We left Split on the overnight ferry and arrived in Ancona the following morning after a reasonable night’s sleep on a bench on the deck. Miraculously there was a direct train from Ancona, on the east coast of Italy, to Orte, a not-very-big town on the west coast. We had a four hour wait in the station yet very nearly missed our train due to the ingenious platform numbering system: there are two of every platform. To cut a long story short, (there’s a first time for everything!) we were waiting on platform 3 on one side of the station whereas our train was at platform 3 ovest on the other side of the station. Apparently ovest means ‘west’ which doesn’t make much sense since there isn’t any other direction you can go by train from Ancona. So anyway we made it to Orte where we were met by a lovely young lady who simply said “Sonica? This way!” and guided us to a waiting coach. Neat.

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Well once my feet had healed enough for me to walk around a little I got to explore Sarajevo and I absolutely loved it. I can’t even say exactly why but I loved it so much I’m seriously considering moving there! Read more »

Well it’s been a while since I wrote anything interesting here but now that I’m travelling and I have things to say, I feel it might be time… Read more »

On the return trip from skiing we flew from Lyon airport. They don’t have extending walkways to board the plane so you have to get on a bus which drives you out to it. I know you’ll think I’m making this up but it’s absolutely true: the bus drove in a straight line two bus lengths then stopped to let us out again.

Now,

• It would have been much quicker to walk - in fact the girl at the check-in counter beat us to the plane even though she left after us
• It would have required less staff - a single person to make sure passengers didn’t wander off was all that was needed
• It would have required less equipment - those buses don’t look cheap and they seem to leave the engines running all the time
• It would have allowed us to board much quicker as there would have been a constant flow of passengers boarding rather than two sudden influxes of them (the bus had to make two trips!)
• It’s not required by some awkward EU regulation since in Corsica they let you use your feet - they don’t have any buses that i know of

It’s just sheer madness!

Everybody should visit once. Nobody should have to visit twice. Read more »

For some reason we seem to have got all our holiday’s failures grouped into a single day. In many ways that’s not so bad: we can write off today as a necessary expenditure to allow us to have a lovely rest of holiday (woooah, bad grammar - sorry all this Pidgin is getting to me. Actually a lot of it isn’t so much Pidgin but a kind of multilingual pidgin - we had a several kids running after us asking for a ’stylopen’ (stylo is French for pen)). Read more »

Had a fun journey down from Dahab (on red sea coast) to Luxor (on the Nile in the south). It was meant to be a 14 hour night bus but with various stops for food, drinks, picking up passengers, arguing with passers-by and fixing engines it turned into a rather unpleasant 18 hour trip. It wouldn’t even have been so bad if we hadn’t been subjected to a poor quality pirate copy of ‘Double Impact’, a Van Damme film where he plays identical twins and gets to fight himself. When that was all over they just played it again. And when we’d sat through it for the second time? Yep. They played it again. Read more »

The Red Sea is AMAZING!

It’s like being in a giant aquarium full of tropical fish. No, wait: it is a giant aquarium full of tropical fish. Anyway it’s very, very cool. Unfortunately it’s also pretty cold at this time of year and I wasn’t able to stay in for more than about 10 minutes at a time. Lydia, who is more used to being cold, managed to stay in for much, much longer. In fact she would probably still be in there if I hadn’t dragged her out. I never thought there would be so many different kinds of amazing fish all in one place let alone that place being just off the beach - not at some remote dive site. Even the few varieties of rather dull fish look amazing because they are now the exception. “o oo! a uu iii!” (translation for those not versed in Snorkelish: “Oh look! A dull fish!”).

New years was nice and we’re off to Luxor tomorrow (14 hour bus ride - wooooo). Gotta go.

Yesterday we visited St Katherine’s monastery which is built on the spot where some chap named moses is said to have had a chat with a burning bush (and maybe breathed a little too deeply on that bush’s smoke eh, moses?). The bush told him to climb a nearby mountain where god gave him some stone slabs with writing on. Read more »

We’re now back in cairo for the night on our way from Alexandria to Sinai. For those who don’t know (I didn’t) Sinai is the part of Egypt the other side of the Suez canal and mount Sinai is the place where Moses supposedly received the ten commandments from god which makes it a special place for all three of the world’s main monotheistic religions. It’s also meant to be very beautiful…

Today we’ve seen a mosque and we’re on our way to (hopefully) see Sufi dancing in the citadel.