Travelling Man and Muse
2010 World Trip

The Last Post  In a couple of hours the hotel chauffeur will drive us to the airport and we will be on our way back home. We left the UK on Feb 1 and the last six weeks have just flown by.  We have seen some amazing places and had some wonderful experiences. With a few minor alterations to our itinerary, we would gladly start the whole trip all over again!  So what have been the high points, what have been the low points and what if any have been the disappointments? The best all-round experience by a very long way was Kangaroo Island and the Southern Ocean Lodge. Everything about this three-day stay was fantastic - the lodge itself, our suite, the food, the staff, the excursions, the scenery, the location, all were pretty near perfect. You might say, so it should be at the price, but it was just so good that you can't really argue about the cost. The only major Australian animal we didn't see there was the emu and I think I'll survive without getting up close and personal ...

Despite a weather forecast that suggested a cloudy, even stormy day, our last day in Cape Town is a scorcher. Even the mountain is visible today.  We wanted to visit District 6. This is the eastern district of the city about a mile and a half walk from our hotel that was razed to the ground over a fifteen year period by the apartheid government.  In the 1960s the government designated what was known as District 6 a whites only zone and declared that the whole area housing a thriving multiple-cultural community that had grown and developed since the late 1890s should be cleared to create more space for the white population.  The residents were resettled in areas outside the city centre in race-based townships and every single building throughout the neighborhood was demolished. Despite protests this was carried through and over 150,000 black, asian and mixed race people were forcibly resettled, their homes and businesses demolished and their communities destroyed. The District 6 museum ...

This is the last evening of our trip. We asked our hotel to find us something special preferably serving seafood. Kelly, the hotel receptionist who has been helpful from the first moment we arrived, booked us a table at Baia, considered to be the best restaurant of it's kind in Cape Town. She even arranged for the hotel's chauffeur to drive us there and collect us again after dinner.   The restaurant has a perfect location in the huge waterfront Victoria centre and it overlooks the harbour on two sides.  The food is certainly the best we've had in Cape Town and is one of the best meals since Southern Ocean Lodge.  In a London hotel this whole experience would cost a King's ransom. Here the most expensive main course is less than £25 and even with a very nice Sauvignon, our three courses of indulgence come to less than £100 in total.  Baia seats 400 people and it's full.  Sitting at the next table is an unassuming man and his companion. As we ask for our bill, he com...

The Cape Heritage Hotel is one of the oldest buildings in Cape Town at around 300 years old. In its courtyard winding itself round various frames and supports is what is known to be the oldest vine in South Africa and in much the same manner as happens in an Austrian 'Heurige' the grapes are harvested each year and turned into the hotel's own wine. It is however rather exclusive producing 4 magnums and just 12 bottles last year. The hotel is delightfully old-fashioned with just enough mod cons to make sure it has everything it needs, whilst retaining all of its georgian charm The floors are all polished timber, hopelessly uneven with old rugs; we have a four-poster bed, complete with canopy, but a great bathroom with a large free-standing Victorian style double-ended bath, separate lounge and air conditioning. Our ceiling is around 9ft high by the door, rising to at least 11ft by the windows. It's charming and rather fun. We're only staying tonight and tomorrow ...

The Comair flight to Cape Town is an early morning commuter flight. Our cabin is full of very serious looking individuals, tapping away at laptops or reading the early morning papers and all looking very smart. In the midst of this earnest group sit Travelling Man and Muse in our normal travel scruff outfits. This is a British Airways flight operated by Comair. I'm really not sure quite what that means. It's a BA plane, but the cabin staff aren't in BA uniforms and fuckadoodledoo the catering is pure BA - an absolute text book example of how to make good food disgusting. Breakfast on this flight started with a fruit platter. All you have to do to make this acceptable is cut up a small quantity of fresh fruit and arrange it on a plate. THEN STOP! Nope - BA can't do that. Instead they have employed an O-level chemistry student to create some disgusting, sticky, sweet, vaguely green slime to 'enhance' the appearance and flavour. What they have succeeded in doing...

Our 11 hour flight from Perth to Jo'Burg only took ten hours and SAA was as comfortable as a flying toothpaste tube can be. SAA don't have an equivalent to BA Club or Business so we get to travel First Class. Yes the food was OK, yes the the entertainment system was as good as these things get, yes the seats performed all manner or power-operated tricks and somersaults and yeas they went flat into what might have passed for beds. However, the designer may have misunderstood his brief or misunderstood the words 'soft' and 'flat'. For 'flat' he clearly read horizontal and it was indeed possible to place the seats/beds in a horizontal position. As for the idea that when in this position, these passed for beds in which one might get some sleep, well they fell a long way short of the mark. Were the Americans to adopt these rock hard and rather lumpy SAA First Class sleeper seats for use in interrogations where sleep deprivation was the intention, I susp...

