Where have we been?

2002

Pisa, Florence & Naples, Italy (Jun) - We had been waiting for quite a few years for the stabilisation work on the Leaning Tower of Pisa to be completed and it was finally finished with the tower open to the public sometime in late 2001. We had been to Venice last December so we wanted a break from Italy but we finally booked our long awaited trip in June. This utilised the double public holiday that we got in the UK for Queen Elizabeth's Golden Jubilee (we didn't get invited to her party).
Well, Pisa only needed a day to cover it (and what a glorious day we had) so we added on 5 days in nearby Florence to take in the Renaissance museums (including seeing Michelangelo's statue of David) and then took the train down to Naples for 3 days to fulfil another long time ambition - to see the volcano preserved Roman ruins at Pompeii.
We flew there with Ryanair and back with Go. Two of our hotels were booked with HotelConnect and the other with AboutHotel. We would have booked our Italian rail travel with TrenItalia but their on-line booking service was temporarily unavailable.

Los Angeles & San Diego (Mar/Apr) - We've touched down in LA so many times before and even spent the night there at an airport hotel but only this year did we finally get around to visiting this huge metropolis. We'd heard a lot of bad things about LA which we think were unfair as we quite enjoyed our stay (although we wouldn't like to live there!)
We spent 12 nights in and around LA visiting Hollywood, Universal Studios, Venice Beech, Santa Monica Beech, Long Beech (home of the Queen Mary ship), Downtown LA, Beverley Hills and of course Disneyland. We then drove down to San Diego for 4 nights taking in the world famous zoo, Sea World, Old Town and the Gaslamp District
We flew in and out of Los Angeles with British Airways booked via Expedia. This was a relatively late booking over Easter and so we paid quite a hefty premium for the flights. We arranged our hotels using Traveleader and arranged our Budget hire car in the UK using the old-fashioned telephone.
Return to the top

2001

Tour of New Zealand (Dec/Jan) - This was a three-week, fly-drive tour cramming in as much of New Zealand as we could in the time available. We made up the itinerary ourselves (following some excellent recommendations from Simon & Fiona - thanks!). Our tour took us from Auckland via the geothermal area at Rotorua & Lake Taupo, Wellington - New Zealand’s capital, Kaikoura for whale watching and a swim with the dusky dolphins, the glacial lakes at Tekapo & Pukaki, Mount Cook Village, Te Anau - for a trip inside the glow-worm caves and an excursion to the Doubtful Sound fjord, Queenstown - the extreme sports capital of the world and home of the bungy jump, then over to Fox Glacier and Franz Josef Glacier on the west coast, along the Greymouth to Westport coastal road including pancake rocks and then over Arthur’s Pass to finish our tour in Christchurch.
This tour very nearly didn’t happen! Lina picked New Zealand for Christmas 2000 but there was still a serious price premium for visiting New Zealand over New Year - presumably because this was the real end of the last millennium and they wanted to sting the purists. We postponed our trip to 2001, but problems with our Russian citybreak meant that we almost left it too late. We hadn’t appreciated just how far in advance we needed to book flights to New Zealand over the Christmas period. We thought that booking in early October was plenty of time but Expedia, Travelmood and Virgin Travel only came up with prohibitively expensive flights. As a last resort, we tried Kuoni. We had really wanted to do our own self-guided tour of New Zealand but we were willing to take one of Kuoni’s organised tours if necessary. Amazingly, after a little creative routing, Kuoni managed to get some flights for us which were quite affordable (despite mixing airlines). We were also delighted to hear that we didn’t have to go on one of their tours to get these flights. All we had to do was book a minimum of 5 nights accommodation through them (which was surprisingly cheap) making this our 15^th trip with Kuoni.

Venice, Italy (Dec) - This trip was booked a last minute after we booked our New Zealand tour and found we had some vacation days remaining that needed using before the end of the year. We booked a 5 day weekend staying in the centre of the eternal city. We were blessed with clear blue skies and none of the traditional flooding that usually occurs in winter. However, it was exceptionally cold and the days were quite short but we still had a great time on the canals and the narrow alleys.
This trip marked our migration towards digital photography following our recent purchase of a Minolta DiMAGE 7 camera - but this was far from a painless transition as the camera misbehaved a lot.
We finally managed to book this trip entirely using the Internet. We booked some very cheap flights on-line with Ryanair and booked our hotel using Go. We even booked airport parking with BAA on the web.

