grahamandtracey

We stayed over in Benalmadena in Spain at the Benalmadena Palace hotel. Great hotel, location is somewhat far out of the resort. By saying this, we found Benalmadena to be such an uninteresting place compared with other resorts in the Med, its is difficult to understand why so many Brits venture there. The town is spread out across a large area which makes browsing around difficult. If you're after shopping and browsing around the shops, don't bother visiting Benalmadena. The whole area including Torremolinos and Fuengirola seems to be stuck in the 1970's with very few decent restaurants, unlike those found around Greece, Turkey and other European countries we could mention. Food standards seem to be much lower than of that found in The Canary islands. On a positive note, we rented a car via Marbesol ... read more

Lee (Heaton). We're on our way home from Thailand with Qatar airways and we have encountered a 'slight' hiccup but its not a real issue for us. We got to Doha in preparation for our connecting flight back to Manchester and there is a so-called 'technical problem' with the aircraft we were due to fly home on. Therefore, we've all had to be put up at one of the airport hotels here overnight at Doha airport until another aircraft has become available tomorrow. However, we've arranged with Qatar airways to stay in the Middle East for a couple of days and fortunately they've booked us on a flight back to Manchester in two days time instead free of charge for the inconvenience. We've only done this for one reason, which is in the hope we can ... read more

Just arrived at our hotel, The Patong Resort in Patong Beach to find nothing much has changed apart from some slight alterations around the pool in the Garden Wing and also a new block within the garden wing has been built where our room is. We got our room for a very good price at a travel agents office in Chaweng Beach on Ko Samui prior to us coming here, where the room rates were cheaper than booking online with the hotel directly. Anyway, our room is lovely and this hotel rarely seems to disappoint. Just outside The Patong Resort Hotel is The Islander restaurant where we used to come for breakfast almost every day. This too has rarely changed and the food still has its great reputation it has seemed to maintain. Our trip to ... read more

Having a great time in New York City. Managed to visit the Fire Department museum, some shopping around Ground Zero and rode on the Subway (Underground). The Subway by the way is about 20 years behind our London Underground in terms of quality of service and cleanliness of the trains and stations, but still an ideal way of getting around the city. Restaurants are plentiful near out hotel unlike last time as well as many local bars so this has been real handy for us compared with our visit 5 years ago back in 2004. The weather is predicted to reach anything up to 20c on Saturday, but we'll have to play this by ear considering as we're still in winter. Also been to the American natural history museum.Tracey is hoping to do a spot of ... read more

Firstly, just like to sday Hello to Mary, the lovely receptionist at Mavrikos hotel in Tsilivi, Zakynthos (Zante). She truly is a gem and helped us along with bits and bobs...so Mary if you're reading this, drop us a line to say hello ! So....Zante. The flight with Monarch from Manchester had the MP George Galloway on with his presumably wife and possibly brother and sister-in-law. Flight delayed slightly, but with a tail wind we weren't that late on arrival. The heat after getting off the aircraft hit you like a steam train, and at 37c you can understand why. Our hotel, The Mavrikos in the resort of Tsilivi was lovely and clean (more in a minute) and a cool beer soon got us in the holiday mood. Soon after we had unloaded our luggage into ... read more