Around the world with Baggage

The final stretch

2010-08-04T14:44:00.003+01:00

Thursday 20th August - Our last full day

More packing but not surprising really.

I also started working on slide shows of our photos so we have something to use to show people what we got up to when we get home. Even after being very selective the full run of slide shows extends to over an hour, and this is using a very small percentage of our thousands of photos.

We did get out, we headed up the 192 and played a game of Crazy Golf, and we even managed a swim, but most of the day was spent preparing for the fact that we leave tomorrow.

Dinner consisted of a Chinese take-out from the Chinese over by Sweet Bay, it is pretty useful having a Chinese within a couple of minutes of the house, we then watched the Hannah Montana movie, which I picked up for Baggage yesterday. I enjoyed it more than I expected I guess, though maybe I should not admit to that!

More packing in the evening and then fairly late to bed.

Friday 21st August - Time to go home

We have until 1pm to finish sorting the house out before we have to head for the airport, and for the first time since we bought this house six years ago we are leaving not knowing when we will next be coming back.

Mum phoned this morning and told us that Candy, our cat had died. She had stayed at our house whilst we have been away, she was 17 so not a young cat, but my Mum had been around to feed her every day, this morning she found her dead on our driveway, all evidence suggests it was just old age. Quite sad really that she had waited for us since we went away and dies within 24 hours of us getting home.

We did get some good news this morning, the package of wooden souvenirs we had purchased in Fiji had arrived back in the UK, almost exactly three months to the day since we had purchased then, the delivery expectation set by the Fijian shop keeper.

We left for the airport with six very full cases to check in, we had left the UK with three, all with space in them, we had already shipped one very full case back with Danny and there was our very full box of items shipped from Fiji, not to mention the various other packages we had shipped back along the way. All our six bags were either as physically full as they could sensibly be, or were on the limit for check-in weight.

Our flight back was fairly uneventful, direct from Orlando to Gatwick and leaving pretty well on time.

Saturday 22nd August - Home

The trip is now really over, we were picked up this morning by Danny from Gatwick airport and he drove us back to Devon via his house in Guildford where we stopped for him to pick up some stuff and for us to have a bacon sandwich. We got home around lunchtime, in places the roads were pretty busy, but it was not too bad, then it was straight into sorting through the cases and finding the various parcels we have bought back for people.

Katie is due back from Fort Lauderdale in less than a week, so we need to get ourselves sorted before all descends into chaos once again.

Would I do it again - ABSOLUTELY!

A couple more entries - nearly there!

2010-08-03T22:44:00.002+01:00

Tuesday 18th August - Jonas in Tampa

Tonight we are off to Tampa to see The Jonas Brothers live in concert. Not quite my cup of tea, but Baggage is really excited.

As it was likely to be a late night tonight we did spend the day in, though I managed to sneak out to Walmart and whilst out got my hair cut, saves having to head straight to the barbers when we get back to the UK.

We headed over to Tampa late afternoon and drove straight to the concert venue, the drive across was OK though getting into the venue and finding parking was a bit slow going.

The band were actually not too bad, the stage show was good and they are good entertainers, however the little girls screaming really did my head in. There was one girl sat closely behind us who spent the entire time the band were on stage screaming how much she loved them, not only would she have had a sore throat the next day, she would have had no idea what the music actually sounded like. Supporting the band were The Honor Societ and Jordin Sparks both were OK!

It was about 12:30 by the time we have made our way out of the car park and all the way back across to Clermont, but it was worth it, Baggage had a really great time.

Wednesday 19th August - Packing and a meal out.

Today is all about packing, we have been living here for the last two months and not only do we have to put into cases what we want to take back to the UK with us, but we also have to pack up the rest of the house and put it away in our lockup. Our new improved lockup with extra locks following the break in earlier in the year.

I found out the Rip Ride Rocket opened on Saturday, just after our last visit to Universal. I desperately wanted to go back for a ride, but neither Baggage nor Lisa could be persuaded to join me so in the end I gave up on the idea, it will just have to wait until we come back to Florida, though at this time have no idea when that will be!

I did manage to write a bit this afternoon, wonder if I will be able to keep it up when I get back to the UK, I hope so!

This evening we went out for dinner with Roy and Janette to The Stonewood Grill which is out their way, we had a great meal and after went back to their place for a bit before heading back here. Baggage even managed to get a couple of last minute additions to her list of transport used, a golf cart and a beach buggy, both of which are CJ’s, Roy and Janette’s son. It was almost midnight again by the time we finally got home.

I will get this finished...

2010-08-03T22:22:00.002+01:00

It has been nearly a year since we finished our trip and I just have not got around to finish posting my blog. The problem was that I recorded the end of the trip in note form and did not even make comprehensive diary entries so I had nothing to cut and paste in. But now I am on vacation again and back in Florida, the thunder is booming outside and the rain pouring down, so why not finish the job off, after all I nearly got there.

Saturday 15th August - A day of rest

Today we started serious packing ready to go home, we have a week still to go and after the packing have our four cases already full, one new one I have bought half full and still a load of stuff waiting to go in, looks like another trip to Walmart for a sixth suitcase will be required.

This afternoon we all had a swim and afterwards I did some preparation out on the pool deck for the last bit of painting I will do before we head for home.

For dinner this evening we went to Animal Kingdom Lodge and ate at their African buffet, Boma. The food there is great, all dishes are African themed and there are plenty of them to chose from, I had small portions of all of the following: Chicken and Coconut curry; Humus and Pitta; Melon Rind Salad; Curried Pasta Salad; Prime Rib; Chicken; Barbecue Rib; Coconut Rice; Glazed salmon with nuts; Sweet Potato Mash; Various small pudding samples. OK so maybe not so African, but a really great buffet!

When we got back to the house we watched Paul Blart, Mall Cop, on demand before it was time for Baggage to go to bed.

Sunday 16th August - feel sorry for me

Today I am feeling a little under the weather, bit of a cold I think. I did manage a swim this morning, Lisa joined me but Baggage was far too busy on her computer. She does spend a lot of time on that, as responsible parents should we limit it and encourage other activities instead?

My other main activities for today were centred around motorsport, first I watched the ALMS race from Road America and then I watched the Czech Republic MOTOGP. Not a bad way to spend an afternoon when you are feeling a little under the weather. An early night for me tonight.

Monday 17th August - On my own

Lisa and Baggage are out today, they headed off up Highway 27 to have lunch with Marlene and Cassidy, their last chance before we head back to the UK. Me I am still feeling a little under the weather. I did manage to write a bit more of the book and then all I felt like doing was curling up on the sofa and watching a movie so I watched Angels and Demons, followed quickly after by Steven King’s The Dead Zone. Lisa and Baggage got back late afternoon and we had supper together, but again I was not slow in getting myself in to bed. Need to ensure I am feeling better tomorrow as we are off to Tampa to watch The Jonas Brothers.

Friday 14th August - Off to Universal

2010-01-06T22:42:00.001Z

Today we decided to head out to Universal Studios for a day at the theme park, we hoped that we got get to ride Rip Rocket, the new roller coaster, but when we got there we found it had not quite opened yet, they were running it however with invited guests only. In fact we found out on Saturday that we were at Universal just one day too early, Rip Rocket opened to the general public on the Saturday Morning. We have a good day in the park however it was not too busy and we managed to do everything we wanted to. We end our visit with dinner at Bubba Gump, our first time of eating there, Baggage loved it, in particular the stop and run signs on the table that you use to attract the attention of your server. The food was pretty good also.

Universal.

When we get back to the house Baggage and I have a quick swim.

I am almost out of beer now, that will not do I will have to get a little more, even though I only have a few more days during which to drink it. I am sure I will manage that however.

Thursday 13th August - Whoops! A bit too fast.

2010-01-06T22:17:00.002Z

This morning I decided to do a final bit of shopping before we head back to the UK so I set off on my own, Lisa and Baggage just wanted to chill to drive up to festival bay.

On the way through Disney land as I cut across the bottom of it to reach International Drive I got stopped by a Highway Patrol Officer for speeding, not good in Florida and definitely not good in Disney! He pulled me over doing about 65 in a 50 mph zone. I plead ignorance and own up to being a stupid tourist and he takes pity on me as I have a clean UK license and decides to let me off. Nice Mr. Policeman.

At Festival Bay I get quite a bit of stuff including a new book The Runes of the Earth - Stephen Donaldson, the first volume in the final Chronicles of Thomas Covenant, a series of books I read back in the ‘80s. I also get a Christmas present for Baggage, organised aren’t I!

When I get back to the house I chill and finish Cell, a really good read which I thoroughly enjoyed.

This evening Lisa & Baggage go to Bob Evans with vouchers for a free meal that they got from the Library when they visited recently, we decided it would be good for the girls to have a girly trip out. I am happy to stay at home anyway and cook for myself then watch a movie as I have finished my book!

Not a late night and we are really getting into the frame of mind of going home now, we have a couple more things to do before we do head home, but most of our time will be spent in preparation for our final journey to take us back to the UK and North Devon.

And a bit more of a catch up!

2009-08-19T22:07:00.002+01:00

Tuesday 11th August

Today I did a 3 hour drive down to the West Palm Beach service station, then turned around and drove right back. Whilst I was there I did have lunch and move a couple of things from my car to Katie’s and vice versa so I guess there was method in my madness.

I got back around 4pm to arrive in the middle of an issue where Katie had been cut off from electricity in Fort Lauderdale because the power company thought the bill had not been paid when it had really. As can often be the case when dealing with big corporations Lisa and I spent probably 5 hours on the phone between this afternoon and tomorrow and really did not achieve very much, the power went back on when they wanted it to, all our shouting and complaining did not seem to move anything any further along. In the meantime Katie and Rachel had a house with no air conditioning with temperatures inside in the 90s, luckily they found elsewhere to sleep at night. When the power company did come back out to turn the power on, Wednesday lunchtime, they claimed the gate was locked and as they could not raise any attention from the house, the door bell is electric, they left/ Amazing how they managed to open the same gates when they wanted access to turn the power off. Eventually the power was restored on Thursday at around 11am.

Wednesday 12th August

Today we spent a day in, I was very happy with that after yesterday. I read a lot and did manage to do a bit of writing, but not a lot else, other than talking to Florida Power and Light on the phone of course....

Monday 10th August - Kennedy Space Centre

2009-08-16T03:17:00.005+01:00

Today we drove over to the coast to Kennedy Space Centre, Baggage has been doing work on space exploration as part of her science school work and this is a very suitable field trip for the end of term, after all you always go on a field trip at the end of the summer term don’t you.

Space Shuttle Discovery is on the launch pad, it rolled out there last week in preparation for it’s launch at the end of August so we get a look at it from the observation gantry, though you do not get to see much as it’s launch tower is in the way and all you can really see is the top of the orange fuel tank. However it was still good to see it there getting ready for it’s launch, we will not be in Florida when it goes off, but after having seen it getting ready to depart I will try to track it's launch date and get Baggage to watch it go off over the Internet on the NASA site which streams all launches as they happen.

On the way out to the gantry where we looked at Discovery from we drove alongside the crawler roadway that is used to transfer the assembled shuttles from the assembly building out to the launch site, the impressions in the roadway being clearly visible even though the shuttle travelled over it a week before.

After having taken a good look at the tip of the tank from the gantry we continued on to the Saturn V centre where the focus is on the Apollo program and moon landings. It was 40 years ago this summer that man first landed on the moon and this is being commemorated in the centre with additional exhibits being on display from the NASA archives for the first time, it was good to go there and see some of these things that had been hidden away for so long. The exhibits included an array of prototypes for the suit for the moon walk, I guess that the suit that was worn has become part of our history so does not look out of place, some of these that were proposed and tested looked as if they would have been more at home in a 50s ‘B’ sci-fi movie.

After the Saturn V centre we headed back to the main visitors centre and watched one of the IMAX films and then took a walk in the rocket garden and paid a visit to the Robot Scouts exhibition before thinking about heading back to our house. It was a good day, we have been to the Kennedy Space Centre before, but the last time Baggage was there she was only 7 so did not remember much of it and it all came across as being new to her, she really enjoyed it, it was a pretty good field trip.

We got back to the house at 8:30, early enough to watch a bit of Torchwood before bed.

Another couple of days (slowly catching up!)

2009-08-13T14:40:00.003+01:00

Monday 3rd August

Lisa and Baggage went out to The Villages to meet their friends Marleen and Cassidy today, they went to ‘Paint-a-pot’ I took advantage of the peace and quiet and wrote some more, I am now well into Chapter 9 ‘Australia’.

Before I got into any writing this morning though I cleaned the pool decking and painted a bit of it, I am not painting the entire deck as I only did that last autumn, but there are some bits of it that do not seem to have faired very well so as I have some of the paint left I am just touching those up.

This evening I watched Wayne’s World, one of those films I felt I knew as I have seen so many clips from it over the years, but had in fact never seen all the way through.

Tuesday 4th August

Mainly just did a few jobs around the house today, cleaned the front door step ready for it to be painted and sorted all the towels and sheets, disposing of those that are well passed their “sell by date”. Did manage to get some writing done as well and even managed to read a bit, but nothing too exciting.

Wednesday 5th August

Today we spent the day at the house and did a few more jobs around the place, then this evening we went back up to the Amway Arena to see Green Day, who were supported by the Kaiser Chiefs. The concert was brilliant. The Kaiser Chiefs were very good, even though most of the American audience did not seem to know who they were and they got the biggest cheer whenever they mentioned Green Day, they only had a half hour set but managed to fit in a good number of their hits. Green Day were really on form, they played loads of material off their new album and most of their well known tracks, the stage show was very impressive and there was loads of crowd interaction, they even got members of the audience up on stage to sing with them and at the end one lad went up to play guitar, and did a pretty good job! The plan had been to take Katie with us to Green Day as we did not think Baggage would like it, though as Katie is now back in Fort Lauderdale we had no choice other than for Baggage to come along and she had a fantastic time, I doubt she would admit it, but I reckon she preferred Green Day to Demi Lovato! The next concert we have booked is on the 18th, the Jonas Brothers, another one for Baggage, reckon I may well be taking ear plugs to that one!

Thursday 6th August

Ears still ringing this morning!

We did some packing today, we have two weeks left before we return to the UK, but have an awful lot to sort out and pack so decided it was best to do it in bits, not all at the end. I also managed to fit in a swim and to get some writing done, I am now up to Australia’s Red Centre.

For tonight’s dinner we had sweet and sour chicken made with tinned chicken from our Hurricane Box, we keep a box of supplies at the house in case of a long term power outage caused by a hurricane or tropical storm and most of the tins are heading out of date so we either chuck them or have some odd meals to eat up before we head back to the UK.

Friday 7th August

Today we were going to go to Kennedy Space Centre, but Lisa and I had a really bad night so we will put that off until Monday, Baggage also gets the day off school today as Lisa is not with it enough to teach her!

This afternoon we did make it up to Festival Bay and watched G-Force in the cinema, it was OK, though there were plenty of other films showing I would rather have seen if we had not had Baggage with us!

On the way home we had dinner at Chilis, then Lisa got herself an earlier night and I watched Domino on DVD, it was OK if you like seeing Keira Knightly getting roughed up, better than G-Force!

Pinch and Punch, our final travelling month

2009-08-11T23:56:00.002+01:00

Saturday August 1st

Today Lisa and Baggage went off to the Craft Show again, as we had been for one day it was only $4 each for them to spend a second day there and there were plenty of crafts we did not get to yesterday for them to try out. I decided to stay at the house and got on with my book, I actually really got on well with it and wrote 2 1/2 chapters, getting me up into the writing about what we did whilst travelling by getting me half the way through Hong Kong.

Lisa and Baggage got back around 6pm, a second good haul of free stuff, though not as much stuff as we bought home between the three of us yesterday.

Sunday August 2nd

Today we are spending most of the day at the house, we are off to see Demi Lovato at the Amway Arena tonight so are not in a hurry to do much during the day. I read quite a lot and have now finished my book, I have a second Stephen Kong book here I have not read yet, Cell, so whilst I am in a reading mood guess I will give that a go.

The concert, whilst not the first time Baggage has seen a band played live is in effect her first concert, in that it is the first time she will have been to a concert she chose to go to and that was not a part of something else. I did not have very high expectations, I was really only going along as the driver, but I was pleasantly surprised. Demi Lovato was supported by Jordan Pruit and David Archuleta, both of whom were pretty good, Demi herself was very good on stage, especially as she is only 17, if she is still in the business in her 30s her stage show is likely to be well worth taking the time out to see.

After the concert Baggage managed to get her ticket stub signed by Jordan Pruit which made the day even more special for her.

days off and a few Crafts

2009-08-11T23:36:00.003+01:00

Wednesday 29th July

Today we decided a day off from Baggage’s schooling is in order so we treated her to a visit to Disneyquest in Downtown Disney, we got there at about 11am and stayed in there until just after 6pm. Disneyquest is a computer game based indoor theme park, we managed to try out most of the games on offer, plus Baggage did the drawing classes where she learnt how to draw various Disney characters.

The photo shows Baggage and Lisa as paddles in a life sized pin ball game, they had to rock their ducks to move the pucks on a large video screen to strike the ball and win points. On one of the games Baggage actually won, though was not sure how she managed it.

On the way home we got ourselves a McDonald’s drive through, it was far too late to worry about what to cook for dinner.

Thursday 30th July

Today we really did not do much, all that computer gaming yesterday has tired us out. I did read quite a bit, am getting near to the end of my book now. Some more beer to add to the records also: Killian’s Irish Red, Lienenliugel’s Berry Weiss, Yuengling Black and Tan. The Irish Red is very good, as with the Sam Adams it is best drunk at room temperature. The Berry Weiss is very refreshing when drunk in the hot tub at the end of a long day, best served very cold. The Black and Tan is also best served cold and goes well with a few peanuts and a good television program. Tonight we all watched Adam Sandler in 50 First Dates, Lisa and I had seen it before but as it was filmed in places we visited whilst on Hawaii we wanted to watch it again out of curiosity.

Friday 31st July

Today we watched STS-127 Endeavour land (on the TV), unfortunately the approach was up to KSC from the South, sometimes when coming in to land they do so over Orlando, but not this time.

After it was down we headed up to the Orange County Convention Centre to a craft show, we did not really know what to expect, though it might be a few stalls and we may be in there for a couple of hours. We were in there from noon until it closed at 6pm. It was a fairly large hall and whilst there were stalls you could buy things at the vast majority of the show was given over to ‘Make and Take’, you could try out crafts and take your creations home, all for free. We tried out loads: painting, earring making, Photo Pearls, Christmas Decorations, Scrap booking, Cookie decoration (and eating), Duck Tape Wallet making, mini chalk board decoration. We also got loads of other free stuff to take home, I reckon between us we got well over $150 worth of stuff, all for free. It was so good that Baggage and Lisa have decided to go back again tomorrow.

For dinner we grabbed a Chinese take away.

Struggling to write

2009-08-08T01:48:00.001+01:00

Monday 27th July

We all got up pretty early today, Lisa woke by 6:30 and Baggage and I were both up by 7, no particular reason, just woke up. I spent a lot of time out by the pool reading, I really just cannot put that book down.

Tuesday 28th July

This morning I managed to get a bit of writing done, though nothing like enough. At this rate I reckon I may just about have finished writing half of my book by the time I return to the UK, that is still quite a lot that will be left to be done.

Lisa and Charlotte went out this afternoon to the Library to watch the talent show they are putting on, I had great intentions, I was going to write all afternoon, but after about half an hour of not really getting anywhere I gave up and watched a movie instead. Trouble is it is all too easy to turn off the laptop and go and do something else instead.

When Lisa and Baggage got back we all had a swim before I made dinner, tonight we had sweet and sour chicken.

What can I get for $5

2009-08-08T01:36:00.003+01:00

Sunday 26th July

Did a few jobs about the house this morning then watched the Hungarian Grand Prix. Afterwards we went out to Old Town and had a wander around plus played the $5 game, who can buy the best item for just $5. I got a rabbit made from Nuts and Bolts, Baggage got an orange vase and Lisa got a candle holder similar to those we had seen in Fiji, we decided that Baggage won.

Baggage also did a Bobble Head video which we got in a DVD, this will be useful footage for a future entry for the website. Not bad, they only charged $5, though they could have let her finish the song, the guy who was running it seemed to cut her off early?

On the way back to the house we stopped at Cracker Barrel for dinner and then called in to Walmart where Charlotte got a mouse for her laptop, she got a pink one which matches the laptop cover.

Progressive Nation 2009

2009-08-07T02:44:00.002+01:00

Saturday 25th July

Today I can get a Grand Prix fix again, though qualifying leaves a bit of a bad taste ad Massa ends up being taken to the hospital after a very nasty hit on the head from a spring off the back of Barichello’s car. It turns out he has a fractured skull, it would have been much worse had the helmet not held up, and he is to spend a few days in a Hungarian hospital before returning to his native Brazil. He obviously is out of tomorrow’s race and Ferrari will only run one car, though there is talk of Michael Schumacher stepping back into the car for the European Grand-prix at the end of August.

This morning Lisa and Charlotte headed over to Lowe’s (the hardware store) for a wood working class and Charlotte came back with a helicopter model she had made, it is all free, I guess the store work on building customer loyalty, and Charlotte has a great time, in fact she has already said she wants to go to the next one in a couple of weeks time.

This evening I am off to Hard Rock live at Universal City Walk to see Dream Theater. They are playing as part of the Progressive Nation tour 2009 and there are four bands on the bill: Scale the Summit, Big Elf, Zappa Plays Zappa and Dream Theater. All bands are very good, Zappa plays Zappa and Dream Theater are both excellent. Most of the stuff Dream Theater play is off their new album, Black Clouds and Silver Linings.

The gig ends after 11 and I stop off at McDonald’s on the way back to the house as I have only managed to grab a burger for tea at about 5:30 and am starving, two burgers in one day, very healthy!

Katie and Rachel are off today

2009-08-07T02:32:00.000+01:00

Friday 24th July

Katie and Rachel are heading back down to Fort Lauderdale this morning so we all head over to iHop for breakfast before they go. Lisa and I had a bad experience in an iHop a few years ago and have avoided them ever since, however the breakfast we had this morning was very good, if we were in the habit of going out for breakfast then eating here could become a habit. I am sure last time we went to an iHop about all that was on the menu was very sickly pancake and waffle variations, today you could have had pretty well any fast food staple you desired, the menu was fairly extensive.

After breakfast Katie and Rachel got straight off, the house will seem awfully quiet without them here!

This evening we watched Coraldine, I picked it up yesterday from Walmart on 3D DVD, luckily there was a 2D version in the box also as none of us could get on with the 3D, maybe our telly is just not bright enough, but it just seemed all blurred and washed out. As it was Lisa did not like the film at all and gave up after about half an hour and went and had a bath, Baggage and I did watch it through to the end, though I felt a few of the scenes may be nightmare material for Baggage.

Reading is my main activity!

2009-08-07T01:38:00.003+01:00

Wednesday 22nd July

Today I seemed to spend most of the day lying by the pool and reading Duma Key, guess I must really be enjoying this book, it has been a long time since I read a book from cover to cover with the kind of speed I am reading this one, in fact the last would also have been a Stephen King, the last book in the Gunslinger series.

The additional $100 that was originally held back from our repaid deposit on the house in Hawaii also turned up today, with that we have finally got all our deposits from our various properties back, all our Internet based bookings went OK, the houses were there, they were as expected and we got all our security deposits back in full. If you follow my rule of always talking to a real person before you book a house over the web you seemingly should be OK!

This evening by special request I made lasagne again, everyone really enjoyed it last time and tonight the repeat performance was also a hit. Simple recipe off the side of the lasgne sheet packet and it obviously worked. After dinner we played a couple of games of Toss Up and Monopoly Express, both simple dice based games, before going to bed.

Thursday 23rd July

A quiet day in today, I get to the bank to deposit the cheques and stop off at Walmart for a few bits and pieces on the way back. This afternoon the girls go in the pool.

