...but everyone likes a sun set!! Distance travelled from Cape Town: 4,544 nautical miles On leaving Dakar we now had another two days at sea before our next Port of call, Las Palmas, Gran Canaria. Surprisingly there were two trivia sessions on our first of the two days. Not surprisingly, Roisin and I won both (with a little help from Don and Yonkers Dave) in the evening. This is even with me talking Roisin out of a correct answer on both occasions. ‘What is the fastest breed of dog?' Immediately we both said the greyhound. However, I then had a brainwave that this seems too obvious and perhaps the right answer was ‘Whippet' Yes, I'm sure it was. In fact I convinced myself that I'd heard this question before and the answer is definitely whippet. The ... read more

The sea, once it casts its spell, holds one in its net of wonder forever - Jacque Coustaeu – We have now been at sea for almost seven days. There have been no further medical emergencies or stabbings to report!! After a series of initial misgivings about MSC we are now starting to settle down, enjoying our lengthy sojourn up the West Coast of Africa. No one came to sort out the Wi-Fi problem in our cabin so I had to report it once again. This time, the customer services assistant arranged for the I T Manager to contact me. That he did, ten minutes before we were due in the restaurant for dinner!! He checked the signal and confirmed that it was very weak. He told us it is because the router is far down ... read more

This morning we hired a car. After a busy yesterday, today was a tad more relaxing…for me anyway as Roisin did the driving!! We had booked the car back in the UK with Thrifty and as we had passed their premises on the way to the hotel from the airport, we now knew where the car hire place was. It was a little too far to walk although it didn't look that far on the map as we took distance in to consideration when making the booking. In my estimation, the car hire was at least two miles from our hotel. It was probably only a half hour to forty minutes' walk but in order to save time the hotel rang for a taxi and advised us it should cost no more than 40 rand (there ... read more

It was raining heavily today as we waited for the taxi. If you scroll through the opening blog for most of our other trips you will notice that raining heavily is what it seems to do when the Hodgsons are off on one of their trips. Whether in the midst of winter of mid-summer. Come autumn or spring it is guaranteed to 'piss down' on day one!! Yesterday when checking the hand luggage I asked Roisin for the travel documents. Expecting a few sheets of A4, I was surprised when she held up a bundle of papers that could easily have passed for the briefing documents of O J Simpson's defence!! There were the e-tickets for the train to London, the tickets for the Heathrow express, the tickets for the flight. Hotel reservation, car hire whilst ... read more

After a comfortable night in a very spacious room we headed down to the restaurant where we had a satisfying breakfast. It was buffet style and had a wide variety of items, ample to suit our needs for the busy day we had planned for today. Vienna. Our first glimpse of this most imperial of cities in the cold (quite literally!!) light of day. Vienna, the capital city of Austria since only 1804 when the Austrian Empire was officially proclaimed. 2.6 million inhabitants reside in or around the metropolitan area. That's nearly one third of the entire population of the country. Rewinding back a few years the English name Vienna is borrowed from the Italian name Vienna!! Vienna and the official German name Wien, are thought to derive from the Celtic word windo, meaning bright or ... read more