Most people who’ve flown with Singapore Airlines would agree it’s one of the better airlines if not the best. Their people know the difference between offering a service and being a servant (take note various western airlines, too many to mention), their planes are comfortable and clean, although like all airlines, if you travel up the back it helps if you’ve spent time as a battery hen. And the experience is only as good as the people around you. On the leg from Singapore to Cape Town the CB and I were in premium economy so there’s a bit more space and a bit more attention. But can someone tell me why, in the middle of the night, half way across the Indian Ocean, when half the people in our small three row cabin are trying to sleep (me included) and the other half are binge watching White Lotus (minus the naughty bits), the crew hands out bags of potato chips. It would have been quieter if they’d put bubble-wrap carpet down in the aisles.
It was a late start out of Singers because of the weather. I’m good with that. I’ve flown through typhoons and cyclones (same thing, just depends which part of the world you’re in) so if the captain thinks it’s worse than that, delay away.
Speaking of typhoons, it was grand final day in 1993 and I was on my way to Hong Kong. I got upgraded to first class so the trip was off to a flyer in more ways than one. I asked the cabin boss to ask the captain to keep us updated on the score which he duly did and the Broncos won, of course. I was sitting next to a St George supporter and by the time we got to Honkers I must have had two bottles of champagne in the bag so when we had to land (after a few attempts) in a typhoon, I was feeling no pain. Flying through, then over a cyclone in India between Vishakhapatnam and Madras in a rickety old Indian Airlines plane was an entirely different experience however.
Safety is also a rather significant item in the holiday’s strategic plan if travelling to South Africa. Our son helpfully advised us not to get car-jacked and our daughter also read about the country’s imminent collapse into chaos. I was somewhat heartened when waiting for our bags in the baggage hall. There were the usual lost luggage counters and foreign exchange rip-off booths. But there was also a booth I had never seen before, anywhere in an airport. It was simply called “Fire Arms”. I should have asked if they were checking those being brought in like Wyatt Earp did in Dodge City, or giving them back to the good burghers of SA who had inadvertently left them in their carry-on bags or selling them to nervous first-visitors.
I was reminded of the the airport’s Fire Arms shop or whatever it was, when driving round the more salubrious parts of town. Security signs are on private houses everywhere with some provided by professional security firms and others home-made but all are dazzlingly clear. Of all of the words written on these signs, as a would be miscreant you only needed to be cogniscent of two words which are ubiquitous vis-a-vis the signs and these are ” Armed Response”. Every other word is superfluous.
It’s now three days into the trip and we’ve been rather busy so the next entry will cover what we’ve been up to in fantastic (there’s a clue) Cape Town
I can’t remember where I heard this. Just a bit of trivia I hoovered up under society’s sofa I guess but it seems the pineapple we have on one of our suitcases has rather a salacious significance when used in a certain way. Apparently a pineapple shape outside your door means there’s shenanigans of a swinger variety occurring on the other side of said door. Our pineapple is so we can identify our bag on a carousel loaded with similar bags. Remind me not to leave this bag outside our door on the cruise because cruises are supposedly rampant with this behaviour. Who knew? It’s rather perplexing when I think the CB and I have been amongst the youngest passengers on our cruises. Most of our cruise-mates have struggled to stay upright let alone impress a stranger with their horizontal tango expertise.
This could be the least of our problems however. I just read a news article that suggests South Africa is about to become a failed state. Not a good state of affairs if you’re landing there tomorrow, as we are. Now before we get too excited about this it has to be said I read this on news.com.au which is where Rupert sends his work experience kids to pretend they are journalists. It’s hard to take their dross with anything more than a grain of salt when usually 6 of the first 8 articles are about The Block or Married at First Sight. These worldly hard-bitten cynical journos think Josh giving Bree a good sorting-out when we were all hoping against hope that he’d play hide the sausage with Summer, is breaking news to them.