The long way home via Cape Town.  It made sense to keep our apartment for an extra day, although we'll be vacating long before we can complete a night's sleep. We've come back after lunch and another bus ride for an afternoon snooze. Anyway it's got really hot today so we're both happy to be lounging around in air-conditioned comfort. It's meant we can shower, have a rest, finish the food in the fridge and change into our travelling clothes.   It was always going to be a long journey home. We have an eleven hour flight to Johannesburg, followed by a two-hour hop to Cape Town after a two-hour stopover and a seven hour time change.  Our Cape Town hotel has been very understanding. They've waived our first night room charge as we're arriving later than planned and they've rearranged our pick-up. It looks as though we're going to enjoy our stay albeit that it's shorter than planned.  At least we're starting in comfort in the Qantas club loung...

How best to spend our 'extra' time in Perth was not a difficult decision. We barely scratched the surface of Kings Park yesterday. Today we went to one of the non-Jacobs Ladder entrances on the western side of the city - an altogether easier entry point.  It's Monday so most people are at work. This huge space is almost deserted and we have a chance to walk round much more of it. Most of the park is actually an enormous botanic garden. It is broken up into dozens of separate areas all linked by attractive walks and pathways.  Each mini-park within the park features all the flora and fauna from a different part of Western Australia. Given that WA is larger than Texas and Alaska put together, that's a lot of botanic garden. The two main routes or walks around the whole thing are 'Lover's Walk' and 'Law Walk' - the first dovetailing neatly into the second......'twas ever thus! It's another glorious day naturally, the temperature hitting 31c by e...

Oh Shit! I have avoided mild obscenities up till now, but no longer. This is an 'oh shit' moment. After weeks of finding every booking working smoothly, whether it was a flight, a hotel or an excursion, we have encountered a minor cock-up, well more of a major catastrophe really. Our itinerary has us leaving Perth on March 8th at 11:00am. This is exactly as planned. Our apartment here was booked for March 5, 6 and 7 and our Cape Town hotel for March 8, 9 and 10. We are therefore enjoying a last comfortable night in our apartment. We're slowly packing, just looking out the tickets for tomorrow's flight. Oops! The tickets have us leaving about 8 hours ago! Our plane left this morning without us! Our tickets had us flying out on March 7th rather than the 8th. We were in Kings Park as our flight took off. The supreme irony is that at about the time it left, I was photographing the glorious view looking east from the park. In the photo is a Qantas plane taking off. I t...

We are nearing the end of our trip. We have this one last day in Perth and then we're on the way home with just the three day stop in Cape Town before we arrive back in the UK. I will post one or two more reports from Australia, but unless our Cape Town hotel provides free wifi or a business centre with free PC access, I will not be able to post our Cape Town reports until we get home In the USA, New Zealand and here in OZ it has made sense to buy a local SIM card. In South Africa, I don't expect that to be a viable proposition, so we'll take our chances and see what our hotel there is able to offer.  Sunday exploring Perth.....it's a beautiful day. The sun is shining out of a cloudless deep blue sky, but we could be walking out into a ghost town. There is absolutely no sign of life.  Where is everybody?  After a short walk, we have found them - the population of Perth, that is. Since 7:00am this morning they have been taking part in a triathlon event that seems to have...

One of the Muse's many functions whenever we travel is to ensure that I don't miss anything that should either be photographed or just looked at and appreciated.  That includes the local 'totty'!   Up until now there hasn't really been anything worthy of comment. We arrived in Sydney the day after the end of their gay Mardi Gras, yet disappointingly, the stranger creatures that had filled the newspapers the previous day had all but disappeared back into the undergrowth. Even the 5,000 or so who had apparently stripped naked and posed for a 'performance artist' on the steps of the Opera House had dispersed. In Perth, perhaps because it is hotter and sunnier here than anywhere else has been, there are one or two things that you can't really fail to notice.   I will just say this....if you're a leg man, then this would be one of the places you'd want to live. You would die happy! The favourite item of clothing for the Western Australian female aged...

We've decided to take a ferry along the Swan River into Fremantle and to take the train back. There is some very fancy residential real estate along both sides of the Swan River as we cruise downstream. One or two of the more prominent and extravagant constructions would set you back a cool AUD$60m or so, but you'd need pretty deep pockets if you wanted anything decent along the waterfront, even though it stretches for miles all the way from the city centre to the ocean on both banks of the river. And it seems that for every property there are at least a dozen boats. Apparently this area has the largest number of boats per head of population anywhere in the world. There are certainly plenty of yacht and boat marinas packed with boats of every size - mostly large! If you like waterfront living, this may well be the place. The properties are every bit as extravagant as they were in Sydney. The riverbank also boasts the world's smallest and most exclusive yacht club. It i...

Our longest - 4.5hr - Qantas internal flight was comfortable enough. As luck would have it, this was the only internal flight that we didn't get allocated the exit row seats, so it was a little more snug than previous flights. The in-flight lunch was a well thought out and carefully prepared chicken dish. It was disgusting. This was actually very considerate of Qantas, as it reminded us that we will shortly be returning to international travel, so we needed to be re-introduced to the standard that we can expect from BA! A couple of mindless in-flight movies helped pass the time and we soon touched down in Perth. Another efficient airport/airline performance ensured that within an hour of touchdown we were settling in to our apartment in the centre of the city. We have heard much about Perth, a city of only 2m people closer to Djakarta in Indonesia than it is to the major cities on Australia's east coast. It does have a flavour all it's own. We'd met people in Sydney wh...

