Brighton - Ticking all the boxes

Brighton, on England's south coast, could well be said to be "London's beach getaway town" - in just 50 minutes by fast train, you can swap pigeons and pie-and-mash for seagulls and scampi-and-chips. Way back in June we decided to pounce on a particularly nicely-forecasted Saturday and see what Brighton had to offer.

In order to truly understand the appeal of Brighton, you must first grasp the fundamentals of the English seaside:

• The weather will most likely make actually going in the water extremely unappealing
• Thus, there must be plenty of amusements on hand
  
• The more (knowingly or not) outdated and/or tackier the amusements, the better
• There must be deckchairs
• There should be a seafront promenade, which all visitors must tour up and down
  
• There must be {fish/scampi/burger}-and-chip outlets all along the sea front
• No matter what the weather, thou shalt have an ice-cream
• If thou art a small child, thou shalt drop thy ice-cream and cry

In this regard, Brighton delivers on all fronts. But it goes even further, adding to the mix:

• A genuinely unique maze of lovely, quirky shop-filled lanes just behind the sea front
• A completely bonkers Royal Pavilion built by the Prince Regent in the early 1800s
• A whopping-great pier with an amusement-park on the end (not just a few dodgem cars either)
• A thriving local culture embracing two universities, a gay scene and live music

We were perhaps fortunate to visit Brighton on a sparkling summer day, but it was an absolute delight. After wandering though the eclectic and interesting independent shops of The Lanes, we arrived at the seafront promenade to this vista:


As per English Seaside requirements, we promenaded in both westerly and easterly directions, before stopping for refreshments, and plenty of 'em. It was seriously warm!


A visit to the Pavilion is an absolute must. Truly breathtaking in scale and ornate detail, both inside and out:


Finally we crunched our way out onto the beach itself and enjoyed the simple pleasures of England's gentle, non-threatening sunshine:

Off To Nether-Netherlands

Right children, we begin with a geography lesson. The Netherlands is the low-slung nation with the dykes and the windmills. Holland is one of its regions (actually two provinces, North and South) that sits right next to the North Sea. People use them interchangeably because the most-visited things in The Netherlands also happen to be in Holland - namely Amsterdam, Rotterdam, The Hague, and Delft.

But what about the other bits? Well as our friend Jenny has recently moved from Australia to the eastern side of the Netherlands, we are able to report, following a lightning visit in June. As usual with these things, there is of course a member of the opposite sex involved, and Erwin is a charming and highly-intelligent Dutchman - fluent in English and German too! They were truly excellent hosts, and went out of their way to give us a genuine Dutch weekend.

Let's start with the food. The Dutch apparently do! Breakfast was a lavish affair with numerous courses, ranging from savoury (eggs, salmon, meat, white asparagus) through to the uniquely-dutch chocolate sprinkles ("hagelslag") which are enjoyed on bread, or in Erwin's case, on everything.

First destination was a national park that draws Dutch people from miles around. Why? Because it actually has a few decent hills! The roads were busy with serious cyclists actually having to use their gears, but we were more interested in the friendly wild ponies (which by the way is now the THIRD time we've come across lovely wild mini-horses in Europe; Dartmoor and Iceland being the others)


We cruised around the area, going to a number of interesting small towns whose names we sadly can't remember, but including the home of Grolsch beer, and a place with a star-shaped network of defensive canals, with cannon still in position. Just in case those nearby Germans get any ideas....


No visit to The Netherlands could be complete without a bicycle-riding session; this is a nation where bicycles outnumber people, after all. We took a delightful spin around J & E's home town, enjoying the quite astonishing flatness (it makes London look Himalayan) - particularly Erwin, who affixed Jenny to his rear rack so that the rest of us could have a bike each!

Lost energy was replaced by visiting a traditional pannenkoekenhuis (dutch-pancake house) where we enjoyed pannekoek in both savoury (bacon and local forest mushroom) and sweet (delicious apple with stroop syrup) varieties:

Huge thanks to J & E for their excellent hospitality and for showing us that there's much more to Dutch life than Amsterdam's seedy charms...

Baltic Boating Part 8: Days At Sea

Pardon our horribly-slack blogging, we're packing up to go home! We're going to make it up to you by finishing off like we started - a blog a day! Yes, if you can remember almost three years ago, unemployed Johnny was cranking out a new blog post every day on average. Now those idle days are back again, so for the sake of symmetry (and catching up on a lot of adventures) he'll attempt to roll them out like he used to until it's time to head to Heathrow...