I’ve been a South Africa watcher for decades. They are a major producer, exporter and consumer of coal which is my thing (let the debate or abuse begin). Their state-owned power producer Eskom is about to precipitate a collapse of the electricity grid causing even more mayhem than usual. Fortunately I’ve also been watching The Last of Us so know how to survive in a dystopian shit-storm and as previously mentioned elsewhere on this blog, I can run faster than the CB if the shit-storm shit hits the fan (just joking, yuk yuk). It’s not unexpected though. Mandela stepping onto the mainland in 1990 was the high point and it’s been more or less downhill ever since. As long as we get up Table Mountain on Thursday without a power-cut stranding us half-way and get to sample what I am reliably informed are excellent wines on Friday, all will be well. We escape on Saturday.
When I worked full-time for a living and
spent a large proportion of that time on the road (or in the air to be more
accurate) we used to say that the countries you least wanted to go to were the
ones that made it hardest for you to get there. For me that was Iran, Pakistan
and at least the first few times, India. The child bride and I are about to
embark on a cruise up the West African coast from Cape Town to Lisbon and
obtaining visas for the various stops is proving somewhat problematic. But
first let me recount a story in a similar vein.
Back in the day I spent an awful lot of
time in India. It wasn’t always awful, in fact it rarely was except when a
severe bout of the inevitable descended. Descended right through me in fact.
But that’s a different and not really worth revisiting, story. So on this
particular trip I was looking forward to coming home in a day or so when I got
a call from my boss. I know he’s going to read this so I’ll keep the abuse to a
minimum. If you are a regular reader of this blog you will have read the story
about when he asked me, on a Sunday night, to go to India on Monday during the
1989 pilot’s strike and I didn’t have a visa. This was a bit different – he
wanted me to go to Pakistan.
Not such a big deal you would think
because it’s next door. It is though, when your passport’s almost full. Going
back a step, I was pretty pally with the Austrade Senior Trade Commissioner who
worked out of the Australian High Commission which is next door to the Pakistan
High Commission as luck would have it. He gave me the name of the Pakistani
senior visa guy so I walked next door, told the security guys who I needed to
see and one of them escorted me to his office. That’s when I was told I needed
a full blank page in my passport (which I didn’t have) for the visa stamp (no
sharing it seemed) and the inside back cover, the bit stuck to the cardboard,
wasn’t good enough.
Back to the Aus High Commission I went
and an hour later after rushing off to find somewhere that did passport photos
I had a brand new passport in my hot little hand. It was hot because the
passport has hot – straight off the presses. So back next door I went.
On arriving back at the Pakistan HC it
seemed all of the security guys had gone to lunch and not only had they left
the gate unlocked, it was wide open. In India! So I walked in completely
unmolested. I knew where the visa guy’s office was so I walked across the
courtyard and into the building like the invisible man and knocked on the visa
guy’s door. He didn’t seem too perturbed to see me and proceeded to get my visa
stamped. Somewhat bemused I was thinking to myself that a James Bond gig would
be pretty easy if all you had to do to break into a foreign embassy was wait
until lunch-time. This was some time ago and there has been a bit of ugliness
between the two countries since then so I am sure they have beefed up security
by introducing staggered meal times.
That was that although as an epilogue to
the process, when my Pakistan Airlines flight took off it felt like we had been
fired out of an almost vertical cannon. I have only experienced similar
prolonged steepness, like sitting in the space shuttle, when flying over the
Andes from Santiago in Chile where the ground seems to be only a few hundred
feet below you for about half an hour. The relationship being what it is
between India and Pakistan I guess they wanted to get out of missile range as
quickly as possible.
I can’t remember whether all of that
aggravation was worth it. I never managed to sell a tonne of coal into Pakistan
(with that company – I did later with another) so I guess ultimately, it
wasn’t.
