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Day 17: Fort William
The day started with our lovely bnb host attempting to smother us with food; with a big breakfast of muesli, a rack of toast, and a cooked breakfast. Oh, and some fruit and yogurt. Stomach was sufficiently bolstered for a big day ahead. We took a wander through Fort William as many of the shops were now open. It’s about a middle sized town, big enough to have at least two whisky shops, a bookshop, a chemist, a couple of cafes, several restaurants, and some other assorted stores. I popped into one of the whisky shops, as it had a number of independent bottlings in the window, and inside were…
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Day 16: Islay, Fort William
We were up early to get the bnb tidied, everything packed, and the ferry back to the mainland. Which meant that I barely slept, as I kept waking up, seeing it was bright outside through the rather thin curtains, and scrambling for my phone to make sure I hadn’t overslept. I hadn’t overslept when I did this at 1am, nor 3am, nor 5am, and I was still running on time when I got up at 6.45am. This ferry was one of the older, less shiny ones in the CalMac fleet, so instead of lovely carpet and wood veneer, it was lino and melamine. But it fit our car, and floated,…
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Day 14: Islay (and Jura)
That’s better, back to my usual readership of maybe 3 people, nothing like a good bit of drinking to thin the hits. Today’s entry might even get me down to 1. We kicked off with a trip on the ferry to Jura, well first with M, P & G trying to kill me by suggesting we walk the 20 or so minutes to Port Askaig. Now there are 20 minute walks, I do these all the time with the dog back home, but 20 minutes in Islay involves no more than 50 metres of straight track, and if it’s straight it’s also likely to be a 10 degree incline or…
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Day 10: Portree
The morning kicked off with my first full Scottish breakfast of the trip, basically all the good stuff: black pudding, bacon, potato bread, flat sausage, beans, egg, mushrooms, half a tomato, and toast. Happily, no white pudding to be seen, it’s been a while since I last tried this, but having had it several times, the best I could describe it is “meh”. P has been poking me to have some, so I’ve said I will if he does (he’s a vegetarian). Anyway, the breakfast was good, even if the cafe had a weird Spanish name and hints of Spanish food on the menu (we’re quite a way away from…
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Day 8: Inverness, Loch Ness
Our last full day in Inverness and, once I finish this entry, I’ll have caught up on the backlog of days. G wanted to have a quiet day pottering around the B&B and town, possibly a little burnt out from our “short trip to Dufftown” yesterday where he was the driver. M&P wanted to do some wandering around Loch Ness, so I happily joined them. We headed south, and were soon alongside the loch, traversing the Great Glen that basically splits the Scottish mainland into two bits. It’s certainly a very beautiful split, driving along Loch Ness if one stunning view after another, once the trees part. Our first stop…
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Day 5: Glasgow
Now where were we? Then it was walk, kebab, sleep, hangover. Welcome to Glasgow. Ah, I remember now. It was a rather slow morning, doing as little as possible while my liver and kidneys did what I brought them along to do, and the paracetamol kicked in to help some. I was upright and mostly human by around 11.30am, just a little too late to get the breakfast menu at the nearby Smile Cafe, but in time for the lunch menu including some amazing pizza by the slice. And when I say slice, they say 1/4 of a whole pizza. With this amount of salami and zucchini pizza, plus a…
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Days 4: Frankfurt-London-Glasgow
Early start in Frankfurt, as my flight to London was a 7am departure. I figured if I got to Frankfurt Hbf a little after 5am I’d be fine. It took me a little while longer than expected to get everything together, not helped by a crap night attempting to sleep while my brain kept poking me to make sure I didn’t oversleep and miss the flight, so I got the the station around 5.15am, still a comfortable amount of time in theory. I hadn’t accounted for the happens-more-often-than-expected thing that German trains sometimes do run late. Germans will joke about this, crazy as the concept seems. So I board the…
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Day 3: Frankfurt
The final actual day in Frankfurt, and I’ve done a lot of walking the last couple of days, so I took things a bit slower. I had planned to take in a couple of museums, the Senckenberg Natural History Museum and the Stadt Museum, but I stuffed up on the research as the Stadt is closed on Mondays. Fortunately the Senckenberg wasn’t, so I went and checked out the dinosaurs and other wonderful attractions. I had one of those moments, coming out of the U-bahn station, where I wasn’t sure if I’d emerged in the right place or was heading in the right direction. Fortunately, after 20 or so metres…
