How many countries have you visited?
April 5th, 2013 by Roger Darlington
I have always believed the old adage that travel broadens the mind. I love visiting new countrires and experiencing new cultures because I learn so much.
Our recent round the world trip has added three nations to my total, so that I have now visited 60. You can view the list – and a world map – here.
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How long is it possible to sleep?
April 5th, 2013 by Roger Darlington
I’m fortunate in that I’ve always slept well and can more-or-less sleep anywhere at any time. If you’ve followed the blog postings on our round the world trip, you’ll have seen that it was an intense exercise with a lot of early starts and a great deal of travelling, so I haven’t been getting as much sleep as usual in the last month.
On the near-11 hour flight from Los Angeles back home to London, I managed to doze for around five hours and, back at the house, I crashed for almost three hours. Last night, I went to bed early – and I rose almost 14 hours later.
What a trip. What a sleep.
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Our round the word trip (29): conclusion
April 4th, 2013 by Roger Darlington
The final stages of our journey home involved a flight from San Francisco to Los Angeles of just 50 minutes on an United Boeing 757-200, a period of four hours at LAX airport, and then another flight from LA to London of 10 hrs 40 mins on an Air New Zealand Boeing 777-300. The last flight of our long holiday – the 12th excluding helicopters – was not just almost half a day in duration but involved a time difference of 8 hours, so we arrived at London Heathrow really jet-lagged – to be met by a temperature of 2C/36F and snow flurries (In April!).
How to summarise such a fantastic holiday?
The bare statistics of the trip are four countries in 31 days, involving six time zones and two languages, taking 12 flights totalling almost 56 hours, and staying in 13 hotels. We even managed to meet five sets of friends in three different countries. The trip has added three new countries to our total which, in Roger’s case, brings the grand total of nations visited to a round 60.
It was a great month to be away from home since, while we had very hot weather in Thailand and Australia and really warm weather in New Zealand, most of the UK had snow and overall it was the coldest March there for 50 years (1962).
On such a fabulous trip – our furthest and longest together – it is a challenge to pick out all the highlights, but among them would be the visit to the Temple of the Emerald Buddha in Bangkok, our helicopter flight over Ulhuru, snorkelling on the Great Barrier Reef, climbing the Sydney Harbour Bridge, our helicopter ride to the Franz Josef & Fox Glaciers, the cruise on Milton Sound, the jet boat ride in Skippers Canyon, and the views of San Francisco from Sausalito.
By visiting Australia & New Zealand, we have now been to every continent on Earth – but there are still many more countries to see and (we hope) many more holidays to come. This one though will always remain the BIG one. As well as our memories and this record, we have almost 1100 photographs to help us recall the adventure.
Thanks to taking an iPad with us and having access to WiFi almost everywhere, this is the first time that we have blogged about a holiday as it has happened and this is the last such blog posting. From now on, NightHawk will return to normal service. Did you enjoy the trip?
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Our round the world trip (28): three icons in San Francisco
April 3rd, 2013 by Roger Darlington
Our last day of the stop-over in San Francisco and the final day of our amazing round the world holiday – Day 29 (Tuesday) – began with another Argonaut Hotel breakfast. You order a ham & cheese omelette and you receive an omelette twice the size of any in Europe (they use three eggs) plus fried potatoes and a couple of slices of toast. Is it any wonder that so many Americans are obese?
Today we managed to experience three icons of San Francisco: a cable car, Golden Gate Park, and Alcatraz Island.
The San Francisco cable car network is the last manually operated cable car system in the world. Of the 23 lines that were created between 1873-1890, three still operate and one of them starts and finishes round the corner from the Argonaut Hotel, so we paid our US$ 6 a piece and took the Powell & Hyde line. As it rises up Hyde Street, you get a great view of Alcatraz in the bay and then you pass the head of the crooked part of Lombard Street. Turning into Washington Street, you pass the Cable Car Museum, before turning into Powell Street and proceeding through Union Square all the way down to Market Street.
As fun as the sights when riding the cable car are the sounds: the ever-present whirring of the cables, the periodic manipulation of the grip lever, the regular sounding of the bell, and the constant calls of the conductor: “All the way in – shoulder to shoulder … Hold on folks, goin’ downhill … New riders? … Union Square, anyone?”