Back to our trip. We are visiting South
Africa, Namibia, Angola, Ivory Coast, Ghana, Gambia, the Canary Islands,
Madeira and Portugal. As with most e-applications these days you are presented
with drop down menus and limited choices. Interestingly most of these guys are
not with the multiple gender program yet because you only get two choices in
their genetically based application process. Not even three let alone the 74 listed
on most university application forms! Guess they’ve got more pressing issues.
The menu for port of entry for one country provided for three land based and
two airports. Problem. Problem has not gone away and their embassy with
responsibility for Australia which is not in Australia is, like Joe Biden, not
taking questions. And I was getting as much sense out of one of the others as
journalists get from Joe Biden’s press secretary (but she is the first black,
immigrant, lesbian press secretary, so it’s alright). I actually completed this
application before an administrator asked for our flight itinerary. After
explaining three times that we would arrive by boat so we didn’t have flight
itineraries, they eventually explained they only issued visas for entry by air.
Now I’m politely explaining to them why they need to reimburse the visa fees I
paid to complete the process (or so I thought). I could be the victim of a very
elaborate scam here.
Anyway, we’ll see what happens. We spent
three days in Russia off a cruise a while back and it was the only place in
Europe that wanted us to buy (the operative word) a visa. We got off and on the
boat numerous times without an immigration officer in sight. Maybe this trip
will be the same. Stay posted to find out.
It’s been a while and apart from the last few weeks, not much has been happening. The last few weeks however involved helping to organise a mass visit of colleagues including the MD and CEO, from various corners of the globe to Brisbane for meetings then a series of mine and port visits. If you can imagine what planning and implementing a cross between a royal wedding and D-Day is like, that was it. Herding cats doesn’t even come close.
Airport transfers and meetings on the first two days went swimmingly. But just so you know how seriously I take these things, I MC’d the MD’s dinner on day 1 when he hosted a bunch of dignitaries and …ugh…coal suppliers. My commentary commenced as follows:
“Please take your seats, ladies and gentlemen” (obviously not a government function or this would have been “birthing people and scum”).
“Thankyou, I wish my children were as obedient.”
“Thankyou for coming. I am hosting tonight. My name is Chris and I’m the Australian representative for the company. My pronouns are “golf’ and “beer”. I have another but choose not to bring it out in polite company”
And so it went.
Then on the first day of mine visits it all went to shit, starting with my airline ticket which had been cancelled by the booking agent and I found out an hour before the flight. I had 13 people, most of whom had never been to Australia before, in two groups heading in two different directions and for a while it looked like half of them (my half) would be on their own. The other group were on their own anyway as I am only able to be in one place at a time, much to the child bride’s chagrin.
Fortunately I was able to secure one of the few remaining seats on the Hi-Viz Express with my group and the fly-in fly-out or FIFO or fit-in or fuck-off (an intolerant bigot would say) mine workers. On landing in Emerald it took more than an hour, for various unfathomable reasons, to check-out two hire cars. We could have bought them quicker. And now I have to sort out the mess as both cars have been invoiced twice. While all this was going on the other group missed the guide I had organised for them in Gladstone so confusion reigned. A long first day became even longer – a 4.30am start to get the flight, two mine visits and about 4 hours of driving. No wonder Dysart thought the zombie apocalypse had descended upon them when we arrived that evening.
As I’m writing this, I’m also writing my weekly report for the above-mentioned people. Who said white, heterosexual cis-gendered, privileged, middle-class sperm donors can’t double task. And I’ve just inserted a link to the Rolling Stones song “You Can’t Always Get What You Want” in my weekly report. This is also the somewhat tenuous link between the mine visits and said weekly report.
Firstly, why is a Stones song in my weekly discussion on the status of the coal and iron ore industries in Australia? It’s because I insert songs and cartoons and occasional pithy comments to make these reports more interesting to the disinterested reader. While not detracting from the legitimate stuff I put in there, the various non-sequiturs do give the reader more incentive to open the report if only to check out the cartoon on page one. Here is one of my favourites from a couple of years back:
I worked at a copper mine for a few years about 15 years ago and got into this habit there – one report for the board and one for the staff. The last one I did for the staff explained the copper and gold prices using a Pink Floyd theme. I was particularly proud of that one.
