MandEm

It’s hard to believe that our holiday is rapidly drawing to a close. Thankfully, after an extremely busy albeit enjoyable time in Israel and Jordan, we managed to kick back into holiday mode during our stay in Egypt. We did a tour in Egypt, although we use the term “tour” loosely. It was more of a package of a few organized activities and accommodation, with a tour guide available to organize anything else you wish to do on top of these pre-arranged activities. This suited us quite well as it allowed us to largely stick to our preferred method of independent travel. We arrived in Cairo last Saturday morning. Our tour was not scheduled to start until Sunday evening, so we had some R&R time and walked the streets of Cairo. Crossing the road in Cairo ... read more

We arrived in Rome by train at nighttime and pretty much headed straight for our hotel, trying to tow our suitcases over the one serious weakness of wheeled cases - cobbled sidewalks. It took us nearly twice as long to struggle through the narrow sidewalks of Rome (where pedestrians come a distant second to cars) as walking along unencumbered. We were generally unimpressed with Rome. We were tuckered out and didn’t feel like battling the crowds at the Vatican, so just stuck close to our hotel and saw some of the sights nearby. The next day was Matt’s 30th birthday. We started the day with getting a phone call from home and Thumper and Turbo singing Matt a happy birthday. This had to be cut short as we had to make the train to Naples to ... read more

Upon arriving in London, we picked up a hire car to allow us to get to the location of Matt’s 30th birthday present. Matt had no problem with England roads, but forgot that England speed limits are posted in MPH, unlike Ireland where it’s KMH. It was late and there was no traffic so he set along a quiet airport road at 50 km/h. Not too much later, a bus communicated via judicious use of high beam lights and horn that England is in MPH. Whilst it was not actually Matt’s birthday until the 20th, he had always dreamed of driving a nice car for his 30th pretty much since his 21st birthday. Emma was nice enough to buy Matt a racing experience at Thruxton Race Circuit in Andover (about 1hr west of London). Whilst not ... read more

We arrived in Vancouver Island via the Victoria Clipper and met up with our long-time friend, Nellie accompanied by her youngest granddaughter, Rachel. We settled into our room and went to the local duck pond with Rachael and picked her brother, Ethan and sister, Clare, up from school. We had fun climbing on the school playsets with the other (smaller) children. Over the next couple of days we checked out a bunch of sights whilst staying with Nellie and her daughter, Karen and son-in-law, Steven, around Victoria including the Cowitchan Cultural Centre which had a bunch of displays about the local native Cowitchan community and Butchart Gardens. We also went to a Canadian National Film Board showing of a bunch of animations by Canadian artists. Some of them were really good. I don’t know whether you ... read more

After San Francisco, we turned south for the Pacific Coast Highway. On Matt’s last trip here with Ross, this road was entirely fogged in and there was very little scenery. This time, we had perfect weather. This perfect weather meant that we could make full use of the drop-top Mustang, and cruised our way down the PCH. We stopped at a PCH landmark, Nepenthe. This is a restaurant with an amazing view of the coast (again, completely obstructed by fog last time). There was clear evidence of the forest fires back in summer on the surrounding hills. Now, at the end of the last blog, we mentioned Emma has a distinct hatred of Beach Boys now. The Mustang can play MP3 CDs. At the start of our PCH journey, Matt burnt an entire MP3 CD of ... read more