13 Sep 2008 Makarska It’s cold in England at the moment, particularly so at 4am. Croatia is not cold, particularly so at 12pm. We left home at quarter to 4 for Gatwick and hence a plane to Croatia, eventually leading to a bus, a walk and arrival at our boat around midday. By this time the layers donned in the UK had been shed rapidly and replaced with shorts, t-shirts and jandals (flip flops for the non NZ). Summer hadn’t arrived, we had arrived in summer. Before we get to Croatia however, we have to first leave the UK and at [View Full Entry]

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Saturday 23 August 2008 A lot of travel and hassle and we'd only got to the airport. The only thing worse than catching a bus at 3am, is being told that you don't have a seat on the 3am bus. This was the fate of many of the people waiting for the too-early bus to Stanstead. Apparantly 3am is a popular time to catch a bus as there were only 3 seats available once it actually arrived. Luckily, 2 of those had been reserved for us, so after flashing our receipt to the driver we gained admittance. Check-in was good, a [View Full Entry]

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Wight is a middle english word meaning "creature especially human", literally translating the islands name as "Creature Island". Subsequant to Tolkein, wight also means "undead creature" meaning that many people assume that the island is named after ghosts and such, they are wrong, however there it has given rise to many ghost books and tours. There is also a special sub-set of people who think that the Isle of Wight is named after a colour. Those people cannot spell. Waking at quarter to six wasn't bad. Leaving the house at quarter to seven wasn't bad. Getting on the bus at quarter [View Full Entry]

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We've all heard horror stories about US airports. Queues winding outside the terminal and down the road, uncompromising officials asking obscure and obtuse questions and of course the laundry list of biometric data that they now extract without humour or lubrication. The stories of people transiting through L.A. and missing the connecting flight because they were still going through security - even though they began the process immediatly after getting off their arriving plane and had three hours between flights. Therefore, when you are recommended to be at the airport three hours before [View Full Entry]

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I know how the Queen feels. Well, on one minor point anyway. Many countries in the commenwealth celebrate the Queen's birthday, however for reasons understood only by them, none of them celebrate it on her actual birthday. The date of her actual birthday being an enigmatic, mysterious point in time - or simply a google search away. It is this similarity that I share with the Queen - in that other people celebrated my wedding anniversary today, even though it was in fact not my anniversary. Today was our second day at Disneyland. Having cased the joint a couple of days [View Full Entry]

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When a once in a lifetime opportunity comes around, you want to make the most of it. Don’t waste the day as my Mother would say. It’s a little disheartening when your only means of transport doesn’t agree with you. Universal Studios probably opens at around 9am, but I didn’t bother to find out. I didn’t bother, because the earliest pickup from the coach was at 10am - which should get you there at 11am. By that time of the morning, the actual opening time becomes somewhat of a moot point. Rather than whining, I could have found another coach service [View Full Entry]

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Disneyland opens at 8am. Naturally, we decided to be up and ready, waiting at the gate for opening. Naturally jet lag had it's say and we didn't even wake until nearly 8am anyway. Nevermind, a quick shower and we headed down for breakfast. My first All American breakfast. It was everything that I had heard. In a room even smaller than our hotel room, there were waffles (make your own), donuts, pastries, coffee and cereal (encrusted in sugar). There was only one item not covered, consisting of or smothered in sugar - but it was bland, with the consistency and taste [View Full Entry]

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When you travel from the United Kingdom to New Zealand you lose time. It's unavoidable, you're in the sky for over a day and New Zealand is twelve hours ahead anyway. By the time you get there nearly two days will have passed - even though you fly direct and spend all of that time cramped into economy class. If you're staying in New Zealand for the rest of your life, then you've just been cheated out of a couple of days. This kind of premature aging could be a bad thing - good thing it's capped at only a few [View Full Entry]

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The good thing about bank holiday weekends is that they make travel to little places seem acceptable. We didn't know too much about Denmark, nor about Copenhagen - but we thought three days would probably be right. The bad thing about bank holiday weekends is that you want to cram as much into those three days as you possibly can. This means we took the earliest flight that we could on Saturday morning, which in turn meant that we had to get out of bed at 4am. This kind of thing gets your mind working at odd angles. A question I [View Full Entry]

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Iceland was probably colonised on a dare. Literally, the only things there are volcanic rocks covered by ice. Actually, it's more like ICE. Well, that's the way it seems as you fly into the capital city Reykjavik. Placed directly above The Mid-Atlantic Ridge, Iceland is literally one gigantic lava field - well, a pretty cold lava field. The first day that we were there we checked into our hotel (nice and central with a view of the harbour - and many a corrugated iron roof) and went for a walk. The intention was to do the lonely planet self guided tour. [View Full Entry]

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