But back to the Rolling Stones connection. I had two young tech savvy Indians in my vehicle and it took them about two days to work out how to pair their phones with the sound system in the car. It took old tech dinosaur me about ten minutes. So I had a couple of relaxing days of the Rolling Stones (there’s the connection, if you missed it), Led Zeppelin and the Pogues before being assaulted by a musical genre which, to be fair, I was very familiar with. I have spent more than a year of my life in India thanks to numerous (around 80, last count) business trips so am quite familiar with Indian cultural proclivities. I have also seen their movie. I know they make hundreds every year but it’s basically the same one with a few minor variations on the same theme – hero rescues heroine from moustache twirling villain while being assisted by numerous chest shaking, pelvis thrusting dancers. Their movies are like AC DC records. So I spent the last few days being subjected to a never-ending procession of Indian hotel elevator music.
Having almost missed my flight at the start of the trip, it was only fair that I almost missed it at the end. Having to return to our starting point because the hire car company wouldn’t allow an A to B hire, only an A to A, we were faced with a four and a half hour drive back to A after a port visit in the morning and retrieval of a left bag at our hotel which required a one hour diversion.
I was struck by how relaxed the usually officious security people at the airport were when faced with the bottle opener and spray can in my check-in bag which wasn’t being checked in because check-in was closed when I arrived at the airport half an hour before my flight. I guess they realised it would be taken off me at the foot of the plane’s stairs and put in the hold. Either that or imagining hijacking a plane with a bottle opener and deodorant was a bridge to far for even these people. Dear reader, you should try this because it guarantees your bag will be first off the plane. Not good for the blood pressure however.
The actual motivation for writing this was that the CB and I will be off on our travels again soon but I got side-tracked, as usual. But now that borders are open despite covid still being rampant throughout the world we are free. Fortunately politicians can’t think of any other ways to squeeze political advantage out of it so have lost interest. We’re off to Nepal so expect a series of Himalaya Hike stories. Actually it won’t be a hike. The CB doesn’t do camping or tents or hikes unless it involves one of these:
Good luck to you if you have managed to escape the what are now proving to be useless restrictions placed on us by our public servants. The CB and I are about to get our fourth dose of a vaccine that was once guaranteed to prevent us from catching covid (remember “the pandemic of the unvaccinated”). And we’ll have to wear a mask that’s now only good for robbing banks when we get the vaccine. And we’ll have to stand 1.5 metres away from the surgery receptionist before we get on a plane with a couple of hundred other people.
This covid thing will be right up there with the Y2K bug, catastrophic man-made climate change and rap “music” as the biggest frauds perpetrated on the human race in the last hundred years, IMHO.
Since the CB and I decided to do a reverse tree-change and move from a semi-rural acreage setting to a townhouse closer to the city one thing we have missed is the view or in our case, views. There’s the horizontal (or slightly elevated) view to the hills in the distance and the vertical view to the incomprehensible splendour of the Milky Way. We hadn’t seen the Southern Cross and its Pointers for four years because of the blocking effect of city lights but a few nights ago, there they were.
Stanthorpe only has around 5000 people and we were out of town anyway so if he’d been there, Darryl Kerrigan would have been in his element – how’s the serenity. This piece of trivia would not have registered with those of you who haven’t immersed yourselves in the Aussie cultural equivalent of the Renaissance, a movie called “The Castle”. Watch it. Here’s a taste.
And I mention the Southern Cross because it’s very much part of the Australian psyche (and flag). And it and Orion’s Belt are the only celestial constellations I can identify.