Katie decided to head back to Fort Lauderdale today, but left it a bit late in the day and even though she did get everything into the car and head out towards the Turnpike she ended up turning back and is back at the house tonight, they are now going to leave for Fort Lauderdale tomorrow morning.

More time spent in Florida

2009-08-07T00:54:00.003+01:00

Monday 20th July

Today is the day that Baggage has been waiting for since we were back in Australia, the day she is going to watch the new Harry Potter film. The film came out last week but Katie is taking her and wanted to watch all the other films again before they went and only managed to get the last film watch yesterday evening.

Did not do much during the day, spent quite a bit of time sorting photos from our trip, there are so many of them to go through and if I do not sort them down into a much smaller subset of the best ones we will never end up showing them to anybody! The plan is to select a subset from each country that will make about a 10 minute slide show for that country, even that would be over an hours worth of viewing if you were to watch all the slide shows end to end. Thank goodness for my MAC and iPhoto it makes such tasks so much easier.

After the girls went out to Harry Potter Lisa and I decided we should watch a movie to, we chose the couch potato option though and bought The Curious Case of Benjamin Button ‘on demand’ from our cable supplier and thoroughly enjoyed it. We did not have to drive home after the movie either!

Tuesday 21st July

Today Katie and Rachel are going out to Islands of Adventure for the day, I decide to take the opportunity of the house being relatively quiet to catch up with the last couple of Baggage videos that needed completing and getting up on the web site.

We managed to spend quite a bit of time on Skype this morning, first with my Mum and then with Danny, it was good to be able to talk to both of them.

Baggage managed to find another copy of There’s Something about Mary at the library today, so when they get back Lisa and I watch it from where we left off with Katie and Rachel, they had a good day at Islands.

Beer tonight is Sam Adams Boston Lager. After having forgotten to put it in the fridge I find that it tastes much better when served at room temperature, no surprise really, it is a red beer and does a British bitter not taste best when not too cold? Am just irritated that I have been chilling it for all this time and missing out on the real taste of the beer.

A few more days in paradise (almost a song in there!)

2009-07-24T02:54:00.001+01:00

Friday 17th

Not a lot to write about today, I managed to sit out by the pool and read for a short while this morning and apart from that I am not really sure what I achieved, oh well just another day in Paradise!

Saturday 18th

And again not a lot to say, not sure what we really did but the day seemed to pass and then it was over!

Sunday 19th

This morning Katie and Rachel took Baggage out for breakfast, the three of them went to iHop, it was unbelievably quiet, I actually managed to read a good amount of my book, I am reading Duma Key, the Stephen King book that Baggage gave me for Father’s day.

This afternoon the Lisa, Baggage and I had a swim, it was a really hot afternoon, not quite so muggy as it has been.

After dinner Lisa, Katie, Rachel and I tried to watch There’s Something about Mary, unfortunately the DVD was not playing and we got an hour into the film and then had to give up!

A day at a waterpark

2009-07-24T02:40:00.002+01:00

Thursday 16th July

Today we went off to Typhoon Lagoon, a Disney Waterpark. All five of us went. We headed off pretty early as the rain at the tail end of an afternoon would likely cut our day short.

We managed to ride on most of the rides: the lazy river; water based roller coaster (Crusher Gusher); the various raft rides and the tube slides, though only Baggage and Rachel rode the really steep enclosed tubes. Lisa, Baggage and I all had snow cones, though nothing like as good as the shave ice we had in Hawaii! By just after 4pm it was starting to cloud over and as we had been there for over 6 hours we decided to call it a day. When it came to getting out of the park I had no shoes, the ones I had bought with me as they can we worn in the water had disintegrated by the second ride, guess the chlorine had finally got to them the last time I wore them.

For dinner I picked up fried chicken portions from Win Dixie, that was fine, really did not want to cook anything or sit in a restaurant as all that fresh air had made us all very tired. When I picked up the chicken it was almost time to renew my beer so I picked up a six pack of Sam Adams Blackberry Whitbier. It was already chilled so I decided to have a bottle tonight, extremely refreshing, yes I really like that one!

A bit more going on!

2009-07-22T15:53:00.006+01:00

Monday 13th July

We really do need to get into a better routine here if Baggage is to get through the schooling we still have to do with her before we return and I am to get any real ground covered on my book!

Today we spend an easy day in the house, a quick trip out this afternoon to get a few birthday presents to send back to people in the UK but apart from that not a lot going on. This evening I did do the token bit of home maintenance, I bought a couple of bags of bark chipping from Lowes and spread them over the front borders.

Tuesday 14th July

The first thing I had to do today was try to sort out our trip to Greece planned for this October, it should have been a simple case of cancelling one person and paying the balance, but nothing seems to be simple anymore hence this took up most of the morning!

Another bit of house maintenance, the pool lights have not been very bright since we got back, they are a fibre optic system so I thought it would be a simple job of taking the cover off, maybe changing the bulb and cleaning the lenses inside, wrong, after an hour I gave up as the screws holding the cover on are rusted solid, and one of them is pretty inaccessible, I have limited tools to work with here, will need to get the right tool and try again.

Lisa, Baggage, Katie and Rachel go off to Wonder Works, I get to spend the afternoon at the house, I actually get some writing done, one whole chapter and a bit of the next one.

For dinner I cook Lasagne, the girls are longer than expected and it ends up being in the oven for over two hours, luckily it is still fine when it comes out, in fact it goes down very well and I am asked to make it again for another evening!

This evening we watch Americas got Talent and and then play a few games before bed. I am still drinking the Sam Adams white beer, though one of the bottles I open tonight was completely flat and ends up going down the sink!

Wednesday 15th July - Endeavour

Today I decided to head over to Titusville to watch the launch of STS-127, Space Shuttle Endeavour, the launch in planned for 18:03 so I head out from here just after 15:00. I was surprised by how easy the drive was, how easy I got to park and how I managed to get a prime waters edge spot to set up my tripod less than 1 hour before the launch. I guess as this is Endeavour’s sixth attempt to get off the ground people are not turning out in such large numbers as is usual for a shuttle launch.

About 4 years ago we saw a Delta rocket launch from Kennedy Space Centre, but have never witnessed the shuttle go up and I am in prime position, about 11 miles from the actual launch site with a completely uninterrupted view and the visibility is pretty clear.

I had come over to Titusville on my own, Lisa and the girls opting to watch the launch on the TV and then from the back of the house as the Shuttle rises into the sky, they did not want to make the trek on the chance it may be postponed again as when I left the house at 3pm the weather forecast was suggesting a 50/50 chance for launch. By the time I got here though the sky was clear and the launch looked definite.

Right on time the main engines fired and exhaust/steam billowed out under the Shuttle, it seemed to rise off the pad quicker than I remembered the Delta rocket having done and before you knew it it was little more than a bright speck in the sky, with a wavy vapour trail behind it. The noise hit a good thirty seconds after the launch was visible, a loud roar following the shuttle on its ascent to the International Space Station.

I had chosen to watch the launch from Space Park which houses the space walk of fame, a good choice as there was a small stall selling official STS-127 merchandise so I bought something for everybody before heading back to the car to drive back to Orlando.

The drive back was not as easy, firstly there was a lot of traffic returning from the Space Coast, then as I neared the junction with the 417 I drove into a horrific storm, lightning coming down pretty close to the car and torrential rain that almost caused me to pull off the road more than once, even when on the clearer road of the 417 the rain was keeping driving speeds down below 30. Later this evening I found out that at the heart of the storm had been a tornado that had touched down doing quite a bit of damage only a few miles away from me.

I eventually got back to the house at just after 9pm, just in time for a beer before thinking about calling it a night!

Islands and back to writing!

2009-07-14T14:28:00.002+01:00

Friday 10th July

Katie went to a second doctors today as the one she saw last night gave her a pretty thorough going over but could not determine what was wrong with her. This doctor also cannot determine the cause of her pain so has recommended blood tests. The pain is not so severe today and at the moment Katie feels she will wait until we are all back in the UK to get checked out again and if she has to have blood taken do it at that time.

Since getting back to Florida we seem to have failed to be able to get back into the routine we had anticipated. I had seen myself getting up in the morning, having a swim before breakfast then doing some writing whilst Baggage and Lisa get on with school work. We had let Baggages schooling lapse during the back end of the trip as the intention was to run it through the summer whilst we were in Florida and not moving about. We have now been here nearly three months and the routine has not been established, in fact in many ways it feels as if we are just waiting for our flights back to the UK at the end of August.

Today I did get back to my book for the first time since we got to Florida, though I could not really settle to it and in the couple of hours I tried to write only managed to pen a couple of sides of A4.

Saturday 11th July

Today Baggage gets a day off school and we are going to Islands of adventure, Universal’s second theme park. With the weather doing what it has been recently we decide to make an early start and then if the weather turns at least we will have got a few things in before the downpour.

We get there just after the park opens at 9am and it is already pretty busy, our first ride ‘The Hulk’ requires us to queue for about 20 minutes. I must be getting two old for fast roller coasters, when we get of The Hulk I feel disoriented and have a thumping headache.

Before lunch we manage to fit in the two main water rides in the park and get truly soaked. Baggage and Lisa both bought spare clothes, I opted not to and would still be damp four hours later when we returned to the house.

After lunch we rode Spiderman and One Fish Two Fish, Baggage also rode Cat in the Hat, then we decided to leave the park. Baggage was tired and had been moaning about one thing or another since lunchtime and Lisa and I had enough of it, also the clouds were darkening and we could see a storm coming in from the west. Tomorrow morning we were to see on the news that a torrential downpour hit the area just after we left, though we missed it completely as the clouds skirted north of our house. I guess we chose a good time to leave.

Tonight we got Baggage into bed particularly early and she must have been tired as despite her protests she was asleep within 30 minutes.

Sunday 12th July

Today I am going to watch the Grand Prix, I have not managed to see one since the one I caught at Midnight in Ohope. Unfortunately the coverage in the US is split between Speed and Fox and today’s race is on Fox who chose to air it mid afternoon rather than live, never mind I will just avoid the result and it is better than missing it altogether.

This morning we go out to get a few presents as we have a couple of Birthdays coming up that we have to send things back to the UK for, we do OK and get what we had in mind when we set out.

This afternoon I settle down on the sofa to watch the race, Lisa does also but after about 15 minutes is asleep and stays that way until all but the final lap. As Grand Prix races go it is OK, there is not a lot of action on the track but the result is good, Mark Webber won his first ever race after 130 starts, this years season keeps on resetting expectations.

After dinner I had planned to watch the shuttle launch on the TV and then watch the actual ascent out the back of the house. On a clear day you can see the rockets lift off as they rise directly east from here so for anything other than a morning launch the sun will not be in the way of the view and tonight’s was planned at 19:29. The launch was scrubbed however due to thunderstorms at the cape, just as well for us as after dinner Katie suggested we all play cards and I completely forgot the launch until just after it was due to have gone up. Maybe I will have better luck next time, it is rescheduled for tomorrow.

July 9th - a few more days in Florida

2009-07-10T04:30:00.001+01:00

Tuesday 7th July

Today we had a pretty quiet day in, this morning Baggage and I had a swim then she got on with some schooling and I made myself busy around the house. This afternoon Baggage spent most of the time on-line with her friends, they were playing hide and seek in Fantage which is a virtual world that they play in, Kids imagination is so great.

The weather is still pretty wet, we had planned on fitting in a few visits to theme parks before the British schools break for the summer and it gets really busy over here, but it has just been too wet, raining almost every day, some days raining on and off all day.

This evening we went for a drive up #27 to find a dark patch of road and see if we could see the International Space Station, it should have been visible to the naked eye for 5 minutes from 21:29. We could not see it there was just too much cloud cover.

Wednesday 8th July

Today Katie and Rachel are going to Kelly Springs, an area at Lake Apopka where there is a boardwalk and a fast flowing stream that you can ride in an inflatable hoop. Baggage has schooling to do and is not very impressed that she has to stay in. They are out all afternoon and do yet to ride the stream, though only just as when they got there the skies opened up and it poured, with intermittent thunder and lightning so they had to wait for that to pass before they could get in the water.

Baggage and Lisa did go out this afternoon, they went to the library where there was a craft session and Baggage came back with a tambourine she had made.

For dinner tonight we have roast beef, a good ‘ol British home cooked meal, though I did try to make Yorkshire pudding from a recipe I found on the web with a general purpose flour and that was a bit too stodgy! Never mind when I bought the beef it was buy one joint get one free, so I can have another go at it later in the summer and this time I will make it with self raising!

Whilst I was cooking Roy dropped in so that I could show him the alarm system, I now have to write out a set of instructions so he knows how to change the code as it is not like any system he is familiar with.

After dinner we all played cards, Baggage had bought herself some poker chips when she and Lisa stopped off at Win Dixie on the way back from the library. After Baggage had gone to bed we watched America’s Got Talent, then Lisa Rachel, Katie and I played a few more hands of cards.

I have now moved onto the case of Sam Adams White Beer, when I opened it I noticed the best before date was May ’09, but it tastes OK so I am not going to bother returning it.

Thursday 9th July

First job this morning, after a quick swim, was to clear the rubbish out the back of the house next door. I would not normally clear up someone else’s rubbish. but it seems as if the occupants moved out last weekend and they have left a couple of dustbin bags full of food outside their patio door and the smell has already become offensive, add to that the fact that in the night something rummaged through the bags and spread the rubbish and I had to do something.

Whilst outside I also replaced one of our sprinkler heads which was no longer popping up. Yesterday when it started to rain the sprinkler’s came on, could be a fault in the rain gauge that determines if it has rained and thus you do not need the sprinkler’s to come on, I will have to keep an eye on that.

Baggage and Lisa got on with Baggages school work, today was a role reversal day, so Baggage was the teacher and Lisa the pupil.

This afternoon the girls took Baggage to the cinema to see Ice Age 3, Lisa and I took advantage of having the afternoon off and went food shopping (exciting!).

Before we went out I had to phone the people we rented off in Hawaii as they had returned our deposit less $100 to cover the cost of getting out a plumber to unblock their drains, a problem that they blamed on us. When we were there we were aware of this problem however at the time were told we were not being blamed for it, so I was somewhat surprised to learn we were now being charged $100. After a debate on the subject they agreed to refund the $100, I do not mind being charged for something if it is my fault but in this case I am not sure it was and also do not like the way it was dealt with, they had plenty of time to tell us they would be withholding the $100 whilst we were there, after all they only lived downstairs. Even though we are getting our $100 back I am not satisfied with the outcome, it seems a pity that the memory of us left with the people we rented from in Hawaii is not a good one, guess we will not be renting from them again!

For the last few days Katie has been complaining about pains in her shoulder and abdomen, tonight Lisa had an idea that it might be related to a collapsed lung which has been prevalent on her side of the family and once she had that idea could do nothing but take Katie to a doctor. As I am writing this I am waiting for them to get back from a visit to a paediatric care centre, I have spoken to Katie on the phone and she tells me they gave her a pretty good check over and they do not know what is wrong with her, they have suggested she takes herself down to the hospital in Celebration in the morning. We have to wait to find out what is wrong with her.

July 6th - Cars crashing & Independence Day

2009-07-07T14:39:00.004+01:00

Thursday 2nd

Today we stayed in. Billy came round to fit the external siren to the alarm system. The girls spent a bit of time in the pool and I managed to get a bit of Baggage web site work done.

Friday 3rd

Today we stayed in all day and again Billy came round, this time to install the remote keypad and get the alarm system connected up to the phone line. We are off out this evening though, leaving to go to Crash-a-rama at the Orlando Speedworld at 5pm. Lisa had decided not to come with us, she was staying at the house for a bit of peace and quiet and the chance for an earlier night.

The racing did not start until 8 but by the time we had got there and found a seat, plus had a ride in the racing school bus that was going round the track we only had an hour to kill. I had never experienced anything quite like this, it was motorsport on steroids. There were a number of events and they were all very much a contact sport. The races were: 50 Lap endurance; Auto roller derby; Cars with back wheels replaced by skids; School Bus figure 8 racing; cars towing trailers; Monster Trucks; and a Destruction Derby. The School Bus racing was the most fun, though they were all pretty good, when I asked the girls if they wanted to leave about an hour before the end they most definitely did not. The racing did not end until after midnight and it was nearly 2am by the time we got back to the house. For a better understanding of what it was all about visit www.beingbaggage.com and take a look at the video diary entry for Crash-a-rama.

Saturday 4th - Independence Day

The plan had been to get up and go to the Celebration Independence day parade which was at 9am this morning, sort of missed that one! Eventually got up at just after 10 and decided it was best to spend the day in as we wanted to go out to Celebration tonight to see the fireworks. Lisa and I got to spend a bit of time in the pool on our own this morning, very relaxing. For dinner we had chili and rice, which we ate at about 4pm just before we left for Celebration.

We were so glad we had decided to go to Celebration rather than one of the theme parks for 4th July, the whole place had been converted over to a 4th of July party. The road along the lake front was closed to traffic, in the centre of it there was a stage with live music playing all night and there were concessions everywhere, mostly serving up food or drink. At the end by the cinema there was an inflatable play area and we bought Baggage a wrist band for it and she kept on going back to it all night. The big girls had decided to go to the cinema before the fireworks, however it was so crowded when they got into Celebration that they did not manage to park in time to get to see the show so they watched the band and looked around, we bumped into them a couple of times.

The fireworks were spectacular, though they did have a bit of a false start when due to technical difficulties they could not be started on cue. The went on for about 20 minutes and the sky was ablaze. Were they better than Hong Kong for Chinese new year, I cannot say, the memory is now too distant, but they were great and I got some really good video footage and pictures.

Getting out of Celebration after the fireworks was a bit of a challenge, the traffic was intense and did not seem to be being managed. Katie gave us a lift back out to our car as we had used the park-and-ride to get in and it still took us half an hour to get there. Whilst in the back of Katie’s car Baggage managed to split a glow in the dark headband making the inside of Katie’s car look a little like a glow worm cave!

We eventually got back to the house a little after 11pm, another late night for Baggage.

Sunday 5th

Another change of plans, we had intended to drive into Kissimmee today for a dog agility show, but after two late nights none of us really felt like it. Instead we had a fairly lazy start to the day and then we got on with a bit of cleaning, stripping beds etc. This afternoon Lisa, Baggage and I went into Downtown Disney as I wanted to check out what days we have left on our Disney park tickets before we try to use them, it turned out we had exactly what I thought so we are good for a few visits before they run out. Whilst there we looked for a couple of birthday presents but did not find anything and in the Ghiradelli chocolate shop I managed to lose the filling I had put in whilst in Ohope on a square of chocolate, probably judgement for going back into the shop for a 2nd square!

On the way back to the house we stopped at Walmart to get a few bits and pieces including the steak for tonights dinner, steak with a green been salad.

I am still working my way through the six pack of Sam Adams Cherry wheat, but have bought myself a half case of Sam Adams white beer to see me through when it is gone, whoops another wheat bear! The Cherry wheat is a very refreshing drink, you can taste the cherries which surprisingly complement the wheat beer taste and make it best drunk very cold which is what you need in this heat.

Monday 6th

Today Katie and Rachel are off to Islands of Adventure and we are staying at the house. First thing though I get hold of Danny on Skype, it has been a while since we have talked to him and it was good to hear his voice, he is staying in Guildford for most of the summer, though next week he is down to Devon as he has a couple of gigs with his band, the last ones before they split up and stop working together. This morning Baggage and Lisa get on with some schooling whilst I concentrate on getting the backlog of Baggage videos out of the way, by the end of the day I have completed 5 new videos to put up on the web site.

Billy comes again this afternoon, his last job on the alarm system which is to get us hooked up to the central monitoring station, this takes a couple of house and now we are all set. Whilst he is here Lisa and Baggage head over to the library to return some dvds and come back with a bunch more for Baggage to watch.

For dinner we have a Chinese take-out, a good time to do it as neither Rachel nor Katie like Chinese food and this evening Lisa and I watch Windtalkers which I bought for Lisa for her birthday as large amounts of the film were shot on Kualoa Ranch which we visited whilst in Hawaii. We were supposed to be able to see the International Space Station pass overhead this evening, though there was too much cloud cover, maybe we will have better luck tomorrow when it is also visible.

July 1st - a few more Floridian days

2009-07-02T03:58:00.000+01:00

On Monday morning I was got up and out of bed by Billy phoning and saying he would come round to fit another sensor and locate the alarm box in its final position. He turned up at around 11am and was here for a couple of hours. Katie and Rachel went out today, up International Drive and then to the cinema to see Transformers 2, Baggage got a solid morning’s schooling in and then after spending a bit of time on MSN went to the library with Lisa. I spent most of the day getting the house tidied up and sorted out, I was just fed up with the state of disorganisation we were living in and have been since we got here, after 6 months living from cases I wanted to feel everything was put away and tidy.

After supper Baggage and I went in the pool, the first time I have been for a swim in it since we got here a week ago. Lisa had bought water pistols whilst they were out earlier and we played with these, and various other things.

I am catching up with the backlog of videos and getting the photos on the website, today I added a further video, ‘Biking the Bridge’ and our photos from our road trip to Vegas and from Hollywood.

Tuesday bought the rain, it was raining when we got up and rained on and off all day. We decided to go to Florida Mall as we needed a few things plus had to take Baggage’s Macbook back to the Apple store to get a crack in the shell fixed. They are happy to fix the crack under the warranty, though it had to be sent away and will be about a week before we get it back. Whilst at the Mall we got Baggage a bear from Build-a-bear, she chose the bear though we dressed it in a graduation gown and mortar with a class of 2009 sash, the bear is her reward for putting up with ‘class of mum’ this year! For supper we stopped off at Cracker Barrel on the way back along #192.

Wednesday 1st, Lisa’s Birthday. We are all up much earlier this morning, though Lisa goes back to bed as she has a splitting headache. The plan was for us to go to a Disney Park this morning, though it is raining and the forecast is not good, so even though Lisa gets in free as it is her birthday we decide a theme park in the rain is not the best way to spend the day. Lisa eventually gets up at nearly 11 and is feeling a little better, she opens her presents and we decide to go out and play crazy golf. We head down the 192 and go to Bonanza golf, there is a lot of choice as to where you can play crazy golf here but we quite like Bonanza as it is not too dressy but the holes are fun to play. After the golf (which I win!) we head into Celebration for dinner at market Street Cafe, though before we eat we walk around the lake and do manage to see a couple of alligators in the water, one up close and a much bigger one a little way out.

After dinner we head back to the house and watch one of the dvds I gave Lisa for her birthday, West Side Story. I finish off the last two bottles of Michelob Wheat Beer. I already have my next beer lined up, Sam Adams Cherry Wheat, must make sure I do not buy a wheat beer next time!

Sunday June 28th - Florida Week 1

2009-06-30T14:19:00.001+01:00

I am not going to be adding to this journal everyday now that we are back in Florida, there would likely not be a lot to be saying if I did, however I will record, at least on a weekly basis, what we have been up to, and if I remember what beer I have been drinking.

Our first day back here was spent emptying our suitcases, catching up on all the clothes washing, we had bags and bags of it and preparing for Katie to join us, she is coming over as it is her birthday tomorrow and she wants to go to a Disney park and spend some time with us now that we are back in the USA.

At first she was coming for a few days and then leaving us to return to Fort Lauderdale before heading up to Canada for a couple of weeks with the family she has be Aupair-ing for to then return to us for a couple of weeks at the beginning of August before we head back to the UK. An issue at the airport when she returned from Mexico with the family last weekend however changed all that. Katie did not have all her forms on her and was stopped by immigration, she was given 30 days to submit all her paperwork and get it sorted or she has to leave the country, her passport has been stamped with a 30 day exit limit, over-riding her visa. Even if she gets this sorted she is now nervous about leaving the country in case she has any problem coming back in next time as it would mean she may not be allowed to leave the airport. It is a shame, the couple of weeks in Canada would have been a great experience, though I can fully understand that after an hour and a half in the hands of immigration officials she does not want to run the risk of going there again. So now Katie is likely to be with us for most of the summer as there is no reason for her to be in Fort Lauderdale in an empty house.

