1 – You can get a shot of grappa in your Espresso for an extra 50c, usually to a ratio 50% grappa to 50% coffee. 2 – People really do say “Mama Mia” – I first heard a couple say it in a lift on our first day here and it made me smile. 3 […]
Read More →We got off the boat at 2:30 pm and the plan was then to walk to Central Station to pick up the bus to the airport. As we set foot on dry land, I noticed a shuttle bus for free. Never one to turn down a bargain, I went up and asked the driver where […]
Read More →Once we got on the boat we picked up our cabin key, panicked that the key didn’t work, then got it to work, then tripped in because we forgot about the lip at the bottom of the door. You know, the usual thing that you do when you first arrive in a hotel or on […]
Read More →The time had come to move on from Napoli. The plan was that we took the overnight ferry to Palermo on Sicily, get the bus from the train station to the airport and pick up a hire car to drive off to our next accommodation. The boat was a midnight sailing and arrived in Sicily […]
Read More →Last Saturday when we were doing the final bit of packing, hiding the laptops (burglars, don’t whatever you don’t lift the manhole cover above the drains and look for a sealed bag) and watering the plants (no point, they are all dead) Karen said “we must pack a fan”. My immediate thought was how are […]
Read More →Napoli is hilly. I kind of knew that from pictures, but Google maps lulls you into a false sense of security. To my knowledge, Google maps doesn’t have a topographical feature yet where you can see the hills, which seems a bit weird as Google knows everything about me so really it should know that […]
Read More →A schoolboy error which both Karen and I made when booking our accommodation for this holiday was the lack of washing machine. When we normally book a villa with the gang, in our list of requirements a washing machine is pretty high (after hot tub, Barbecue, Wi-Fi, satellite TV, concierge). Without having Nikki and Rachel […]
Read More →Since we arrived here we have seen adverts for Bufala Fest. This was a obviously a festival of buffalo mozzarella cheese. It seemed to start in August and go into September and the other day when we were on the open top bus, we saw them setting up down by the seafront. We decided to […]
Read More →The other night when we were having our dinner (that’s tea to fellow northerners), we got chatting to a family next to us. They spoke English but we worked out that they weren’t from England. The mother and grandmother in the group were fluent in Italian, so we assumed they were of Italian origin. When […]
Read More →Now that we have worked out how to buy Metro tickets (see yesterdays blog) we have been using it quite a lot. The other night though we had quite an interesting journey. As the Metro was pulling out of the station, a small gentleman jumped on the train at the last moment and to everybody’s […]
Read More →Napoli has a great metro system. Actually let me rephrase that; Napoli has a metro system. It consists of 2 lines and various funiculars (all of which I will have travelled on before we leave. That’s a promise). The only problem is trying to buy a ticket to travel on them. We have a metro […]
Read More →The kids have gone back to school, the leaves are turning brown, the telly had got good. It can only mean one thing. It’s time for the Fenners’ Summer holiday! Yep, myself and Karen have two weeks exploring the delights of Italy. We have a week in Naples as a city break and then we […]
Read More →The kids have gone back to school, the leaves are turning brown, the telly had got good. It can only mean one thing. It’s time for the Fenners’ Summer holiday! Yep, myself and Karen have two weeks exploring the delights of Italy. We have a week in Naples as a city break and then we […]
Read More →This is the last day of the holiday so I don’t usually write a blog as we are normally up stupidly early and off to the airport to fly home. However on this occasion we are flying back on a late evening flight so have the luxury of not having to set off for the […]
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This is the last day of the holiday so I don’t usually write a blog as we are normally up stupidly early and off to the airport to fly home. However on this occasion we are flying back on a late evening flight so have the luxury of not having to set off for the […]
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Over the course of this holiday I have managed to completely destroy the Spanish language. The salami type sausage called Salchichón. will forever now be known as “Salty John”; the card game “Chinchon” has been rename “Chimmy Changa” and I have starting saying “Chinky-Chinty-Uno” which is, of course, the number 21, or 51 depending on […]
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A regular feature of these holidays is me attempting to keep my religious running regime. By religious I mean that I only do it on a Sunday because I feel I should and even then only do it half heartedly. (Hopefully most readers will see the irony in that last sentence). I tried it in […]
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The weather here has been, to say the least, changeable. Being in the mountains, we do have a bit of a microclimate and the weather can be completely different 2km down the road. When you look at a rain radar map of the area you can see a yellow splodge with a red edge over […]
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Our first real adventure out (other than to the village) was to Montblanc (not to be confused with Mont Blanc. There were no pens or Toblerones here.) It is a beautiful medieval town, which answered yesterday’s question as to whether they had a medieval period here. They did. They have castles and walled cities and […]
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Yesterday I mentioned that we were not overlooked, well we are sort of, by an entire village. The village of el Vilosell is a small medieval village perched atop a hill. I say medieval, I’m not even sure that Spain had a medieval period did it? History was never my strong suit at school. I […]
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The next morning, after a bread intensive breakfast, we headed out to the villa. To get out of the car park we had to pull up to a console and go through this familiar routine; lower the window, try an type in a pass code, realise that you have misjudged the distance, move a bit […]
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Billboa has some amazing buildings, most of them built in the last 30 years. It also has some pointless ones. Here is a quick history lesson. Back in the 1990’s the Basque government managed to persuade the Guggenheim foundation to build a new museum in Bilbao on some reclaimed industrial waste land and since then […]
Read More →One thing Karen is obsessed with is the weather. Before we came out she was checking the weather here to decide what to wear. Now we are here, she is even worse. Every night we turn on the telly to check the weather on at least two channels (but she does prefer the weather on […]
Read More →The plane journey was pretty uneventful (except for the party of school kids behind me kicking my seat). As we landed I got my first sight of Bilbao Airport. It’s certainly striking. Whereas most airports have gone for the glass and metal look, Bilbao has gone for white concrete and glass. But a mainly concrete. […]
Read More →Hey blog lovers we are back on our hols! Its been a long 4 months since our trip to Copenhagen but we are back destroying the environment with a trip to Bilbao. This is actually a present from my parents and my sister Nikki, for Karen’s birthday. If you remember last September we all went […]
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When I saw the original Star Wars film aged 7 I nearly wet myself in the cinema with excitement. 40 years later watching The Last Jedi I nearly wet myself again; but that was mainly due to the length of the film and a middle aged prostate. But I was still grinning like a 7 […]
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In our guidebook there were a lot of things not to do in Copenhagen. Walk into cycle lanes, complement the Swedes too much (see yesterdays blog) and jay walk. Jaywalking is not illegal like it is in some states in America, but they are very code compliant here. And you stray into a cycle lane […]
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The Danes really do like their chairs. I mean they are seriously obsessed. In our apartment there are pictures of chairs on the walls; in the shops you can buy mini models of chairs and get this, at the the table where I sit and do my blogging in our apartment, you guessed it, there’s […]
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After arriving in Copenhagen and checking into our accomodation, the next thing we needed was food. A place that had been recommended to Karen (and our host confirmed this) was a place called Paper Island. My immediate thought was paper mache island, so like the Tracey Island which Anthea Turner made all those years ago […]
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So the journey began this morning at 4:30. We were so worried about over sleeping we set 3 alarms, 2 using alarm clocks we have never used before, so we then spent 5 minutes working out how to turn them off. By 4:45 we were in the car and off to the airport. Luckily, Storm […]
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