We are now in Ireland. Robert has taken over as the official organiser and co-ordinator. His first job was to figure out how we could possibly get our 50kg of luggage on to our very cheap Ryan Air flight from Madrid to Dublin. Baggage allowance is 15kg each, no sharing. This involved a lot of guesstimating of weight, ditching unwanted items and even a trio to the post office to orgainse sending some of our gear home. We knew that we were up for an experience wors...

This is a very quick update. We are in Marrakesh and have been to Fez. Some pics of the medina in Fez have been uploaded. Everything not necessarily nice but mind boggling. Proper update soon. A further update of this has taken longer than thought. Fez was scary, dirty and exciting. The medina (market) was a crowded smelly entangled mesh of crisscrossing alleyways inside stone walls. Donkeys compete with humans. The call is Barak (Get out of the way) and Att...

We have seen the Flamenco the real thing and thought it was electrifying. See hot off the press photos. It is very hot here in Seville 34 degrees. The days are long sunrise at 6am and still 34 degrees at 10pm last night with the sun still shining brightly in the sky! Siesta is not a luxury its an absolute necessity. The Americas Cup is showing on Spanish tv we cant understand any of it of course but you only needed to speak the lanuage of horror and gasping whe...

Here we are in Portugal at last.To get here we passed through Salamanca, Spain, the town where Courtenay went to university and we wondered why she came back to NZ. We were lucky enough to go out for dinner last night to hear the Fado, which is the Portuguese version of the Blues. Robert was here many years ago and has been really surprised by the wealth and organisation of the current Portugal compared to when he visited. Lots of EU loans. The wine and shoes are...

Time to leave Turkey and join our cruise on the Norwegian Jewel. We laid off looking at monumnets as we did our own sightseeing on board mainly staring at our 2,300 travelling companions. 2 categories of them. Cat 1 Americans, retired, fat, huge appetites and very loud voices. Cat 2 Americans the beautiful people all day in the gym, young and still eating heaps. We loved the ship. Servants every where even spraying your hands as you walked into one of the 12 re...