Day 2 was a wine tour – all day. Four wineries and the Queensland College of Wine Tourism for lunch. That was about 38 wines all up. For professional tasters, that’s all in a day’s work. For amateurs like us it’s a serious challenge which was approached with all of the grit and determination we could muster. There were four of us (plus the driver) on our tour, the CB and I and a honeymooning couple who spent their time on the back seat of the mini-bus while the CB and I admired the scenery.
For the pros, wine tasting is all about the five “s’s” (pronounced “esses”), as in swirl, sniff, sip, swoosh (round the mouth) and spit. For us amateurs there’s a variation on this theme that goes swirl, sniff, sip, swallow, serve (the next one). And by the end of the day you might find the real amateurs doing the sip, swirl, swallow, sip, swallow, sprint, spew.
In these wine growing and wine making areas with lots of cellar doors you’d have to assume that, especially on the weekends and in high season there will be at least a few half pissed tourists on the roads. Which could explain the signs near all of the main intersections which tell drivers to stay on the left because this is Australia. Apparently these signs are all over the country but this is the only place I’ve noticed them and also apparently it’s because of the proliferation (in non-covid times) of fruit picking backpackers. In these covid times some fruit rots on the vines because our entitled youth and unencumbered older types are too lazy to pick fruit for $25/hour. There’s a strawberry runner farm in the area which employs about 600 people at peak times but….despair.
The CB and I would have offered to help out but with my dodgy back and her bursitis ravaged shoulder the best we could do was make a financial contribution so we signed up for wine clubs and bought a car full of produce, mostly of the liquid variety. And as previously mentioned, the Ugg Boot Lady got a couple of sales (four if you count each boot). And we bought Christmas stuff (and chocolate) from the Christmas farm because it’s May already and we don’t want to leave it too late.
Back at the cabin, after a long day supporting the local vintners, it was time to relax in front of the fire and not go to the bar because it had closed at 5.00pm. Incidentally, we did attempt to grab a cleansing ale at about 4.55pm but the lady behind the bar assured me that they closed at 4.45pm. I pointed in the direction of the reception area and reminded her that there was a sign there that said it closed at 5.00pm but she assured me it said 4.45pm. It didn’t and when I went to take a picture of it the next morning for this blog, it had disappeared like so many conservative Twitter accounts.
We had plenty of wine and beer but there was a principle involved here. After dismally failing to invoke the principle it was back to the cabin and the fire. It was then that the CB and I discovered we would make useless arsonists. It only took about four goes and a box of fire starters to get a decent fire going. I should know better because fires burn oxygen and as the oxygen content in the room drops, sleep creeps up. And that was that.
Well the xhild (her new pronoun – no, actually it’s a typo – the “x” is next to the “c”) bride and I have finally escaped, albeit for just a few days. Our travel plans were decimated last year for obvious reasons and this year hasn’t been any better. So we loaded up the car and hit the road. Of course any excursion that involves more than one night away from home rivals D-Day for logistical complexity because you never know when you might need…… (fill in name of appropriate item or inappropriate as the case may be, a truffle trowel, for example). We did however manage to leave enough space in the car for a few cases of wine and that space was duly filled because wine tasting was the primary motivation for visiting that particular part of the world.
We stayed at a rather rustic establishment that came with cabins and its own micro-brewery just outside Stanthorpe, a pretty little town (if rather rocky – it’s in an area called the Granite Belt) in south east Queensland once famous for apples and snow. It is just about the only place in sub-tropical Queensland where it does snow occasionally.
Incidentally the little town just outside Stanthorpe called Applethorpe has a school which they have self-titled “the coolest school in Queensland”. Applethorpe has the cold and the apples covered whereas (and here’s the geologist in me making a rare appearance), Stanthorpe is named after Stannum, the Latin word for tin which was mined in the area (in the late 1800’s) before they started growing apples. And those of you who remember any chemistry will know that the chemical symbol for tin is Sn.
Now onto more frivolous musings. Oh yes, I almost forgot. Stanthorpe is now known for apples, snow and wine.