From Market Street, we took a taxi to Golden Gate Park which is even larger than Central Park in New York: over 3 miles long east to west and half a mile wide north to south. We asked the Ethiopian cab driver to drop us off at the De Young Museum. At first, Roger was disorientated: the museum he used to visit in 1970 has been competed destroyed and replaced by a new one opened in 2005 and the exhibits he remembered have been relocated to a completely different museum. But then we found that, since it was the first Tuesday of the month, admission was free and the special exhibition had a reduced fee.
While we were at the museum, there was the sounding of the earthquake alarm system which is tested throughout San Francisco at noon on the first Tuesday of every month. The city was devastated by the earthquake of 1906 and seriously damaged by one in 1989, so there is always the threat of a natural disaster and a fear of “the big one”.
The special exhibition was a collection of Dutch Golden Age engravings and paintings including works from the Mauritshuis Museum in The Hague (which Vee & Roger had visited on a trip to the Netherlands). The top draw of the exhibition was the famous Vermeer painting “The Girl With The Pearl Earring”. Also we enjoyed viewing a permanent collection entitled “Art Of The Americas” which ranged from the Aztecs to the Inuits. The views from the Hamon Tower and a visit to the cafe rounded off an excellent visit.
Trips to Alcatraz are often – as on this week – fully booked days in advance, but we got to the island this afternoon as part of our 48 hour sightseeing package. Starting from Pier 33 on The Embarcadero, it is a 15-minute ferry ride to the island which served as a federal penitentiary for 29 years until it was closed in 1963. Infamous inmates included Al “Scarface” Capone and Robert “The Birdman” Stround.
We took the audio tour of the Cell Blocks B & C (336 cells for the “general population”) and D Block (42 cells for segregated prisoners) and tried out one of the tiny cells for size. Having seen movies like “The Bird Man Of Alcatraz”, “Escape From Alcatraz” and “The Rock”, it was eerie to walk the blocks and contemplate the terrible isolation that such incarceration must have involved.
We had barely 15 minutes back at our hotel to freshen up for an early dinner with our dear American friends Art & Lynn Shostack who have very recently relocated from the East Coast to the West Coast. Art is a prolific author who is currently working on his 35th book which is about the unusual occasions of kindness shown by Holocaust victims to one another.
For our meal, we returned to the seafood venue of last night’s dinner and found that, since this time we had booked, the menu given to us was headed “McCormick & Kuleto’s San Francisco welcomes the Darlington party!” Roger & Vee had enjoyed last night’s clam chowder so much, we started with it again. Then Vee had jumbo shrimp scampi sautéed served over linguini, while Roger went outside his comfort zone and tried the San Francisco cioppino with crab, mussels, clams, squid, rockfish, scallop & prawns. As Lynn put it, the immensely affable evening was “the capstone” to a magnificent holiday.
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Our round the world trip (27): two tours in San Francisco
April 2nd, 2013 by Roger Darlington
Arriving at our San Francisco hotel after crossing the Pacific, the first priority was a little sleep in mid afternoon. Then it was out around Fisherman’s Wharf for something to eat. We played safe and went to a very traditional American diner called “Denny’s”, but we had forgotten just how enormous many of the servings are in the USA. Vee was provided with a huge helping of hash browns with her omelette that she could not manage at all, while Roger’s banana split was literally twice the size of any in Europe and even ‘the king of deserts’ could not finish it.
Strolling back, we jumped when what looked like a bush on the side of the pavement (sorry, sidewalk) suddenly opened up and a black hobo holding two large branches shouted at us: “Waaah!! Be a man! It’s only a black man in a bush!” What was all this about? We watched him do it again to some other unsuspecting tourists: “If I’ve made yuh holla, give me a dollar”. Only in America …
Once back in our room, the jet-lag kicked in and we decided to rest our eyes for another while. When we opened them again, it was four hours later – and the evening time when normal SF goes to sleep.
Day 28 (Monday) started with our first hotel breakfast in the States for many years. The bad news is that in the USA, unlike most other countries, breakfast is not included, so you have to pay for every individual item and provide a tip of typically 20%. The good news is that the choice of food is amazing – Vee had bacon scramble and Roger chose Eggs Benedict.
Through the hotel concierge, we booked 48 hour tickets at US$ 100 (£66) each with City Sightseeing San Francisco which does a range of hop on – hop off loop tours, so the day was a tale of two tours – and two tour guides with great tales and amazingly the same marriage. Meanwhile the day started overcast and cloudy but soon became bright and sunny.