Katie and her friend Rachel arrived at around 4pm after having driven up from Fort Lauderdale, even though she is effectively not working for them any more the family she worked for are letting her keep hold of the car they provided until she leaves the country at the end of August, very good of them and great for Katie as it does mean she retains a high level of independence.

Tuesday was Katie’s birthday, she had already had her main present from us, we replaced her laptop with a Macbook when it got stolen, we did however have a number of little things for her, many of them items we had picked up on our travels. Katie and Rachel spent the day at Animal Kingdom and when they got back we went out to Chilis for dinner, not the best performance from the restaurant, Baggage’s Pizza was undercooked, as was the one they replaced it with, still we got it free, plus a free sweet and free Margaritas to compensate. I had got hold of an alarm company, well single installer in reality, to see about getting an alarm fitted and he came around today to discuss the options. We decided on a system, agreed on a price and he got the system on order for us.

On Wednesday we mainly just chilled around the house. Lisa and Baggage did go to the Library this afternoon as there was a craft session there, Baggage made a pom-pom caterpillar and then helped the smaller children make theirs.

Thursday was another day in, all this time I have been sorting out the stuff from the locked cupboard we keep here that was broken into and I have also fitted a second lock to it’s door making it a little harder to get into than before. I have also bought a further dead-bolt for the pool bath door that I will fit where it cannot be reached through the window if that is smashed, this was how the thieves gained access a couple of months ago! After supper we all watched ‘The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas’ which we had bought Katie for her birthday, Baggage and Lisa had read the book together whilst we were travelling but Baggage still cried.

On Friday Billy came to install the alarm system. All the girls went out in the morning to an English shop and the library and bank and I stayed in whilst the system was being fitted. We changed the design of the system a little before it was installed and Billy needs to order some extra components but what he had he installed so that it is working, even if not all there.

On Saturday we spent the morning at the house and then went to Universal studios in the afternoon. We went on a few rides, Jaws, Men in Black, The Mummy and Shrek 4D then watched a concert in Universal’s summer series, Natasha Beddingfield. Katie was particularly excited about this as she has liked her music for a number of years. It was OK, though I would not go out of my way to see her again. Baggage was very tired by the time the concert started and spent most of the time sat on a kerb and not bothering to watch.

Sunday saw a day at the house and Lisa and I decided that after being here for a week we ought to clean a bit, we therefore stripped all the beds and washed the sheets and cleaned all the bathrooms and toilets. The house is still very disorganised, we do not seem to have got on top of things this visit. We were going to go up to Lake Ridge winery this afternoon, but Baggage was not keen to go out as she was talking to her friends on MSN so Lisa ended up staying in and I went up the road to Walmart to get a few supplies that we needed. I did manage to catch the MotoGP this evening, it was the race from Assen in Holland and Rossi won his 100th Grand prix, quite an achievement, it is good to see him leading the championship again also.

As for the beer, the Honeymoon went down very well and when gone to replace it I bought a Michelob wheat beer sampler pack, two each of three different beers. Honeymoon is a wheat beer, based on Blue Moon but with honey added into the brewing process as the name suggests, a very refreshing drink for a hot place. As to the sampler pack it contained, Honey Wheat, similar to Honeymoon though a little sweeter, Shock-Top a belgian style beer with various spices and a strong citrus tang, again very refreshing and Dunkel Weisse, a clear, dark, wheat brew. All three different beers proved very good. Time to pick up something different again!

22nd June - Return to Florida

2009-06-30T02:44:00.002+01:00

Our travelling has come to an end, yet we are not returning to the UK until nearly the end of August, to fill the gap we are spending the summer in Florida, tropical storms and all!

There is no rush this morning, we do not plan on leaving the hotel until nearly midday, as that is when we have to check out and we do not fly until 4pm. We get up, finish off the packing and then drag the suitcases with us when we go down to breakfast so that we can get them in the car. We decide to eat at Kahunaville again, this time Lisa and I go for the three eggs and Baggage goes for a fruit platter and it is massive, there is so much fruit on it that it would have done as a continental breakfast for the three of us, she manages it very well, though there is never any possibility of her eating it all.

After breakfast I head for the lobby and check us out and then head back up to the room and we finish off our last few bits of packing, we eventually leave the room just after 11am. On the way to the airport we have to get fuel and it turns out to be a good job we are running a bit early as we drive to the airport to find out the car return is some six miles away, so we then have to head over there, return the car and get a shuttle bus back to the airport. Had I been thinking ahead I could have dropped Lisa and Baggage off at the departure area as I drove through the airport, but I was not so we all ended up hauling our cases onto and off of the transit bus. Check-in was painless and we were soon all sitting in the departure lounge. We managed to find a free Internet connection so that enabled us all to catch up on email whilst waiting for the flight. The most memorable event in the airport was when Baggage kicked over a full cup of Sprite, it went all over the floor and all down the side of a gentleman’s luggage, luckily he was pretty laid back about it and did not seem to mind too much, though it was pretty embarrassing for us!

The plane left pretty well on time, the flight was pretty uneventful and we arrived in Orlando pretty well on-time. Our flight got us in at 11:30 and by the time we had got our bags and the hire car and were driving out of the airport it was well after midnight.

On the way to the house we stopped off at Walmart to get a few basic supplies and then finally made it to the house at nearly 2am. In our minds of course it was only 11am as we had gained three hours during the flight over from Vegas.

Even though it was so late we did not rush straight off to bed, instead we allowed ourselves to chill a bit and then called it a day, one thing we did not do was unpack anything other than what we needed to go to bed from the cases.

I did manage to pick up a few beers when in Walmart, I got Honeymoon, the summer ale from Blue Moon brewery, though it will have to wait until tomorrow night for me to see what that is like.

June 20th - Last day in Vegas

2009-06-28T15:42:00.004+01:00

Tonight will be our last night in a hotel before we return to Florida tomorrow, five months of travelling and living out of a suitcase will come to an end. To mark the occasion we have booked tickets to go and see the Cirque de Soleil perform Love this evening.

We do not hurry to get up and when we do I have to go out to the Mirage to collect our tickets whilst Baggage and Lisa go for a swim. Saturday in Vegas is much busier than the other days we have been here and the experience by the pool is not as pleasurable as it should have been, another sign of Vegas not being so family friendly, the pool is crowded with people drinking around the edge and there is a DJ with music booming out, glad I did not go!

On the way back from getting the tickets I have another session on the fruit machines and then head back up to the room where I do some packing whilst waiting for the girls. When they return we head down to the hotel’s buffet lunch, at the weekend they do a champagne brunch, you pay $7 more than the normal lunch buffet, but the champagne flows as long as you want it. The buffet is excellent, though it is one of the ways that Vegas hotels compete to get people through the door to play the machines, so you would expect it to be. I start with Sushi, then have a salad, followed by some Chinese and then a barbecue plate, as if that was not enough I then hit the sweet counter and have a number of samples of the various delights on offer, at the end of it I feel as if I have eaten for a week, it does not hurt once in a while!

After lunch I decide to head over to the Imperial Palace to take a look at the Auto Collection on display there, Baggage and Lisa opt to stay in our hotel. The cars are really impressive, they are all classic and many are worth well in excess of $1,000,000, most are for sale. There are over 250 cars spread across three halls, they range from one of a kind prototypes to cars made famous in the movies such as the Mini Cooper driver by Charlize Theron in The Italian Job. I guess my favourite car is the Ford Torino in red with the white stripe as used in Starsky & Hutch (The Movie) would have been better had it been an original car from the TV series though!

Back to the hotel and Lisa and Baggage are not in the room, Baggage has made a friend her own age and they are down at the pool, they only just get abck in time for us to go across to the Mirage to see Love.

We take the inter hotel monorail from Treasure Island to the Mirage and get there in plenty of time for the show. Love is a Cirque de Soleil show set to the music of the Beatles, a variety of Beatles tracks taken from various periods of their recording career. Paul McCartney and Ringo Star worked with the Love producer to select the music and George and Giles Martin re-mastered the tracks, the show is the nearest you will ever get to seeing the Beatles live in concert. It is great, all the songs have been interpreted and the action on stage depicts the interpretation, the show tells the story of four boys form their childhood during the war through to their early 20s, loosely based on the lives of the Beatles. The live action is combined with projected images which includes psuedo Beatles silouhettes at certain points in the show playing along with the music. There are also a number of segments of studio chat between the Beatles recorded during the originl studio sessions where their albums were laid down. The show is great, we all really enjoy it, a fitting end to our time as travellers.

After the show we head back to Treasure Island, we catch the Volcano show on the way out of The Mirage, water and light is used to give the volcano feature out front of the hotel the impression of erupting. We then try to catch the Sirens show at TI, unfortunately there is a bit of wind and the show is cancelled so we head inside for something to eat and all grab a sandwich. I then head out and take my cameras to get some final night shots of Vegas before we leave and on the way back check out the Sirens show again, which is again cancelled, though a couple of the Sirens are posing in the lobby by way of compensation and I do get to have my photo taken with them. By the time I get back to the room it is well after 11 so I just grab one quick beer before we all settle down for the night, my last bottle of Red Trolley ale will not be drunk as I had two left and will not pack the one after tonight’s to get it back to Florida, if it were to open it would make a right mess!

19th June - Grand Canyon

2009-06-26T21:59:00.004+01:00

Today we are off to the Hoover Dam and the Grand Canyon so we do not hang about too much before we head off from the hotel.

We grab a cooked breakfast from one of the hotel restaurants, Kahunaville, it is a Hawaiian themed restaurant though we all go for the traditional American ‘3 eggs any style’ option.

It takes about 45 minutes to drive out to the Hoover Dam, there is construction work going on there as they are in the process of building a large suspension bridge for the freeway that will bypass the dam, at present all traffic has to drop down into the valley and cross the top of the dam, in the future only those cars actually wanting to see the dam will have to make that descent, I would also expect they will close the road over the dam in the evenings as at present they have to have a 24/7 security post on the road screening all traffic crossing the dam against terrorist threat.

The sheer scale of the dam is very impressive, it is also architecturally impressive as it demonstrates very clearly its art deco heritage from the 1930s when it was constructed. The building of the new road was also impressive to see and it was interesting to be able to show Baggage the way in which a major bridge is constructed, particularly as she has walked over so many of them during the past 7 months.

We parked and walked across the dam, did the customary one foot in each state, though could not do the one foot at 10am and one foot at 11am stunt as both Nevada and Arizona were on the same time, I guess one of them does not implement summertime adjustment? We also got what will be the final Baggage mode of transport photo, her feet as she crossed the state line.

From the Dam we drove on to Grand Canyon West where the Hualapia Indian nation have opened up there land to tourists wishing to see the canyon and have built the Grand Canyon Skywalk to give visitors to the canyon a new perspective. The drive from the Dam to the canyon was about 1 hour and 45 minutes, 14 of the last 21 miles being off sealed road and on a graded dust track, technically I guess the rental car was not insured for this section! By the time we reached the parking area the car was thick with dust, reckon I will have to lean that off before I return or or it is a bit of a give-away!

Grand Canyon West offers a number of options as to how you can spend your day, there is an entry pass which is $29 each which includes the use of the shuttle buses that takes you to the Skywalk and the lookout spot, it is then an extra $29 to walk on the Skywalk. When buying the tickets they also loaded an extra $11 each for environmental impact and fuel, so for the three of us to get in and walk on the Skywalk it was just over $200. Our first stop after buying the tickets was the Skywalk, this is a semicircular transparent pathway mad of strengthened clear plastic that extend out 4,000 feet above the canyon floor. The first thing you notice is that it does not seem as if you are 4.000 feet above the floor, the canyon is immense and there is nothing to scale it by, it was not until we saw a helicopter flying in front of the opposite canyon wall that we got some idea of the scale. It was fun to do the Skywalk but it is not as large as I expected from having seen it on brochures, you can take as long on it as you want, but to simply walk around would take less than a couple of minutes, not much fort $29 a head. You are also not allowed to take your own cameras on the walkway, they say so that you do not drop them and scratch the flooring, however it just so happens that they will take a photo of you that you can buy in the shop for $30. You really do not get the feeling of being high above the canyon floor, you can see it is a long way down, but I have recently been on top of the Empire State building in New York which is half the height of the Skywalk, yet because you get a good sense of scale looking down on buildings, cars and people the top of the Empire State felt higher.

After the Skywalk I took a walk around the demonstration of Indian home building techniques, Baggage and Lisa opted to stay in the shade, then we got back on the bus and headed to Guano point. Guano point offers the best point for a view of the Canyon within the Hualapia area, it left me wondering why this area was not chosen for the Skywalk, possibly something to do with the significance of Eagle Ridge to the Indians which is where the Skywalk is. From the point you are looking down on a bend in the canyon where it also forks slightly and you have a superb view of the Colorado River coming in down the far fork. Again at first there is no sense of scale and it took a passing helicopter, which was little more than a spec against the immenseness of the far wall, to give it some perspective. We walked right out to the point of the lookout for the best view, at this point there are the remains of an old Guano mining operation, at one time there was a tramway here that descended the canyon, now about the only remnant of it is the cable house and gantry on the side we were on. To make the most of the view I took a number of overlapping photos, at some point I might get around to stitching them together into a panorama.

From here we took the bus back to the car park area where we spent a while, and a little cash, in the gift shop before heading off. We made a quick stop at the Hualapia Ranch on the way out as we wanted to see if we could get a souvenir spoon depicting the canyon and the main gift shop had sold out, unfortunately we could not. The ranch was great, a model of a small western town, complete with Sheriff’s office, saloon and undertaker, it was unfortunate it was at the end of the day, you could easily have spent a few hours here.

On the way back to Vegas we stopped again at the Hoover Dam, this time at the lookout on the east side of the dam where we took a few photos of the sun setting over the dam, not sure how they will come out as the sun was very much in our face. We also stopped at Pizza Hut in Boulder City for a bit of supper as by now it was 8pm and would be far too late to eat if we headed all the way back to Vegas. The food was OK, Pizza hut is pretty dependable but this was not the best we have had.

Back at the hotel we were all pretty tired, it was nearly 10pm when we got to our room so after a couple of beers it was time to hit the sack. I am still working my way through the bottles of Red Trolley Ale, and still enjoying them, in fact they are nicer here where I am not drinking them from a fridge, it would seem this is similar to a bitter in the UK, a beer best not drunk cold.

18th June - Our first day in Vegas

2009-06-26T02:02:00.004+01:00

Today we are going to see what is around in Vegas, the plan is to walk along the strip and see what we find to do. The only fixed point will be our starting point as we will start with a visit to Madame Tussauds which we had tried to do for Baggage in LA.

We are not early rising this morning, and when we do get up we eat some of the food we picked up yesterday evening for Breakfast. Once up we do not hand about and are soon walking out of the hotel and across the road to Madame Tussauds. I did not have high expectations as whilst I have enjoyed visiting Tussauds in both London and Amsterdam I had been told that this one is a bit disappointing, but we had promised it to Baggage so we duly delivered. We were pleasantly surprised, Tussauds Las Vegas is billed as an interactive experience, you can mingle with the models: get into bed with Hugh Heffner; Touch J-Lo’s bum and make her blush; play golf with Tiger Woods, marry George Clooney; sing with the Rat Pack etc. We did most of them, or at least those that were appropriate, we have great video footage of me giving Baggage away to George Clooney, though I am still waiting for the dowry cheque. In all we were in Tussauds for almost two hours and really enjoyed ourselves, Baggage made sure she was photographed with everyone, or is that everything?

After Tussauds we walked on down the Strip, it was extremely hot and we ducked in many places just to get out of the heat. We stopped to eat at the Harley Davidson Cafe, a themed restaurant as you would expect from the name, with motorbikes and suitable memorabilia on display throughout. The food was pretty good and not badly priced and it was an interesting place to eat, plus served as somewhere to sit down and cool off.

We had planned to walk all the way down the strip, but the heat meant that this café was almost as far as we got and when we left after eating we pushed on to the MGM Grande and paid a visit to the lion habitat, but then started walking back down towards our hotel. On the way we saw the fountain display outside the front of the Belagio, which was very impressive and then went up the replica of the Eiffel Tower that is the centre piece of the Paris hotel for great views of the strip and a superb photo opportunity.

On the way back to the hotel the girls went on ahead and I did a bit of shopping and then had a go on the slot machines in Casino Royale, only the free go that you can win tickets for at the promo machines outside the Casino, but it gave me an understanding of how a typical Vegas slot machine works.

Vegas is not really a family destination, it could be but would need a bit of cleaning up, there is plenty for the kids to do but leaflet distributors who line the pavements dealing out cards advertising girls who will be delivered directly to your hotel room is not really what you want your children exposed to. The leaflet distributors are in your face as you walk down the strip and they do not hold back from trying to distribute to women with children, they line the road side of the pavement and flick the cards as they draw the top one from the deck and try to give it to you. Where they are distributing their cards also cover the pavement where they have been dropped making it slippery to walk upon.

I picked up a few things we needed for tomorrow from Walgreens and managed to fond a few presents, including tee shirts for Baggage and Lisa (Lisa’s fitted Baggage and Baggage’s was too small even for her! I had to go back out again later to change it for a bigger size) and then made my way back to the room. After a while in the room we went down to the café in our hotel for a bit of supper, Lisa and I each had soup and Baggage had Eggs Benedict without the hollandaise sauce (poached eggs on toast!).

We were not late to bed tonight as tomorrow we are off to the Grand Canyon and it will be a long day.

17th June - On to Vegas

2009-06-24T18:16:00.005+01:00

Today we are heading for Vegas, it is about a 4 hour drive from Pasadena so we are going to take the shortest route as determined by the Sat Nav.

We grab breakfast in the hotel room and head off before 10am.

As we are letting the Sat Nav take us there via the shortest route it is straight on the freeway. We have only been on the freeway for about 5 minutes however before we hit a traffic build up due to an accident at some road works that takes us about 20 minutes to clear. At about midday we stop at a small shopping centre with a Target as Lisa needs a comfort stop, so we decide to grab something for lunch, we do not need much after the big breakfast we had. Lisa and Baggage each buy themselves a new book also, Baggage get Miley Cyrus’ Miles to go and Lisa get Marly and Me, both books they had been looking out for.

We stop a couple of times more on the way to Vegas once at a reasonably sized shopping mall that seems so remote from anywhere you wonder where all it’s shoppers come from and once at a service area in the desert, it probably ranks as the nicest service area we have found in the entire trip, it is fairly new and exceptionally clean.

The drive is amazing, the scenery as you drive across the desert a combination of mountain backdrop behind flat featureless plains. We climb up a couple of times and then descend into deep wide valleys, with temperature differences between the summit, where we see about 82 degrees, and the valley floor, where it is approaching 100 degrees. Lisa captures the spirit of the drive on video in a few places, we will have to see how well that comes out as the camera was bouncing about a bit with the movement of the car.

We arrive in Vegas just after 4pm and find our hotel easily. As we are arriving in Vegas in the light we do not get the highest level of impact from coming across this pool of life in the desert that you get when you come across a blazing beacon after driving for miles in the absolute night. It is still a sight to behold however and unless you have been there you probably cannot fully appreciate how out of place it seems to be.

After check-in to get to our room we have to walk through the casino, it is at the heart of all the Vegas hotels, after all that is why most people are here. One thing hits me straight away, there are rows and rows of slot machines, but not people sat on the stools with buckets of quarters and the jingle of coins filling the air as I have seen in all movies depicting Vegas, it has all gone paper based, you put your bills in to buy credits, play the credits and get your winnings out on a ticket, though I am not to get one of the latter at all whilst I am here!

After chilling for a while at the hotel, we are staying at Treasure Island, one of the many on-strip themed hotels, we head out to have a look around and get something to eat.

On the way out of the hotel we find that one of the hotels free shows, The Sirens of TI, is about to start so we decide to watch it. It is one for the adults rather than the kids, but then that goes for the whole of Vegas, a bit of a raunchy show where a boat load of Sirens (women of the sea) repel a boat load of pirates through a number of scantily clad dance routines. All good fun.

From our hotel we head across the road to the Venetian where we find a nice noodle bar and decide to stop here for our supper. After we have eaten we decide to go for the indoor gondola ride through the canals in the Venetian, OK so it is not real, the canals are in reality no more than an elongated pond, the gondolas are powered by electric motor and the gondolier is only responsible for steering the boat and singing under a painted sky, but Baggage loves it and it is another form of transport to add to her list.

After our ride we wander through the shops in the Venetian and then go to Wallgreens, which is between the Venetian and Treasure Island, to grab a few basic supplies to have in our room. By the time we get back to our room it is time to think about going to bed.

As we are settling down to sleep we hear a train horn and on looking out of our bedroom window, we are on the back of the hotel on the 29th floor, we see a train track not that far away carrying goods traffic. Memories of Hummelstown last Autumn come back when we were kept awake at night by the sound of the goods trains at the unmanned crossings and we dread a bad night’s sleep, however even though we hear a few more trains before we get to sleep they do not really bother us once we have settled down.

16th June - Hollywood

2009-06-24T16:46:00.006+01:00

Today we get up promptly, eat breakfast in our hotel room, we bought some fruit and yogurt yesterday, and head straight out to catch the train into LA. Today we are doing Hollywood!

The train Journey takes about an hour in total with one change at Union Station, we get off at the station on the junction of Hollywood Boulevard and Highland. As with all public transport we have used in the US it is very cheap, we purchased a day pass which gives unlimited use of the LA metro system for only $5 each. The first part of the journey is above ground so we get a good view of our entry into LA, the second part however across LA and into Hollywood is below ground.

We emerge back into daylight in the middle of Hollywood’s walk of fame, here the stars of the stars are laid out in the sidewalk, if you are not careful you can be walking on Betty Davis, Sting, or Harrison Ford! The walk of fame is not only lined with stars, it is also lined with people in costumes, most of them pretty bad, who will happily pose with you for a photo then ask for a small demonstration of your gratitude, by the number of them there it must be quite a lucrative business. The worst we see has to be a Homer Simpson, the head of the costume does not even fit the person wearing it properly, there is also a Marilyn Monroe who was probably as old as Marilyn’s Mother was when Marilyn died.

We head down the walk of fame to the Chinese Theatre, the site of many movie premieres and where the hand and footprints of the stars fill the courtyard, from here we are going to take a guided tour of the homes of the stars, a bit cheesy but Baggage really wants to do it. Lisa opts out of this tour, it is two hours with no stops, and elects to see the sights from a hop on hop off bus tour instead, so Baggage and I pay our Dollars and hop aboard. The tour is given in a convertible minibus, which with the sun beating down today is a great way to get around and be able to get good photos at the same time.

The tour takes us through Hollywood, Beverly Hills, Rodeo Drive, Sunset Strip, Bel Aire and the Hollywood Hills, we see the famous Beverly Hills and Hollywood signs and the houses of numerous stars, or at least in some case the gates as the houses are well back off the road and there are tall hedges for privacy in front of most of them. Among those we see are Madonna, Elton John, Phil Collins, Nicholas Cage, Larry King, the Playboy Mansion and where the Fresh Prince of Bel Aire was set. If you want to see the homes of the stars and only have a day in the area a tour like this is fine, though if you have longer and a car you would probably have much more fun if you were to buy a star map and do the tour yourself, after all you could even do it early in the morning and stop for Breakfast with Larry King as he frequents the same coffee shop every morning, or get a takeout coffee and enjoy it in the park near Bel Aire where a number of the rich and famous are known to take their morning jog. Whilst driving down Sunset Strip Baggage and I see a chap in a white classic Mercedes, it may not have been Orlando Bloom, but if it was not he was a very close look alike, unfortunately I was not quick enough to get a photo so we could have been sure.

