minilinnie

LeHavre, France, 13th July, 2010. Well, the journey is almost over. I am takingh it easy in LeHavre whilst Lyn is in Paris with friends. I decided not to make the blood clot any worse by walking around a city I have no real interest in. I am really looking forward to England tomorrow and seeing the family, visiting my old stomping grounds and most importantly, visiting the grave of my Dad as I have not had the chance to since he passed on. That will probably be a very emotional time for me. I shall most certainly miss the fantastic freinds we have made on this cruise. They have made the boring days at sea a lot more enjoyable. I was once told that life is like a train journey, you start off on that ... read more

A great day and another highlight of the tour. Well done France. Gibraltar, 10th July, 2010. Gibraltar has been a part of my growing up since I was a lad at school, a part of the essential history of my country of birth. I learned about it in my history classes and later when in the RAF it was one of my preferred options as an overseas posting. RAF Gibraltar was one of the most sought after postings in the RAF and quite a few of my friends were lucky enough to be stationed there and they had wonderful memories of that time. So landing on this particular place was almost like a coming home even though I had never been there before. A group of 6 of us hired an eight seater taxi for a ... read more

Cannes, France, 7th July, 2010. We docked at the Southern French port of Cannes around 6am to a misty day which was a sign that it was going to be quite hot. This is no surprise really as we have been sweating solidly now for 6 and a half weeks. A cold, wet day would be a blessing but that was not to be. The port of Cannes is nothing if not very clean and beautiful with lovely golden beaches and plenty of shops and hotels on the seafront. We hopped on our tour bus for the drive to Monaco and what a lovely and pleasant drive it was. The countryside around here is stunning. We drove through Grasse and Nice and after 90 minutes we arrived at the Principality of Monaco and all can say ... read more

Dubrovnik. Croatia. 3rd July, 2010. What little bit of research I did on this stop basically told me that Dubrovnik was an ancient walled city in the old Communist country of Yugoslavia and after the fall of the ’Evil Empire’ it reverted to it’s old Slavic name of Croatia. In the civil war a few years ago Dubrovnik was almost wiped out by Serbian artillery except for the old walled city section, so my info was somewhat limited and I had no special interest in it after the highlights of Venice so after seeing the Doc about my knees I ventured forth trying to find Linda who had stepped off earlier with friend. I then discovered an absolute gem of a city. Wow and double wow. Had I been wrong in my assumptions about this place. ... read more

This city has some of the finest and stunning Roman ruins anywhere in the world. There is the Odeon, or small theatre with a capacity of 1400 which was also used for public meetings of the city council. The Magnesian Gate and Town hall are nearby. Some of the sights are quite amazing, such as the public toilets and the Government run brothel, the hospital and Apocathery. The impressive Library of Celsus stands at the foot of the main street. It’s a stately two storied façade that had interior walls designed to display 12,000 scrolls in niches which protected them from humidity. The Temples of Domitian and Hadrian are impressive and the Great Theatre, which holds 25,000 and is where St Paul preached to the Ephesians and is still in use today for concerts. The Arcadian ... read more

Athens, Greece. We docked at the port of Piraeus at 7am on a bright sunny morning to a view of one of the really ancient cities of the world. We are told that to experience Athens is to discover the pages of history coming to life and they are not wrong. We boarded our coach and had our firsts view of our tour guide for the day. Standing around 6 feet 2 olive skin, black hair with a touch, Nay, a hint of grey,with a sculptured body was our suave Alpha Greek male aptly named ‘Adonis’ (that’s right, bloody Adonis was the moniker this blokes Mum gave him at birth). He crooned into the coach microphone teaching all the ladies on the bus their first lesson in Greek, the words “I love you”. Talk about laugh. ... read more

21st June, Port Said, Egypt. After 7 days at sea due to the tour of Luxor and the Valley of the Kings being cancelled we finally landed at Port Said, Egypt. We got to this port by navigating the world famous Suez Canal. I actually arose from my bed at 4.30am to view this wonderful event but it was pitch dark and I could see nothing so went back to bed. I got up again around 9am and was greeted with my first view of this famous waterway. It is certainly a magic piece of engineering but the views on either bank are extremely drab with only isolated farms, Military Camps and desert/scrub for hundreds of miles. That said, it was very interesting to view a bit of rural Egypt and see at first hand the ... read more

Monday, 14th June, Dubai. This was one port that I had many expectations of and looked forward to seeing this ‘most modern city on earth’. Historians tell us that prior to the advent of Oil and natural gas in the region, Dubai was no more than a fishing village belonging to the Bani Yas tribe who made their living from fishing and pearling as well as camel breeding but was now the shining star of 21st century success. It’s other claims to fame are the tallest building in the world, the only 7 star Hotel in the world (Burj Al Arab) and The Gold souk. It was also the home of Sinbad the sailor. The city is split into two parts, the old part Bur Dubai retains many of it’s ancient buildings and old Souks then ... read more

Friday, 4th June, Langkawi, Malaysia. After 2 hectic days in Singapore and KL we decided to give Langkawi a miss as it bwas again, stinking hot and we were knackered, but we awoke to see our ship surrounded by some beautiful islands in a lovely cove  so around 12 midday we decided to take a short bus trip into the village and find an internet café. It was a nice surprise to find a smallish village with duty free shops, small markets and an internet café. The café cost us 2 ringits (about one Aussie dollar ) for one hour. The equivalent time on the ship would have cost us around $54 AUD Although it was extremely hot and steamy we wandered around the stalls and saw some great merchandise and the people were so ... read more

Thursday, 3rd June, Kuala Lumpur. The ship docked in the Port of Kelang where we became a part of farcicle operation of trying to organise 1500 ageing Australian pensioners into tour groups for the trip into Kuala Lumpur. And what a farce it was. I have seen better organized wars and it was funny, but not funny, seeing everyone walking round in circles not knowing where to go and trying to follow instructions issued by Ships crew who didn’t know where to send us. How we all ended up aboard thirty odd coaches in some semblance of order is beyond me. Anyway, off we go on a hot steamy day in a hot steamy coach. If we thought Darwin, Bali and Singers was hot then we got a shock in this place. And it got better ... read more