Rovinj, Croatia [12-20 September] Our four stage journey started at Seton Place at 07:15am, took us Ryanair to Brussels, then on to Pula, car transfer from Pula to Rovinj, and finally boat to the Island Hotel Katarina, where we arrive about 11:00pm. According to a large sign in the dining Read more
Trip Three’s Blog Zero happily isn’t peppered with major medical issues, or even cases of sublime stupidity on our part. We make do with two unexpected root canal treatments for me, which both have to be done twice and so require five visits to the dental surgery in the two Read more
Sol del Este, Menorca [9th – 23rd October 2019] And so, once more, to La Gardenia in Sol del Este – the first village in Spain to see the sun rise. Brian and Joanne kindly provided the reception committee to greet us, as they had in 2018, and we arrived Read more
Lisbon, Portugal [7th – 9th October 2019] Lisbon was another city, like Sevilla last year, which Fiona and I had both visited separately in the past, but never together. In her case, it was on a school cruise when she was 11, so her recollections were understandably hazy. I’d been Read more
Genoa, Italy to Lisbon, Portugal [2nd – 7th October 2019] Our only previous cruise was back in 2011, when Fiona, Sean and I went on a Caribbean cruise with Princess Cruises, leaving from Manhattan. We’d often admired MSC cruise liners when they docked in Mahon harbour, and we wanted to Read more
Genoa and Portofino [30th September – 2nd October 2019] We arrived close to midnight in Genoa, having phoned ahead to our hotel. They asked us to check in down the road at their 5* sister hotel, so we had two nights in a fabulous room in the, appropriately ocean liner-themed, Read more
Ragusa, Sicily [28th – 30th September 2019] Our last train journey of the trip took us to Ragusa, climbing higher through the Sicilian hills to the scene of many an episode of Inspector Montalbano. When we arrived at the typically overgrown station, we had to actually cross the train tracks, Read more
[23rd -28th September 2019] Our AirBnB host, Marcello, met us at the train station and drove us along to the island of Ortigia, which is the oldest part of the city of Syracusa. As we neared our apartment, the streets got narrower and crumblier. We walked the final hundred metres Read more
[21st – 23rd September 2019] We knew that the day of travelling between Stromboli in the Aeolian Islands to Taormina in Sicily would likely be the most difficult, as it involved a golf cart to the port on Stromboli, a hydrofoil to Milazzo (though we shaved two hours off that Read more
[17th – 21st September 2019] When approaching an island which is pretty much just a live volcano, with some houses and a few hotels around its base, safety is understandably prominent in one’s thoughts. So it was gratifying to board the hydrofoil from Lipari, and immediately be invited to view Read more