We just had a few more things to say about our cruise experience through Scandinavia, or more specifically about one of our new all-time favourite things: Days At Sea.

As cruise virgins, we'd been slightly worried about being bored on our four "Days At Sea". We'd supposed that only mad-keen Bridge or Bingo players would enjoy what the ship had to offer on these days. But we were so wrong. The Jewel Of The Seas was like a 5-star hotel dropped onto a Whitsunday Island, decorated with everything from the Weight Watchers Forbidden List. Our typical Day At Sea would see us shuffle into the all-day buffet at around 10.30 (just in time to catch the omelette-making-guy before he knocked off) and gorge ourselves before attempting to burn off the calories with EPIC table-tennis matches - rallies lasting hundreds of shots were not unheard-of. We'd then swing past the library to pick up the day's cerebral activities - fresh trivia, crossword and sudoku puzzles were provided each day - and settle down somewhere, possibly with a coffee from the (hideously-named) Latte-tudes Café. After swinging back past the buffet for another bout of eating, we'd often adjourn to the games room for some Scrabble, take our books to one of the pool areas, or do something a bit more active like Mini Golf, Rock Climbing or hitting the gym. And then all too quickly it would be time to eat again, this time in the Tides dining room with our regular dinner companions.

Of course we got to know our fellow diners very well. But with this cruise being an American-run enterprise, all of the service staff were hyper-attentive in that "Really want a good tip" way. Luckily our Peruvian waiter Juan and his Turkish assistant Mehmet were genuinely nice guys and had quite a Laurel-and-Hardy routine going - often unintentionally! Mehmet had more than a touch of Manuel from Fawlty Towers about him, while Juan was ever the consummate professional.


Our "stateroom attendant" Sori was a towel-folding magician - each time we came back from dinner we'd have a new sculpture awaiting us. It turns out that all stateroom attendants get taught how to do this, which slightly diminished the special feeling, but it was still impressive:

There were characters among our fellow passengers as well, some of whom achieved notoriety through participating in the various game shows run by our cruise director Joff (aka John Cleese - exceedingly witty and entertaining, even if his endless quips had a slightly well-practised feel to them). One couple in particular will forever remain in our memories. During a "Love and Marriage" show, the wife was asked who (aside from her, of course) her husband would most like to have with him on a desert island. She replied that he would choose his brother. When they swapped over, the husband (they'd been married for a year) simply could not think of an answer. Under intense pressure from Joff, his wife, and the crowd, he blurted out "My secretary?!?!?" at which point both the crowd and the wife exploded, but in rather different ways. For the remainder of the cruise that couple looked somewhat strained.

Johnny has already expressed his displeasure at violators of the dinner dress code - the passenger who most incurred his wrath was a Hispanic diner on the next-door table who consistently flouted not only the dress code but also basic rules of table manners and politeness. Thus he acquired the unenviable nickname of "Stupid Latino Ugly Guy", or SLUG for short. Sadly we have no picture of the Slug, but just imagine Jabba The Hut from Star Wars but with fewer interpersonal skills and you've got him nailed.

On the subject of famous likenesses, Johnny thinks that our cruise line may in fact be the forbidden lovechild of the Transformers' Autobots and Decepticons:

+ =

At 90,000 tons, if the Jewel ever does transform into a robot, JUST RUN!

Good and Bad News

Let's begin with the bad news - Johnny's reverse-Midas touch with employers continues. After 15 months at ICOM, the company has been declared insolvent and all employees made redundant on Wednesday (September 30).

This follows more than 9 months of late and partial payrolls, and we are all still owed for August AND September. Officially the company has NO assets so the chances of getting anything out of them are very remote. (In classic dodgy-business style, the bankrupt company that employed us is a separate entity to the one that owns all of the stuff like computers that could be sold off)

There is some chance of getting some compensation from the UK government's "National Insurance" arrangement that all companies have to pay into. It's exactly the kind of situation that NI is meant to cater for. It won't fully cover what is owed - not even close - but it will help.

Luckily, it's not too big a problem. John was in the process of resigning anyway, because, drum roll please...

We're heading back to Melbourne, for good, in November!

That's the "good news" bit if you were wondering. Yes, it will have been 3 years almost to the day - we've absolutely loved our time in the UK and gallivanting around Europe, and we always wanted to leave at the point where we felt we'd really got to know it well, but before it all became too familiar. We've averaged one international trip a month for the last 35 months, and have seen some fantastic stuff, but we can safely say we're "over" budget airlines now! And it really will be nice to spend some quality time with family and friends back home after relying on phone calls, emails and Facebook for so long.

