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The long awaited Amsterdam. Apologies for the severe delay. As those of you who spoke to me at the time will know, I enjoyed Amsterdam immensely. I do recall before I left the Ministry of Education another Taranaki lass telling me to “go to Amsterdam! Don’t go to London, it’s horrible… go to Amsterdam!” At the time I didn’t realise that she was in fact sharing pearls of wisdom. However, can’t cry over spilt milk and all of that. I don’t imagine Amsterdam would have been so easy to get a job. I went with a group of 7 others. Sonja, Francine and Marcel from New Plymouth and the rest were their friends. This was Sonja and Francine’s 3rd trip to Amsterdam (they love it there) and they were great to go with seeing as they ... read more

As you are likely to tell from the volume of beautiful photo’s that I managed to get, Paris is the most amazingly gorgeous city. The accommodation proved to be a slight mission after we realised that our booking for the “Peace and Love Hostel” (on which we had our hearts set based almost purely on the fabulous name) was for April rather than March. However we ended up booking into a Hotel close to the Gard du Nord which was where we arrived on the Eurostar. Did make it a little more expensive than I was expecting, but it was still pretty decently priced for a Hotel. George joined us the next day and we trudged out in the rather miserable weather to see the Eiffel tower. We went right to the top (and were surprised ... read more

After the fairly rough tourist centre of Luxor we were quite pleased reach the UK winter escape destination of Hurghada. After checking into Al Gizera we booked in for a diving trip the next day. Even thought it was windy and a bit cold, the Red Sea was apparently still 22 degrees, which is not too bad. The men in Hurghada were obviously a bit more sophisticated in sales, I even heard one attempt at “bridging to a sale” (for those that haven’t worked for Telecom bridging is a fairly self explanatory sales technique where you establish a customers needs and then use them to bridge to a solution). After a shopping trip to buy fruit we were all walking along with our tour guide Sean leading us and he was greeted with “My friend, all ... read more

We celebrated out arrival in Luxor by having a custom tourist show complete with belly dancers. To complete the western tourist effect we all dressed up in Galabea’s and other Egyptian attire. Very authentic, honestly! Funniest thing about the show was watching everyone else watching the belly dancers. There were those who were disgusted, those who were really REALLY interested, those who were trying to pick up tips and then those who were just plain uncomfortable. I didn’t quite understand the whole transformation from totally cloaked Muslim to belly dancer. But did enjoy quite a few Egyptian Stella’s. Had an interesting conversation with another person who had the same operation as a friend of mine. He fell out of a 5 story building was in a coma for a week and they took out a bit ... read more

Temples and early mornings not really being my thing I decided not to go to Abu Simbel. The Australians on the MS Melody were outraged, and convinced me that it was an absolute must see. So I did the tourist thing and got up at 3.30am to join a convoy through the desert to this monument. For those of you who (like me) have never heard of the Abu Simbel temple it was erected by Ramesses II and is dedicated to himself. However besides being a large monument it’s claim to fame is that when the Nasser damn was built it was going to be submerged, so UNICEF stepped in, chopped it up into little pieces and carted it up the hill thus bringing it into the spotlight this century. The convoy out there was pretty ... read more