These are our personal views, our thoughts and our feelings of our trip to Poland. Don and I have no direct relationship with the Holocaust. Our families fled Russia and other Eastern European countries at the end of the 19th Century to escape the pogroms. Therefore, we went with general knowledge of the Holocaust (also called the Shoah) but no specific personal emotion. This narrative contains historical notes as an aide memoire in our dotage and for readers to remember the conditions and treatment of Jews before and during WW-II. After spending the evening in the Ganey Canaan at a wedding (which we thoroughly enjoyed) we set off to Israel's TLV airport in our finery. We changed into our travel gear and went to check in. However, check-in wasn’t until 2:30 am and it was only ... read more

Our last day on the tour we were allowed a lie-in as we didn’t start our touring until 8.30 am. We had our last Jeff breakfast and made up our lunch boxes, made sure that all of our stuff was loaded on the coach and left the hotel for a coach ride round Johannesburg. . We drove through Sandton which is only about 30 - 33 years old and passed the largest mall in South Africa. Amos was rather cynical as to what kind of stores are in the mall - expensive ones. The buildings are high rise and the new buildings are getting higher and higher. Just like all modern cities (more's the shame). The Sandton area is clean and bustling. . For the World Cup in 2010 the government started building an underground transit ... read more

. Going down to breakfast we watched the red wing starlings and spur winged geese. In the dining room there was humour in watching the staff continually chasing out the velvet monkeys. We ate a hearty breakfast and then we loaded up into the vans ready for our day trip to Botswana. . The road was long but not winding and the warthogs were out in force. We almost had a collision with a yellow billed hornbill. At last we saw the lime-vested border police. . We had learned that Botswana gained independence in 1966 but the old colonial bureaucracy was still extant. We lined up to walk through the hut which passed as the immigration office. The staff were incredibly friendly. Once we had cleared immigration we noticed that on the road leading from Botswana ... read more

Up early and after a scrummy, samey breakfast onto the coach ready for our tour of the Cape peninsula. The route was southerly down the western side toward the Cape of Good Hope, around Cape Point, and back northerly up the eastern side back to Cape Town. To begin we were on our way to the Seal Colony in Hout Bay to see the Cape fur seals and the cormorants. . We passed some very exclusive properties set into the mountains with car parking on the roofs of the buildings. We passed through a town with pastel coloured buildings - blue, purple, lime green, pink, etc. Amos pointed out Camps Bay beach with its beautiful clean beaches. Every few meters all the way on the beach road were green rubbish bins. It was a Sunday morning ... read more

Up at 6.30 am and on the coach by 7.45 am after a good breakfast. First stop today - Table Mountain. We passed Signal Hill in the background. Signal Hill stands 360 meters above sea level. It was used to signal weather warnings. We passed a statue of Bartolomeu Dias who didn’t manage to land at Cape Point due to the weather. Looking out to sea we drove past Robben Island, where Nelson Mandela had been imprisoned until 1994. There wasn’t time for us to visit the island, because it requires an hour's boat ride each way in addition to the time spent in the prison museum, so that would kill nearly half a day in our tour. Amos explained the flora as we drove around the city. In particular he pointed out the fever tree ... read more