St. Petersburg & Moscow, Russia (Aug) - We spent a week in each of these Russian cities visiting their fabulous buildings and museums. We visited Peterhof, St. Isaac’s Cathedral, The Hermitage & the church of Christ the Saviour on the Blood in St. Petersburg and the Cathedral of Christ the Saviour, the Kremlin, St. Basil’s Cathedral, Red Square, Lenin’s Mausoleum, Kolomenskoe and the wonderful metro stations in Moscow.
This was another trip that was very nearly booked entirely using the Internet. We booked our flights on-line with Expedia and arranged our hotels using Demlink Travel but not directly through their website - we had to do it via email in order to get their help arranging our Russian Visas. We expected the Visas to be the hard part but they turned out to be fairly straight forward thanks to Demlink and the Edinburgh consulate. However, a number of simple mistakes were made on our hotel booking by Demlink which took quite a lot of sorting out and so overall we wouldn’t recommend Demlink.

New York City & Washington DC (Apr) - We originally wanted to go to New York way back in 1994 as part of the “Hoover Free Flights” fiasco but we didn’t get around to booking a replacement trip until 7 years later. Actually, the main purpose of our trip was to visit the excellent Smithsonian Museums in Washington DC but we thought that this was a good opportunity to finally add a visit to the Big Apple. We spent a packed 10 days covering the main attractions in NYC including the Empire State Building, the Statue of Liberty, Ellis Island, Central Park, World Trade Centre and Times Square. We then spent 6½ exhausting days in DC including some seriously early starts and some obscene queues. We visited the White House, the Pentagon, the Capitol Building, the FBI Headquarters, the Lincoln, Jefferson and Roosevelt Memorials, the National Archives, the National Air and Space Museum, the Museum of American History, the American Museum of Natural History and Georgetown.
This was almost our first trip booked entirely using the Internet - we arranged our hotels using Traveleader but, although we could get good prices on the long haul flights using the web, the 200 mile flight from New York to Washington DC added half as much again to the price. However, Emma, at Virgin Travel, managed to get this short flight included into the long-haul price by using a cunning choice of airlines (sadly, we couldn’t get the same deal on the same flights over the Internet so we still have some use for human beings!)
Return to the top

2000

Asian Cities Tour (Dec/Jan) - After a very busy year at work we were left with quite a lot of vacation days to take by the end of the year. We didn’t have any ideas for a long break so we decided to spend a few days in each of a number of different cities in the Far East. We visited Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon) and Hanoi in Vietnam, Manila in the Philippines, Taipei in Taiwan and finished with a stopover in Hong Kong on the way back. We tried booking it all on the internet but we had left it too late and the flights were seriously expensive. To our surprise, our Kuoni VIP travel consultant managed to book it all for us in record time (despite the fact that Kuoni don’t cover Taiwan & The Philippines!). It wasn’t cheap, but it was a lot cheaper than we were quoted on the internet.

Warsaw & Krakow, Poland (Aug/Sep) - I (Chris) am half Polish and I have visited Poland many times as a child with my family (when Poland was a communist country). We spent almost all of our time visiting our relatives during these trips and we hardly saw any of the country’s attractions. Although Poland has changed a lot in the 24 years since I last visited it, I decided it was time we took a look at it without any family or relatives. We spent a week in each of Warsaw and Krakow with our hotels and flights arranged by Cresta.

Arches & Canyons (Apr/May) - An extended two-week self-drive tour of some of the National Parks near America’s West Coast including the Grand Canyon and Yosemite both of which we had been meaning to visit ever since our trip to San Francisco back in 1995. We also visited Sequoia National Park, Zion National Park, Bryce Canyon, Arches National Park and Monument Valley. We finished our tour with a few days in Las Vegas for a complete change of scenery. Our self-planned itinerary was a little too aggressive and this is now easily our most exhausting trip to date as we only allowed ourselves one night at each of the first 6 National Parks. On the plus side, the spring weather was excellent, and we saw some spectacular scenery and we have some incredible photographs of our trip. If you want to be told when we have written what promises to be a very photo intensive trip report from this tour then let us know

Return to the top

1999

Sri Lanka Highlights (Dec/Jan) - A week long escorted tour of the major attractions in Sri Lanka over Christmas finishing with a few days relaxing at the beach for the biggest New Year celebrations of the millennium. We had to book this tour well in advance because of all of the Year 2000 hype but the tour turned out to be only half full. This was the thirteenth trip we have taken with Kuoni (who, thankfully, didn’t really charge an awful lot extra for this Y2K spanning trip).

