Dubai is very hot!! We arrived at 7.30 am and it was 38C and humid. Flying in we could see the housing compounds surrounded by fences - to keep the desert out. Apparently there is no rainfall here! It is a city of huge shopping malls and hotels. The air is filled with a haze of sand and shimmer of heat. We had a tour of the city in the tourist bus and it is evident that the most important thing here is about being the biggest, tallest, richest. Many people we...

Ah Paris ! It is as lovely as its reputation has implied, well except for the unsavory elements of the street deposits. We have had a rendezvous with both with Marnie ( francophile extraordinaire) and Tom O'B and Phoebe (our french interpreter). She is so good that people ask her where in France she is from!! We have seen beautiful artworks, wandered the Champs Élysées, gone to the top of the Eiffel tower, wandered the formal gardens, been lost in the charm...

Our friend Holger picked us up from our mutual friend Michael's house and whisked us off to Bonn via Köln ( to visit the cathedral and look at the Rhein) After dinner we hit the road again and headed for Bötzingen - near Freiburg in the south of Germany. We spent a long weekend being given a fabulous guided tour of the area, eating food typical to the area. Holger took us to a few little wineries that serve their own wine and simple food - so delicious and ...

Another train trip of 5 hours from Lubeck to Hamburg took us to Wuppertal to stay with Michael who lived with my family 32 years ago. It was fabulous to see him and his wife Heike and son Tobias. We had Mittagessen with his parents the next day and it was just like all those years ago......Sally, have some more to eat ....... It was delicious so of course I did. I did of course have to exercise my brain a fair bit during this time as I needed to try to speak Ge...

We travelled by train from Berlin to Lübeck. I lived in Lübeck as an exchange student in the winter of 1979/80 It was amazing that I was still able to remember how to get to my school and the marzipan shop after 32 years. It was lovely to see Lübeck in summer, it is so much greener- obviously. We stayed with my friend Frauke's parents who happen to live right near Lübeck in the former East Germany. They live in a beautiful restored barn that had been buil...