Incidentally, back on the travel thing, just to show how out of touch the CB and I are, we went to a bottle shop in Stanthorpe on the first afternoon and as we browsed we separately asked the attendant if they had any local wines and he pointed us to the section which had a large sign over it which read “Local Wines”. Now as any regular traveler will know, it’s advisable to have your metaphorical antennae up when you’re out of your homely comfort zone. You need to be able to notice stuff. However this was Stanthorpe not Mogadishu but we have been out of practice so both claim immunity from accusations of stupidity. And why were we buying wine from a bottle shop when there were dozens of cellar doors within staggering distance? It was the first afternoon prior to visiting any local wineries so we needed supplies to get us through the next few hours.
But here’s the real reason we needed to stock-up. The place where we were staying had a very nice bar which shuts at 5.00pm. Let me say that again. The bar opens at 10.00am and shuts at 5.00pm. Not 5.00am but 5.00pm. The first day, we got there with enough time to order one drink. The bar lady asked me if I wanted a 10oz beer, a 15oz or a pint. Nice lady, stupid question. If she’d offered me a bucket after a day of driving and considerable stress, I’d have taken that.
Stress, you say. Yes, something happened between arriving in Stanthorpe and getting to our accommodation, apart from the mercy stop at the bottle shop. This was something I had never done or even contemplated in my many years of existence. I bought a pair of Ugg boots. These have long been considered, along with flanno’s and mullets as integral parts of bogan culture. And I wouldn’t or hadn’t ever contemplated such a flagrant act of cultural appropriation, apart from eating Indian (and Thai, Chinese, Japanese etc) food, driving German cars, drinking ….well any nationality actually….beer (apart from non-alcoholic Iranian beer which I tried once in Iran, funnily enough, and tastes like what I would assume camel’s piss tastes like) and on and on the list goes. Having said that, the inner bogan does emerge occasionally. My wife and daughter once scolded me for wearing jeans and thongs (the ones that go on your feet not in your arse). Who knew?
So a bridge too far, or in this case more like an elephant’s foot too far, had been crossed and I had succumbed to warm feet syndrome. I have never been a fashionista and I’m as likely to follow fashion trends as I am to go bungee jumping. And by buying Ugg boots, I broke the bungee.
Well, this will be the last journal entry for this trip before we fly home tomorrow. We’re now in London again and have just had our first pub lunch. We were here for 3 days 3 weeks ago but it was the 3 days leading up to the friendly between England and Scotland at Wembley. The pubs were full of blokes in skirts speaking a foreign language and Trafalgar Square was turned into a massive beer garden so actually getting through the door of a pub during those three days was somewhat problematic. Anyway, we cracked it today.
Just had a nice relaxing three days in Switzerland, starting in Zurich and then 2 days in Geneva. I have never seen so much conspicuous wealth as in that place. Plenty of Rolls Royces and Ferraris with various Arabic (the most common language we heard while there) number plates. In Hong Kong, if you close your eyes and step out into the road you’ll either be hit by a Rolls Royce or by a taxi. Here it would be somewhat similar except for the taxis.
The train trip from Zurich to Geneva was nice. I didn’t realise that all of the open spaces in Switzerland have been mowed. The whole place looks like a park. And the train trip reinforced something I have come to firmly believe since being here. For the best part of 3 hours, all the way from Zurich to Geneva, two young women across the aisle from us talked….and talked….and talked. In fact they did not shut their yaps for more than 5 seconds the whole way. It reminded me of when we were here 3 weeks ago and were queuing for the London Dungeons. We had to queue for about 40 minutes and two teenage girls behind us did not shut up for one second of that time. Two blokes can sit in quiet contemplation for hours without feeling the urgent need to communicate other than telepathically. Two or more women can’t….at all….ever. But if the word “like” was excised from the English language, 30 million women under the age of 30 would be immediately struck dumb. Do us all (as in us blokes) a favour girls and just STFU occasionally.