Highlights of Peru (Oct) - A two-week, fully escorted tour around some of the many diverse regions of Peru. We visited Lima, the Amazon rainforest, Cusco, the Lost Inca City of Machu Picchu, rode on one of the highest railways in the world over the Andes, visited the floating reed islands on Lake Titicaca - the world’s highest navigable lake and flew over the mysterious Nazca lines. This was our twelfth trip with Kuoni and our first visit to South America - we can now say that we have been to all four corners of the world! This was the third trip report written specifically for the web it is another long one!

Tour of Japan (May/Jun) - A three-week self-guided tour of the land of the rising sun. This was our most ambitious holiday to date but despite Japan’s reputation for being difficult to get get around, we had very little trouble. We were expecting this to be our most expensive holiday to date as Japan has somewhat of a reputation for being expensive but it turned out to be a very reasonably priced tour. After we had decided on our tour itinerary, we used a company called KR Tours to book our flights and hotels all for an extremely competitive price. This was the second trip report that was actually written specifically for the web and it is by far the largest one we have written to date (it took a very long time to write!)
Return to the top

1998

Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia (Dec) - Just a week in the Malaysian capital (because we booked too late and couldn’t get a later flight back). The Commonwealth Games had been staged here were while we were in Australia and so we thought that the place would have been made into a showcase for the world. There was a new airport, a new light rail transit and they currently have the tallest building in the world (but not the tallest structure - that’s still the CN tower). We tried to use Kuoni for this trip but their phones were repeatedly engaged so we used Travelmood again to book the flights and hotel for us (which actually saved us some money). We spent a lot of our time shopping in Kuala Lumpur. This is our 3rd trip report available on the web and the first one that was actually written for the web.

Tour of Australia (Aug/Sep) - Our longest holiday to date. This was a four-week tour cramming in as much of Down Under as we could. We made up the itinerary ourselves and booked the flights, cars, some hotels and some excursions using an excellent company called Travelmood. We did all of this in record time too with less than 6 weeks from first deciding to “do” Australia to our actual departure.

Our Wedding in Jamaica (Apr) - We have been touring the world together for over 10 years now (see below). During these 33 holidays we have spent over a year abroad (57 weeks) visiting 22 countries and travelled around 200,000 miles. When we decided to get married we wanted to choose a honeymoon that would be very special to us despite the fact that we go on “Holidays of a lifetime” on a regular basis. We achieved this by actually getting married abroad in a “couples only” all-inclusive resort in Jamaica. The resort was packed with plenty of things to do and so, unlike any other holiday we have been on, we hardly ever left the hotel complex.
Return to the top

From Java to Bali (Dec) - A two-week Kuoni overland tour of the Indonesian island of Java finishing with a few days on the beach in Bali. Starting at Jakarta, we drove through the volcanic mountains and the lush scenery, bathed in the Sari Ater hot springs, visited the Prambanan and Borobudur temples and viewed the sunrise from the Mount Bromo volcano.

Mexican Panorama(Oct) - A two-week, fully escorted and highly educational tour around the ancient ruins in Mexico finishing with a few days on the beach where we had another go at scuba diving. This was our tenth trip with Kuoni. This was the second trip report that was converted to HTML. Make sure you read it as it has earth-shattering implications!

Copenhagen, Denmark (Aug) - A week exploring this compact Scandinavian capital - home of the Little Mermaid, Hans Christian Andersen, Carlsberg Lager and Herrings.

China Highlights (Apr) - an exhausting 2 week, fully escorted, Kuoni tour of the major sights in China including The Great Wall and The Terracotta Warriors (and finishing in Hong Kong for a final glimpse of the colony before it was returned to China).
Return to the top

Bangkok, Thailand (Dec) - 2 weeks exploring this city full of golden temples including a crash course in Buddhism. This was our 8^th trip with Kuoni and we have finally converted the Word file to HTML (including adding loads more pictures).

Niagara Falls and Toronto, Canada (Aug) - 2 weeks split between the falls area and the city. This trip report was my first attempt at converting the Word file to HTML and this was very time consuming as I was trying too hard to achieve the same look as the paper version.

