Hi again, Yesterday was spent travelling to and from Gidea Park - about 20 Miles out from London via tube, tube and national line train - not much to see on our travels but a pleasant trip to see John's aunty Gladys. We arrived at Gidea Park and bought some flowers to take to his aunty whom he hadn't seen for about 15 years. The florist was lovely and was able to show us on her computer where to go and printed out the simple directions. When we arrived at her complex everyone knew her nephew was coming to visit from Australia!! No secrets there. A welcoming committee too - with her friend, Alf, and a couple around our ages there to meet us. What a lovely and gracious lady she is, on the ball and ... read more

Day 1 - 17/7/10 Off again - ah what adventures lie in wait for us this time... Here we go again flying Royal Brunei (a Muslim alcohol free airline) and true to form we brought out a bottle of Shaw & Smith Sauvignon Blanc and requested that it be chilled to have with our dinner. The flight attendants were extremely helpful and brought it out nicely chilled when dinner arrived - in our section we were the only ones drinking wine for dinner - how uncivilised were the rest? Landed at Bandar after an uneventful flight and stayed at the Radisson as guests of Royal Brunei as they had initially stuffed up our booking - so here we are in Brunei - where they're celebrating the Sultan of Brunei's 64th birthday celebrations. We went for a ... read more

Buenos dias, Are you ready for a bit of history? We booked a trip to go to Montserrat today and were up bright and early... and went to where we had to catch the bus to head up there...... well after much waiting and toing and froing it appeared that we weren't going to get there by our booked tour bus. It's after Christmas and the low season here so numbers were so down - we, apparently, were it for the tour so it was cancelled. Well after John's new found romance with the Metro he decided to find out how to get there using that and also the train to get there so that's what we did. It was a great and breathtaking trip up to Montserrat and so very easy to get there - ... read more

Buenos Dias! Here we are again - lucky I can type reasonably quickly otherwise would spend hours writing to you... Today was a bit of a slow day and we just went wandering and guess what - we went to La Rambla again and decided to take a few side streets - one was a market - Mercat De L Boqueria - well we were knocked out by what we saw in there - absolutely incredible - it was a fruit, vegetables, nuts, chocolates, meat and fish market - massive and what amazed us was the presentation of the food as you will see in the photos. There were also a few well attended Tapas Bars in there!! Tapas bars and cafes have taken over restaurants, as we know them in Australia - if only we ... read more

Hola!! Bueno tardes everyone! We thought today would be a bit of a slow day and ended up talking John into going on the underground Metro - JOhn was reticent but he grudgingly agreed to do it - anything to make me quiet.... I guess. So we checked out a few things we could go and see and which Metro line to take and those stupid details - would rather just get on one and see where it takes us and have a look around.... John just doesn't have quite the same quirky sense of adventure but anyway we went to the Metro - bought our daily ticket each via the electronic machines there and on we went - it was quite easy and pleasant and so warm down in the underground - with the weather ... read more