Travel Blog

Wow! My only previous trip to Dubai was 20 years ago when Katy and I stopped on the way back from the Maldives. She didn’t like it much because they treated women as second-class citizens. You can imagine how that went. With two full days in Dubai and perfect weather,…

Thursday 9th This was my first trip to Oman and we arrived at Port Qaboos in the capital, Muscat, nice and early. My unplanned late night in the casino meant that I missed the sail in. Completely unplanned you understand. It was a beautiful sunny day and the white buildings…

Well, the airport experience was rather acceptable although Heathrow’s terminal 4 did feel like I was in a different country. A lot of international flights not involving “caucasians” is all I can say. This was my first flight on Etihad, the airline of Abu Dhabi and I was looking forward…

After two nights in Succitoto at the splendid hotel Los Almendros de San Lorenzo (highly recommended), we left for Honduras via Honduras and Guatemala. We were facing three border crossings. Into Honduras, into Guatemala, then back into Honduras. I blame the road planners. During our brief lunch stop in Guatemala,…

Day 5 - San Juan del Sur to Granada, Nicaragua We had a free morning to do as we pleased so I went walking and exercising along the shore. Australian Allan persuaded me to go for a morning livener and I succumbed. We found a beach bar and had a…

Apparently I don’t. On the Explore website it said the tour started in Antigua, Guatemala and ended in San Jose, Costa Rica. I had booked flights accordingly. When the trip notes came through I noticed I had booked the reverse itinerary. I shall accept “partial” responsibility. I spoke with two…

A little late in posting, but at the end of September, Dianna and I made our first trip to Cabo. I say first because we will be returning. We both fell in love with the place. We’d flown separately to Cabo - I went via Texas with an overnight stop…

Monday Our adventure continued as we traveled from Belgrade to Novi Sad on a high-speed train. Novi Sad is Serbia’s second largest city and is also located on the Danube. This was a nice train. When I say nice, it was spectacular. Unlike some of the grubby rolling stock that…

Wednesday We walked with our bags about half a mile to Zagreb station for an early train toward Bosnia. Our evening destination was Sarajevo, but with issues involving trains in Bosnia, we were going to the Croatian border by train, and then transferring to a minibus. Our second train journey…

My Balkan rail adventure started with a long weekend in Ljubljana, the capital of Slovenia. Three nights in the 3 star Hotel Park was mostly acceptable although the bar had peculiar hours which included shutting at 8pm on a Friday night, and closed all day on Sunday. When I say…

Saturday First stop was a salt mine a few miles outside of Kraków which is a major tourist attraction. Luckily I’d booked the English speaking tour with about 25 people. I think I was the only actual person from England. We started off by descending 64m via a wooden staircase…

I flew club class from Heathrow to Warsaw and was pleased to avoid the summer airport chaos, otherwise known as queueing. A little over two hours later the plane landed in Poland’s capital and I went in search of my hire car- a Nissan Qashqai. Sadly, it was a manual,…

Wednesday I woke at 3 am in a very hot room. I couldn’t get back to sleep again so I decided to award myself another “free day”, not to go on the hike with the others, and do my own Paddy hike, (otherwise known as walking on the flat). I…

For the second time this year I was on a Vueling flight to Barcelona. You’d think I would’ve learnt my lesson the first time round. No “bag drop” so the queue was going all the way to Crawley. It took an hour to check my bag. After the trauma of…

We’d lost Bully to Covid, so the three of us headed to Split on easyJet. We were met at the airport in Split by Antonio who had the personality of a small grey rock. Jim tipped him which was more than he deserved. Having said that, the transfer was free.…

We descended into Dublin on three separate flights, for a 3 night jaunt to Ireland in celebration of some sort of milestone. Gatwick was heaving with newly released school kids and the security queue was intimidating. I then saw a priority line, normally reserved for those with a better class…

Rome, Florence, Cannes, Majorca Civitavecchia, or “Rome”, according to cruise lines, was not exciting either of us. We’d both been there before, we were a little exhaustulated from the day before, and the weather was looking promising for lounging around the pool. Later in the day we stepped off for…

Barcelona, Corsica, Naples The flight from Gatwick was on an airline called Vueling and after they finished fuelling the Vueling we were bound for Barcelona. To describe the seats as uncomfortable wouldn’t do justice to the protests from my arse. The flight attendants were a bit like prison guards, but…

Our final sea day was cold but sunny so lots of indoor activities. My fifth time in the Bay of Biscay and smooth once again. I’ve been very lucky. The other day we all had a note slipped under the door about some Covid cases on board - crew and…

La Coruna Our first Spanish port was pretty much on the same longitude as Lisbon, but La Coruna was an hour ahead, meaning late sunsets. I had no plan and my expectations were a little under “low”. The only thing I knew about La Coruna is that they have a…