We enjoyed the Med and the pool, spending the majority of the holiday there. Here’s a pic from the casbah in Hammamet.

But we also enjoyed the desert. While we were in Tunisia, we spent two days of trip exploring the country. I believe I’ve seen 75% of that country now. We even spent a night in the desert, under the stars in tents! Pretty nice, I think.

The trip took in El Djem, a well preserved coliseum, and then went on to show us some cave dwellings and places which were Star Wars. We also took in a camel trip, which Paul and I opted out of, but Paul did get some nice Camels for me.

The best part was seeing the sun rise on the Sahara. Yes, yours truly was up at 4:30 am in order to see the sunrise at 10 past five in the morning. And it was worth it. Check it out:

Isn’t that beautiful?

Our trip in the desert ended that day, seeing a beautiful oasis featured in The English Patient.

It was a good trip overall, lovely weather and much more to see than anticipated. There are even more photos in the gallery, if you’d like to gawk a bit more.

Walking through town to our hotel (we stayed in the Hilton Glasgow! I’d recommend it, but the drinks were overpriced!) the banter around me instantly reminded me that I was indeed in Scotland.

We checked in and then headed out to discover the town. We had a few hours to kill before heading down to Glasgow Green to see Radiohead, so we made our way up to Sauchiehall Street. Sauchiehall Street is Glasgow’s big shopping street. It’s where you can find all the shopping malls, etc. We spent a lot of time on Sauchiehall Street while we were in Glasgow, and while shopping there I experienced some of the best customer service ever in the UK. I was very impressed and would love to go back even just for that!

We didn’t do a lot of touring in Glasgow, but we did see a few things other than Sauchiehall Street and Glasgow Green. We made a brief stop in The Barras, which is Glasgow’s market. That was an interesting wander – it certainly wasn’t Camden, but we enjoyed it! We also had a look around the People’s Palace, a museum about the people of Glasgow.

We also took in some Charles Rennie Mackintosh while we were in the city. We didn’t see as much as I would have liked, but we found we ran out of time. On our last day, we stopped by the Willow Tea Rooms for our lunch. The Willow Tea Rooms were designed by Mackintosh. As industrial as Glasgow’s history is, it is an artistic city, and evidence of this is everywhere.  Street musicians were found all over the place (and I only saw one person playing bagpipes!) and numerous music and art shops all over.

The best bits about Glasgow were definitely the banter, the customer service and the sheer fact that it’s undeniably Scotland – even without all the extra tartan! It was a brilliant place, but almost a polar opposite to Edinburgh. It’s definitely the place to visit for art and music, but if you’re looking for kilts and shortbread, Edinburgh’s the place to go.

Now, we didn’t go to Dover, but went to a place just outside of the town, in the country. We’ve been to Dover before, and it’s not a spectacular town. It’s a port, and so it isn’t the best, certainly not much to write home about. But, you can’t beat the idea of seeing the White Cliffs and so we stayed a lovely hotel outside of town in the countryside. The hotel was Wallet’s Court, a hotel and spa. We didn’t do much except get away from home on the Saturday. I think we spent the majority of the day eating. We had a nice cream tea when we arrived, and then because we weren’t going into town, we had a wonderful dinner there. Seriously, the dinner was gorgeous, and we were able to take our time with it. Normally when we go out to eat, we always are rushed through the meal, only to have to wait ages for the check to come. It was actually refreshing to be able to take our time, especially when the whole point of the evening was to spend some actual real time with one another. It was lovely.

The next day, we drove down the road and had a lovely view of Dover Castle. We didn’t visit the castle on this trip. However, we did walk by the cliffs, and I was able to get some pictures, which I’ve been wanting to do for ages. This walk, I have to say was breathtaking, and a big highlight. We live so close to Dover, and I’ve seen the cliffs from the ferry, but to see them so close was amazing. The walk takes you right along the top of them, all the way to a lighthouse.

The weather, as usual in England, was a bit unpredictable. When we started the weekend out, it was sunny and just warm enough to get away with a heavy sweater. Then, it cooled down quite a bit while we were away. It started to snow (of all things!) while we were walking, so we turned back after we were about halfway. Paul had left his coat in the car, thinking his sweatshirt would keep him warm enough. Unfortunately, he was wrong, and we had to turn around so we could go get him warm again.