The first tour was the Downtown one which lasts an hour and a half if you don’t leave the bus. Our guide was the red-hatted moustachioed Leo who delivered his commentary in the super-fast style beloved of those who cover horse races for television. We saw such famous sights as Coit Tower and the Transamerica Pyramid and well-known locations like Union Square, Market Street, Chinatown, Little Italy and Washington Square, all of which gave us an introductory overview to this wonderful city of 1.7 million.
After hot drinks and pastries in the “Waterfront Bakery” (run by a Persian who left Iran 30 years ago), we took the Golden Gate Bridge/Sausalito tour which, with our break in Sausalito, filled an afternoon of three and a half hours. Our guide – who was also our driver – this time was “the fat lady” called Betsy who turned out to be Leo’s wife and was even louder and funnier than her husband of 34 years.
Betsy described San Francisco as “the most liberal city in the United States” (she mentioned the annual nude cyclers event) and the place for “the best people-watching anywhere in the world” (she identified “the bushman” from yesterday as Greg who has been named “street performer of the year”).
The Golden Gate Bridge was completed in 1937 and it is 1.7 miles long. Betsy stopped at the southern (city) end of the bridge in case anyone wanted to walk it but nobody did (Roger walked it in 1970). Apparently, since it was built, some 1,700 have “strolled off” (her words) the orange-coloured structure and only 30 of them have survived. She stopped again at the northern end of the bridge for fabulous views back to the city skyline.
Sausalito – or sarsaparilla, as Vee jokingly called it – is a very wealthy community of 6,000 just north of the Golden Gate Bridge where Roger & Vee left the bus for a couple of hours to enjoy hot drinks and cakes at “Cafe Tutti”, browse the expensive shops, and savour more stunning views of San Francisco across the bay. Mysteriously the originally clear view of the city was suddenly replaced by a line of fog which rose from water level to almost the tops of the skyscrapers before melting away almost as quickly as it had appeared. The phenomenon made for a neat set of photos.
In the evening, we went upmarket for our dinner compared to yesterday by strolling round to Ghirardelli Square where we found an excellent seafood restaurant called “McCormick & Kuleto’s”. We both had New England clam chowder followed by grilled swordfish which were delicious.
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Our round the world trip (26): from Christchurch to San Francisco
March 31st, 2013 by Roger Darlington
Day 27 (Easter Sunday) and the Australia & New Zealand core of our trip is over but, just as we broke our outward journey in Bangkok, so we are breaking our return journey in San Francisco, so the holiday is not quite concluded. As other members of our NZ group departed for early morning flights, joy of joys, in Christchurch we were able to stay in bed until 8 am and then spend a leisurely morning alone in the city. Back in Britain, it was the start of British Summer Time but March has been the coldest since 1962. For us though, it was another pleasant day: 24C/75F.
Just over the road from the Chateau on the Park is the extensive and herbaceous Hegley Park and we strolled round this to the Canterbury Museum (built in 1870) where we had been dropped on our original arrival in the city six days ago. We spent over three hours at the museum viewing the exhibits, buying more gifts from the shop, and having a light lunch in the cafe.
We were surprised at how broad and interesting the displays were, ranging from information on the original inhabitants of the island, through material on Maori culture, to a recreation of a Victorian Christchurch street. A large, three-storey Victorian dolls house was affected by the earthquake which knocked over various tiny objects in the little rooms, but the items have been left where they fell as a record of “the big one”.
Our journey to San Francisco involved two flights. The first was a one and a half hour hop from Christchurch to Auckland (where we saw the first rain of our trip). The second was an eleven and a quarter hour haul from Auckland to SF. Both flights were with Air New Zealand, the first on a Boeing 737-300 and the second on a Boeing 747-400. As usual on long-haul flights, Roger managed to sleep reasonably well but poor Vee hardly at all.
At some point over the Pacific Ocean, we crossed the date line, so that we passed from today to yesterday – or something like that (this round the world trip is getting complicated). On our second Easter Sunday (we are confused too) , we landed at 7.05 am yesterday Auckland time but 11.05 am today in San Francisco.
It was Roger’s eighth visit to the USA and Vee’s fifth – in both cases, the last trip was less than a year ago when we were on the east coast. It was Roger’s third time in San Francisco (two months in 1970 and a week in 1980) but Vee’s first (indeed this choice of stopover was hers).