It’s been a fantastic three weeks with only one thing left to do before we head home tomorrow. We are having dinner tonight with a good friend and her partner. She works for the same company I work for and he is Welsh so they’ve been over here frightening his relatives in the villages.
It just remains now to get home and see if the cats have eaten each other. We didn’t leave them to their own devices – they are being supervised so, you know, ignore the eating each other bit.
Just about to leave Seville for Madrid then Zurich tonight. Got off the boat yesterday morning and headed into town to a hotel for an extra day here.
Seville is a magnificent city with all of the monuments you expect from an old city. It also has some relatively new ones including all of the pavilions built for the 1929 and 1992 World Expos. The 1929 Spanish Pavilion is incredible. For a start it’s huge but the attention to detail has to be seen to be believed but then that’s a fairly common trait from Roman times through the Dark and Middle Ages and the Renaissance right up to a few years ago when we were introduced to the joys of graffiti and “just in time” buildings (building unions notwithstanding) with lots of glass and straight lines. Gone are the days when an artisan spent most of his life chiselling out a few statues on behalf of the church. Religions should go back to doing this instead of running political campaigns. By now you will have realised that I tend to stray into these philosophical and political discussions when there is not a lot else to report.
The Spanish Pavilion has been used in 52 movies including Lawrence of Arabia and, believe it or not, the 5th Star Wars movie. It was also used for the old Clint Eastwood / Sergio Leone spaghetti westerns which were filmed in Spain because there is a desert nearby – in the middle of Spain.
One interesting thing I almost forgot is that we passed through a lock on the river outside Seville. Was a bit of a damp squib actually because the river levels were almost the same either side. I didn’t notice any change but someone told me it was about a foot. We then turned around as the river narrowed and reversed up the river to the dock. That was interesting. I guess it’s easier to drive straight out with a full load.
Just before the lock we passed through a lot of rice fields which were being crop dusted by a gang of John Belushi’s it seemed. How they didn’t prang into each other is beyond me. Maybe they do, they just didn’t do it while we were trundling past. One of these clowns actually buzzed the ship. I was sitting on our balcony and this plane was coming straight at me. We were very close to the back and this plane went past us level with me and metres from the back of the boat. And he dipped his wings a couple of times as he went past. In Australia they’d have had the airforce after him (do we still have one or did Rudd sell it?). In Spain – mañana.
Sorry for the stream of consciousness this post has become but I keep thinking of things.
We are in the cruise company club and they had a club cocktail party a few nights ago which was basically an advertising opportunity. They presented an award to the most frequent cruisers – two blokes who have done 38 cruises and were two of the 100 or so (out of about 600 total) who stayed on the boat for the next leg to Rome. Considering the line has only been around since 2001, that’s pretty impressive. One of them must have invented something for them to have the time and money to do that.
That’s the end of our Southampton/Seville journey. More countries and things crossed off the bucket list with many more still to go and a determination to not let other things stand in the way. I’ll regale you with tales of later cruises….later.
Well, we’ve just left Lisbon and are on our way to the last stop (Seville) of this cruise. We did an organised tour yesterday then walked up to the Castle of St George this morning. There is a Portuguese version of this name which I will get wrong if I try to write it – I could go back to the room and get a brochure but I’m writing this in a bar so you get the English version. The castle like most of them round the world, is on a hill and it’s not a small or gently sloping hill so we certainly got our exercise today. And the streets can be as narrow as one person – easy to defend but rubbish in an earthquake and they had the mother of all earthquakes in 1755 which destroyed two thirds of the city and killed 60000 people. Anyway, the castle was well worth the visit. Been there since the mid 11th century although archaeologists have found evidence on the site of people from the Iron Age – 700 BC.