It didn’t help that we had just cut his hair, so he had nothing on his head to keep him warm either!

And that just about sums up our trip to Dover. It made for a very nice weekend trip away, and it was a very happy anniversary for us.

Paul and I decided to go to France at the end of January pretty much on a whim. Yes, we knew we would end up in France

some time this year, but this was a random decision we made one afternoon and before you knew it we had booked the

weekend. I guess maybe because I was between jobs and had two days off that we felt we couldn’t

waste the time. Anyway, it doesn’t really matter, because off to Normandy we were headed.

To begin with, the weather wasn’t great, and we were soon happy that we had decided to take the car on the train instead of the ferry this time. This is the train which allows you to go to

Calais with your car, which was far easier and faster than the ferry. And, considering the weather I was certainly happy to be below the sea. I think we definitely be doing that again.

We stayed at a lovely hotel called Ferme de la Rançonnière, where we had a gorgeous room and great service. As you can see from the picture, we had a massive bedroom, with beautiful furniture and a canopied bed. The only downside was that the hotel had clearly just opened back up after the holidays and the room was freezing when we got in. It took almost our entire stay before it became a comfortable temperature, but we can’t really fault it. We weren’t in the hotel for very long anyway, as the restaurant was still closed as well. This has been one of our best experiences so far with hotels and France, and I think we may very well stay there again if/when we go back to Normandy.

The main thing Paul wanted to get out of this trip to Normandy was to see the D-Day beachesto and the surrounding historical spots. As you can see, we got to see large guns left by the Germans, and to the right here you can see a shot of Omaha Beach. I would have a picture of Utah Beach as well, but it was dark by the time we found our way there.

We also visited the town of Ste Mere Eglise , which is where the paratroopers landed, and on our way home we stopped by and took in Pegasus Bridge. They had a nice museum there along with the original bridge. We didn’t see everything though, and there are other things in the area that we would like to go back and see. For instance, it would be nice to go closer to tourist season, and make a point to taste some calvados and local cider.

While I enjoyed the trip, I was thoroughly all warred out by the end of my three days and was quite happy to be able to take some pictures of a pretty French village. I don’t have the name of the village with me – but it was a pretty little place.

Also, I guess I would be misleading you if I let you think the whole of the trip was focused on the D-Day landings and WWII. While a large majority of the trip did focus on this, we did see the famous Bayeux Tapestry – you know, the one which depicts the story of why the Normans invaded England in 1066. It was pretty impressive.

And that is Normandy in a nutshell. I’ve uploaded a few more pictures which can be found under European travel in the Gallery.

Only a small one, though! I have a couple of days off, in between my old job and new job, so Paul has decided we should take our first car journey of the year. We’re headed off to Normandy for a couple of days, which I am very excited about. We’re slowing dipping in and exploring France one trip at a time.

It’s a pretty good thing we’ve got going.

Now, we didn’t set out to be globetrotters on this holiday. Nope, it was all going to be about sun and sand and swimming – you get my drift. However, when we got to the hotel and realized that one of the “day” side trips they offered was to Jerusalem, we couldn’t pass it up. I mean, how often can I ring mom and dad up and say, “oh yeah, by the way I was in Jerusalem just last week.” Exactly, not very!

So we were really excited until we realized that the bus was going to pick us up at 1 o’clock in the morning, and it would return us back to our hotel at around 1 o’clock the next morning. Yep, you got it, a twenty-four hour round trip – by coach. But, we weren’t deterred and decided we’d be game and cracked on.

Apart from the coach ride, the early rising and late return, the trip was pretty amazing. We went by road to Taba , where we crossed the border into Israel. That in itself was an experience. We left our bus on the Egyptian side and picked up another bus and an Israeli guide. The first thing our new guide pointed out to us was that when we looked at the sea, we could see four countries from where we stood, which was pretty neat. Looking towards the sea, we could see Israel (the country we were in), Egypt (the country we had just left), as well as Jordan and Saudi Arabia. Pretty neat, eh? And then they shuffled us back on the bus and we drove through Eilat on our way to the Dead Sea.

