Ephesus by Mike We had an early start as we had booked a boat excursion and there was a lot to see today. First stop was the House of the Virgin Mary. This is where she is settled after the death of Christ. She settled here with John the Baptist nearby as he had sworn to look after her. Pretty spiritual place – this was turning into quite a religious journey for me. I lit two candles there – one for Mum and one for Jo, and we then filled some bottles with spring water to keep. Off to Ephesus. These ruins are bloody spectacular. The Council/ Town Hall, to The Temple of Hadrian all impressive. 250,000 population, one public toilet…the amphitheatre was grand. All the time thinking what it would be like to live there ... read more

Roma – the end of the Road (well for Billy anyway!) The Road Trip – by Michelle Well the road trip comes to an end, where we also began, in Roma. So my job is to reflect on the road trip and our time with the RV and Billy-boy! Well let’s start at the end. We manage to negotiate ourselves around the Ring Road this time so don’t end up in the middle of Rome but safely down to the campervan place. Now we had a few mishaps (to put it nicely) with the RV so are expecting our $1500 Euro deposit will never be seen again. Additionally, we are expecting to be caned for millage as we are way over our limit. To re-cap: - Millage allowance based on what ‘sane’ people would travel over ... read more

Gruissan by Jacob So we just arrived in this small fishing village in the middle of nowhere and I immediately say to my parents “Can we leave this place is sooo boring”! We start strolling into the middle of the village. We saw the Barberoussa tower. We searched around to find the entrance to the tower and eventually we found our way to the foot of the mountain and we were staring at an old church. We walked up the seemingly endless flight of stairs to reach a gate where we entered the base of the tower. There were a couple signs and after briefly reading them we eventually made our way up to the tower. My parents both exhausted from the stairs had to wait a little bit before walking again but I was already ... read more

Lavender, Papes and the Pont by Mike What a wonderful piece of the world the south of France is. The countryside is beautiful. I’m reminded of a lot of the colours and light of paintings like Monet. I don’t know if this is where he did his painting but when you are driving down tree lined roads and sunlight is reflecting from the leaves in multiple patterns it certainly is nature making its own art. We travelled in the morning to Avignon – one of Tristin’s suggestions – and I can certainly see why. The history of the place goes back a millennia and you really felt a sense of history and historic change walking through. The historic part of the town is set within the walls of the old city so we started off at ... read more

Dubai - Michelle How to describe Dubai? Hot for a start! After great flights but only a few hours sleep we arrived in Dubai. With an outside temp of 38 degrees at 6am we made our way to our hotel. Unfortunately Friday and Saturday is the Dubai weekend and nothing opens before 10am so it was four hours of directionless wandering and time wasting before our adventure could properly begin. Now rather than narrate our time in Dubai chronologically I’m going to split it into what we did in Deira City (Old Dubai and where we stayed) and New Dubai. Deira City is what I would expect most Middle Eastern cities are like. It’s relatively poor and the shopping is functional with pretty basic malls. The people are quite conservative but for the most part dress ... read more