The thing about a villa holiday is that you do spend a lot of time, well, at the villa. Some may think this a bit boring compared to hairing around America or eating your way around Europe, but you can make your own entertainment; well the parents can anyway. They have been laying new water […]
Read More →Eventually we got to do “The Big Shop”. For some, their first drink in a sun lounger is the start of their holiday; for others it’s their first meal sat under the stars waiting expectantly to find out what bizarre local liquor the restaurant will offer you as the digestif; for us it’s spending two […]
Read More →We left baggage reclaim (with all 7 bags) and an hour later we were heading off to the villa in our hire cars. The villa is just outside of Colmenar and is about 40 minutes from Malaga airport. We had looked at the place many times on Google maps before, but one thing you don’t […]
Read More →After two and a half hours of hell, we finally got into baggage reclaim, which can only mean one thing…a trip to the toilet. Yep, I stood shoulder to shoulder with all the other men who thought “I’ll hold on until I get off the plane”. When I came out Tibu and dad headed off […]
Read More →So we left you having got through security and on our way to breakfast. The time is now 4:30 in the morning. We had breakfast at the Grain Loft. All around the place they had signs saying “please review us on TripAdvisor”. Don’t you worry, I will do. Actually I have become a bit addicted […]
Read More →Hello. Did you miss me? Yep that was nearly a whole week without a blog/holiday. Well, we are back off again. This morning we started our second holiday which is 2 weeks in Spain with Karen, my sister Nikki, mum and dad and our friends Rachel and Tibu (you can cross reference all these people […]
Read More →So reader, you may remember a couple of days ago we made an attempt at getting the hop on, hop off bus, but failed? Well today we succeeded (and a note to the taxi driver who was trying to get us to go with him on a tour, the bus fare is only 60zl, not […]
Read More →This may be the last time we can come to Poland as I fear we are wanted men. It all started this morning when we tried (again) to use public transport. We had worked out the walk to get to our (sort of) nearest tram stop, and the fact that we had to just go […]
Read More →I’m never too sure whether I like to plan too much on holiday; but I do like to wake up with a rough plan of action. Today’s plan (such as it was) was to take the hop on hop off bus tour. The bus stop is less than 100 metres from our apartment and we […]
Read More →This morning we woke up to the beautiful sound of church bells ringing. Our accomodation is in the old town and we are quite literally down the road from the Royal Palace (which has the most beautiful chimes). The weather here has been, shall we say, variable. By that I mean cold. This morning, after […]
Read More →Well here we go again. It’s holidays month (yes that is a real thing in our world). Karen and I have taken the P’s on holiday to Poland. We have a job share with my sister Nikki where she takes them to Spain and we take them to ex-communist countries. Can you guess who is […]
Read More →Well blog fans, not long to wait now. On Thursday Karen and I are taking the P’s for a few days to Warsaw. Why Warsaw? It’s only the 9th cheapest capital city in Europe, that’s why. Dad has his “Shalloties” ready (he is going to be disappointed when he finds out that the Poles use […]
Read More →You will have noticed I have made reference to Ubers a lot in these blogs. For the uninitiated (basically mum and dad), this is what they are. They are people who are using their cars as taxis. You book them via an app on your phone, so you request one, and about a minute later […]
Read More →Today was, I suppose, one of the highlights of the holiday. We were off to see a real live bone fide NFL game. Now this isn’t my first game of American football, no sirrree y’all. Nikki, my big sis, was one of the early adopters of gridiron (nope, no idea why it’s called that, just believe […]
Read More →“So what brings you to Nashville then?” Seems to be the opening gambit of every uber driver we have encountered since we touched down on Thursday. That’s actually a good question. I suppose a combination of Rayna James and Bob Harris. Yes I am a big fan of the TV series Nashville but I have […]
Read More →Today we went to the Philadelphia Museum of Art. The cultured of you will know it as having one of the best collections of art in the world housed in a stunning neoclassical building. The rest of you will know it as the building with the big steps that Sylvester Stallone runs up at the […]
Read More →The dilemma you always have when you come away is “how much cash should we take?” In the olden days you had to go to the bank and get travellers’ cheques (Google them kids, they were real) and find a bank on holiday and cash them in (but you also had to produce your passport, […]
Read More →They don’t half like to run in Philadelphia. Now I am not adverse to a bit of running myself. Have I told you about my triathlon? No? Well you must be the only person I haven’t bored to tears about it. I was even considering bringing my running shoes to keep my hand (foot?) in, […]
Read More →I know I wrote a blog four years ago about how good the service is in America but they seem to be getting even better. When we were in Washington we went to quite a posh restaurant (well posh for us. Tablecloths and everything.) The server had the most earnest look I have even seen. […]
Read More →We have been doing a lot of traveling around via the metro when we have been visiting cities. Washington has the most modern one and it is only 40 years old. It also has amazing stations which are like underground cathedrals subtly lit with up-lighting. By comparison, the Chicago CTA trains have been running since […]
Read More →We have been staying in the Logan Square area of Chicago. Before I came away I spent a couple of nights in an Airbnb in Cambridge and on my second night was joined in the little flat by an American gentleman called Miles. He was in Cambridge at a conference but came from Chicago and […]
Read More →I have a love hate relationship with late night American chat shows. They never caught on in the UK (although Channel 5 did try it with Jack Docherty when they launched In 1997) but they have been an institution in the US since the 1960’s. You may remember I blogged about our trip to see Jay […]
Read More →Fresh from the success of last week’s ball game, we repeated the experience today. Chicago does like its sport. I have never seen so many sports shops selling Cubs, Bears, Bulls, White Sox and Gray Skids merchandise. The two baseball teams are the Cubs and the White Sox (yeah I know, can you imagine going […]
Read More →Klaxon alet: prepare for a statement of the flaming obvious: things are big over here. The country is big; the portions are big and as a result a lot of the people are big. But the museums are also big. Washington has an area just full of national museums which are all free. I can’t […]
Read More →One thing that has struck me this trip is how passionate the Americans are about trying to get enough water into you. So far every restaurant we have visited has given us a glass or bottle of tap water with our meal. (Ok I say every restaurant, McDonalds and Nando’s haven’t quite gone that far, […]
Read More →Washington is a modern city, well sort of. It was built in the 18th century and designed by a French planner Pierre L’enfant and is largely based on the recently redesigned Paris. The founding fathers liked what they saw in Paris as the planners had cleverly avoided showing them that the the Arc Du Triomphe […]
Read More →Those of you die hard blog followers will remember our first experience of a ball game (if you are new to it or have forgotten, you can refresh you memory here). Last night we went to our second game. Yeah we are die hard ball fans. 2 games in 4 years. This time it was […]
Read More →For our first day in the capital city of the USA, we thought we would do what any self respecting British tourist from the North East would do and stopped random strangers and asked where the Nissan factory was. Once we got bored of that game we headed for the Capitol to find out what […]
Read More →Well we are off again. We planned this trip with as much care and planning as ever (basically we wanted to go to Chicago, but it was cheaper to fly to Washington, we liked Nashville the TV show and the internal flights to Philadelphia were cheap as well, so boom, itinerary sorted). We have booked […]
Read More →I’m sorry I have missed a few days’ blogging. Unbelievably in a place where there is nothing to do I have been kept very busy. So, blogs which I have not managed to write since the last time include: – Mountain Deep River High (or scary places to take photos from) – Don’t drink whisky […]
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