22nd February 1969 – it was cold wet day in Liverpool, UK. What to do to celebrate fifty years of happy marriage? We like cruising so how about a cruise around Cape Horn at the bottom of the world? So be it . . . . . Our plan was to fly to Santiago in […]
The British celebrating ten years of service for Concorde’s trans-Atlantic service, accompanied by the Royal Air Force’s Red Arrows, and Queen Elizabeth 2 cruise ship, which also carried passengers trans-Atlantic but much slower. On arrival at JFK (New York’s major airport) we taxied to terminal 7 There wasn’t any mistake as to our location because […]
Will, John and I first met in September of 1960, and we had kept in touch – on and off – over the years, so when we had the opportunity of sailing together we jumped at joining Azamara Quest for the South American cruise. When Will & John found out that during the cruise Maureen […]
According to Robert Louis Stevenson – ‘I travel not to go anywhere, but to go. I travel for travel’s sake. The great affair is to move.’ I visited the UK to take part in a reunion – it had been fifty years since I left the nautical college HMS Conway to go to sea – once […]
Check the pronunciation of Budapest – it ends as ‘pesht’ not ‘pest’. On arrival at Budapest station from Prague we had to buy our onward tickets to Vienna. I’d tried to buy them over the internet, but Hungary’s rail system would not allow this to happen. We found the office for international tickets and entered, […]
After leaving Tarawa it was a short 805 mile flight to Funafuti, Tuvalu, but it still took about three hours in the HS 148. The aircraft carried more freight than it did passengers, because not many people visited Funafuti, other than returning residents, and the occasional businessman, i.e your truly. As we made our approach to […]
Blackman’s Swamp in 1870 We had five nights in Cowra and planned to have three nights at Blackman’s Swamp. We left Cowra on Friday, but after we received a phone call that Maureen was booked into hospital on Tuesday we decided to cut our visit to Blackman’s Swamp to just two nights. Just to make […]
We sailed from Thailand for Vietnam’s southern main port of Ho Cha Minh (used to be called Saigon), and once again we couldn’t get too close to Ho Cha Minh city because of our size. We berthed at Phu My, which is a 90 minute drive from Ho Cha Minh city via the fleet of buses waiting for […]
I’m late I’m late for a very important date. We still had to call at Doha (Qatar), Dammam (Saudi Arabia), Bahrain Island, Kuwait and finally Basrah (Iraq), which is about 90 miles up the Shatt al-Arab from the Persian Gulf. The Tigris and Euphrates Rivers meet and become the Shatt-al-Arab and in English this means The […]
Our cabin (or to be PC our stateroom) The balcony was a decent size, with a table, two chairs and two foot stools. The Atrium or Piazza as it is called in this class of ship, covered three decks in the centre of the vessel. Each early evening a female string quartet, or a small jazz […]
You can sail the Danube or the Mekong or even the Amazon for pleasure, and not have a worry, but I doubt that you would choose to sail up or down the Shatt Al Arab for your annual holiday. The map will give you an idea of where we were heading – we bunkered (refuelled) […]
A quiet town with a very unusual historical link. We took a ship’s cruise, because I was unable to find a ‘walker’ guide. Another temple – Kehi Jingu Shrine, or as the locals call it “Kei-san,” I took the above photo, but as usual you couldn’t get a clear shot for the tourists :- o) This shot […]
We were advised that we would not get wet when rafting, because we would be sitting on small seats that would keep our clothes from being wet. That was a joke! We watched as the rafts were being created from poles of bamboo. The rafts are floated down river carrying the ‘dry’ tourists and dismantled […]
One leaving the Royal Flying Doctor we had to find a cold drink so we decided to visit Bell’s Milk Bar , which is an icon in Broken Hill, and not far from the airport. Bell’s goes back to 1893, but is now stuck in the 1950’s. Regardless of Bell’s age the drinks were cold and […]