Back in town we have to wait nearly 45 minutes for Lisa to turn up, much to Baggage’s frustration as she seems to have less and less patience the longer we are travelling. Lisa had in fact not hopped off her bus at all and had gone for a two hour route which when you allowed for all the stops and the traffic had taken longer. Her route had been similar to ours though a bit wider in radius and no driving up and down the residential streets.

For lunch we find a nice flat bread cafe, Lisa and Baggage both have wraps, I have a flat bread grill which is like a pizza on a wrap.

After lunch we do the tour of the Chinese theatre which is very interesting, we get to see the biggest theatre screen in the US and behind the scenes where in the past the stars would have readied themselves for a premiere. Baggage and I also get to try out the new D-Max, sight and sensation seats, where your seat moves in relation to the movie you are watching to ‘complete the movie experience’

Our next stop is El Capitain, the Walt Disney flagship theatre on Hollywood Boulevard, here we watch Up, though the experience is not the same as it would have been in any other theatre. Firstly there is a live organist playing music before the film starts, as there would have been in most theatres in days gone by, then after the trailers (and there are no adds) a dance troupe take to the stage and you get a Magic Kingdom style song and dance show for about 20 minutes before the main feature. We had no expectation of this when we bought our tickets, though it did add up to a movie experience I doubt we will ever forget.

After the movie it is time for something to eat so we head for Mel’s Diner, a Hollywood institution since the 50s and have a great, and surprisingly very reasonably priced meal. The place does not look like it has changed much inside since the 50s, though I guess that is part of it’s appeal. I opt for the American standard of Burger and Chips, Lisa has Fish and Chips and Baggage has Chicken Noodle Soup.

After the diner we wander on down Hollywood Boulevard towards Hollywood and Vine and are once again able to see the famous Hollywood sign between the buildings. At the Junction of Hollywood and Vine lisa asks at the Pantages theatre if they have a public restroom to be told they do not and she could not be let around the back, one of the security guards then talks to us, shows Lisa where a bar is she can go to but when he discovers Baggage also needs to use the toilet he lets us in around the back of the theatre so she can go. When we are in there he then lets us into the back of the auditorium to see a bit of Dirty Dancing that is being performed on the stage, it is a presentation of the original Broadway production. We watch about 5 minutes before we gesture we probably need to leave as we want to catch the subway, I wonder how long he would have let us stay there if we had nowhere else to go?

We catch the train back to Pasadena and eventually get back to our hotel after 10pm, we are all exhausted after a full day in the city.

June 15th - Madonna to Pasadena

2009-06-21T22:57:00.004+01:00

We were not in such a hurry to get moving this morning, we enjoy a leisurely breakfast at the Copper Kettle, the Madonna Inn’s café and set off at about 11am. We have just over 200 miles to drive to get us to our hotel in Pasadena, which we will be using as the base for our day out in LA tomorrow.

Today we are letting the Sat Nav take us there via the shortest route, so it is straight on the freeway. After about an hour we pull off fore some petrol, we are driving a Jeep Grand Cherokee at the moment an it is certainly a thirsty beast. At around lunch time we find ourselves passing close to Solvang so decide to take a detour and a break from the journey and have a look around. Solvang is a Danish town in the heart of California, obviously very aware that the Danish look to the town attracts tourists the town has ensured that only building in the Danish style are built in the centre and has become a thriving tourist destination. It is very nice and we have exceptional Danish pastries, but you cannot help but feel it is all a little contrived and that the only reason the community build in this way is for the visitors benefit.

We stop once more on the way to Pasadena, again for a comfort break and we arrive at the hotel just after 4pm. We are staying at the Sheraton tonight, I got a great rate on-line, and it is exactly what you would expect a Sheraton to be. Our room is large with two double beds, the hotel is very clean and tidy, our bathroom feels as though it has recently been redecorated, though the hotel is not too old, so it probably hasn’t.

After a spell in the room we head out to have a look around and get something to eat. We drive through downtown Pasadena which looks like a very nice town (The americans probably call it a city, but then everything seems to be a city!). The centre is very modern and well laid out, just off the centre there is a full supporting service of all the usual suspects you find around a US town, fast food joints, coffee shops, mini malls etc. The college looks very new and a good place to study and is not too far from the centre of town, and the housing, again not far from the centre looks new and spacious. You have to wonder what was here before all this new stuff was built?

We end up eating at McDonalds, not the most adventurous of establishment, but quick and easy and you know what you will get!

After we have eaten we head for a supermarket to pick up a few basic items, including the essentials of beer for me and wine for Lisa. I get Lisa a case of 4 small bottles of wine as we will be travelling and this is a good way to do it rather than having to worry about open bottles. For my beer I get Karl Strauss - Red Trolley Ale, a Californian beer brewed in San Diego, originally brewed as a christmas special but it became so popular that they now brew and bottle it all year round, and I can see why.

Back to the hotel we watch a bit of telly and I catch up on my journal, we are not too late to bed as tomorrow will be a long day.

Sunday June 14th - Arriving at the Madonna Inn

2009-06-21T22:46:00.004+01:00

We did not hang about in the morning, we were up and out of the room by just after 9am, first stop Carmel-by-the-sea for breakfast. Carmel is a lovely little town only 6 miles further on down the coast from Monterey, it’s claim to fame is that Clint Eastwood was Mayor of the town from 1986 to 1988. We had breakfast at a quant little restaurant called The Cottage, at first we struggled to find somewhere to eat, but this place was a real treat. The breakfasts were great, possibly the best we have eaten out all trip, in all breakfast there cost us $40, but it was well worth it. We all had Eggs, I had mine with bacon and Lisa and Baggage both had theirs with fruit and toast.

Before we left Carmel we had a wander through it’s streets and bought Danny a really appropriate T-Shirt, if he is reading this and wants to know what it is, he will just have to wait until we get home.

From Carmel we drove on down the coast, our destination The Madonna Inn at San Luis Obispo, stopping at many places along the way to admire the rugged coastal scenery and take photos of the views.

Along the journey we managed to see: a very pretty blue breasted bird; a sea otter; squirrels that were tame enough to eat right out of your hand; sea lions on a beach in the distance; elephant seals right up close. Baggage was a bit nervous of the squirrels at first though soon got the hang of feeding them and we have some great photos of her with them.

The elephant seals were amazing, such large pondering animals on the beach yet so graceful when they took to the water. The stretch of beach was full of them, there must have been more than 100 right where we were standing, the closest probably less than 20 feet away from us and all that separated us was a rope divide.

Highway 1 down the California coast is stunning, the section we drove went down around Big Sur and we stopped there for a late lunchtime snack, though we all only had an ice cream each as we were still recovering from our rather large breakfasts. The road winds and twists its way along the coast, at times placing very little between you and a sheer drop over the side of the road, wherever we stopped the views were breathtaking. When away from the coast the road is taking you through redwood forests, equally breathtaking.

We arrived at the Madonna in at just after 4pm, tonight is intended as a bit of a treat and something very different from the other hotels we have stayed in. The Madonna is a family run hotel were every room is themed and every theme is different making every room unique. We were in the pony room, a red room, the walls being half panelled with red stained wood and half red painted brickwork, all the fixtures were as you might have expected to find in a stable and a carousel horse was in the middle of the

room. The room was massive with two enormous King size beds, meaning Baggage had a whole King size to herself, it absolutely dwarfed her. Baggage loved it.

We did manage a peek into a few other rooms whilst we were there, of those we saw ours was the nicest, though on their website are pictures of all the rooms and some are just fantastic. We had decided to stay at the Madonna in right back when we were first planning this trip. My parents had stayed there about 20 years ago and we have recently seen it on a couple of TV programs, the place just fascinated us, and yes it did live up to all the hype. It is gaudy and brash, almost themepark-esque, without being as false as a theme park or these very large themed hotels. The rooms are very spread out, there are three blocks, we were in block 3 which is the newest, and even the layout and design of the blocks is different, in the centre of our block for instance was a round tower, giving the opportunity for a number of circular rooms with circular beds to be available.

After we had settled in we all went for a swim, the pool was very pleasant, large and gradually sloping, with two hot tubs and a waterfall feature off to the side, at 6pm the waterfall became a torrent and we were in the pool at the right time to witness that.

For dinner we ate in the hotels main restaurant, the food was excellent and the restaurant was a bit like a 50s diner, though all in pink. I had rib eye steak, Lisa had lamb chops and Baggage had salmon and rice, for afters Baggage and I shared an enormous slice of chocolate gateau.

Whilst waiting for our table we had a drink in the bar and at one point Baggage and Lisa went off to the toilet together and eventually returned after about 15 minutes with tales of how they had gone into the gents as they had been told they needed to go and have a look because the urinal was a waterfall running down a rock face, they had met another mother and daughter who were going for a look so had teemed up with them and had counted gents in and out to work out when they could mount their raid, Bagagge was fascinated. By the way the drink I had was a pint of hand pulled Fire Red ale, very nice it was too. To accompany dinner though I had no more beer as Lisa and I shared a bottle of Chardonnay, well I drank most of it as she reckoned she had enough after just a glass and a half! Still I was pretty jolly by the end of the evening!

After dinner it was time to retire though I did go for a wander and take some photos of the place after dark before calling it a day.

Saturday June 13th - Driving to Monterey

2009-06-21T22:45:00.000+01:00

Today we move on from San Francisco, we are heading for Monterey.

I head off at just before 9am to pick up the hire car, it is reserved at Dollar from their O’Farrell street office, I had booked an SUV for collection at 9am. When I got there the queue was ridiculous, at first I queued in the Dollar Express queue as I am a member, however after having been in that queue for about half an hour I was informed that I had to join the longer queue because I had a voucher for my car collection so was not using my Express membership properly? I was not prepared to go to the back of the queue which was now even longer than when I got there so I cut in after people I knew had arrived just after me. Eventually at 10:30 I got to the front of the queue to be told to come back in half an hour as they did not have a car for me. I went for a walk and ended up in the Apple shop. At 11am I returned to Dollar to wait at the counter for almost another hour before I finally got the paperwork for a car, I then had to go down to the garage and queue for another 15 minutes before I got the keys. I had arrived at Dollar minutes after 9am and it was past noon when I was driving out of the garage, and due to heavy traffic as it was a Saturday morning it was almost 1pm by the time I got back to the Tuscan Inn to collect Lisa and Baggage.

We had planned a leisurely drive all the way down the coast to Monterey, but as it was now so much later than we had intended we opted for the freeway which only picked up the coast road about a half hour north of Monterey. On the journey we made a brief stop to relieve ourselves and grab a spot of lunch, apart from that we headed directly there. We arrived at the hotel at about 3:30.

Not the best hotel we have stayed in, it was OK but very basic. The reception rooms were very tidy and it was those that had appeared in the web advert when I booked it, the bedrooms were just pretty basic, the kind of thing that if you had booked a travel lodge in the UK you would have been disappointed with when you arrived, still it is only for one night.

After a brief break from travelling we headed into Monterey to have a look around and get something to eat. Parking was a bit of a challenge, at first we manage to find a metered slot but have no change and the shops are reluctant to give any, then we do find a parking lot, reasonably central that is offering all day parking for $5. We eat in a smoke house and the food is very good, I go for pulled pork and chicken from the barbeque, Lisa has fried chicken and Baggage has chicken tenders and fries. After dinner we go for a walk and take some photos, we also hop on the free hop-on hop-off tram that runs between Monterey’s Fisherman’s Wharf and the Cannery area (we are in the cannery) though after a couple of blocks I establish that this might be the final run for the evening and it might be stopping at Fisherman’s Wharf and not returning and as that is a couple of miles away we quickly hop-off before we are too far from the cannery and then walk back to the car. I say ‘might’ as the driver appeared to be South American and his English, whilst much better than my Spanish, was such that we barely understood each other.

Back at the hotel we went for a walk on the beach and watched the sun go down, we also watched pelicans dropping into the water to catch their supper, it was a great sight, there were about 10 of them in the bay area and obviously a good amount of fish for them to eat.

Set up on the beach was a small wedding chapel, where a ceremony had been held earlier and it’s lanterns were still alight which gave some good photo opportunities, there was also a dead seal just off to the side of this, not very nice for the wedding party and luckily we managed to distract Baggage so she did not see it as doubtless it would have upset her. With the wedding happening right there I really would have thought someone could have moved the body as by it’s colour it looked as if it had been there for sometime.

After sunset we returned to the room and did a bit of stuff on the computer as this is likely to be the last place we have Internet for a while.

We were not too late to bed either as all of us were pretty tired.

June 12th - Riding the DUKW

2009-06-13T23:55:00.005+01:00

This morning we have a bit of a lay in, we are not rushing out as the plan is to grab a bit of lunch and then catch the 1pm DUKW tour of the city. We have been trying to get on a DUKW tour since we saw them in Baltimore last year, but for one reason or other have always failed, so today we are determined to make it.

Lisa does not feel too good this morning, she has been sleeping better, but does look pretty washed out, I know she is desperate to get back to Florida and for us not to be travelling anymore, I think she has just about reached her journey’s end!

We leave the hotel at about 11:30, first stop to buy the DUKW tickets, we are told that today there will be a 12:00 tour and decide to go for that, have a bit of a look around then return to get on the tour. When we get back we are told the 12 tour has been cancelled and we are transferred onto the 1pm tour, so now we head over to Boudin o grab a bite of lunch. I go for the clam chowder again and Baggage the tomato soup, Lisa is only up to a bit of dry bread.

After lunch we have a quick look in the Mechanical Museum, a collection of antique slot machines dating from the turn of last century, then it is time to head up to catch our DUKW. The vehicle is full and the driver slightly mad, he starts off by sitting at the back and harassing a couple, playing the part of a complete bafoon of a tourist, he then goes to the front to get rid of a water bottle at which point he reveals himself to be our driver. His attitude does not change at all during the tour, he has most of us in stitches.

We all get yellow duck callers for use on the DUKW and the driver certainly expects us to use them, regularly calling out for duck calls throughout the tour.

The tour is far too fast and the vehicle far too jerky to take any good photos, but it really is great fun, and throughout we get a hilarious commentary and the driver is constantly harassing other road users through is mic and loud speakers.

When we eventually get to the part where the DUKW goes onto the water we have to be joined by a qualified captain, who meets us at the ramp, I guess regulations will not let the DUKW onto the water with passengers onboard without a Captain, however all he does is sit there for the time he is with us.

Whilst on the water Baggage gets a good long time driving the DUKW and I even get a short go behind the wheel. It is very slow to respond to the steering controls when on the water, but then I guess even though it is amphibious it is still more at home on land.

We all really enjoy the tour, I guess as with any of these things it is the driver who makes it, or in some cases breaks it, and our driver really did make it for us. He told us that he was an actor and that both his dog and him had parts in the Robin Williams movie Mrs Doubtfire, if nothing else that will give us an excuse to watch that movie again when we get home to see if we can spot him in it.

After the DUKW tour we head for Pier 39, Baggage has a hat she wants and I had promised her we would go and get it. On the way back from there to the hotel Baggage grabs an Icee and I have an ice cream.

Back at the hotel we pack, we are leaving here tomorrow and heading on down towards Monterey, yet it seems as if we have only just got here. This last part of our trip will be over in a flash and before we know it we will be heading back on the plane to Florida.

After a couple of hours we head back out for Dinner, the first stop is the Mechanical Museum again as Baggage has a few more quarters to spend. We eat in The Franciscan Crab Restaurant which is right on the front and our table has a great view of the bay as we see the sun setting across it, during dinner Lisa also sees a dolphin and some seals in the water. For dinner I have Dungeness Crab, which is a bit of a local delicacy, Baggage has mussels and Lisa has Tilapia, we then round off with a couple of sweets, Baggage has wild strawberry cheese cake and I have ice cream. The restaurant is great and the service really good, a nice way to spend our last evening in San Francisco.

After dinner we wander down to Pier 39 again, we watch the seals for a bit then Baggage has a go on the carousel, on the way off the Pier Baggage gets a bag of doughnuts and Lisa gets a wooly hat, she is a bit cold!

Back at the hotel there is just time for a quick beer then we hit the sack, though we have trouble getting straight to sleep as there seems to be a lot of noise in the hotel tonight, maybe because it is a Friday night?

June 11th - Biking the Bridge

2009-06-12T17:09:00.007+01:00

Today we make a reasonable start out of the hotel, well 10am anyway, we are hiring bikes and are going to cycle over the Golden Gate bridge.

We pick up our bikes about 1.5 blocks from the start of the new cycle track that takes you almost to the start of the bridge path, they are very good condition mountain

bikes. We pay for a

Junior bike for Baggage, but she is too big for what they give her so they swap it to the same size as Lisa has, not bad as the junior price is just over half the full price.

It takes us over two hours to reach the base of the bridge which we were told would only take an hour, but we stopped numerous times along the way, including about 20 minutes at the Sea life visitors centre. There were only two inclines on the way to the bridge, Baggage struggled with both of them so it gave us all an excuse to get off and walk!

Of all the bridges we have seen since this trip started the Golden Gate has to be the most impressive, the way the colour contrasts the surrounding scenery, that fact that it is not simply a flat grey, the two tall towers and long spans, and maybe as Lisa suggested the fact that on the far end there is open countryside, it does not simply span city to city. It is also the least 21st century modified of all the big bridges we have seen, the walk way is not lined with high fencing to stop you throwing yourself off, in fact all that is between you and the fall to certain death in the channel below is a slightly above waist height railing with not even a fully enclosed panel beneath it.

Biking over the bridge was great, our path out of San Francisco would not have taken us this way so by biking it at least we get to cross it without going miles out of our way on Saturday. It was not as windy on the bridge as I expected, in fact we had ideal weather for a bike ride, there was a breeze, the sky was blue and the sun was warm but not too hot.

The bridge was busy, but I guess not as busy as I expected, we were able to find plenty of empty spaces and stop wherever we wanted for photos etc.

On the Sausalito side we stopped at a look out to look back at the city before heading down the hill into the town. the hill was very steep and there was no cycle path, possibly the most dangerous part of the entire trip. Sausalito is a quant town, which does not seem to have become oversized as a result of being close to San Francisco, in fact the entire area does not appear oversized, maybe it is just the use of low level housing as we are on the earth quake belt.

From Sausalito we caught the ferry back to San Francisco then cycled back up to return our bikes. After the bikes were back we stopped at Ben & Jerry’s for a well deserved ice cream treat.

After the ice cream we returned to the hotel for a couple of hours before we ventured out for dinner.

Tonight we are going where Baggage wants, Rain Forest Cafe, a typical chain of restaurants where the menu is the same and the food tastes the same the world over, but it is fun and Baggage likes it and as I said it was her choice. Baggage has a meal off the kids menu, Lisa has pot roast and I have coconut shrimp and Maui Maui, we also get a complementary starter courtesy of a voucher I had found. Tot drink I have a glass of a beer called Fat Tyre (I did check the name with the waiter and he assured me it was not Flat Tyre!), possibly the nicest pint since we left New Zealand. With her drink I let Baggage have one of their souvenir lightening glasses, something else we now have to fit in the suitcase.

After dinner Lisa and Baggage return to the hotel whilst I go for a walk, camera in hand. I head right out to the harbour wall that is at the start of the park area as this gives a good view of the bridge, but the sunset is not as dramatic tonight, there is a big cloud sitting right over Sacramento hill and the sun hides behind here as it goes down. Hopefully we should see some better sunsets as we head down Highway 1 and then later across the desert!

Back at the hotel room I had a bottle of Anchor Steam and then had to pop out to Safeway to get some milk before turning in for the night.

June 10th - Riding the cable car

2009-06-12T05:53:00.003+01:00

We are out of the hotel at about 10:30 this morning and we wander up to the Hyde Cable Car terminus where we catch the car up the hill to the centre of the city. This is the first time any of us have ridden a San Francisco Cable Car and we all opt to stand on the running board and hang off the side. It is incredible that in this sanitised world where you are so frequently prohibited from doing anything remotely dangerous that you can hang off the side of a relatively fast moving vehicle in a busy city with other vehicles manoeuvring around you, it is great fun.

We hopped off the first car at Lombard Street, keen to see the famous street that winds its way down the side of a very steep hill which has featured in so many movies over the years, we then got back on the next cable car all the way to Market street in the centre of the city.

We had a reason for coming into the city centre, other than just riding the Cable Car, Baggage has been growing since we left the UK and now needs some new jeans and Lisa needed some new underwear, we made successful purchases on both fronts.

We grabbed a bit of lunch in a food court on the ground floor of a large central shopping Mall and then headed back out of the centre on the cable car. This time we rode as far as California street and changed here for the California cable car which we rode all the way back down the hill to where we could catch the electric tram back along the harbour front.

On the way back to the hotel we did a bit of gift shopping and then returned to our room for a couple of hours before heading out again for the cable car and a ride up to Chinatown for dinner. We ended up eating at The Chinatown Restaurant, the food was very good. We ordered a bit of dim sum as a starter then a noodle dish and sweet and sour pork with rice, they got the sequencing all wrong though, we got the noodles first, then the dim sum, then the pork and lastly, quite a bit later, the rice. As it was the restaurants 90th birthday we also got an additional free dim sum dish which they did bring out first of all, and some green tea ice cream to finish off with, this was surprisingly very good.

After dinner I took a walk and some photos around Chinatown then we got the cable car back down the hill to Hyde. From here Lisa and Baggage headed back for the hotel whilst I stayed out and took some more photos firstly of the sunset over the bay, and then of the Fisherman’s Wharf area after dark.

On the way back to the hotel there was a bit of fuss outside a restaurant. Two silver SUVs were parked with police cars in front and behind and a security detail manning the doors of the cars, a few people had gathered to see who was going to come out of the restaurant and get into the car so I waited with them. After about 10 minutes the car doors were opened and a party came out of the restaurant escorted by their security detail, who they were I have no idea, nor did any of the other people waiting by the roadside to catch a glimpse.

Back at the hotel Lisa and Baggage were already getting ready for bed. I grabbed a bottle of Anchor Steam and uploaded a few photos off the camera after which it was time to turn in.

June 9th - Alcatraz

2009-06-12T05:51:00.003+01:00

Today we are off to Alcatraz, we are booked onto the 11:30 boat so have to be at the wharf for 11am, it is about a 20 minute walk from the hotel to where we will catch the boat.

Slept a bit better last night, though Lisa still had a lot of trouble getting to sleep. For breakfast this morning we had the croissants that I picked up last night in our room.

The crossing takes about 15 minutes, then we are greeted by Ranger John, who gives everyone a pep talk on what to do and not to do on the island before you are allowed to head on up to the cell block. The visit to the island comes complete with use of an audio guide whilst in the cell block, it is very good, the narration being given by a mix of ex-cons and prison officers, all who ‘did time’ on the Rock. The guide takes you through the history of the prison, introduces some of it’s more famous inmates and gives you an insight into some of the escape attempts, including the one immortalised by Clint Eastwood, when in 1962 3 convicts did escape the Rock and the one in the 50s that led to the Alcatraz prison riots.

After we left the cell block Lisa and Baggage headed back down to the dock, I took a bit more time over the journey down as I wanted to snap a few more photos.

Before we left the UK my Mum described to me how when she had visited Alcatraz with my Dad a few years ago he had hated the place, he had not felt comfortable there and had been very happy to get back on the boat and head across the bay at the end of their visit. I had not felt the same way, though I can understand it, the place is very foreboding, you get a sense of what has gone before as you walk around and when you are in the cell block at times you can easily imagine the cons within their small confines, as though they had only popped out for a quick spell in the exercise yard, even though the place is in reality brimming with tourists.

We got a boat back across the bay at around 3pm and after a wander back up to the hotel, stopping off a couple of times along the way we decided to take a break before going out for dinner tonight.