We took a taxi – driven by a guy from Eritrea – to the city and, as we drove in, it crashed with rain. We are staying at the Argonaut Hotel by Fisherman’s Wharf with a great view of Alcatraz through the window of our room. But now we need to nap ….
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Our round the world trip (25): back to Christchurch
March 30th, 2013 by Roger Darlington
On Friday evening, Roger thought that he could fit in one more experience as he had seen a stargazing option advertised so, while Vee washed her hair (a very important ritual on all our holidays), he was out from about 8-10 pm. The exercise was located at the top of the Skyride Gondola, but the weather proved so cloudy that the guide Colette cancelled the event and arranged refunds. On the ride up, Roger befriended a professional Indian couple from Mumbai and, on the ride down, he talked with seven Chinese – three women and two men – and had photos together.
The last day of the New Zealand tour – Day 26 (Saturday) for Vee & Roger – was no different from all the others on the South Island. Yup, yet another early start: alarm at 6.15 am, bags out at 7.15 am, and off at 8 am.
Our driver Darryl – who shared a lot of the commentary with our guide Mark on the South Island – courted controversy by explaining the strict gun control laws in New Zealand (very similar to those in the UK) and ventured to suggest that the United States would benefit by adopting the same type of controls. The Americans – whose constituted the largest national segment of our group – were as divided between liberals and conservatives as their country as whole and some of them gave Darryl a lively counter argument.
Our journey originally took us east to Cromwell where we turned north and drove along Lake Dunstan and through Lindis Valley before stopping at Omarama for refreshment and a final opportunity at retail therapy in the “Merino Country Cafe”. Continuing north through the oddly-named Twizel to the foot of Lake Putaki, we halted for photographs of Mount Cook – or Aoraki (“Cloud piercer”) as it called by the Maori – at the other end of the lake. This mountain rises to 3,755 metres which makes it the tallest in Australasia, but only around a third of tourist groups actually see it because weather conditions are so variable, so we felt blessed that our brilliant luck with good weather had held out throughout the tour.
An hour later, we made another scenic stop for another photo opportunity: the tiny stone and oak Church of the Good Shepherd built in 1935 at the foot of Lake Tekapo. Roger & Vee were excited to find themselves at this church because they remembered that it was the location of the wedding of their good friends Beth Lamont & Philip Bickerstaffe in December 2002. We asked an attendant if we could see the register for that time and found the record of Beth & Philip’s wedding.
After more travel in an easterly direction, our lunch stop of almost two hours was at a wonderfully congenial place: the Morelea Farm at Fairlie. This is a working farm with some 4,000 sheep, around 1,800 cattle, three alpacas (for their wool), and a sheep dog called Bo. It is run by Stan & Angie who made us really welcome at their lovely home and served an excellent meal of hamburger, lamb, sausage & salad followed by a particularly delicious pavlova.
The final stretch of the journey was across the Canterbury Plain to Christchurch which we had left a very, very full five days ago. We arrived at our hotel – this time the Chateau on the Park (still under repair from the earthquake) – at 5 pm after a road trip of nine hours. As he said his farewell, Darryl asserted: “We know that it’s Australia that brings you down to this part of the world, but we believe that it’s New Zealand that will bring you back”.
The farewell dinner was at the hotel in a large restaurant shared by other groups but, at the end of the meal, there was much hand shaking and hugging as we all promised to be in touch. Nobody stayed on at the bar because most people had to leave for the airport at 4 am or 5 am next morning.
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Our round the world trip (24): Skippers Canyon
March 29th, 2013 by Roger Darlington
Just how many thrills can you experience on one holiday? The answer, in the case of this trip, was: at least one more. Day 25 (Good Friday) was free in the official itinerary, but we were offered various optional extras and most of us – including Roger & Vee – opted for the Skippers Canyon Gold Tour at NZ$ 189 (£103) a head which presented one hell of a thrill.
It was a case of up at 6.30 am and off at 7.50 am in two four-wheel drive minibuses, one driven by a guy who was an extra in one of the “Lord Of The Rings” movies. To start the four and a half hour tour, we headed due north and drove up and up Mount Coronet to a peak at about 1,000 metres for marvellous views of the Richardson Mountains behind Queenstown.