We have spent our last full day in Sydney exploring its outer reaches. There hasn't been time for a trip out the Blue Mountains or to a number of the places that looked worth a visit. There are also many restaurants that will have to wait until we can return.  We won't even get to Bondi beach.....well who wants to see a whole lot of bronzed Aussies in marginally better physical shape than we are and a year or two younger to boot!  I'll cling to my fantasies and illusions thank you!!  Instead we have bought a one-day travel card which will allow us to use all the bus, ferry and train services throughout the city.  We start by heading out to Palm Beach. Apparently this is where the seriously monied have their ocean-front properties. The journey out is pleasant enough, though not quite on a par with the drive from Sorrento to Naples on the Italian Riviera. However, once you reach Palm Beach, Whale Beach and Avalon it is not difficult to see why the wealthy settled here, though...

The jazz/soul singer Nina Simone died 7 years ago. For one night only in Sydney Opera House's Concert Hall, her original backing band is giving a concert of her music. The singers include international jazz singer Diane Reeves and Patti Austin as well as Simone, who is Nina Simone's daughter.  We have managed to get tickets, centre stalls.  The concert lives up to all expectations. The musicians are superb and the venue itself makes it a really special evening.  The whole harbour area has a great buzz in the evening. Imagine Covent Garden's Piazza area but with glorious weather and water all around you.  A memorable evening.  

Today we've booked a trip with English emigre Annie Bennett who runs her own private yacht charter company. We set sail on her rather splendid 32ft sailing yacht for a day exploring Sydney's many harbour areas. Annie is based in Clontarf, a tiny sheltered harbour about a ten minute cab ride from Manly. The easiest way to reach Manly is by high speed catamaran. The Manly Flyer operates a commuter service between Sydney Harbour and Manly Marina. The journey takes exactly the time advertised - 18 minutes. By catching the 7:30 am boat, on a perfect morning, we have magnificent views of the morning sun bathing the Opera House and Harbour Bridge as we head out of Sydney Harbour. This is the picture-perfect postcard view of The city. Manly is delightful, a spit of land with a perfect surfer's beach on one side and a harbour and marina on the other. Because we're early there is time to wander down The Corso, the main shopping street. A rather lovely Italian deli provides u...

Aria footnote.  There is a difference between fine dining restaurants in the UK, USA and Australia.  In the USA, the waiter is obviously hoping to become a member of your family - 'Hi, my name is Tom and I'll be your waiter for tonight.' In the UK, not only has the waiter no interest in becoming a member of your family, he has no interest in waiting you either;  in fact he should be sitting where you are and you should be serving him.  In Australia, the waiter is already a member of your family and has no hesitation in relating intimate anecdotes about other members of the family (yours, his, 'ours').  We had been seated for dinner at our table in Aria for only a few moments when our waiter came to the table to discuss the menu. We were looking out of the window at the harbour bridge and remarked how wonderful the view was and how amazing it was that even as dusk fell, there were still groups of bridge walkers climbing to the top. 'Yes', said the waiter. ...

We have arrived in Sydney at a hotel called Sir Stamford on Circular Quay. We were pretty confident about what to expect just from the name - charm with a slightly old-fashioned look and feel - perhaps a gently down-at-heel country house. In fact the hotel has turned out to be delightful. The staff are friendly and helpful. The furnishings and decor hark back to the elegance of Edwardian England and we immediately feel at home. Perhaps that's because we have a rather typical English summer's day - grey skies with drizzle! We have used our brollies for the first time this trip. Weather forecasts say we'll have much the same tomorrow followed by two glorious sunny days. Into every life a little rain must fall! Our room was exactly what we ordered this time, a large comfortable room with a good seating area, king-size bed and a large modern bathroom with bath and shower. It was also blissfully quiet. We are a short walk - about 100yds - from the steps of the Opera House, so...

The news of the Chilean earthquake as we wake next morning includes tsunami warnings for the whole of the east coast of Australia. This is the day we have planned to go diving. We could be in for an interesting day. Although we have another early start, our hotel is only a two minute walk from the Reef Fleet Terminal where we catch our boat. The Big Cat Green Island boats take you about an hour offshore to a small rainforest covered island in the middle of the Great Barrier Reef. It seems that the only consequence of the devastating events in Chile has been a 'King Tide' here. There are one or two minor floods in Cairns itself and almost no beach left to sit on once we reach Green Island as it's high tide, but things return pretty much to normal by 11:00am as the tide begins to go out. The boat provides a pretty good buffet lunch, drinks and snacks all day, a semi-submersible trip which gives a fabulous view of the reef's marine life, a glass-bottom boat and all the...