Dover Woke and looked out to see Dover Castle atop the famous white cliffs. What a thrill to be back after so long. We hurried through showering and breakfast so as to get ashore all the sooner and meet our friends. The weather hadn't improved since yesterday - not surprising, really. After all, this is the UK! Carole Anne met us as we disembarked while John waited in the car, a 2 door hatchback Honda Civic. I tell you this as it's significant. They'd arra...

Bonjour from Le Havre The weather has changed at last. As soon as we left Lisbon the weather closed in and became cooler and quite windy. For the first time since leaving Sydney we were back in winter clothes. In the morning when we docked in Le Havre, which is at the mouth of the River Seine, it was overcast and threatening to rain. Many passengers had booked tours to Paris or Rouen, but we decided to wing it as usual as there were some nice places closer ...

Lisbon. As we sailed up the river to the dock in Lisbon we were overlooked by the lofty statue of Christ. The only other similar statue is in South Amerca, in Roi de Janeiro, I think. We've made friends with a great group of people and some of them suggested we hire an 8 seater van to do a tour of Lisbon. I was glad they did because I was going to stay on board feeling sorry for myself. Instead, after the usual bargaining at the gate we set off with our dr...

Gibraltar Since leaving home I discovered a nasty lump on my leg. It grew daily and was painful so I knew what it was - another nasty cancer (an SCC) like the one I had a few years ago. I hoped that it would be OK until I got home but eventually faced the fact that it was growing too fast so off I went to the Medical Centre. The upshot was that it had to be removed either in Italy or Gibraltar. Luckily Gibraltar was only 10 days or so off and English was sp...

Barcelona. Lovely sunny day again. We caught the free shuttle into town and were dropped off near the Christopher Columbus statue. His index finger is half a metre long and there's a strange anomaly because the statue's been placed with him pointing towards the Mediterranean, not towards America. It was the hop on, hop off bus for us again. I only had faint memories of our previous visit as a series of problems had made it a somewhat stressful time. Let me ...