Now Queenstown owes its origins to the nearby discovery of gold in 1852 and our destination was Skippers Canyon which was at the heart of the gold rush. It took 22 years to carve out an access road using only black gunpowder and hand drills and this is still the main means of entering the canyon. The problem is that the rock road is little more than a vehicle’s width and, as it hugs the curves of the mountain side, it has no barrier between it and the sheer drop on the off side. Our driver was very assured but the ride was genuinely hair-raising, although the glorious terrain eased the anxiety considerably.
The standard Skippers Canyon Land Tour is all about the history of the gold mines. The tour is owned and operated by a fifth generation Skippers family (originally called Smith) and one of the stops is a little museum staffed by the oddly named Winky (Hohneck) who is a member of the fourth generation. Here visitors can try their hand at gold panning at the Sainsbury’s Gold Claim.
One of Winky’s sons pilots the jet boats operated by the company along a stretch of the Shotover River and the Gold Tour includes such a ride. We had to don blue spray jackets, orange life jackets, gloves and, so long as they were available, beanie hats (Roger did not manage to find one). What followed was a massive adrenaline rush.
It takes no time at all for the jet boat to achieve speed and the spray to start drenching you. The temperature of the freezing water and the force of the wind generated by the motion was like a slap in the face which simply ached with biting cold. There is no time or opportunity to worry too much about your face though because you are thrilling to a boat racing through incredibly shallow water, bouncing over all obstacles, and barely skirting adjacent and overhanging rocks. Most exciting of all was the spins when the boat is whirled a full 360 degrees in a couple of seconds.
Just how exhilarating the jet boat ride had been was not wholly apparent until it ended and we clamboured out of the vessel, exclaiming like kids. We found that we had to make a distinct effort to straighten up our fingers after gripping on to a bar for dear life and our legs were strangely weak so that we wobbled around for a few minutes. How could we not buy the official photograph even if we were barely distinguishable in all our gear?
After all this excitement Roger & Vee spent the afternoon chilling in downtown Queenstown. Stanley Street should be called “Backpackers’ Alley” – just about every shop is offering accommodation, equipment, or thrill activities to the young men and women descending on the place from all over the world. We ate some lunch at “Fat Badger’s Pizza Bar” on Stanley Street and later had huge cornets of Hokey Pokey ice cream from “Patagonia” on Beach Street. We sat by the water and just soaked in the magnificent harbour views once more.
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Our round the world trip (23): Milford Sound
March 28th, 2013 by Roger Darlington
Early starts and full days are now the norm and today – Day 24 (Thursday) – was certainly no exception: we left the hotel in the dark at 7.15 am and arrived back at 6.45 pm but, in the intervening eleven and a half hours, we had a magical time.
Our destination was Milford Sound which Mark explained is not actually a sound but a fiord – apparently a sound is a drowned river valley but a fiord is a drowned glacial valley. Half Welsh Vee was pleased to note that it was named after Milford Haven in Wales.
As the crow flies north-west from Queenstown to Milford Sound, the distance is not far, but there is simply no direct route. Instead you have to take a long U-shaped route, travelling south, then west, and then north. At least we made it and the weather was excellent – sometimes rock or snow avalanches near the sound cut off access or poor weather at the sound makes many features hard to make out.
We had a comfort break at Te Anau which is located at the bottom left of the U-route where the “Kiwi Country Cafe” has excellent facilities, including a shop where Vee & Roger bought more cuddly toys for the kids back home, but a very odd and unfriendly practice of charging more for take-away coffee than coffee in the cafe.
The rest of our route was through Fiordland National Park, a huge expanse covering 1.25 million hectares or 3 million acres. We passed along the side of the wonderfully scenic Lake Te Anau which is the second largest in New Zealand and twice the depth of Loch Ness in Scotland. We took the Milford Road due north which eventually goes through the 1.2 km Milford Tunnel, both of which were competed in 1954. Along the way, we made five stops to admire the stunning scenery and take great photographs.
One halt was at Mirror Lakes. These are not lakes, rather ponds or tards – but, boy, are they mirrors. The absolutely still water reflected perfectly the vegetation, the mountains, and the clouds to enable us to take pictures which looked like professional posters. Another stop was at The Chasm where the Cleddau River plunges through a narrow gap 22 metres deep in a location of verdant rainforest housing noisy kea birds. Everywhere we were so high up that the clouds skirted around the middle of the peaks and created fabulous scenes reminiscent of “Lord Of The Rings”.
It was a hard road to navigate, with repeated hairpin bends, but our driver Darryl negotiated the route with great skill as well as adding to the commentary with sardonic humour. He ensured that we arrived at Milford Sound exactly on time for the 1 pm departure for our hour and a half cruise on the sound complete with packed lunch.