Hurghada, Egypt (May) - An exhausting week learning to SCUBA dive in the Red Sea. We both successfully completed the PADI open water diver course.

Rome, Italy (May) - A week exploring this city steeped in history and religion including an audience with the Pope and a day looking around the massive Vatican museum with its Sistine Chapel.
Return to the top

India (Dec) - a 2 week, Kuoni escorted tour of the major sights in India. This was another very special Christmas as we got up early on Christmas Day to see the Taj Mahal at dawn. This was also our first full colour illustrated trip report.

San Francisco, USA (Oct) - 2 weeks staying with friends in Fremont, CA and exploring nearby San Francisco and the surrounding area. This was our second, text only trip report and is also awaiting a visit from the illustrator. This trip made use of a 2-for-1 flight offer from Barclays Bank. The flights were actually about twice the normal the price but they were with Virgin Atlantic and we were keen to try them out.

Hawaii (Apr) - 3 weeks touring around the 4 largest Hawaiian islands to celebrate our tenth anniversary of being together. This holiday was packed with many amazing sights and experiences and this was the main reason why we started writing our lengthy trip reports after returning home. This first attempt was text only but we might revisit it one day and illustrate it for you. This was our 6^th trip with Kuoni and another one where they excelled themselves by allowing our significant customisation of their standard 4 island hopping tour without charging a premium. We even booked one of the hotels directly ourselves when we didn’t want to use the only hotel they were offering on The Big Island.
Return to the top

Hong Kong & Bali (Dec) - almost three weeks starting with a 4 day stopover in one of our favourite cities before moving on to our main destination on the Indonesian Island of Bali. Our 5^th trip with Kuoni.

Dublin, Eire (Aug) - a week wandering around this city full of culture and excellent Guinness. We were actually there when peace broke out.

Kenyan Safari (May) - a two-week safari around many of the wildlife parks in Kenya. I remember this tour being quite an ordeal that we were glad to return from but it was also an incredible experience not to be missed. Our 4^th trip with Kuoni.

Mallorca, Spain (Apr) - a week booked at the very last minute to use up some holiday days reserved for the “Hoover Free Flight” scam. We were trying to go to New York for a week but when the flights didn’t materialise we had to book a replacement holiday otherwise Lina would have lost the holiday days. This replacement holiday didn’t go that well either, as the hotel wasn’t open and we were moved to another hotel which was right out in the sticks. Also the resort was pretty dead as it was too early in the season.
Return to the top

Singapore (Dec) - three weeks in this squeaky-clean city/country that bears very little resemblance to Hong Kong. There were some torrential, but short, monsoon rain storms almost daily and it was amazing to see the impressive drainage system kick in to life to rapidly drain the water away shortly after it fell. This was our 3^rd trip with Kuoni.

Athens, Greece (Aug) - a week wandering around this ancient capital in probably the hottest weather we have ever encountered to date (it was regularly over 40°C - this was actually beaten recently when we visited Jakarta and experienced a peak temperature of 47.5°C but this high temperature didn’t last very long unlike in Athens where it persisted throughout the week). This city has many famous ancient ruins with the most famous being the Parthenon on the Acropolis. However what surprised us was the number of relics dotted around the city outside of the main sites (mostly in the parks).

Lisbon, Portugal (Jun) - a week exploring the Portuguese capital by foot and using its famous funicular trams to get up and down its many hills.

Sauze D’oulx, Italy (Jan) - our last week’s skiing. We’d love to keep it up but it was interfering with our other travel plans particularly now that we are regularly going away at Christmas.
Return to the top

Ancient Egypt (Dec) - This was an amazing, 3 week insight into the ancient Egyptians starting with an excellent, week long Nile cruise from Luxor to Aswan with a resident Egyptologist during which we were extremely privileged to be allowed to enter King Tutankhamen’s tomb (which is normally closed but was reopened on the 70^th anniversary of its discovery. After a visit to the awesome temple at Abu Simbal, we spent a few days in each of Aswan, Luxor and Cairo with a very special treat of going into the Great Pyramids on Christmas Day. I’ve always been fascinated with ancient Egypt and, after finding out that the pyramids were the last remaining of the original “Seven Wonders of the Ancient World”, I decided that we should try to visit the many so called “eighth” wonders of the world. This was our second trip with Kuoni and they really excelled themselves. We took their standard Nile cruise and customised it with extra nights in Aswan, a trip down to Cairo for a few nights followed by and a stay in Luxor. All of the transfers were included and the price couldn’t have been beaten.