For dinner we head to Girardelli Square, the plan is to eat a lighter tea and then go to the Girardelli Ice Cream parlour for an ice cream sundae. We find a nice little diner on one corner of the square and decide that will do us for supper, Lisa has a salad, I have popcorn shrimp and Baggage has popcorn chicken. When it comes Baggage and I split the shrimp and the chicken between us giving us each a bot of a mixture. As is always the case with American restaurant meals there is far too much food and we end up leaving large amounts of it in order to make room for our ice cream.

After the diner we head across to the ice cream parlour and Lisa and Baggage share a Cookie Sundae, I have a Cable Car. Both are way too big and extremely over indulgent.

From here we take a slow walk back to the hotel and catch up on a few things before going to bed. We turn in at about 10:30, again a very late night for Baggage, but quite early for us.

June 8th - San Francisco Day 1

2009-06-12T01:23:00.004+01:00

Neither Lisa nor I slept very well last night and we have a bit of trouble getting up and moving as a result. We are eventually out at bed and ready to think about going out by just after 11am.

Our first stop is to get something to eat, we stop at Boudins the sour dough shop and both Baggage and I have soup in a bread bowl, I have clam chowder and Baggage has tomato. Lisa has a tuna sandwich. The food is really good.

We wander down to Pier 39 and have a look around the shops, plus go out to the end and watch the seals. Baggage gets some strawberries and chocolate sauce to dip them in and in true Baggage spirit when I give her $10 as she has no money for San Francisco she spends it all within 10 minutes.

It is quite amazing how the seals are so at home on the floating barges off the end of the pier, I guess before man came along the colony lived on the coast so why shout they move out. Also in the past I am sure they were well fed here, though today it is a crime to either feed or harass the seals as they are wild and protected animals.

Pier 39 has been totally transformed from it’s original commercial fishing use to a pleasure pier, today it is filled with boutique shops and things to do, we buy a couple of little souvenirs and enjoy looking around.

At the entrance to Pier 39 is the San Francisco Bay aquarium, we decide to go in here, Baggage is particularly keen after all the fun she had in the sea life centre in Hawaii. It is a relatively small aquarium, though does have a fairly long moving walkway under two glass tunnels through large aquariums, the first one shows many species of Bay inhabiting fish, the second one small sharks and rays.

After the tunnels there is a touch room where we get to touch the back of a leopard shark and a ray and I also get a rather large sea star on my arm. The latter sticks to the hairs on my arm and is quite painful when the assistant removes it. Baggage is particularly taken with the microscope in this room and enjoys putting all the available specimens under it to see what they look like, she then progresses to magnifying her skin and fingernails.

After the aquarium we wander back up to the hotel for a rest before going out to dinner. On the way we stop to watch a street artist creating unique views of the San Francisco bay and the Golden Gate bridge using a combination of spray paint, his hands and a paint scraper, he is really good and we are so impressed with the finished result we buy one. Something else for us to try and get back to the UK without ruining it.

After this the girls go straight to the hotel I go to a Safeway which is just across from the hotel on the way back to get a few basic supplies, coffee, some cold drink, some fruit and some croissants for breakfast tomorrow. I also pick up a case of San Francisco brewed, Anchor steam beer, after all an entire case from Safeway is the price of one bottle from our mini bar. Our rest at the hotel ends up being pretty extended as we do not go out for dinner until nearly 8pm. For dinner we decide to head to Knuckles again as it is close and the food is pretty good. Tonight we have nachos as a starter, I have a chicken salad, Lisa has pulled pork and Baggage has chicken noodle soup again. To drink I had a glass of Anchor Liberty Ale, a local brew, and very good it was to.

After dinner we walk back down to the front and take a look around the shops before returning to the hotel, primarily as we have eaten pretty late so this is to help our dinner go down.

We settle down at about 10pm, the problem with us all being in one hotel room is that Baggage has to stay up as long as we do, she cannot got to sleep before us as she does not settle, this means she ends up going late whilst we are going early. Lisa has trouble getting to sleep again, tonight it takes her about two hours after we get into bed, I do not have the same problem.

June 7th - San Francisco here we come!

2009-06-10T01:32:00.002+01:00

We left the house at about 9:15 this morning and drove over to the airport. When we got there and returned the car I found I still had Bob and Nancy’s front door key on the key ring so had to mail it back to them form the airport.

Check in once again had its issues, it seemed Qantas had not issued our tickets for the flight and whilst that was OK and we were booked on it we had to have tickets issued at the airport and could not check in using their automated system.

The flight left on time and was pretty uneventful, we were flying American Airlines this time on an ageing 757. Again not the benefit of a personal entertainment system to keep Baggage amused, though she had her DS and iPod and enjoyed the film they showed on the main screens so the five hour flight was over fairly quickly. We arrived about half an hour later than scheduled because there had been a strong headwind on the way over whereas this route usually benefits from a tail wind, or so the captain said!

A taxi from the airport got us to our hotel for $50, according to the meter and the extras list it should have been $41, but the driver said it was $50, still he would have got $50 anyway, only this way he got nothing as a tip!

The hotel is OK, not the best accommodation of the trip and not the worst. The room is a little small and has two standard double beds in it and not two queens as is the usual case in a US hotel room, still it will do, we will only really be sleeping here after all.

We pretty well left our room as soon as we had got into it and headed out to get something to eat, it was already 10:15, though our body clocks said 7:15, and we were somewhat limited with options. Luckily there is a sports bar just down the road from the hotel, Knuckles, which was open and turned out to be very nice, we grabbed a bite to eat in there. I had fish and chips, Lisa a Greek salad, and Baggage chicken noodle soup.

To drink I had a bottle of Sierra Nevada, not exactly a local brew, but a nice red pint.

Back to the hotel and we got a few items out of the cases before going pretty well straight to bed. Baggage got off to sleep OK, but both Lisa and I struggled, after all based on our body clocks, which had adjusted to Hawaii time pretty painlessly a couple of weeks ago, it was only just after 8pm.

June 6th - Last Day in Hawaii

2009-06-10T01:32:00.001+01:00

Today is our last full day in Hawaii, we fly out tomorrow morning and still have a load of packing to do.

We have to pick Baggage up at 10:15, we leave in plenty of time and get there early, though Dianne and the girls are ready and come out to meet us within a few minutes. Baggage had a great time, and had coped with all the bugs around admirably after her initial panic. Whilst there she had: Done some star gazing with Diannes husband Paul who is an Astronomer; watched a dolphin show with penguins in it also; fish identification; touched some fish at the touch pool (Baggage managed to touch a Yellow Tang and a sea cucumber, no one in her group got to touch the shark as it would not come close (would you with a bunch of girls trying to poke you!)); scavenger hunt; ate fish shaped biscuits made by the Brownies; fed turtles and slept in the room with the reef tank in it with the rays, sharks and creepy crawlies. By slept I mean laid down and chatted, Dianne knew the girls were all still awake at 3:30 and then again when she woke up at 5:30, they reckon they slept, Dianne was not so sure. Consequently Baggage was a bit of a wreck when we collected her.

After collecting her we returned to the house, the plan was to go down the beach in the afternoon after she had an opportunity to recover, we were not to make that though as she really was too tired and did not feel like it.

We are preparing for a flight again, so packing takes that little bit longer, all cases have to be weighed and we have to ensure they are below 23Kg, at $100 per case if overweight it is really not worth over packing them. We spend most of the day packing and sorting stuff out, including booking to go and see Cirque de Soleil Love whilst in Vegas and booking our car hire for Florida.

After supper, which was a case of using up a variety of bits and pieces that we had in the fridge and freezer, we did go out to the beach, though only for a walk. We tried to get down to the beach from the far end via the small beach and walk along, but the tide was too high, we ended up walking along the road and going down via the main beach access. On the way we passed an exceptionally large beach front estate, could well have been the place that Michelle Pfeiffer used to own, certainly had impressive gates!

When down on the beach we saw the reef just off shore, we had not noticed it when we came down here swimming, possibly because earlier in the day the sun was so bright and reflecting off the water, now it was a very noticeable dark patch in the water. Lisa could possibly have walked just down the road from our house and snorkelled with turtles, something she has not managed whilst we have been in Hawaii.

Back to the house and I am busy catching up with the Baggage videos, over the past couple of days I have almost caught up with the Hawaii backlog. I have three bottles of beer to drink up tonight also, so I had better get started.

June 5th - Diamond Head and Lost Baggage

2009-06-10T01:27:00.003+01:00

This morning we are off to climb Diamond Head, the dormant volcanic crater just East of Honolulu that offers fantastic views across the city.

It is a relatively early start as it is a tough climb and we do not want to be doing I in the heat of the day. We leave here at about 8:15 and get there before 9. Baggage objects violently to making the climb, she does not see the point in it and does not want to do it, she eventually gives up objecting when she realises that we will not budge on our resolve to go up there and she has no choice but to go with us, all the same she still whinges for quite a while. As we reach the top a rescue helicopter lands on a heli-pad up there, a woman had collapsed and the rescue services been called, however in the meantime she had come round and started to make her way back down into the crater, we had passed her as we came up, Baggage was very pleased to be able to tell the rescue man that she had seen her on her way down the path, the excitement finally made her forget she was supposed to be complaining about having to do this.

The view from the top is well worth the climb, from one side you can see out over Waikiki and Honolulu, from the other you look back towards Hanauma Bay. It was a beautifully clear day, the vog (Volcanic Fog as it is called in Hawaii) had left the hills and we could see for miles. We all made it right to the top and loads of photos were taken, some of which I am sure I willl be posting with this blog!

The walk down was much easier, though when at the bottom my knees did feel a little like jelly for a while which was not a feeling I had got as a result of the climb. At the bottom we all had a shave ice, again well deserved.

From Diamond Head we returned to the house via Don Quijote as we needed to pick up a birthday present for the Mother-in-Law and then the post office as we needed to get it in the mail.

Back at the house we just chilled for a few hours and got most of the packing done. Baggage is off to a sleep over with the Girl Scouts tonight at the Sea Life Park and we wanted to ensure she enjoyed it.

Ar just before 5:30 we headed out for the Sea Life park, it is about a 30 minute drive. When we got her there we were amongst the first to arrive, though Dianne was already there and Lisa had wanted to catch her early as she had a couple of things to go through with her. Baggage settled right in, playing tag with some of the other girls whilst waiting to get into the park. We hung around for about half an hour after which we decided to head off and leave Baggage to her sleep over, she was very happy to see us go.

Lisa and I headed back to Kailua, we have a table booked at Buzz’, a restaurant by the beach, famous as Bill Clinton chose to dine there whilst in Hawaii. The table is booked for 7:30 and we get there a little early, but not too early such that we are hanging about. The food is very good, we both go for fish, Red Snapper, mine is poached with a ginger dressing and Lisa’s is grilled, both are excellent. The meals come with a salad bar which is also excellent, not your usual selection of bowls of salad but an array of diverse and interesting dishes. Avocado Salad; Water Melon in a vinaigrette; An egg salad; Pinapple in a savoury sauce; and an Onion dish were just a few of the options available.

After dinner we went back to the house, I had wanted to go for a walk on the beach, but Lisa did not see the point as it was dark and we would not see anything!

At around 10pm we get a call from Baggage, there are spiders and cockroaches where she is staying and she is a bit freaked out, at first she wants us to come and get her, we explain that if we do she will miss out on the mornings activities as they start at 06:30 and there is no way I would get up to get her back out there for then. We have a chat with Dianne and agree it is best for Baggage to stay, we know if she comes away she will regret it, we then talk to Baggage again and she is a lot happier, guess she did not really want us to come and get her after all. We do not hear from her again tonight.

June 4th - Kayaking in Kailua

2009-06-10T01:20:00.004+01:00

Today we are renting a couple of Kayaks to take out into Kailua Bay. We get ourselves to the Kayak rental store just before 9am and rent a double and a single kayak.

Before we are allowed out on the water we have to watch a 10 minute safety video which basically tells us how to wear our life vests and where we can take the kayaks. There are three islands out in the bay and you are allowed to land on two of them, they are all bird sanctuaries with strict rules as to where you can go, the third being so strict you cannot even take your kayak onto the beach.

At first we paddle up the river to the lake, it is about a 30 minute paddle to get us there, the lake is private however so when you reach it you turn back and head back towards the beach. On the way back I see a Barracuda that must have been more than 3 feet long resting on the bottom of the river just over from where a family were fishing, as if teasing them with his presence.

Back at the beach we have a chat with a kayak instructor who is waiting with his kayaks on the sand for a party of 40 to be bussed in, he tells us the best way to get out to the island as there is about a 15 knot head wind today, getting out will be a task, getting back should be a breeze.

Whilst at the beach we find a sea horse swimming around in the channel, though he does not seem very happy, he keeps on beaching himself as he tries to head back to the sea. I decide to give him a hand and catch him in my hand then transport him past the surf into the sea. He seems very happy with that and swims off out to sea on his release.

He is quite right, the paddle out to the closest island is about 20 minutes of reasonably hard work, though well worth it. Flat island is volcanic in origin and this is evident in all the rocks you see on the island. Near the shore of the island the rocks are full of holes, some leading directly to the sea below. Many of these holes are inhabited by crabs, some impressively large. We walk all the way around flat island, though by the time we get back to the kayaks realise we do not have enough time to head on to Mokulua, the larger of the islands. From Flat Island that would be a good 30 minute paddle, then an hour back to Kailua beach and our rental only has an hour to go. We had decided on a half day rental as we figured for us novice paddlers that would be quite enough and we were probably right as our arms really ached this evening.

We got back to Kailua beach in good time and had our only drama of the session when Lisa and Baggage’s kayak capsized in the surf and Baggage got trapped beneath it, shaking her up a bit.

As a reward for all our hard work we headed for Island Snow Hawaii to get one of their renowned shave ice cups. The choice of flavours is extensive, I opt for root beer and coconut with a cherry flavoured topping, the shave ice is also on top of ice cream, the combination makes for the best shave ice in Hawaii, as discovered by President Obama on a recent trip here. Neither Lisa nor Charlotte opt for the ice cream on the bottom, nor the topping, but both also enjoy their shave ice also.

Back to the house after the shave ice and we spend a few hours in out of the sun, we even manage a bit of packing.

Later on we head out again, tonight we are having a McDonalds take-out on the beach as the sun goes down. The trade winds have really kicked in now and the beach is pleasantly cool as we sit and eat our supper, not a bad way to end a day. Before we head back to the house we let Baggage have a play with our bucket and net at the mouth of the river, she catches nothing, though she does manage to save a puffer fish who is stranded in a small and draining pool. Lisa manages to catch a crab, there are a number running around near the shore-line.

Back at the house we attempt to get Baggage to bed in good time, she has her sleep over tomorrow night at the sea life park and we do not want her to be tired for that.

I start on the Kaua’i Golden Ale, the last of the Hawaiian brewed beers I will try, this one is a lager with a hint of citrus, much more a hint than in the case of the passion fruit wheat beer, and again very refreshing.

June 3rd - Hanauma Bay

2009-06-06T09:16:00.003+01:00

Today we are meeting up with Dianne and her girls to go snorkelling at Hanauma Bay. This means a very early start, parking is limited at the bay and Dianne has recommended we get there about 8:15 to ensure a space. Once the car park is full there are very few options other than going and finding another bay. We are there at just after 8:15, there is plenty of space, though later on we do find out the car park was full by not much after 9.

Hanauma Bay was formed in a volcanic crater, it is almost fully enclosed and therefore very protected, there is a vibrant reef in the bay and it has become home for many reef dwelling species including fish, squid, octopus and turtles. The Bay is now a protected national park and is available for snorkelling, though strict guidelines apply and you have to watch an introductory video on how to snorkel safely for both you and the environment before they will let you any where near the water.

The bay is fantastic, clear still water, soft sandy beaches and plenty of space to just swim in the warm sea water if that is what you want to do. There was limited shade in the bay however and we therefore decided that we should only stay until just into the afternoon to ensure we did not burn again, though as we were in the water before 10 this was hardly a problem.

We spent almost two hours solid in the water before we took a break, whilst the snorkelling inside the reef line was not as spectacular as we experienced on Lady Elliot Island it was well worth the effort. We saw numerous species of fish: Threadfin Butterfly Fish; Eyestripe Surgeon Fish; Palenose Parrot Fish; Convict Tang; and Hawaiian Sergeant to name a few. I also managed to get a bit of reasonable video for use on the web site, though my skill as an underwater photographer leaves a lot to be desired.

After our first spell in the water we took a break and grabbed a spot of lunch, Baggage enjoyed playing with Dianne’s girls on the beach. Dianne had another girl with her today, Hannah, who is 11 (nearly 12) and one of her Girl Scouts and a friend of her girls. You really would not believe Hannah was 11 however, she looked far more in place when playing with Katherine who is 13 rather than Baggage who is 11.

One more visit to the water, snorkel on head before we left the Bay, this time though the waves had come up a bit as it was high tide and they were washing over the reef, as a result visibility in the water was significantly reduced.

On the way back to the house we stopped off at Don Quijote, a ‘sell all shop’ in Kailua, it is Father’s day next weekend in the UK so we wanted to send something back for my Dad. I picked up a couple of fixed price packages from the post office as we also want to send a backup of our recent photos back to the UK and they would not fit in the package with the present we have bought my Dad.

Dinner tonight is Chicken Fettucine Alfredo courtesy of a packet of Chicken Helper, I know cheating! It may be cheating, but was very nice.

For supper I washed it down with the last couple of bottles of the Wheat Beer.

June 2nd - Honolulu & Waikiki

2009-06-06T02:46:00.003+01:00

Today is a day Baggage has been looking forward to since the beginning of the trip, Sims 3 is released. All the places we have gone to and all the things we have seen and she has been most looking forward to buying a computer game she could have got back in the UK.

To ensure we are somewhere we will be able to buy the game for her we have arranged a trip into Honolulu for today.

First stop the Ala Moana shopping Mall and Baggage gets her game, the only problem for her is that we are not hurrying back to the house, we are in fact likely to be out all day, so she will have to wait a while before she can play with it!

From Ala Moana we head for the Iolani Palace, the home of the Hawaiian monarchy up until the point that Hawaii was annexed by the USA and the final Monarch abdicated. This is also the only palace in the whole of the USA that ever housed a reigning monarch.

The tour around the palace is an audio guide based one and it is very informative and well worth doing, you get to look around all the above ground rooms of the palace and get a good insight into the life of the Hawaiian Monarchy. After the Monarchy was dissolved the palace was used as government offices and lucky to have survived, almost all of the royal possessions were auctioned off and spread around the world. Today the palace is a national monument and considered a treasure of the USA and a large effort has been made to recover those items previously sold off to bring the palace back to it’s original glory. How sentiment changes with time.

After the Iolani palace we head for the Aloha tower, which we climb for a view back across Honolulu, when it was originally built, at 10 storeys tall it was the highest building in Honolulu, in fact on any of the Hawaiian islands, today it is dwarfed, though it’s location on the waterfront is not crowded and it still offers great views back across the city.

Next stop Honolulu’s Hard Rock Cafe for lunch, I have a very good shrimp fajita, Lisa has salmon and Baggage spaghetti and a marinara sauce.

From here we head to Waikiki beach, it is now 5pm and when we get there we see the surf is very manageable. Lisa had wanted to give Baggage a surf lesson this trip but has not managed it, we do however manage to find a rental place from where we can get a surfboard for $10 an hour, and which is open until 7pm so they decide to give it a go. Baggage’s first surf is quite sucessfull, it is more a launching than a surfing with Lisa launching her into the wave, though she does manage to get to her knees. Lisa on the other hand completely fails to catch a wave when she takes the board out further, still at least she did have a play on a board off Waikiki beach.

After we have dried off and dressed we watch a bit of Hula that is being performed on the sea front, there is a Pan Pacific show happening around Waikiki this weekend

We eventually get back to the house just after 8pm, Baggage is straight onto her computer, but of course as with any new game it has to be loaded first and this one takes over half an hour to load, still it gives her chance to have a shower whilst it is loading. We let her stay up late to have a play on it, it would have been mean to declare it bed time after she had finished loading it after all, wouldn’t it!

June 1st - Kualoa Ranch

2009-06-06T00:40:00.004+01:00

The original plan for today was to hire a couple of kayaks and head out across Kailua bay, due to Baggage and Lisa still feeling the effects if their sunburn at the weekend however we decide a day where we are a little more under cover is called for.

We are therefore off to Kualoa Ranch and are booked onto this afternoons movie set tour. Kualoa ranch is to the north of the island and is the largest ranch on Hawaii, it is also still a fully operational working ranch. Because of it’s location which includes a long valley between the islands two most prominent volcanic mountans it has been used as the filming location for many movies and TV productions over the years. Possibly the most famous was its use as the island for Jurassic park, at the moment it is being used as the backdrop for the TV series Lost.

The ranch is about a 45 minute drive from here so we leave in plenty of time and plan to go via the Byodo-in Buddhist temple, an impressive building and exact replica of the 950 year old Byodoin temple in Uji Japan. This replica is itself more than 100 years old. We struggle to find the place, first because we head up highway 3 planning on picking up the Likelike highway, only to find there is no exit to it in our direction so we have to carry on through the tunnels to the other side of the island and outskirts of Honolulu before we can turn around, then because of road works we miss the turning into the Valley of Temples and have to turn back again to find it when we reach the Kamehameha Highway and know we have gone too far. As a result our time at the temple is very limited, though we manage to get a few photos and have a reasonable look around the grounds. This temple has also got a big screen appearance or two in it's past, most recently having been used as Sun's Mother's house in the TV production of Lost.

Whilst there we bump into the lady who was with the film crew doing the filming when we went out to work at Mokauea Island, they have finished filming and have just become tourists for a couple of days before returning to Texas. We exchange web site addresses and look forward to seeing their completed film of their visit to Mokauea on their web site.

The movie set tour at Kualoa is a bit of a disappointment, it is a coach based tour in a battered old bus from sometime back in the 60s, we stop at a bunker to see a bunch of movie posters for all the movies that have been made there and then tour the sets, most of which are little more than signs stuck in the ground telling you filming happened in this area. I did not expect much more than this, though the tour was advertised as an hour long tour of the sets and the ranch, we only saw bits of the ranch we needed to drive through to get to the sets and were back where we started within 40 minutes.

On the way back to the house we travelled via Waimanalo, the home of the house that was used as Robin’s Nest for the filming of Magnum p.i. I took a few photos and then Baggage and I waded along to the houses tidal pool where Baggage had a swim. I recorded enough material to make my own version of the Magnum p.i. intro, replacing some of the original scenes with those of my own making, including pulling off the grass verge relatively fast in my Charger as Magnum does in his Ferarri!

Back at the house we had a fish and chip supper, well Tilapia pieces, a bit like cod fish fingers, and waffle fries.

A bit more of the wheat beer tonight.

May 31st - Pearl Harbour

2009-06-05T05:07:00.005+01:00

This morning we make a reasonably early start as we are off to Pearl Harbour to visit the USS Arizona memorial. The Arizona was sunk with all hands in the harbour during the Japanese attack, December 7th 1941, in total 1177 lives were lost when it sank. It sank within a couple of minutes of being hit by a torpedo which ignited the ships main magazine. The memorial we are going to see is built on top of the sunken remains of the Arizona which now serves as a tomb to all those lost with her. The memorial was opened in 1962. To visit the memorial there is no cost, but there are a limited number of daily tickets available, you get there as early as you can and are given your ticket, hopefully the wait from when you get your ticket to when you can visit the memorial will not be too long, all the tickets are time stamped as you can only access the memorial on one of the Navy’s shuttle boats.

We get to the memorial at about 9:30 and it is not too busy, our allotted time is 10:15.

In order to get across to the memorial you have to watch a 20 minute informative film about the attack on Pearl Harbour and the Arizona in particular, Baggage actually found this pretty interesting, though we had been doing a bit of work from the Arizona Memorial website before we visited the memorial, so the film bought a lot of this to life for her.

After the film you take a short, 5 minute ride, on a cross harbour ferry which docks at the memorial, your ferry then returns for the next party and then comes back to get you off, you are supposed to get about 15 minutes on the memorial. We miss the next ferry however and travel back with the 10:30 ticketed party, whoops - sorry!