Last night was White Night, a typical cruisey thing – everyone wears something white (lucky I bought that t-shirt in St Jean de Luz) and eventually gets whipped into an all singing, all dancing frenzy by the manic cruise director. It wasn’t bad actually in a, how shall I put this, “gay” sort of way. Amazing what you’ll do with a skin-full so there we were doing all the arm movements for YMCA and I Will Survive and singing along to Ricky Martin songs (I was miming – don’t know any Ricky Martin songs apart from “Doing the something something”…promise). Would have preferred to be on the stage than in front of it. They got together all of the musicians who perform in various parts of the ship and all of the singers and went for it and I have to say they were very good – great musicians and great singers. So even though I would have preferred to be on the stage, I wouldn’t have qualified.
I have to tell you about Captain Johannes (not really Captain Stubbing for all of you under the age of 40). He is Norwegian. We’ve all heard of the wacky Swedes and their riotous sense of humour. Well if this guy is representative of their culture, the Norwegian police force must be run by the Keystone Cops, Billy Connolly is the Minister for Culture and making whoopee cushions is the Norwegian version of Ikea. When we left port today he came on the intercom and said “Good afternoon everybody, this is your designated driver here. As we leave, the ship will be under the control of –insert female name because I forgot – our apprentice officer. It’s her first time to do this so we have painted a large red L on the back of the ship to warn other ships in the area”. And then 20 minutes later when we had to stop and flush all of the jelly fish out of the cooling water intakes (to stop the engines overheating) he came on and said, “- insert female name because I forgot – has asked me to tell you it wasn’t her fault that we had to stop”.
And now I can’t get that bloody Ricky Martin song out of my head.
Greetings once again from the Love Boat or the SS Startled Face.
We left Bilbao yesterday and on our way out of the harbour Captain Stubbing advised us that the swell was going to get increasingly stronger on our way to Lisbon. Consequently I woke up at about 3.00am this morning gripping the mattress and trying not to fall out of bed. This was not another “bench” episode as I’d been asleep for hours – promise. In fact yesterday was a pretty easy day. Couple of wines at lunch time, couple of beers in the afternoon, couple of gin and tonics with dinner and a couple of scotches before bed. Pretty much an alcohol – free day really.
Something we learnt when we were in St Jean De Luz is that they are famous as fisherman, having hunted whales in the 17th and 18th century as far away as Newfoundland. But they were also famous as pirates. Apparently the French king was happy to give them privateer status in return for 50% of the booty. And they attacked British ships. They never told us that in the history books. It was all Sir Walter Raleigh and Sir Francis Drake and how useless the Spanish and French were. But then again, they may have been lying.
Bilbao was a revelation. As some of you may not have heard of it, it’s in Spanish Basque Country, not far from the French border and was famous for producing steel. It is now a haven for architects. You’ll see some incredible buildings in amongst the obligatory history and 12th century cathedral. And it has a Guggenheim Museum which is magnificent. There are three Guggenheim Museums in New York, Venice and…….Bilbao (???).
So the city’s done a good job creating new industries as steel went backwards and their unemployment rate is significantly lower than the rest of the country. Notwithstanding we did see a number of now obligatory (in Europe) wind turbines at the end of the harbour – monstrosities that need subsidies of $500,000 per job in the renewable energy field and destroy another 5 jobs along the way. They put billions into this at the behest of the greenies so no wonder Spain is an economic basket case. Enough of the rants.
After we turned left and headed down the Portuguese coast to Lisbon the swell got to 15 ft. But it was going in our direction so we could to surf the last 300 miles.
This is our second and last full day at sea out of 12. The great thing about these cruises is that you stop almost every day but a day to chill after a lot of walking and happy snapping is welcome. Also, I’ve had a chance to scope out the clientele and have concluded there are no gangs of geriatric Man U or Millwall supporters on board so I am proudly wearing the Manchester City shirt I purchased at the City shop in Manchester. And I found out their official nickname is actually The Citizens and not The Blues. You wanted to know that didn’t you.
It’s now 2.30pm which is almost beer time.
Back soon.