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Day 2: Frankfurt
Welcome to the next installment of possibly the world’s least read and least informed travel blog. Today was the day that some may have been waiting for: the day when the 4 year old yells at me in German. Today I was able to spend a few hours with L’s cousin S, and S’s 4 year old Tochter A. Last time we were here, we met one of L’s other cousins, K, who was 3 and had a huge personality, an didn’t understand why I didn’t speak much German. So she spoke at me slower, and louder, and when that didn’t work, most of the time just yelled “Nein! Nein!”…
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Vietnam the third: day 19, Singapore
Our last full day in Singapore, and, weirdly enough, according to our various step trackers, our most walked day of the trip. We kicked off with the Gardens by the Bay, that wonderful Singapore landmark with the crazy artistically fake trees that you see in all the tourist videos. Our rideshare driver taking us there was a hoot, had lots of interesting knowledge to share, including apparently Singapore has a bit of a fresh chicken shortage at the moment, due to borders opening and closing with Malaysia, which is affecting the quality of that Singaporean icon, Hainanese chicken rice. Singapore’s main source of chicken now is Indonesia, which is great…
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Vietnam the third: day 17, Singapore
It’s kinda weird to be back in a place where people speak English, signs are in English, cars drive on the left all the time, intersections are controlled, people queue in an orderly fashion, yet at the same time looks and feels foreign. Singapore, somewhere I’m yet to spend enough time in to gain anything but a surface understanding of: organised yet still South East Asian; both incredibly multicultural with multiple significant minority populations, yet to a degree lacking integration with each population having their own little enclave, and it seems that the upper-echelons are confined to a single group; a somewhat progressive country yet also quite conservative. The contradictions…
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Vietnam the third: day 16, Hoi An – Singapore
Was a little sad to say goodbye to Vietnam: for all the heat, chaos, hawking, and haggling, it’s now elevated to a home away from home, a place where there is much good food, friendly people, and a general good time to be had. It’s also proof that a country can bounce back from being screwed over by the US and make something for itself (now if only the US could do the same). The Vietnamese seem to generally be a proud people, who can both hold onto traditions and also adapt with the times — many of the businesses we shopped at also have strong online presences, and will…
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Vietnam the third: Day 3, Hanoi
Summer in Hanoi. We’ve had a few conversations with locals, like hotel staff, tour guides, and they’ve all had one thing to say, “It’s a shame you’re hear in Summer when it’s so hot, the best time really is October”. And in fairness that is probably true, but our day jobs don’t always provide the luxury of travelling at the best times, so here we are in the heat and humidity. Today was a walking tour of Hanoi, with the aim of ticking off a few of those boxes for things we haven’t seen in previous visits, as well as something we love to do. So it was Ho Chi…
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Vietnam the third: Day 1, Transit Day
Who doesn’t like a 3am start? Me for one, but when the mobile starts beeping and calling out that wonderful catch phrase, “Smile, you’re travelling!” then it’s just a case of sucking up the entitlement and hauling my white arse out of bed. An added bonus was pissing the cat off by having the audacity to get up before she’d had a chance to get in my face about her breakfast. So it was last minute run around, make sure animals were sorted, recheck the notes for the house sitter, and drive to the airport. Being generally prepared and seasoned travellers, we aimed for 2 hours pre-flight and weren’t too…
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Holiday in Cambodia Day 2: Siem Reap, Angkor Wat
I am a fortunate traveller. In the past 3 months I have both watched the sun set over Manhattan, and the sun rise over Angkor Wat. I know that I’ve also worked hard to be able to afford both the time and money to travel, so some of my fortune is of my own doing, but I’m in a count my blessings kind of mood. (Not that I’m going to literally count all of my blessings, but we can just say that I’ve probably got more than most but less than some.) Angkor Wat, a huge, impressive temple structure, symbol of Cambodia, world heritage listed, and a monument to Vishnu.…