The memorial is quite moving, it is a strange shaped ‘box’ all in white across the decaying body of the Arizona in the waters beneath, there are a few places you can see evidence of the ship below, but only a few. The Arizona still appeared to be leaking a small amount of oil into the water after all this time, if not then the sunken ship is simply attracting oil spills from elsewhere in the harbour. All 1177 lives lost with the Arizona are listed in the memorial, along with the names of some of the survivors of the attack who have subsequently elected to be interned with their shipmates when they have died. The most recent of these was in 2008. I am not sure if it moved me because I believed it should, if it moved me in the same way as a military cemetery does as you survey all the rows and rows of matching headstones, or if it was something deeper, but there was a great sense of peace in the memorial, a sense that was clearly being respected by all the party who were visiting, probably more than 100 people and hardly a sound being uttered.

When we returned from the memorial we grabbed a bit of lunch then paid a visit to the US Submarine Bowfin which has been retired from service and is moored across the harbour form the memorial. The Bowfin was also well worth the visit, if only to get a feel for what life must have been like on a WWII submarine. In the park there is also a garden of remembrance to the 52 US Submarines that were lost at sea during the war years, more than 3,500 US Submariners gave their lives during WWII, the Bowfin was one of the lucky ships that made it to the end of the war.

After the Bowfin we decided to leave Pearl harbour, we could have visited the USS Missouri, the battleship on whose decks the Japanese surrender, we had seen her from the Arizona Memorial however and Baggage was getting a bit bored with looking at old boats.

One other thing we saw at close quarters in Pearl Harbour, and possibly the most impressive was a US Nimitz Class aircraft carrier the USS John C. Stennis, named after a long serving US Democratic Senator. It is massive, you see pictures of them and know they are big, but until you see one close up you do not really appreciate it. the aircraft and helicopters were lined up on it’s deck and we sailed right past it on both our way out to and back from the memorial, a great opportunity for some photos.

From Pearl harbour we went to the Aloha Stadium Swap Meet, recommended to us as a great place to get gifts by a number of people. I got the obligatory Hawaiian shirt, we got a hand carved Tiki statue, Baggage got a bunch of Lei, and we got a few other odds and ends as gifts for people. As promised the prices were very cheap, my Hawaiian shirt for example was $10. Unlike many markets I have been to there was no pressure from the stall holders for you to buy their wares, and if you decided to they were very happy to serve you, but then the Hawaiian way is a pretty laid back one!

On the way back to the house I picked up a pre-cooked chicken and some salad and we had that for our supper, nice and easy and in this heat a nice refreshing meal.

Only one bottle of Longboard left, so I had a try of the Wailua wheat bear, not sure about the idea of beer with passion fruit, it is refreshing and easy to drink, but a bit like having a lager with a shot of lime in it, you can no longer taste the lager.

May 30th - Beach and Sunburn

2009-06-05T05:02:00.003+01:00

We had planned to go to Lanikai beach this afternoon after a morning in the house, however after Baggage had made a friend on Kailua yesterday she was keen to go back there in the morning, as the main reason for going to the beach was for Baggage we are happy to switch to Kailua, though it will mean a reasonably early start as the parking lot there gets full very early on.

We head down to the beach just around 10am, Baggage is straight in the water, Lisa and I sit on the beach for a short while, but soon join her. We all play around in the water, which is very warm, for about two hours. We take in body boards and our snorkel gear, Lisa and I had hoped to get a chance to snorkel close to a turtle, we did see one swimming not too far away from us, but could not see him under the water. The water was churning quite a bit and as a result the visibility was very poor, we did not manage to swim with the turtles. We did have a great time in the water however, possibly for a little too long considering there was no cloud cover and the temperature was high 80s.

We got out of the water and decided to eat our lunch in the shade, the lunch had been in the cool box in the car since 10 this morning, Baggage was OK as she had peanut butter sandwiches, Lisa and I had cheese however, which was now seriously melted cheese!

After lunch we stayed in the shade and read for about an hour, then we went back in the water for a quick swim, however at this point we noticed Baggages legs were a little pink. We got out of the water and decided it was best to get her back to the house and in the shade. When we got there we found she was not the only one who had caught the sun, I was burnt across the shoulders and Lisa quite badly burnt on her back. I left the two girls at the house and went out to get some after sun, I also got some higher factor sun cream, we were on factor 30, I took us up to factor 50.

Back at the house we all had cooling showers or baths and piled on the after sun.

The plan had been to go out tonight and get a McDonalds take out and eat it on the beach watching the sun go down. Neither Lisa nor Baggage now fancied this, they both felt quite shattered after their time on the beach, so I decided to get a Chinese take-out. I drove down to Kailua Beach and walked around the area taking photos and watching the sun go down, before heading into Kailua to get the Chinese. The Chinese was far from the best we have ever had, we had Garlic chicken and sweet and sour pork to share between us, I will not be going there again.

None of us had a late night tonight, but I did manage a couple of bottles of Longboard before I checked in.

29 May - A day on my own

2009-06-01T20:09:00.004+01:00

Today Lisa and Baggage are off to a water park with Dianne and her two girls, it is a girls day out so I am not invited.

I drop them just after 9am at the Honolulu Girl Scouts headquarters, where we buy Baggage a couple of guide related souvenirs before I head off leaving them to their day of fun. I am due to pick them up at about 4:30 this afternoon.

On the way back to the house I stop off at Pali Lookout. Set at the top of the Pali highway between Honolulu and Kailua this lookout offers magnificent views down over the windward side of Oahu. The view is not a clear as I would have liked to see, the absence of the trade winds means that the fog on top of the mountains does not clear during the day, and there is a constant haze reducing the distance visibility.

Next stop, the centre of Kailua where I wander through a few shops, pick up a couple of CDs and end up in Safeway getting a few provisions that we need.

Back at the house I have my work lined up for me, Lisa had asked if I would was the bedding and some towels through, there is no clothes line here so even though it is a blistering 80+ outside I have to put them in the tumble dryer to get them dry.

After lunch I go for a walk down to Lanikai beach, I head for the small secluded beach in Millionaires Row, here all the beach front houses have private access to beach area only accessible by boat or at low tide. It is not quite low tide, but from the small public beach I manage to wade along past all the beaches until I reach the large beach from which I can get back out onto the road. Whilst wading I meet an Australian chap who does not really like Australia. I do not find out where he lives now but do establish he travels a lot and previously owned a house in Pacific Harbour. Fiji, before the first coup caused him to decide this was not a good place to be. We chat for about half an hour before I continue on my way.

Back at the house I catch up on a couple of things on the computer whilst waiting for Lisa to call to say she is ready to be picked up.

After I collect Lisa and Baggage we stop off at Kailua beach on the way back to the house and have a quick swim and body board, it has been a pretty hot day and it is nice to get in the water to cool off. Lisa and Baggage may have already had a swim but I had not, though when I suggest it they are both keen on the idea. We all spend about half an hour in the water, then Lisa and I sit on the beach with a coffee whilst Baggage continues to swim, not just any coffee, I have a Hawaiian Macadamia roast Lion coffee, and very nice it is too.

Back at the house Baggage takes charge of cooking dinner, we have Hamburger Helper with smashed up hamburgers as we have no mince, it is ok!

More of the Longboard beer tonight, though when in the supermarket earlier I did pick up a case of Wailua wheat beer, with a hint of passion fruit, should be interesting!

May 28th - North Shore

2009-06-01T07:32:00.004+01:00

Today we are going to take a drive up and look at the North Shore of the Island, the place where in winter time Banzai Pipeline, possibly the most famous surfing wave in the world crashes over the reef some 200 metres offshore.

We head off at about 10:30, it is raining and there is a heavy mist over the mountains, a shame as it does detract from some of the scenery, though maybe it makes it all the more mysterious, particularly up around Kaaawa where the backdrop is the mountains and valleys where Jurassic Park was filmed. We stop a number of times on the way up the coast to take photos and have a look at the scenery, we then stop on the North Shore at Sunset Beach for lunch and to visit Ted’s Bakery. We had come across Ted’s Bakery when we were first looking at where to rent in Hawaii, we had considered a house in Sunset Beach and it was an easy walk to the bakery, when we decided to rent elsewhere Baggage remained very keen to visit the bakery. From the bakery I had a speciality of theirs, a macadamia cream pie, Lisa had a monster éclair and Baggage had a doughnut, they were all very nice. Lisa could not manage all of hers, lucky me, I got to finish it for supper.

After Sunset Beach we drove on to Laniakea (Turtle Beach) and stopped to see what it was on the beach that was causing all the fuss, cars were stopped by the side of the road and people were down on the beach pointing. It was turtles, and lots of them, in the water just off-shore. Apparently they are very frequent visitors to this spot, there are low rocks on the beach covered with a green moss-like substance, the turtles love this. We then backtracked to Waimea Beach Park where we had a short swim. Again whilst on the beach we saw a couple of turtles in the water just off the shore. The sand sloped very steeply here and you did not get far off the shore before you were out of your depth, a nice beach, but nothing like Lanikai.

From here we drove on to Haleiwa where we stopped at the Market Place as Baggage wanted a bag (appropriate) only she only had $6 dollars to spend and these were all branded surf gear type shops, no joy there then. On the way back to the house we skirted around Honolulu as we took the central route back, we stopped off at Walmart in Pearl City, she got the bag she wanted (and only $7) and we also got a few basic supplies we needed.

Back at the house we had a quick chicken dinner, again all pretty tired tonight, must be all the fresh air and 80+ temperatures.

For beer tonight I try another local brew, Longboard, a Hawaiian Lager, nice and refreshing for these warm evenings.

There has not been a lot of let up in the heat since we got here, the trade winds which blow at this time of year and cool the windward side of Hawaii (where we are) have been absent since we got here, the house we are in has no air conditioning, it does not need it after all because of the trade winds, we cannot get out of the heat. All the fans in the house are cranked up and it is still sweltering until long after we have gone to bed.

Wednesday 27th May - Mokauea Island

2009-05-30T08:26:00.006+01:00

Today we have been invited to join in with an Eco Project via the local Girl Scout Leader, this afternoon we are off to Mokana Mokauea Island to help with it’s clean up.

In order to get across to the Island we have to meet at Sand Island, just west of Honolulu at 3pm in order to hitch a ride on an outrigger canoe. As we have to be ther for 3 we decide this morning is a good time to travel around the south Eastern corner of the island and see what is there.

We set off just before 11am and make a number of stops on our way around to have a look, take a few photos and just see what is about. It is a fairly undeveloped corner of the island, a band between where the mountains come down and the sea starts, basically a very pleasant drive.

We stop an Waimanalo beach for a stroll on the sand and then at Sandy beach for lunch. Sandy beach has a reputation of being the best beach for body boarding in Hawaii, though only experienced body boarders should try it. Today it was almost a mill-pond and anyone could have taken a board in, though would not have been able to do much with it. There were surfable waves breaking just offshore and we saw our first surfers riding the waves in Hawaii. Whilst eating our lunch a young Hawaiian surfer comes out of the water with his board, spear and catch, he had a nice catch of four reasonably sized fish, he is all right for his dinner tonight. We also saw a second guy go into the water with his board and spear, a popular spot for catching your dinner.

We get round to Sand Island Park a bit early, but just as we are pulling in so is Dianne, the local Girl Scout (Guide) leader. We are joining in with a high school community programme today and the organiser of the exercise Donna Kahakui, a renowned Hawaiian canoe paddler who has won many competitions on the world stage and now promotes the health of our oceans through her involvement in various programmes.

Baggage joins in with the other kids and we ensure she is placed in a different group from Mum and Dad, she is far happier being allowed to get on with things on her own without us hanging around. Lisa and I miss out on the outrigger trip over to the island and get a lift on the barge, really not a lot more than a few strung together crates and some planks of wood with an outboard attached. We are promised a paddle on an outrigger for the journey back, Baggage on the other hand is in amongst the other kids and on one of the first outriggers to set off.

When we get over to the island all the kids are given a brief lesson on the history of the island and then they are assigned tasks through the groups they are put into.

Baggage finds herself on planting detail, moving indigenous plants from a nursery bed to where they can spread their leaves a bit more. We tag onto a group with a litter pick-up duty, our job involves walking all the way round the island, wading at past knee depth at time. The water around the island is bath temperature, it is very still, relatively shallow, and has had the sun beating down on it all day.

After we have all finished our first task we then reconvene in the centre of the island where drinks and fruit are dished out. The next task is testing the water purity around the island, the various groups of kids set off to different locations to with a testing kit, this time I shadow Baggage at first to get a few sneaky pictures, though she objects so I rejoin our group who are testing around the fish pond. Dianne has taken plenty of photos anyway so I will see if I can get a copy of those.

After the water testing it is time to return to the mainland. This time Lisa and I get a ride on an outrigger and Baggage in a double hull canoe, I say get a ride, but we all have to do our bit paddling the boat. Paddling an outrigger seems pretty straightforward if you are doing it in an amateurish sort of way as we were, with a couple of experienced paddlers to guide us, however when you look at a club boat going out you realise what a tight knit team the crew are and how what we were up to was really only playing.

When we get back to the shore Baggage has a swim with Dianne’s two girls before we all head off to our respective homes.

Back to the house for a shower and quick tea, again we are all pretty tired, though we feel we have done something quite useful today. At first it seemed that the time it was taken to explain to the high-school kids and us what to do tied up the staff on the island who could have more effectively been doing the work themselves, but then when you look at what was achieved in a relatively short space of time you realise that the few staff from the charity who are actually involved along with the few islanders who participated could not have achieved the same as the many hands did, albeit each pair of hands was somewhat slower in isolation. Our group for example picked up about three dustbin bags of rubbish, most of it small pieces from the far side of the island, hidden in the bushes and in some cases half submerged in the sand and water.

We all enjoyed today and are very grateful to Dianne and her husband Paul for giving us the opportunity to lend a hand, this really was something you cannot just choose to do through a guidebook.

Tonight I finish off my Volcano Red, tomorrow I will have to try out another local beer.

Tuesday 26th May - Lanikai Beach

2009-05-29T09:00:00.004+01:00

Today we decide to make the most of what Lanikai has to offer and enjoy a day on the local beach. Wary though that we have not had much exposure to sun recently we decide not to head down there until after lunch.

This morning I drive into Kailua and visit Safeways to get some basic provisions I did not get in my semi jet lagged state on Sunday, I also find the local post office and get a bundle of stamps as we have both letters and postcards to deal with.

After Lunch we wander down to the beach and take a couple of body boards that are available at the house with us. The sky is clear and temperature up in the low 80s, there is no hint of humidity in the air as there has been later in the day. The sea was pretty much a millpond, though Baggage did spend most of the time in the water on the board, just floating about on it. Lisa and I took it in turns to join her in the water. The beach was busy, though nothing like as busy as it had been when we had popped down there on Sunday afternoon, there was plenty of space to claim your own piece of sand, and no worrying about avoiding people in the water. As on Sunday there was a constant stream of people heading over to the island on a mixture of small vessels, long canoes and paddle boards, again from a distance the beach on the island looked reasonably busy.

Lanikai beach is about as perfect as you can get, obviously a popular beach, though not spoilt by having been over developed, most of the beach front is lined with private houses, all low level and not a hotel in sight, neither are there any tacky beach stores, ice cream kiosks or any of the usual trimmings you associate with a lovely and accessible stretch of beach. Kailua is similar, though the availability of more parking there does mean that the actual front itself has been a little more commercialised, though compared to most places you go where people get near the beach these beaches have been left almost as found.

We stay on the beach for about three hours and by the time we leave we have all caught the sun, though none of us burnt. As we get back to the house it is just thinking about raining, within about fifteen minutes it is pouring and continues to do so until well after dark.

For dinner tonight I cook a rack of ribs that I picked up on Sunday, it cooks up really tasty and goes well with the fries and sweet-corn we serve up with it.

Baggage is not too late to bed tonight, we are all still a little tired from travelling, plus being out in the sun all afternoon seems to have tired us all out.

Beer tonight is some more of the Volcano Red, I like it, but after these bottles have gone will try something different as Hawaii does seem to have a good variety of locally brewed and bottled beer on offer. I thought of something I should have done this trip when I opened my beer tonight, I should have collected all the different beer bottle tops from the bottles I have sampled on our travels, unfortunately I did not think of this earlier and there seems little point in starting now, maybe it would have been a bit too much an anorak thing to have done anyway.

Monday 25th May - Hawaii Day 1

2009-05-29T06:33:00.003+01:00

Though this is our first full day in Hawaii it seems more like our second, having been here since 7:20am yesterday.

Today we have decided to go to Bishop’s Museum, it is primarily a Hawaiian heritage museum, however we are going there drawn by an interactive Cartoon Network animation exhibition that has been recommended to us as being great for kids about Baggage’s age.

We set off at about 11am, we all sleep in this morning, and get there just in time for a lava melting display in their environment hall, at half an hour long it explains a lot about volcanos before getting into the lava melting, that is Baggage’s schooling for today then! The lava melting and pouring is very reminiscent of the gold pour we saw at Perth Mint, only the molten liquid coming out of the furnace does not have quite the same value attached to it.

After the lava smelting we grab a bite of lunch before heading into the animation hall, the food is good and very reasonably priced.

The animation exhibition is great, there is something for all of us. You get to make your own shot by shot film, play with a story line and see the results, record sound effects and a whole load of other themed activities. We spend almost a couple of hours in there and then we leave Baggage in there for a further hour whilst we look around some of the other exhibits.

After we leave Bishop’s it is off to Walmart, we need a whole load of stuff, and three hours later we have just about ticked everything off our list and are $400 lighter, it is a good job amongst the stuff we bought is a new bag for checking in when we move on from Hawaii. One of the other things I had to get was a new hard drive, I have already filled the two 320Gb ones I bought in Australia with video footage, today I added a further 500Gb one which I hope will see me back to Florida, though at $99 it was a pretty good buy.

On the way back to the house we are faced with a closed road due to a car accident and take a circuit to try to get around it, only to end up back in the same place. At this point I ask one of the police officers and am pointed through the car park which will take us behind the accident and back out onto the road we need to be on.

When we get back to the house we have a light and late supper before Baggage goes to bed. I then enjoy a couple of bottles of Volcano red and before we know it midnight has come and gone so we decide we had better get ourselves off to bed also.

Fiji - A quick recap

2009-05-27T08:27:00.002+01:00

It is our last day in Fiji, we have now been travelling since last September with all but a short trip home for Christmas. A good time to start revisiting what we have done so far, I will start with Fiji and there will be a number of additions to this over the coming weeks as I add ‘after the event’ blogs on all the countries.

So what do we think of Fiji?

Well when we got here two weeks ago it was dark and raining, the 2.5 hour drive from Nadi to where we are staying in Pacific Harbour was a nightmare. Dogs, pigs, horses and Fijians, all in the road and all poorly lit, pot holes the size of moon craters and drivers coming towards us who seemed to prefer our side of the road to theirs and did not seem to know how to operate their headlight dip switch! By the time we got to our lodgings I was beginning to wonder what on earth we were doing here.

Then we woke up the following morning, the sun was shining, the palm trees swaying, the sea lapping against the shore, and the people were just so friendly... well the last of those was true anyway. It was still raining, but there is just something about the place, it grows on you, and after two weeks here none of us really want to leave today.

Pacific Harbour is a great place, unfortunately tourist numbers are significantly down as a result of the current economic climate and the perceived political instability of these islands and unless they pick up resort areas like this may well fall as casualties. The south coast of Fiji is the wetter coast, therefore it is just so lush and green, and alive with birds of many shapes and sizes. We had opted to rent a villa here, travelling with our daughter we prefer to stay where she can have her own room and a bit of privacy rather than us all being under each others feet 24/7, though we have made good use of the resort hotels, Uprising and The Pearl, both of which are excellent and in keeping with all Fijians we have met, staffed by very friendly people.

You do not need to hire a car in Fiji, both public transport and taxis are very cheap, we decided to however and have spent the past fortnight driving around in a 4WD flat bed truck, that has been different, but at least the size of the wheels has meant we could traverse the pot holes whilst only actually falling in the 'really' big ones.

So what have we done whilst we have been here, well one thing is rest and recuperate, we have been travelling on this trip since January and had decided long ago that when we got to Fiji we would enjoy a bit of pool time, though that has not entirely stopped us getting out and about:

Navua Market - we went here for a look at how the locals buy their produce and to get our own vegetables, it was just so cheap we bought about three large carriers of all manner of fruit and vegetables for less than £5.

Zip Fiji - A trip through the tree tops of a tropical rain forest suspended from a strand of steel, well maybe a bit more, great fun, would recommend to anyone.

Sagatoka Sand Dunes - A walk through the dunes and down to the beach, one of Fiji's national parks and a heritage site. A really nice walk though the beach could have done with a bit of a clean up when we were there.

Kula Eco Park - A chance to see some of Fiji's native flora and fauna, a nice park, clean and well presented, and the animals seem well cared for also. When we were there we got to hold a couple of Lizards and a snake, well the wife did I passed on the snake, and our daughter got to feed Green Sea Turtles. Also well worth a visit.

Pacific Harbour Arts Village Cultural Show - If you want a look at how Fiji was before the white man, when human flesh was the delicacy at the dinner table this offers a good 'sheep dip' experience. For $80, a little over £20 at the time of writing, you can spend the day there taking a boat tour around a display of traditional crafts, visit a reconstructed temple and a Chief's house, including partaking in a Kava ceremony, enjoy a lovo lunch, traditional fayre cooked in the ground, and watch a display of fire walking and traditional dancing. Unfortunately when we went we were the only three people in the audience, but that did not seem to matter to the cast who put on as good a display as they would have to a packed house. A really enjoyable day, and a good insight into Fijian tradition for our daughter.

Kava Ceremony - You cannot visit Fiji without participating in one of these, we managed a couple during our stay. Kava is the National Drink of Fiji, it is a muddy brown substance made from the root of the Kava plant by crushing it and mixing it with water. The taste is not dissimilar to aniseed. Traditionally you drink it from half a coconut shell and have to knock it back in one. After the first drink you get a numbing sensation in the lips and tongue, after about 5 you start to lose control of your limbs. Apparently as your body numbs your mind clears and you get increasing clarity of thought to help you put the world to rights. Guess you could start with Fijian politics, most Fijians seem to! We have not managed to get as far as the clarity of thought stage as I was driving each time we participated, so we picked up a bag of kava in the market and will clear our thoughts later on in our trip.

To sum Fiji up, we love it here, though it would be good if you could remove the mosquitos and possibly ask the birds to refrain from their early morning chorus until a slightly more civilised hour.

Finally what of the beer?

It is OK, I enjoyed Fiji Bitter, but it is still a lager, not as gassy as those in Australia, therefore I found it more pleasant, but a lager after all. the other two beers I tried, Fiji Gold and Fiji Premium were similar though not as nice. On the flight out of Fiji I did have a can of Fiji bitter export, a crisper taste and a stronger beer, shame I could not get it in export from the supermarket in Fiji.

Sunday May 24th - The day we live twice

2009-05-27T08:26:00.000+01:00

Today is the day we get to live twice, first in Fiji and then getting to the airport, then in Hawaii. Tonight sometime after we leave Fiji and before we arrive in Hawaii we will cross the international date line and reverse by 23 hours, effectively making this the longest day of our lives at 46 hours in total.

This morning is spent mostly getting ready to go, we do not have a lot to do as we had done most of it yesterday. Lisa also spends a lot of it out by the pool and I manage a couple of trips into the village to the supermarket and pick up a couple of last minute gifts. Rain has been threatening all morning, by late morning it is here, at first just a trickle but soon it is a torrent and that is to stay with us all the way to the airport.

