hear the story of the ghost of the castle George or Jorge. Apparently he was a Spanish soldier from the invasion of the Spanish Armada and being injured, he was left at the castle as his comrads escaped. The ladies reckoned he was the friendly type though...Dont think I'd be friendly if I could be in Spain and was trapped in a cold Scottish castle.

The ladies also told us what a brilliant summer they had just had. We thought this was hillarious and would remind ourselves of the fact as we shivered in our jackets and the rain constantly came down.

Mum handed over her geneaology chart to the reception staff, and while it didnt give us discounted entry, it did give mum half an hour of indepth discussion on the McCrae lineage and an appointment to see the local McCrae family history expert of the region. As you can imagine – Mum was well chuffed and this helped make up for our ballsed up family history trip (when we were supposed to be exploring the graveyards of Sterminster Marshall but instead ended up in Stirminster Newton- which despite sounding like Upper and Lower Hutt, they were in fact a couple of hours away from each other.)

So here we were finally inside the castle from the picture on Nana's wall. So much history! It wasnt decorated in extreme opulance and wasnt a mansion but was still large and magnificant. I could just imagine some royal, or high society lady gazing out the window to the river Loch below...perhaps grateful for her great fortune, but for some reason, perhaps the grey skies and chill in the air, I could only imagine a kind of damse

l in distress with a forlorn expression gazing at the freedom outside while she lay trapped in her castle with the ghosts of yesteryears.

The walls were full of portraits, bright oil paintings of the castle's former kilt wearing occupants. A lot of them red headed as you imagine a true Scot to be. But we discovered an interesting fact about the McCrae lineage..the Spanish Armada bought a great deal of Spaniards over to the area in the 1500s and their bloodline became mixed with the Scotish producing a line of very good looking dark haired, brown eyed and tanned McCraes. Obviously – I must decend from one of these lines hahah. But in all seriousness, my father is exactly this so we reckon he must have some Spanish blood in him.

The walls were also full of photos of the McCraes of today. And there are a lot of them! There was an anniversary event for the castle when all the Mcraes were invited and the local newspaper reported the record number of them who turned up and overflowed the castle grounds.

When we went to leave, the rain came heaving down. Jacinda sensibly wore her festival gumboots whereas I had last winters boots with holes in the seams. I packed lightly for our hand luggage only baggage and didnt have much in the way of spare dry clothes to get changed into. So Mum and I decided to wait out the passing shower...and wait and wait..for what turned out not to be a 'passing' shower. So Mum made Jac go to the car and get the umbrella for me. In the compfort of the warm dry coffee shop we settled in for a bowl of soup and scone (they were out of bread).

Later we went for a drive around the area (which took about 5 mins) then explored further afield, with me darting out of the car for photos whenever the rain let up.

That evening we all went to visit Mrs Geneaology expert for Mum to pick her brains and compare family trees. There was a bit of debate about this – I wanted to take photos of the castle by night and Mums geneaology discussion would potentially jeoparidise this, so we compromised by her agreeing to leave when the light was getting right. But the sky was turning that deep royal blue and still Mum yarned on...but with the coaxing of Jacinda we managed to get her out of there.

It was freezing and kinda spitting, but that wasnt going to stop me from this once in a lifetime opportunity. I snapped away as the light faded and even had Jac drive to the top of the hill to see if I could get a picture looking down on the castle. But it was too dark by then.. But overall, Im really happy with how the pics turned out.

We then had the choice of 2 pubs for dinner. We went to pub number 1 and were greeted with a rude waitress – just as the B&B lady warned us we would. But we settled in for our scottish pub meal while the local patrons and their dogs drank pints and played pool (the dogs werent actually drinking and playing pool they just layed motionless on the pub floor). Mum was impressed with her steak and guiness pie..not that they should call it a pie – its got no shell just a top!

After our busy day, we were ready for bed and headed back to our school house – converted to B&B. Our little classroom even had a framed print of its pupils 100 years ago. 80% of them McCraes of course. They were further identified by their father's occupation. Mum copied down all the details then poured over the contents of the communal bookshelf.

We had a fairly early night and despite the horrid weather, Mum announced that she wished we were staying longer so we could explore more of the highlands. While this is true and it would have been great to drive around the mountains in the rain for another few days, our schedule was somewhat restricted by the fact that Jacinda had to be back in London in the weekends for her campaign. We told our travel plans to Mum ages ago and she readily agreed so it wasnt really fair of her to spring the guilt trip on us now. And I can write this because Im fairly sure my mother does not read my blog..despite it being a motherly obligation I would have thought.

On our way out of town, we stopped to check out the gravestone of great-great-maybe a couple more greats - grandad. It was of course raining but Mum was still excited while Jacinda and I feigned interest. The picture makes it look like he's the only one at the cemetery... but in fact he wasnt quite that important to be the sole occupant of a cemetery, the headstones are just quite far apart.

We still had a bit more time up our sleeves before we were due to head back to Inverness, so we scanned the tourist highlights map for things of interest in our vicinity – particularly Whiskey distillaries, but there were none that we could drive to in time. We instead opted to visit a seaside town which the guidebook made sound like a picturesque summer holiday destination. Its funny how pouring rain can make everything look bleak and uninviting. We stopped for lunch in a local tea room then headed back to the airport.

This was the first time us girls had been on holiday together since...actually.. I think this might have been the first time we had ever been on holiday together. We were meant to be going on a trip to Sydney together back in 2000,but Jac couldnt get any time of work so we didnt go.... but neither of us have kids yet so life isnt quite over and perhaps one day we will get to do another trip together...somewhere warmer next time.

If you would like to see the rain rather than just read about it, here's the little video I made of our trip and put on YouTube.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7izwkea45r4&feature=channel_page