So we're Melbourne bound at last!! See you soon!!

Baltic Boating Part 7: Oslo

After another delicious Day At Sea we steamed up the Oslofjord to Norway's capital. By sea is definitely the best way to approach Oslo; virtually every passenger on our boat was glued to the stunning views of the lush green valley-sides dotted with impossibly-cute wooden cottages. If there had been a Norwegian estate agent on board he would have done very well out of our boat that morning!


After several hours navigating the fjord, we docked directly opposite Oslo's 14th-century Akershus Fortress - the most picturesque large-boat mooring of our trip, if not the entire world?

Oslo, like almost all of the Scandinavian cities we visited on this tour, is a compact city, and after an enjoyable hour or so, even the attraction of riding giant bronze tigers though the town square was starting to wane.


Luckily, a short tram-ride away was Vigeland Park, the astonishing sculpture park of Gustav Vigeland. He personally sculpted 212 human figures, in varying positions and phases of life, which are now set out impressively throughout the park.


Back at the harbour, we treated ourselves to a taste of Norwegian fare: a small bowl of delicious fish soup (that's one bowl, shared between us), washed down with a local beer (again, just the one). 160 kroner (16 pounds) later... and we returned to the Jewel with a full appreciation of just how Oslo got its reputation for being one of the most expensive cities to visit. At least the sculpture park was free!

Baltic Boating Part 6: Tallinn

Teeny, tiny Tallinn - the town that 300,000* term theirs. Tourist-thronged, true, though totally typical throughout. Though this, the third* town that these tired travellers took to traversing, tellingly touched them thus:

Phew! Terribly taxing that! Tallinn was a charming little place, compact and quaint, making a pleasant contrast to St Petersburg's ornate grandeur. The capital of Estonia, it boasts a beautifully preserved medieval old town, complete with cobbled streets, walls, towers and a bustling Town Hall square. A traditional market was in full swing during our visit, selling handmade woollen and wooden goods, among other things.


We were mostly content to just wander aimlessly and absorb the atmosphere (it was certainly nice to leave the tour-group-sheep feeling behind), and indeed there wasn't a great deal else to do. Naturally, we made time to sample some of the local food and drink - an interesting fried cheese concoction, sausages, black bread and a local honey beer (quite sweet, funnily enough!)



* Some poetic licence was taken here in order to maintain the ambitious and potentially ill-advised alliteration. Hence, these figures are not, in the truest sense of the word, accurate.

Baltic Boating Part 5: More St Petersburg

Despite feeling slightly weary from the previous day's activities, we were both looking forward to our second day in St Petersburg. We'd signed up for two more excursions - a morning walking tour and a 'panoramic' bus tour in the afternoon - in the hope that these would give us ample time to explore the beautiful city centre, having only glimpsed it briefly the day before.

Once we'd been processed through the port border control rigmarole (Russia was the only country that required this and they certainly weren't friendly about it, not even once cracking a smile), we met our guide for the walking tour, Polina. Another native St Petersburgian, she was pleasant and spoke excellent English, but lacked the enthusiasm of our previous guide. In fact, she seemed to us to be rather bored and just going through the motions. But, nevertheless, we hung on her every word as she marched us along past monument after impressive monument.

Highlights were the iconic Bronze Horseman statue of Peter the Great, the vast and imposing Palace Square, St Isaac's Cathedral with its gleaming golden dome and the fascinating Church of the Saviour on Spilled Blood. Notable for being the only building in St Pete's designed in the traditional Russian style, complete with onion domes and mosaics, it was built as a memorial to Tsar Alexander II who was assassinated on that spot. Hence the slightly gruesome name.

Polina let us loose in the conveniently situated souvenir market across the road from the church. The explosion of crapinski was surely a sight to behold. Thousands of painted Matryoshka dolls of all shapes and sizes stared back at us, making Johnny very nervous on a number of levels. Thankfully, Bec satisfied herself with just a few small purchases, and took only 43 of our allotted 45 minutes to make her selections from the vast choice available.

We returned to the ship for a well deserved buffet lunch, before heading out again (more grumpy passport scrutinising) for our afternoon bus tour. We were slightly disappointed to discover that our guide was again the disinterested Polina, and even more disappointed when it quickly became clear that this was basically the same tour. Same monuments, same stories told with the same tone of voice, same crapinski market. We consoled ourselves by spending as much time as possible away from the group, exploring this lovely city on our own, and even managing to sample a local brewski.