We are planning to stay in the house at Pacific Harbour until about 4pm as our flight is not until 10:40 tonight and we do not want to spend too much time sitting around at the airport, with the rain the way it is however we realise we will have a slow run across to Nadi so in the end bring our departure forward. When we leave the rain is really pounding off the car roof and driving is not good. Our suitcases are in the rear of the flatbed, luckily they are hard shell cases so all we can do is hope they are waterproof (unfortunately we later find out that one was not quite, it leaked in through one corner, the corner where our tapa paintings were, these now display a nice brown stain, still I guess they are now unique!).

On the way to Nadi we break the journey just before Sagatoko at the handicraft store we stopped at the other day and buy a few more goodies, including a Fijian shirt for me, that will not look at all out of place down the pub at home, still at least any cars passing me as I stagger home after the pub will see where I am!

It takes us just over 3 hours to get to the airport, in a couple of places a lower car would likely have aquaplaned. Not far into the journey we pass the scene of a recently happened and pretty nasty accident, one car is in the the ditch with its front smashed in and on the road is a small lorry on its side, guess one of them was not where they should have been on the road, likely not helped by the amount of rain. By the time we got there plenty of people had already stopped and were dealing with the aftermath, so we picked our way around the scene and continued on our journey.

The car hire return seemed unnecessarily painful, as did the check-in, both taking more than an hour and a half in total, but we got there in the end and headed through to the departure lounge for something to eat.

The area around Nandi airport is developed, but in as poor a state as the rest of Fiji, the roads if anything are worse, much worse than those around Pacific Harbour, the airport on the other hand just seems so out of place. It is modern, comfortable, brimming with well presented shopping and offering a variety of eating and watering holes, someone likely wanted to demonstrate that Fiji is an up and coming nation and decided to use the airport as a showcase. If you arrive at the airport and are all inclusive at the Sheraton or somewhere similar after all you likely never get a glimpse of the real Fiji.

With about half an hour to go before departure time we get an announcement that our plane is going to be delayed, then in five minutes we are boarding, there is a bit of a hold up when we are on the plane but it is not too bad. Again Air Pacific makes the flight a pleasure. It may not be the newest fleet, the entertainment system is drop down TVs, but at least they have one, but the staff are friendly and make you feel comfortable from the first to the last. This has been the way with all Fijians we have met. We all manage to get a little sleep on the plane, but none of us get anything like enough.

And so starts 24th May the Re-run!

We land in Hawaii at 7:30 in the morning. We may still be on a Pacific island, but from the outset it feels more like Florida than Fiji. When we arrive it is already warm, but not as humid as the country we have left behind. US immigration is, well US immigration, but we are in now and do not have another immigration control to go through until we arrive back in Gatwick in August. We collect our car, which again is unnecessarily drawn out, in addition they do not have the Dodge Charger we had rented so upgrade us to a whale of a Lincoln Town car. Very nice, leather interior, lots of electric toys, but I hate it from the moment I pull away from the rental place, it literally wallows down the road, rolling as you try to turn it around a corner with the mobility of an oil tanker. In it’s favour it is probably the quietest car I have ever driven, next to no road noise and you cannot hear the engine at all.

We get to the house we are renting for the next two weeks a little after 9am. It is a nice house, we have the upper storey and the owners live downstairs, Nancy and Bob, a very friendly couple, we will be fine here. The house is only a 5 minute walk from Lanikai beach, one of the best beaches on Oahu, and only 5 minutes from Kailua where we can get all our shopping, but at the same time only a 30 minute drive from Honolulu, though nowhere is very far from anywhere else, we are on a relatively small island after all.

After we have got sorted out I head out for basic provisions, there is a Safeway nearby so I go there. By the time I get back with the shopping Lisa is fast asleep, Baggage is on MSN, she has sorted out her laptop and got it connected to the Internet here, not a surprise.

By the time I get back with the shopping I have had enough of my whale, the fact that the drive here is quite tight and that I had to jiggle it around at the top to get it out did not help, so I head back to the airport. The road we came in on was the southern route through the mountains, I head back in Highway 3, unlike the road we came in on which only had a short spell where it was nit built up, this route seems to take you right up into the mountains and then cuts through them with a much longer tunnel than the other route, a spectacular drive. Back at the airport I get the Lincoln changed for a Charger, they have one available now, and immediately I leave the airport I am much happier with it. It has nothing like the level of driver aids, and you can clearly hear the engine and the wheels on the road, but it goes where I put it, I feel I am in control.

Lisa is awake by the time I get back, she and Charlotte have already had lunch so I just grab myself a banana. We sort out our suitcases and then take a walk out to see what the beaches are like. They are fantastic,the sand is the softest I have ever known and the water is so warm, it is more like paddling in a cool bath. There is a constant stream of people on kayaks, outriggers and paddle boards heading across the bay to an island out by where the breakers are against the lagoon, you can see a very active beach. This is Memorial day weekend and the beaches are very busy. Whilst we are down at the beach it rains a bit, we sort of expected this, we are in a tropical climate and this is the wet side of Oahu, we could well see rain most afternoons, but even in the rain it remains particularly hot so this is not going to be an issue, in fact whilst we are out walking it is very refreshing.

By the time we get back from our walk it is almost time for dinner, we just pop out into Kailua today and grab a McDonalds, Baggage is very keen for one and both Lisa and I are far too tired to object.

After dinner we let Baggage stay up for a bit, but not too long, when she goes to bed she is asleep within a couple of minutes. We struggle on, not wanting to go to bed too early and call it a day just after 10pm, neither of us remember much after we checked in for the night.

This is the last house we are renting on our trip, when we leave here it is all hotels until we arrive back in Florida where we are at our own place. All in all the house rentals have worked very well, though we would change a few things about them if we could, but not enough to feel we have had any problems. The only bad house was the last minute rental that we did not pay for and never stayed in at Hastings near Napier, New Zealand, of all the others I would happily book into them again if the opportunity arose.

When out at the store today I bought my first Hawaiian beer, what did you expect? I opted for Mehana, Volcano Red, very Hawaiian sounding and actually pretty good. The shelf was stocked with Hawaiian brew beers, I will have fun working my way through a few of these.

So after a very long day - Good night!

May 23rd - Last full day in Fiji

2009-05-26T20:51:00.002+01:00

Today is our last full day in Fiji, tomorrow does not really count as though we are not flying until after 9pm tomorrow night the day will be spent getting ready to travel, travelling to the airport etc. We might manage to fit in a swim somewhere though.

This morning the three of us got on with sorting out our stuff and getting it stuffed into bags, well Lisa and I did, Baggage spent most of the time on her laptop leaving us to the work. Mid morning Lisa and Baggage went for a kayak up the river with a guide form the Pearl. We were all booked onto the kayak, though this morning my arm was hurting quite a bit, it has hurt on and off all week, it feel muscular, most probably a result of zipping through the trees, I therefore give the Kayak a miss and do a bit of shopping plus sort out some paperwork (riveting) that needs to be done whilst they are on the water.

They Kayak around the pacific harbour river system, which includes coming around the house. Lisa took the waterproof video camera with her to capture some footage, she got a great 20 minute clip of the bottom of the red kayak!

After their kayak I join them at the Pearl where Baggage is having a swim, so we have a plate of chips for lunch and stay there until mid afternoon as this is likely to be her last swim there. The pearl is particularly busy today, there was a triathlon starting in Pacific harbour today and there were a lot of people in the area to see it, there was a reception going on at the Pearl as a result of it and there were a number of Children around the pool area. Baggage sort of played with a couple of boys, well they all gave attention to each other as they played by themselves which was enough for her.

After we left the Pearl we went back to the house and did a bit more packing, then headed over to Uprising for dinner. Uprising was also busy tonight. Dinner at Uprising has been good every time we went there, Baggage has had spaghetti bolognese every time, tonight Lisa and I both had a local fish, served with jacket potato and local vegetables, it was nice, a bit like a swordfish steak. After dinner we stayed there for a bit, both Lisa and I played Baggage at pool, she lost both games, but her game is getting good, she has become a reasonable opponent, if we get some practice in when back in Florida she might start winning a few. Guess what, tonight I was drinking Fiji Bitter on draught again.

Back at the house Baggage went to bed and Lisa and I chilled for a bit, I had a drink, last bottle of Fiji Bitter, Lisa did not, she had finished the wine yesterday evening and I did not realise. We did not go to bed too late as we will have a long day tomorrow.

May 22nd - Whoops!

2009-05-22T20:58:00.003+01:00

Today the plan is to stay in this morning and for Baggage to do a bit of maths, then for us to go out this afternoon, over to the Pearl for a swim.

When Lisa gets up Baggage is chatting to her sister on MSN, they have not had a good chat for a while so Lisa lets her off he school work, I bet she wishes teachers in class were so lenient!

I drove over to Navua this morning, there are a couple of things we need that we cannot get in Pacific Harbour and I fancy taking a few more photographs there. Between Pacific Harbour and Navua is another village where the speed limit drops from 80Kph to 60Kph, just as you are about to come out of it, opposite what can only be described as a graveyard for busses I get pulled over by the local police with a radar gun doing 71Kph. A swift apology, bit of pleading about being an innocent tourist who did not realise the speed limit and thought it had gone back up to 8o and more apology and they decide to let me off, not sure what the fine would have been, but it would undoubtedly have involved an amount of red tape I really did not want to have to deal with. On the way back past the same spot I pulled over to take a few photos of the dead busses, the police were still there and pulled another car whilst I was there so I got a photo of them also so I could post it on here. I wonder if the driver of the car in the photo was as fortunate. One thing you can guarantee is that I was very careful with my speed for the rest of the journey both to and back from Navua.

Since we have been here we have commented on the number of police speed traps on the road, the Fijians obviously have a problem with people going too fast for the condition of the roads. We have noticed people being too impatient to overtake and doing it in dangerous places, also people struggling to stay on their own side of the road as they round a corner. We have not made a single journey of more than about 10 minutes without seeing at least one speed trap, on the way here from Nadi we passed about 3. Guess I should have been more aware as I had already noticed this.

When I got back to the house we had a quick lunch and then went over the pearl for a swim, Baggage likes the pool there as it is quite big and she can swim in and out of the cave area.

We stayed there for a couple of hours and then returned to our house, via the supermarket in time to collect the cameras and go out again as I want to have another go at photographing the sunset and Lisa and Baggage are coming along. The sky is pretty clear tonight, very little cloud and a nice bright blue, as the sun goes down the water in the bay reflects with a golden hue. Whilst we are on the beach Baggage writes a few messages in the sand and we video a quick hello, I will use these to do a bonus Baggage episode tonight. The sunset is good, though nothing like as spectacular as we have seen this trip, the sky goes red, but not really red, though I do still manage to get some good photos.

We do have to leave the beach in a bit of a hurry as Baggage starts to get serious stomach cramps, we just about get her back to the house and onto the toilet before she explodes out of her rear, it was only lunchtime today that I was thinking that being here in this heat I was surprised none of us had got stomach upsets, guess I thought it just a little too early.

Tonight we have corned beef hash for supper, Baggage may have has stomach problems only an hour before, but she certainly had not lost her appetite and made short work of her supper.

After supper I put together an episode of Baggage for the web site using the footage from the beach and then settle down in the chair with a bottle of Fijian Gold, the last bottle of beer I had in the fridge, and watch the final Pirates of the Caribbean film, it would have been nice to have been able to sit outside here after Baggage had gone to bed, but we would have been eaten alive by the mosquitos.

May 21st - A cultural experience

2009-05-21T11:52:00.005+01:00

Today we are off to the Cultural show at the Arts Village just down the road. An insight into how Fijian’s used to live, back in the days of grass skirts, warriors and cannibalism.

Sushila is here today also, to give the place a good tidy, once more it will be good to go out and come back to a nice and tidy house.

When we turn up at the Arts Village we find out that we are the only people booked in for today’s event, we had feared this, there will be a bigger cast performing for us than audience. The tour we have signed up for includes a boat trip around the island in the centre of the village where we get to see traditional handicrafts being carried out, a temple tour and visit to a chief’s house where we can partake in a kava ceremony, a traditionally cooked lovo lunch and a meke and fire walking show to conclude with. It is all constructed for the tourist, but actually turns out to be a great way to get a sheep dip in Fijian traditions.

The first thing we have to do is watch the preparation of the lovo and get to place our food in the hot stone oven for it to cook. We see the pit being prepared and the hot stones arranged, then we get to place the food parcels in the oven after which the whole thing is covered with leaves and soil in order for the heat to stay in and cook the food. The contents of our lovo is chicken and dalo root and leaves. The dalo root forms a good base vegetable a cross between bread and potato in substance and it’s leaves resemble spinach and are cooked wrapping coconut milk and onion, when we get home I will have to try this recipe with spinach leaves as it is delicious.

The boat tour lasts just under an hour and we get to see weaving, pot making, coconut preparation and canoe building, we are also supposed to see traditional fire starting, but despite considerable effort the guys cannot get it to light, be thankful for gas lighters.

The temple tour is a walking tour, you get to visit a traditional style temple where the village spiritual man would have spoken to the gods for direction, then you get to visit the Chief’s house and after being welcomed in are invited to a kava ceremony. This time all three of us manage to drink our bowls of kava down in one, the traditional way to drink it.

By now our lovo lunch was cooked, it was delicious, the chicken was perfectly cooked and the dalo was really nice, both it’s leaf and it’s root.

The fire walking and traditional dancing tour this afternoon was also very good, I had feared it would be a bit flat with only us in the audience, but the Fijians still gave it their all and put on a great show. The rocks the fire walkers walked over were seriously hot, having been at the base of a large fire for about three hours before being arranged for the walking ceremony. One advantage of being the only members of the audience was that I was able to pick a really good spot for photos during the firewalking. The dancing was similar to that we saw performed at the Pearl earlier in the week, but then it was the same dancers, though it was nice to see them performing outside on a grass bank.

After the show we picked up a bit of shopping and then returned to the house where I got Baggage to record the next instalment for me to sort out and put on the web site. Sometimes she is very happy to record them and others they are a real chore, tonight was one of the latter.

I decided not to go out to try and get sunset shots tonight, and on cue the sun set the sky ablaze as it want down, better luck tomorrow. And then this evening I edited the next instalment in the Fiji Baggage story, though I will not be able to post it tonight as the Internet is very slow tonight, I am hoping it will be a bit livelier in the morning. Time now for a glass of Fiji bitter before I head to bed.

May 20th - A pretty lazy day!

2009-05-21T09:56:00.001+01:00

When we came to Fiji we had decided it would be a place of rest where I would get started on my book, Baggage would catch up on Schooling and we would recharge our batteries ready for the last leg of the trip. So far we have not done too badly, compared to all the running about we have been doing elsewhere we are managing to stay pretty chilled here, though we have been quite active for the past few days so today we decide to stay in, rest, and then enjoy dinner out somewhere this evening, most probably uprising.

The first thing I want to post is an update regarding the AU$500 bond we have still yet to receive back from our Australian rental in Perth, now over 3 months ago. Since the brief contact I had in Auckland and the promises of repayment I have heard nothing, today my emails started coming back and when I contacted the service provider was told the chap I am chasing has closed his email account. I have checked and he is still advertising properties on the web though so I assume he must have a backup plan. I am not sure what else I can do about this, I have enquired as to the legal status and been advised this is a civil matter and the police are not interested, I reckon all I can now do is take the issue to my credit card provider, after all he did in fact take the bond against my card without my approval and I can demonstrate this with email. I have packaged up all the details and send them to my mum to see if she can get anywhere by taking them into my local bank, all the bank offer for contact on their website are phone numbers and these can be a little difficult from this far afield. If I cannot resolve this by the time I return to Florida than I can pick it up directly over the phone more easily.

This morning I caught up with yesterday’s journal entry then went to the post office to mail out all the cards and a present that we have to send back to the UK. Postage as with other things is pretty cheap here, £6 was all it cost for 11 post cards, 1 letter and a small parcel.

When I got back it was time for a bit of writing, time to start on Chapter 2.

After lunch I decided to husk and open one of the coconuts we had collected, all I had to do it with was a sharp knife and it was a bit of a mission, but I was determined to get into it and see if a fresh Fijian coconut tasted any different from the dried out ones we get from a fairground at home. Eventually I had it husked, to get the milk out I drilled it with a cork screw then to gain access to the flesh I smacked it against a stone in the garden a number of times. Success, none of us really enjoyed the milk, Baggage did not like the flesh, but Lisa and I both found it OK, definitely better than anything we have had back in the UK, the flesh was far more moist, you got refreshing juice out of it as you sucked it before biting into it. It took a while and a reasonable amount of effort, but we could not watch coconuts falling off the trees around us without trying one, could we?

I spend the afternoon reading and doing a bit of writing, and suddenly the afternoon has gone! I go out again to try to get a sunset shot, but again the sunset is not that spectacular, not like the first couple of evenings we are here, also I get into a position where I can photograph it a bit too late.

By the time I get back it is time to go out for dinner, we head for Uprising, Lisa has Lamb, Charlotte spag-bol and I am the only one of us who has something remotely Fijian, I have a chicken curry, and very good it is too. We stay out for a while, Baggage gets her laptop on the Internet and watches a few videos on You-tube whilst we enjoy a drink.. I go for the draught Fiji Bitter again, just to be consistent, not quite a glass of Speights though.

Back to the house and I catch up with this Journal, I am just about to go and pour a beer, I have a bottle of Fiji Bitter in the fridge and we are going to watch Shaun of the Dead, we have seen it before, but it is a great fun film!

May 19th - Weaving etc.

2009-05-20T04:51:00.003+01:00

Not such a busy day is planned for today...

After we first got here I said the place was OK but I doubted I would want to come back, it is amazing how this place grows on you though. Unlike other places we have visited this is not an affluent country, the roads and condition of some peoples homes demonstrate that, however the people here are the friendliest we have met. The people in New Zealand were friendly when you got to talk to them, here everyone is friendly saying Bula as you pass them on the street, waving to you as you drive past them. They are just simply friendly, and they are all smiling, it makes all the difference. To think we considered not coming here because of the current political unrest, well we have seen no unrest, have heard a couple of murmurings due to the damage the political climate has done to the tourist trade, but we have seen nothing, no sign of the army, nobody breaking up groups of Fijians on the street, nothing like what was being reported in the New Zealand media. Maybe it would have been different if we had gone into Suva, the capital, but somehow I doubt it.

Saying how friendly everyone is, today I met the first really obnoxious person since getting here, of course he was not Fijian, by his accent I would say he was Greek, definitely European. I was buying Lisa a bottle of wine and had settled on a specific Merlot, there were about 9 bottles on the shelf, before I got to pick one up this chap moved in front of me and took two bottles and put them in his basket, he then took two more and so on until there was only one on the shelf, at this point I reached forward and took the last one, he turned on me and announced that was hos bottle, he had already taken it he just could not lift three off the shelf at the same time as he might have dropped one, he was quite sharp! Everything here is just too laid back for an argument so I gave him his precious bottle of wine and picked up a Cabinet Sauvignon for Lisa, though as I gave him his bottle I did think, “ass-ole”, by the look on his face maybe I more than thought it!

The girls went out this morning to a weaving class at the Pearl hotel and whilst they were there I drove down the coast a bit and took some photos. They both wove baskets from coconut palm leaves in the traditional Fijian way. They had lunch at the hotel and then I joined them for a swim. Whilst they were out I bought myself an ice cream and whilst eating it, and it was not hard, a rather large filling came out one of my back teeth, there was no pain involved and it seems to be a clean break, the filling being the back corner of the tooth, I will have to see how it goes, as long as no food can get under the rest of the filling and nothing else breaks off it might see me back to the UK, but that is three months away!

The Pool at the pearl is great, there is a little cave you can swim through to get out of the sun, and it was hot today, barely a cloud in the sky, the kind of day you would imagine when you think about a pacific island.

After swimming we head back to the house, we are roasting some chicken portions and eating in tonight. Whilst dinner is cooking I go out for a drive to see if I can photograph the sunset, only there is nothing to photograph, there is a lot of low lying cloud in the distance and the sun simply drops behind that with no spectacular effects.

After dinner we play another game of Scattrgories before getting Charlotte off to bed at a reasonable time. Lisa and I then sit down and watch some chic-flic we find on TV whilst drinking our wine and beer respectively, about all we feel up to tonight, must have been all the sun we lapped up today.

May 18th - Sigotoka and a Fijian Dinner

2009-05-19T01:18:00.004+01:00

Today we are off to Sigatoka to visit the Sand Dunes and the Wildlife Park.

Both Lisa and I are up before 7am, something, most likely a bird, decided to make a right racket on the roof and when we were both wide awake there was no hope of getting back to sleep.

Sushila is here today to clean the place, could get used to having a maid!

The drive to Sigotoka takes about an hour and a half, it is only 80km, but the roads in that direction leave an awful lot to be desired and we have to go back through all the speed bump controlled villages. When we leave Pacific Harbour, by the time we are coming into Sigatoka it is starting to rain and the sky is very black. The plan had been to visit the wildlife park first, but we could not find it, we were looking on the wrong side of Sigotoka, however we knew where the sand dunes were so went there and asked there about the wildlife park, simply switching the order of our visit. By the time we reached the sand dunes it was pouring down, the rain was bouncing off the ground. We ate our lunch in the car and by the time we had finished it was easing off so we all donned waterproof coats and set off. To get up into the dunes we had to climb a steep wooden ramp, it was wet and slippery and Baggage came crashing down, she was OK but we really had to push her to carry on. By the time we got out into the open at the top the rain had stopped, and all except for a quick shower whilst we were on the beach the rain stayed off for the rest of our visit.

The dunes are substantial, the walk we chose was only an hour in duration, you could easily lose yourself in there for a day. We walked up over the dunes, down through the gully where the beetles chirping were deafening, along the beach and then back up through the Mahogany wood. Baggage was particularly interested in the sculptures in the wood of the tree huggers and the tree of lost soles.

After the dunes we headed over to the Kula Eco Park, we spent just over an hour here looking at the animals, we all got to handle some lizards and Lisa also handled a Fiji Boa, Baggage and I both opted to give the latter a miss. Before we left the park Baggage got to feed the sea turtles which she loved.

On the way back to the house we stopped off at a handicraft store picked up a few more gifts and souvenirs, again we were amazed at the price of items, just over £30 buying us a fairly large bag full of stuff that we will have to squeeze into our suitcases.

When we got back to the house Sushila had done a great job and the place was spotless again, it was really nice getting back to a clean house and whilst a maid was not something we expected it is something we have enjoyed having.

Back at the house the first thing I did was fumigate the car with insect killer, it had become infested with ants, most likely picked up whilst parked at the sand dunes, probably because we had eaten our lunch in it whilst it was raining, they were everywhere. I then had a quick swim and got changed for dinner, we are off to the Pearl hotel tonight for their Fiji evening, a Lovo meal and then some traditional Fijian entertainment.

The Lovo is a traditional Fijian way of cooking the meat, it is a fire pit lined with heat resistant stones, when the stones are hot meat wrapped in banana leaves is placed in the pit and covered with earth to cook. On arriving for our dinner we were given some Kava to sample, a traditional Fijian drink made from a root that is crushed and mixed with water. It tasted OK, a hint of aniseed, you do not need much, my lips and throat were numb after a few mouthfuls, apparently after a few glasses you loose control of your limbs!

The food was great, the meat so tender and full of flavour and the other Fijian dishes that were served up to accompany it were all very tasty. During the evening I tried a variety including a Fijian spinach soup, a raw fish salad, an avocado salad, different roast vegetables, both chicken and pork from the Lovo, and fish cooked in coconut milk. For desert I had Chocolate & Pistachio brownie, cassava cake and a plantain and coconut milk dish.

To drink I enjoyed a couple of bottles of Fiji gold with my dinner.

After dinner we were treated to a display of traditional Fijian dancing for about half an hour, then when we were invited to join in Baggage volunteered me and I got roped into a Fijian variant on the conga, I got my own back however by getting her roped into a game of musical chairs, which she won and subsequently stayed up to play musical statues which she also won. The Fiji Gold probably helped my efforts in the conga.