The boat took us all along the west side of the long sound past Mitre Peak standing at 1,682 metres, turned round once it reached the head of the sound at the Tasman Sea, and proceeded all down the east side of the sound including the Stirling Falls. On the early part of the cruise, we were accompanied by a pod of bottle nosed dolphins swimming and jumping in formation alongside the boat. On the late section of the cruise, we sailed very close to a rock where New Zealand fur seals were sunbathing. It was a brilliant trip – and it took our photo count for the holiday to 1,000.
Afterwards two of our group took a flight back from Milford Sound to Queenstown, but the rest of us had to face a long drive back with only one brief rest stop. The return was made palatable by the showing of a film about a New Zealand racing hero called Bert Munro (“The World’s Fastest Indian”). After such a long day, Roger & Vee – accompanied by Andrew – ate dinner at the hotel.
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Our round the world trip (22): from Franz Josef to Queenstown
March 27th, 2013 by Roger Darlington
One morning we might have the chance to stay in bed awhile, but not this morning: Day 23 (Wednesday). We woke at 6 am, showered & dressed, packed again, and left at 7.45 am.
It was a day with a lot of travelling (almost nine hours on the road), but we stopped often, the weather was perfect, and we enjoyed stunning scenery all the time: a winding, twisting road with only one lane each way, dense bushes and trees lining the way, then tall mountains skirted by billows of mist or clouds, wide and fast-flowing rivers broken by rock formations, and frequently beautiful long lakes of dazzling blue water. It was like being in “The Lord Of The Rings”.
All day we were heading south for Queenstown on the only road there. First stop, after two hours, was at the World Heritage Area of Haast where eight of the group were dropped off for a jet boat ride up the Haast River and the rest of us went into town for some rest and refreshment. Typically Roger befriended a lovely four year old blonde girl called Lilly at the drop off point and Vee made friends with a miniature schnauzer dog called Archie at the “Fantail Cafe”.
Proceeding through the Haast Pass, we halted at the wonderfully-named Thunder Creek Falls to observe – and, of course, photograph – the magnificent waterfall which had been replenished by recent rain. Having snaked though the Pass, we left behind the wet forests and made our way over drier, more open terrain.
The lunch stop was at the town of Makarora which is billed as “the Gateway to Paradise”. We all ate at “The Country Cafe” where the toilets were labelled Rams, Ewes, and Mixed Flock and many of us finished our lunch with “Hokey Pokey” ice cream which led some of us to get back on the coach singing an amended version of the “Hokey Cokey”.
Immediately outside Makarora is Lake Wanaka with its glorious blue water. Across a small strip of separating land called The Neck is the parallel Lake Hawea. If the first lake was beautiful, the first view of the second from The Neck was jaw dropping. We stopped to photograph Lake Hawea which is 35 km long and 410 metres deep and the triple strip of green land, blue water, and grey rock was awesome.
Next stop was at the town of Cromwell to make a quick visit to “Jones’s Fruit Stall” which is misnamed because it is really an emporium. As we advanced through the Kawarau Gorge, we looked down on the aquamarine of the Kawarau River. Proceeding through the wine-growing “Valley of Vines at Gibbston, we arrived and stopped for a while at Arrowtown which was at the heart of the gold mining boom of the 1860s and today is a tourist attraction of cute shops and little museums.
Finally we reached our main destination of Queenstown. This town has a fabulous location on the coves of the extensive Lake Wakatipu overlooked by the indigo-coloured Remarkables Mountains. New Zealanders live in a relaxed and orderly country, but are famed for inventing adrenaline-inducing activities such as bungy jumping and river rafting and nowhere in the nation is there more opportunity to indulge in such fun as in Queenstown which is known as the “Global Adventure Capital”.
At 4.30 pm, we checked into the town’s Millennium Hotel. Since we had stayed in each of the last three hotels for one night only, this was actually our fifth hotel in five consecutive nights but, since we were staying here for three nights, we could unpack properly for once. It was a 5 minute stroll to the town centre and a 15 minute climb back (the hotel is at the top of a steep hill) and Roger & Vee teamed up with Anxrew for dinner in town. We chose a fish restaurant named “Fishbone” where Vee & Roger both had a fish called trumpeter and a dessert called the happy hen pavlova.
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