We drove for a long way, and the landscape appeared to be quite barren, although apparently there is a lot of agriculture which comes out of Israel. It was pretty neat, and even though we were extremely tired we learned a lot from our guide and enjoyed the scenery and taking pictures out of the bus windows.

We kept on to the Dead Sea, and when we arrived, had the opportunity to swim, which Paul and I opted out of. We hadn’t taken a change of clothes and I didn’t relish the thought of hanging out all day long feeling half clean – although I must say that there were showers available and Paul and I were just being spoilsports. The Dead Sea was an interesting place. We only had about 45 minutes there at the sea in total, so I snapped some pictures of the salt crystals forming on the sand, and some other scenery.

The Dead Sea is quite a spa resort type area and there were tons of people around swimming in the sea and using therapeutic mud on their skin. You could see where people had made this into a complete holiday destination.

We were pretty rushed for time, and so made our way back to the coach to head on to Jerusalem. After a wee snooze and a couple hours on the bus, we had finally made it to Jerusalem, where our first stop was the Mount of Olives, where we got some lovely views of the city.

From there it was almost a blur of a day, we saw so much! However, I can outline things a bit.

The next stop on the tour was the Temple Mount, and then on to the Western Wall, or the Wailing Wall.

After this, we had a yummy lunch and then walked through the city to the point where we began the process of walking the Stations of the Cross, ending at the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. This was an interesting journey, for a number of reasons. One of them being that this walk seemed to take us through the busy markets of the city.

After rushing through the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, we then went to the church which is supposed to be the site of the Last Supper, and King David’s Tomb. Once that was done, we got back on the coach and turned around to head back to the border.

The trip to Jerusalem was wonderful but exhausting. We saw so much in one day, I’m surprised that I still retain the information about it all that I do. I wouldn’t trade it though, and in fact, I wouldn’t mind going back to Israel again. I wasn’t impressed by the hygiene (the toilets were quite dirty) , but we found the people there to be extremely friendly, and that’s really what matters. So, maybe our next beach holiday should be Tel Aviv!

Egypt is a lovely country. There’s so much to see and do, and the people are extremely friendly. This year, we decided to go to Sharm el-Sheikh for my birthday. (I turned 30, in case anyone missed it.) We just wanted to have a nice and relaxing holiday, and simply put, we did.

Aside from our trip to Jerusalem, we didn’t do much besides hang out on the beach. What a beach it was, too. See how blue that sky is? The water was just as blue, if not even more saturated with color. And the temperature was divine. Our hotel had a pier which you could walk out on and from there you could swim and snorkel to your heart’s desire. I was up like a little kid every day sometime between 6 and 8. Awake and then down to the beach. I loved every minute of it. The whole thing was divine. The sun, the sand, the sea… sigh…

And the snorkeling! The snorkeling was really cool. I’d never been anywhere where you could see so many fish!

Even if a person didn’t swim, you could still see these brightly colored fish while walking down the pier to swim. I’ve never seen anything like it before. Paul and I were in the water so much on this holiday we could have been fish ourselves! We even took a cruise out on to the Red Sea to do some snorkeling away from the hotel.

The trip on the boat was gorgeous as well. We were on the boat for the entire day, and there’s nothing better than lazing around on the sea, having a swim to see some fish every now and then, allowing yourself to relax completely. It was amazing.

So, apart from our trip to Jerusalem, which I’ll tell you about soon, we just had a nice, easy holiday in Sharm el-Sheikh. We did exactly what we wanted to do: Had a beach holiday with a little bit of something extra. It’s incredible to think how different this holiday to Egypt was compared to parts of last year’s trip.

And as I said, it’s official. I love Egypt. Now then, when are we going back??

I still need to post about Egypt. It was a fantastic holiday, and my pictures are online in the Gallery now. However, there’s much more going on.

For instance, today I’m catching a plane north and will be home for Thanksgiving, for the first time five years. And I’m also going to be here in Houston for a while to scope out the scene here. Not to worry, I’ll have some time on my hands after Thanksgiving, so I’ll be able to keep everyone up to date.

Here’s a pic to help you out:

We’ve got loads more to share, but I’m still sorting things out. All in good time. All in good time.

Here, have a look. You’ll be jealous, I promise.