By the time we got back to the house it was after 9pm and we got Baggage straight off to bed as she was pretty tired, she was asleep almost instantly. We did not stay up much after as we too were pretty shattered after our early start and all the fresh air we had today.

17th May - Zip Fiji

2009-05-17T11:46:00.001+01:00

I never did get to read any of my book last night, when I got downstairs Rain Man had just begun on the TV so I blobbed in front of that instead. Still drank my beer though. Must get more today as the fridge is now empty.

After breakfast I had a quick swim, again it did not seem as bad when first getting in as it did when we first arrived here, Then I got back on with my book. Lisa having read it yesterday had made a number of marks where she did not feel it either read well or was totally accurate, at least there were not as many marks as I had expected. I spent the morning addressing these.

Before lunch I popped out to the supermarket to get a few ingredients for tonight’s chilli and some beer and wine. Forgot the onion I wanted and on Sunday in Fiji supermarkets cannot sell alcohol, didn’t I do well.

After lunch we headed out to Zip Fiji for our experience flying

through the tree tops. The drive took about 20 minutes and when we got there we had to wait another half an our as there were some more people joining our party who were yet to arrive. Zip Fiji consists of 8 zip lines through the forest canopy, all apart from the first one take you from platform to platform, the first simply gets you across a river after which there is a short climb up to the second one. In total 4 other people joined us, so there were 10 in our Zipping party, 3 of us, a honeymoon couple from Brisbane, a couple from Canberra and two Fijian guides.

After a very brief introduction we were off, we were all a bit unsure of the first couple of flights, none of us had done it before, I moved my rear guiding hand in a bit too close a couple of times and ended up doing full 360s, but in the main we did OK. By the third flight we were all well into it. Baggage loved it screaming at the top of her voice almost all the way across every wire. The 8 zip wires were over far too quick and we could not believe it when at the end of the course the guides asked us if we would like to go around again, a complimentary set of flights as we were the only party they were taking around this afternoon, we all said yes without any hesitation. Back up to the first zip we went and off we went again, though this time they had increased the pace, were not waiting for a flyer to clear the line before the next one set off and were encouraging us to try a bit of freestyle whilst heading across the wire, it all added to the fun.

At the end of the 16 zips through the canopy I felt totally exhilarated, I would not consider this an extreme sport as it is actually pretty safe and does not require a vast amount of effort, but it is just simply great fun.

Our guides helped make it a truly enjoyable afternoon, they loved Baggage and made her feel quite special and they were just simply very friendly and open at all times, a truly Fijian experience, Bula!

Back at the house I had a quick swim to cool off before making tonight’s dinner, chilli and rice, we all had quite an appetite, must have been all the fresh air.

After I have finished writing this we have decided to pop out to one of the bars for a drink before we settle Baggage down for the night, might be something to do with the fact that we have no alcohol in the house!

We did go out to Uprising for a drink, Baggage took her laptop and logged on to their Internet connection which kept her happy, I also gave her a game of pool whilst we were there. I enjoyed a couple of pints of Fiji Draught after which Lisa drove back to the house, the first time she has driven our truck since we got to Fiji, the hand-brake caught her out just as it had done me!

Back at the house I edited the video footage from today so that I can get the baggage episode on-line, it is going up as I type this, and after this is posted I am off to bed.

May 16th - Just Chillin'

2009-05-16T10:10:00.000+01:00

Nothing happening again today, so no excuse, I settle down this morning and start to write. Before I finish I have completed the first chapter, it’s a start anyway. I print it out and give it to Lisa to read, she knows how to be critical after all!

After I had finished writing it was time for a swim, the pool does not seem so bad now, it is still cold to get in, but you know if you push through the cold barrier it is worth it and the water will soon not feel too cold to be in. Once you are in the pool there is no desire to rush out because the water is too cold to be comfortable, I reckon it just feels cold when you first get in because the air temperature, which is in the region of 28 degrees, is what you are accustomed to.

After a swim I book us into Zip Fiji for tomorrow afternoon, flying through the rain forest canopy on a series of Zip wires. You will know how we get on when I get around to publishing my blog tomorrow.

This afternoon I had to go out to get a few supplies for dinner tonight, I am doing a cheesy rice and tuna bake. Whilst at the Arts Village I meet a lady, Vera, a Fijian national who has been living in the UK since she was 18, she is now mid 50s, her husband was in the forces and she has seen a very large slice of the world, he passed away 6 years ago and now she is considering returning to Fiji. She is currently on a six month honeymoon with the country to see how she gets on. At the end she feels she has become far to accustomed to European ways to be able to move back here, but she is determined to give it a go. We must have talked for over half an hour, by the time I bought the shopping and got back to the house the girls wondered where on earth I had got to.

After I got back I decided to have a rest from all this exertion and put the air conditioning on in our bedroom to watch a film on my laptop, Lisa was ready and Baggage involved in her computer.

When I came to cook the dinner I found we had no cheese, I knew we had no cheese but had forgotten to buy it when I went out to the shop, the wonders of a shopping list. A quick trip out to the shop found it only just closed and as a departing customer had the door open I managed to blag my way in to get my block of cheese, only to encounter the first miserable Fijian I have met since we got here, she is behind the till in the shop which should have closed 20 minutes ago and is obviously wishing she was somewhere else right now.

After dinner we play a game of Scatergorise, a game that was in the house when we arrived, great fun and good to get Baggage off the computer.

The beer is now open and I am going to chill for the rest of the evening, TV here is pretty poor, but I have a book which I am enjoying so maybe I will pick that up to finish off the day in keeping with the rest of it?

15th May - Horse Riding on the beach

2009-05-15T09:56:00.002+01:00

Another quiet day is planned for today, it is raining and it looks set to stay that way so probably not a bad thing, though the forecast is wet for the next few days so I guess we are just going to have to grin and get wet if we want to do everything we have in mind. The girls have planned to go horse riding this afternoon, Uprising offer an hours ride along the beach, we will have to see how they feel after lunch.

This morning I start to compile the next episode of Baggage, the first from Fiji, when it is complete I can find no further excuses so set myself about adding to my book for a couple of hours. By the time I finish the book has grown to nearly 5,000 words, a long way off where it needs to be and I know that even in this there is a lot of repetition, but it is a reasonable start.

After lunch the girls decide they may as well go for it, the rain has all but stopped so we head over to Uprising. When we get there they have no record of the riding having been booked, I thought it was all a bit casual when I booked it on Wednesday, but never mind, they soon get the horses down onto the beach and the girls are off. An excuse for me to shelter under the covered beach side bar and have a pint of Fiji Bitter on draught, a nice way to pass a Friday afternoon. When the girls get back from their ride they are both soaked through, we head back to the house and they both decide to go in the pool, why not they are already wet, though they do take the time to put costumes on first.

Tonight’s dinner is chicken noodles again by special request of Baggage, though I do add fresh vegetables bought from the market yesterday, bok choi, carrots and French beans. After dinner we all sit down to watch a family film which turns out not to be and Baggage gets bored with it and ends up playing on my computer.

More Fiji Bitter for tonight, cannot see myself bothering to but anything different whilst we remain here.

May 14th - A trip to Navua

2009-05-15T00:37:00.004+01:00

Today Sushila came to clean and tidy for us, this is the first house we have rented that comes complete with a maid so it is a bit of a novelty.

This morning we are off out to Navua market, we have been told it is worth a visit, and that the selection of fresh fruit and veg. is extensive. Navua is about 15 minutes towards Suva from where we are staying and compared to some of the roads we travelled to get here the road is very good. Navua is on the bank of the river and many local excursions up the river start from there, the town is typical of the ramshackle groups of houses here. The market is set in a long hall with, more like an extended bus shelter, with some 30 tables inside lined with different kinds of produce, we buy three carriers full of a variety of fruit and veg. and the whole lot costs us about £5. Some of it we know what we are getting, some is experimental.

Whilst in Navua I take the opportunity to take some photographs, both within the market and of the town. Whilst there Lisa and Baggage each buy themselves a Sula, a Fijian sari. Whilst Lisa and Baggage are off getting their Sulas I enjoy a bit of people watching from our truck, again I am struck by the number of people who just seem to be hanging around, the next thing that I notice is the number of young men carrying machetes, there is no threat in this, they are simply the preferred tool of work, yet imagine the reaction in any UK town if someone were to walk through the highstreet carrying a machete.

On the way to Navua I scan for a local radio station to listen to whilst we are here, I find one called Legend that plays those well known 80 somethings songs that most people know and can usually sing most of the lyrics to yet few would own up to having any of them in their record collection. Now that shows my age doesn’t it, record collection, not CD or worse still MP3.

When we get back to the house Sushila is still here cleaning, she is very thorough, all bedding has been changed and washed, the floors have all been mopped and the bathrooms both cleaned, it is far cleaner than it would have been if we had been left to our own devices. This is not a bad thing with the level of wildlife we have found in the house, ants whenever you drop anything, anywhere, tiny fawn coloured insects, running about like ants, wherever it is damp, and a number of lizards running about on the inside walls. We are also being plagued by Mosquitos, all three of us have a number of bites, and despite liberal application of after-bite they itch like crazy.

Lisa and I sit outside to read and I light a mosquito deterrent coil near to where we are sitting, it will burn for eight hours and if it helps to keep them away will be much appreciated.

After lunch I head back out to the arts village, first stop the wood carving shop to get a smaller face mask to take back with us, I have decided this is the safe option as if the other one does not arrive at least we will have something. There is a box on the floor of the shop addressed to my parents house, at least I know of carvings have got that far. I end up buying three masks and some other trinkets as souvenirs, the problem is I really do like the dark wood carvings here and it is all so cheap.

Back to the house, Lisa is still reading, she has already read one book cover to cover since we got here and is now well through the 2nd one. I join her and read for a bit before deciding to cool off in the pool, before long Baggage joins me, this is the first time since we have been here she has done much more than stick a toe in the water.

This evening we went out to Uprising resort for dinner, we chose today as at 7pm there is supposed to be a Kava ceremony and I guess you cannot really visit Fiji without trying a little Kava, however when we got there we found the ceremony was not being held tonight as they were opening their new beach bar and were having a special dinner for that, never mind just an excuse to eat here next Thursday evening. The food was really good, the beer was Fiji Bitter on draught, which tasted significantly better than from the bottle and it was pleasant sitting outside under the thatched shelter, even if it was raining out this evening. Whilst eating dinner there were two young kittens hanging around, they kept Baggage amused for most of the meal, she even got them to eat a little of her bread roll, no wonder they were hanging about.

back at the house I drank the last bottle of Fiji Premium beer, doubt I will bother with that again, in fact I will probably stick with Fiji bitter as of the three local beers available in the supermarket this is the best.

May 13th - Another chilling day

2009-05-13T11:59:00.001+01:00

Today we are again staying around the house, Baggage will be doing some schooling and I get a couple of hours of writing in again.

Before I settle down to write however I have a swim in the pool and manage to get in a few lengths. The pool is not heated and it does make you gasp a bit as you get in, but the reality is that the water is not cold and after you have been in for a couple of minutes you quickly acclimatise, the best bet is just to get in quickly.

For lunch we have some ham that I had bought from the Supermarket, it says it is cooked, but we reckon that is a bit dubious, it is definitely not cooked as much as meat would be at home, if we are ill tomorrow I guess we just ate raw gammon!

After lunch I head back into the village, camera in hand. I start by visiting Uprising and taking some pictures of the beach and pool area, I then head across to the pearl and perform a similar exercise, here there was a professional photo shoot going on taking publicity stills for the hotel, I wonder how many I ruined by being visible in the background? I ended my Photo Excursion at the Arts Village, including a number of shots being taken of the type of wood carvings that we purchased yesterday.

For dinner tonight we have lamb chops. The meat here is not presented as well as we are used to in the UK, in fact as you buy if from the supermarket it looks a bit like something you might buy for your dog, but once you get past the look it is fine, the Lamb for instance was very tender and very tasty. No cooking tomorrow night, we are treating ourselves to dinner at Uprising.

Tonight for a drink I have had a bottle of Fiji Bitter, nice, but I am back in the same world as I was in whilst in Australia, all beer is really a European style lager under a different name.

May 12 - Fiji Day 2 and Mum's Birthday

2009-05-13T11:38:00.000+01:00

When we decided to make this trip we tried to find books written by other families who had done something similar, but could find nothing, I therefore decided that at the end of the trip I would have a go at writing a book. I am not sure if I can, and if I do whether it will even be good enough to get published but I will have a go. When we were in the US at the end of last year I wrote a prologue for the book, some 1 and a half pages, only about a further 298.5 to go then! As we have been travelling I have decided that Fiji will be a good place to get started, we are having a more relaxing time here and also need to take Baggage’s school work a bit more serious, a great opportunity for me to sit down for a couple of hours every morning and put pen to paper, well finger to keypad anyway.

Today I will start, so after breakfast and when Lisa is up and dressed I set myself up in the little office area upstairs next to our bedroom, ideal for a bit of peace and quiet. It works to, in my two hours I manage to get a basic structure down and the first few pages written. After I have finished for the day I let Lisa have a read of what I have written so far to see if I am writing along the right lines, not sure if she was being polite or not, but she said it was OK. Reckon I will send the first couple of chapters to someone else for their comments when I have them penned.

After lunch we decide to go out, Lisa has not yet left the house since we got here so we head for Uprising resort and have a wander along the beach and then go to the Arts Village.

Whilst at the Arts Village we look up a friend of one of Lisa’s friends from home, we find her, she runs a shop there. We also spend some time in a wood carving shop and end up buying just about all our Fiji souvenirs in one go and pay to have them boxed up and mailed back to the UK. We spend a total of $250 (£70ish) on more than 10 individual pieces, including the cost of post and packing for their return to the UK. One piece is a carved mask, nearly 3 foot tall that is destined for our conservatory wall back in the UK. The items will be shipped by land/sea and will take about 3 months to get there, they might just about beat us. It did seem strange parting with cash and leaving the shop with nothing, knowing that if the items never turn up it will be very difficult for me to do anything about it, but the operation seemed genuine enough and sometimes you really do just have to trust people. Any way the mask we selected we could never have bought if we had to transport it back with us. If the items do not turn up in the UK it will be the fact that we do not have all our Fiji Souvenirs that will be most disappointing, not the loss of the cash.

When we get back to the house I compile the last Baggage we recorded in Auckland and publish it on the website.

For dinner tonight I cook a chilli, though I leave the powder out of Baggages portion as she does not like spicy food. After dinner we spend a bit of time on Skype with my Mum as it is her Birthday today, we even manage to say hello to Dad which was nice as he is usually absent whenever we talk to Mum.

Tonight I crack open a bottle of Fiji Gold, a lite lager, not as nice as the Fiji Premium I had to drink last night.

May 11th - Fiji Day 1

2009-05-12T02:54:00.002+01:00

The next two weeks are planned to be a rest, with the current political climate here we have decided not to travel too much and in the main to simply enjoy the climate, pool and local activities available in the area. To this end today we had no urgency about getting up and about.

For me however this was not the case, I was up before 7am, I heard what I was sure was someone trying to open our front door, came downstairs to see what was going on, found nothing but by now was wide awake. Never mind I had a fair few emails to deal with.

Last night when we got in we had a quick supper, we were tired so had left the dirty plates out on the side, this morning they were crawling with ants, we will not be doing that again.

Sushila came, though did not actually get here until nearer to 10am and I agreed with her that whilst we are here she only need come on a Thursday and Monday to change the bedding, give the place a sweep through and clean the bathrooms, she was very happy with this as she gets paid by the owners anyway, and for us it means that we can skip a few jobs we normally have to do when in a rented house. Whilst she was here she did sort out a light bulb that was not working and disinfect the side where the ants had been.

Lisa eventually got up after 11am. She blamed it on a disturbed night.

After Lisa was up I took a drive into Pacific Harbour to have a look around and find the grocery store. The centre of the village is the Arts Centre which is actually a collection of a couple of offices, a restaurant, cafe, and a few shops, including the Pacific Harbour grocery store. I dropped in on Richard to sort a few things out and then went shopping.

The grocery store is relatively small, though has a good variety of food in it, should be fine for the few meals we want to cook in-between those we take out, we will just have to be inventive with the few ingredients that are available rather than always eat the same stuff.

We took lunch sat out by the pool, it has rained this morning and it is incredibly humid, but not too unpleasant.

After lunch I take another drive and check out the two Pacific Harbour resorts, Uprising and The Pearl. Both offer reasonable restaurants and activities that are worth trying out. We will almost definitely be trying the Waterfall walk up through the rain forest which is a guided trek and the Lovo which is a traditional Fijian dinner with pit cooked meat. The Fijian in charge of the activities at Uprising displays the same level of open friendship we have already noticed in most Fijians we have met, he leaves Fiji for the UK in two weeks on the day we fly out to Hawaii so we have quite a chat about what he will find the UK like as he has never ventured that far before.

On the way back to the house I stop at the supermarket again for wine and beer, I pick up a couple of bottles of local Fijian beer, I will have to tell you what they are like later after I have sampled them.

When I get back we all go out for a short walk across the road to the river and then down it’s bank a short way. On the way we collect a coconut which I extract the milk from when we get back, though we do not drink it as we are not totally sure at what point the milk is ready and safe to be drunk, or how long that particular coconut had been laying on the ground, we do try to nock a coconut out of the tree but to no avail. Whilst walking we do hear a few thuds which we realise must be coconuts falling close by, but do not see any that have just dropped.

Dinner tonight is noodles with a poached egg on top, a dish that Baggage had back in Hong Kong, and one which works particularly well.

After dinner Lisa was on the laptop for a bit then did a bit of knitting, she is not a Grandma quite yet, but is in training! I watched a mindless film and drank a bottle of the local brew, Fiji Premium Beer, not so sure about the premium tag, but it was very drinkable and will do fine for a couple of weeks.

10th May - Arrival in Fiji

2009-05-11T02:36:00.003+01:00

Today we got moving from the house in Auckland just after 9am, our flight is not until 12:55 but we have half an hour drive to the airport, have to return the hire car and want to get something to eat before boarding the plane. It turned out that the drive to the airport was shorter than expected and the return of the car hire a quick formality so we ended up in the terminal before the check-in desk for our flight actually opened. Just as well we did though and were among the first in the queue as it then took over 45 minutes for us to get checked in, there was a problem with our ticket, we have an e-ticket but the system at the airport said we had a paper ticket, obviously we did not have one available to give them. Eventually this was sorted and we were assured the problem was corrected so that it would not occur again, we will see!

The flight left on time and was a very uneventful 3 hour hop, getting us into Nadi just after 4pm.

Getting away from the airport was not so easy, firstly our bags were amongst the last to come off the plane, it was nearer to 5pm by the time we were getting out through customs, then Budget did not have the rental car we had booked. I had booked a mid size SUV, they had none available so offered us a twin cab Mazda truck instead. Our luggage would gave to go in the back on the flatbed. We debated this and they did offer us a Mazda 6 as an alternative, the luggage would have been a real squeeze in this though so we stayed with the truck, as soon as we got out of the airport onto the roads I was glad we did. It had turned 5:30 by the time we were getting away from the airport.

I am not sure what I expected of Fiji, but the drive from Nadi to Pacific Harbour was definitely not it. On leaving Nadi within a few minutes we were steering our way between horses wandering on the road and had almost taken out a dog. I was amazed when we finally reached Pacific Harbour that we had not taken out any of the local animal population. One of the aforementioned horses had a very raw tumour hanging between its front legs, at least the size of a basketball. Fijians were along the road side for the entire duration of the journey, either walking fron a to b or as in the case of many seemingly just standing around watching the traffic go by, some of them had better road sense than others. On the way out of Nadi there were also many small fires that had been lit by the side of the road.

The drive from Nadi to Pacific Harbour took us about 2.5 hours, on the way you pass through a number of small villages, but only one township Sigatoka. Each of the villages announces itself to the driver with a number of speed humps across the road, obviously there is a problem with the Fijians speeding there way around and this is an attempt to kerb it, though to the uninitiated they are more like poorly signed death traps. The fact that we were making the majority of the journey after dark did not help at all.

After Sigotoka the road became more windy as you cut up through the hills that line the coast, I am sure at times the views would have been stunning, unfortunately the lack of light meant all we could see was the road we were concentrating on ahead whilst keeping an eye out for the next speed hump or four legged mobile road block that happened to be thrown our way.

We got to Pacific Harbour eventually and had managed it without dealing out death to any Fijian road user. On arrival we drove past the turning which is next to the Pacific Harbour police outpost, after doing a three point turn we were flagged down by a policeman on our way back up to the turning. I was not aware a three point turn on an empty road was an issue? As I would the window down to see what he wanted he said are you Neil? He then pointed us to a car waiting by the road side and suggested we follow it to our house. This is the first time we have been greeted by the local constabulary!

Richard the house manager for the property we have rented then showed us to our house and gave us a quick tour before leaving us to settle in.

The house was built in the late 70s, and whilst it is very clean and tidy this does show, there are areas that are really in need of redesign. The kitchen for example still has all the original appliances and they are very well worn, the two showers have also seen better days. It is clean and tidy though, there is air conditioning in all the bedrooms and the pool is clearly well managed, it will do fine for our two week stop.

One of the things that Richard did tell us was that our house maid Sushila will call at 9am tomorrow morning and do whatever we need doing, this was very unexpected, we did not know the house came with a maid, and to be honest are not sure what we would have for her to do tomorrow as we have only just got here.

As we got here so late there is no opportunity to go shopping so Richard has got us in a few essentials, we therefore have toast and butter, followed by a mandarin for our supper, I will have to go out in the morning and see what else I can get. Not even any beer this evening, though I am sure I will survive.

It is very humid here and the temperature is still quite warm when we go to bed, though we do put the air conditioning off due to the noise and settle for the ceiling fan in the bedroom. Not long after we have gone to bed I lay awake listening to a pretty serious dog fight, not that far away, the vanquished exits the scene howling in pain. Despite this and the heat we do however get a reasonable nights sleep.

9th May - Last day in New Zealand

2009-05-10T22:24:00.001+01:00

Well we arrived in New Zealand some 50 days ago and today is our last day before we depart for Fiji. One thing we have to do today is pack, we have to squeeze all our possessions back into our three suitcases for the first time since we landed in Wellington a month ago. The plan is to check one of our carry on bags and use the backpack we normally have in our suitcase as extra carry on, hopefully that will accommodate all we have bought?

The first job for today is packing, we got a very disturbed night last night as there was very heavy rain at times, and as all but one of the houses we have rented here this place has a tin roof so rain can make quite a din. They really do like their tin roofs over here! Maybe it is a good job we are not going very far today, we are all pretty tired. Baggage actually ended up in our bed with us at about 6am after being woken by the rain.

Packing actually goes better than we had expected and a pile of items we had put out to go in the bin if they did not fit nearly all fit in, one of these Baggages walking boots may prove useful in Fiji but I doubt they will make it beyond there as they are already a little tight.

After lunch we decide to go out for a walk and a bit of fresh air and head into the city and out to Ponsonby. Lisa has found a number of self guided walks in the Ponsonby area and we decide to do one of these which takes us past some historic buildings and the down through Auckland’s Western Park. The rain holds off whilst we are walking, apart from at one point where we shelter in the entrance to a church for about 10 minutes whilst it absolutely pours. The clouds are moving across the sky quickly today though and the rain soon passes.

After the walk we head back to the house as we have decided to pick up a take-out rather than go to a restaurant. That is fine, I guess I will just have to make do with the one (and my last!) can of Speights then.

For our take-out Lisa and I both go for Indian and Baggage has a carbonara from a little Italian restaurant, unfortunately none of them are that special, a shame as it is our last meal in New Zealand.

After dinner Baggage watches a movie whilst Lisa and I finish the packing, we then sit down with our last beer and wine and watch Sleepless in Seattle, we have both seen it many times before but to be honest this evening it offers a really good option.