Amsterdam, Holland (May) - a week walking around this small and friendly city full of cyclists, trams and canals.

Algarve, Portugal (Apr) - a cheap week on the sunny, picturesque Portuguese coast. Unfortunately, we were there before the tourist season started and so some things weren’t open. The Algarve coastline is very picturesque.

Cervinia, Italy (Jan) - a weeks skiing
Return to the top

Hong Kong (Dec) - This is where the travel bug really bit deep. This was the first time we had gone away at Christmas and the New Year and it was the start of a trend we have kept up ever since. It was also the first of our many trips using Kuoni - now our favourite tour operator. We had looked into booking the flights and accommodation ourselves but we just couldn’t beat Kuoni’s package tour price. We spent 3 weeks in this exciting colony which I would happily spend the rest of my life in. I love this place but I don’t know why! I always find it hard to describe how we spent our time there when people say that they couldn’t spend more than about 3 days there. We covered Hong Kong Island, Kowloon, many of the larger outlying islands, quite a bit of the New Territories and had a day trip to the Portuguese colony of Macao (which wasn’t really worth it).

Brussels, Belgium (Aug) - a week touring around the Belgian capital on my brand new Yamaha FJ1200 motorcycle.

Livigno, Italy (Jan) - Two weeks of cheap skiing by ourselves this time in perfect conditions but it was incredibly cold (-40°C at night!). I was wrecked by the end of this and decided that 2 weeks was too long for just skiing. I didn’t have any lessons this time. Instead I had bought a new video camera as I had found that I learnt more about how to ski from the video session at the end of each of the previous trips ski lessons. A combination of this and perfect skiing conditions led to a great improvement in my ability such that I had no worries about skiing with my expensive new toy and taking video footage while I was skiing.
Return to the top

St Wolfgang and Saalbach, Austria (Aug) - a 2 centre holiday with a week in each of these towns in the Austrian lakes and mountains. We were trying to get away from a heat wave back home in England but St Wolfgang was still quite hot (but the lake was nice and cold). Saalbach was quite cool though and the white water rafting we did was freezing but quite a thrill!

Jersey (Apr) - touring around this small island on my old Kawasaki Z650 motorcycle for a week

Tignes, France (Feb) - a weeks skiing with a serious amount of snow and a couple of friends who were beginners. We both took lessons again but they were terrible (our beginner friends didn’t do too well either). I vowed not to have group lessons ever again. Due to the snow, we were often completely blind with white above and below and all around us with no perception of where up or down was. The French lift queues were completely anarchic too and easily the worst we have ever encountered (before or after).
Return to the top

Orlando, Florida (Oct) - 3 weeks in the vicinity of Disneyworld etc. We rented a very nice house from someone at work which was within walking distance of the new Universal Studio site (which was actually still being built when we were there). We arranged the flights ourselves too. Our first impression was of unbearable humidity but we arrived on a bad day - there was only one other day with particularly bad humidity. We spent most of our time in Disneyworld and the many attractions that have sprung up around it but we also visited Cape Canaveral and saw the space shuttle lift off.

Soldeu, Andorra (Jan) - 2 weeks of very cheap skiing in this duty free resort in the Pyrenees with a couple of friends who were beginners. Unfortunately there wasn’t a lot of snow! We had 1 week with lessons but they don’t seem to teach you anything once you have progressed beyond the absolute beginners stage - they’re just glorified guides.
Return to the top

Mojacar, Spain (Sept) - 2 weeks on the Spanish coast to recover from a very long and drawn out house move. This was a cheap, late availability holiday but it was too long. We don’t really enjoy lounging around on the beach or by the pool and there wasn’t really enough other things to do here for two weeks so we got a little bored. Mojacar is where many of the spaghetti westerns were filmed and we visited one of the sets. They also claim that Walt Disney was born here.

Courmayeur, Italy (Jan) - Our very first skiing experience for a week and my first ever flight. We both took beginners lessons here and I got on quite well but Lina didn’t because she hurt her leg in badly fitting boots. We went with a group of friends from work but we were the only beginners.
Return to the top