Observations

We are having a great time on our cruise and have met some very friendly people.  The majority of the ship's passengers are from the US and while the ones we have met are lovely, the one thing they have in common (well the ones we have talked to, I can't speak for them all) is their anger at the way their country is going! 

All we need to do is say we are from New Zealand and the comments start.  Things like 'hell, we wish we lived there... the US is terrible.  Immigrants everywhere, danger, murders etc." We have not once expressed our thoughts but they seem to have the great need to let us know how bad their country is.

Some of the comments have been really offensive like "we wish Nancy Pelosi could be taken to the train station" which is from Yellowstone TV show meaning they wish she was killed. We even had a couple yesterday from Nebraska who have NEVER travelled to New York or the coastal areas and yet they informed us to never go there because of the immigrants and crime now. 

We've had others telling us about the fake election, Biden is not the real President, thousands of dead people voted etc.  Transgenders are taking over the country and on and on. Wow.  We've been asked what our religion is and when we say we don't have one/don't go to church we get looks! We have our own thoughts on all of this but we don't live in the US so really can't comment on how it has changed. In all the time we have travelled with Americans we have never, ever had this happen.

Thoughts anyone from the US? Is this a general feeling now or just amongst those who watch certain news outlets?

Other than that everything is great.  Next stop for us is the Orkney Islands and today is a sea day—thank goodness because I have been so tired on this holiday with a combination of jet lag and so much walking every day.  Thankfully our health is good and so far we've not caught a virus. 

Here's a couple of photos, there's more over on our travel page :)

~ Lynda

The entrance to Stirling Castle, Scotland

At a cute town called Luss on the shore of Loch Lomond, Scotland

We are having a great time

For those who don't follow along on our travel blog I thought I'd pop in here and say hello.

We are having the best time and nothing as gone wrong (fingers crossed).  All my planning has worked out well and we are healthy (no colds or bugs caught with all the travel, again fingers crossed).

At the moment we are in Ireland in a little place called Cobh which is beautiful.  Tomorrow we go to Dublin and then up to Belfast.  The weather so far has been really good so we are hoping that will continue.

I can't think of a single thing to complain about!

I did get pretty stressed the first day on the ship—from memory I often get that way.  It really is overwhelming getting on a great big ship and feeling completely lost.  I see other ladies looking lovely and 'together' and I feel old and frumpy.  There are so many activities on a ship and we don't tend to do many so then I think that I'm missing out.  Anyway I'm over that now and just enjoying what I can do.  

~ Lynda

At Phantom of the Opera in London

The Duke of Wellington Pub in Southampton

First cocktail on the ship (Pina Colada, too sweet, I won't have another one)

The Atrium of the ship

Stu enjoying a Cornish Pasty in Falmouth (Cornwall).

Off to dinner

The corridor of the prison cells at Spike Island, Cobh (Ireland)

The "Deck of Cards" painted houses in Cobh

Stu enjoying a Murphy's beer.

The Irish singers at the local pub, just lovely and really authentic.

London

We made it to London, I'll be posting travel stuff over on my travel blog so this blog will just be for general comments I don't want family to see.  This blog is more private and those who have permission for our travel blogs, don't see this one!

The long flight was exactly as expected.... long.  BUT we arrived in London feeling pretty good and even had an evening walk to Buckingham Palace.  It was just so much nicer being there in the evening with less people around.  In total yesterday I managed to clock up 9 km so not bad for the same day we travelled for 26 hours!

Of course there is the little matter of jet lag and I'm typing this at 5 am London time... I've been awake since 4 am but I know that will settle down in a few days.  We have such a busy few days ahead here so there's a lot of excitement keeping me awake as well.

Here's a few photos of yesterday.

~ Lynda

At the airport ready to leave for our long flight.

My view of Dubai as we left

Dinner at the local Victoria Market Hall 

Stu's happy - beer in London, what more could he want

There are so many cute pubs everywhere

Buckingham Palace in the evening, so peaceful.

Stu on "The Mall" as the sun is setting behind Buckingham Palace.

The day is nearly here!

This time tomorrow we'll be on our way flying over 17 hours to Dubai and then over 7 hours on to London.  We are very excited and (fingers crossed) we are both feeling healthy—very important when travelling such a long way.

We got the boys yesterday for a couple of hours and then went to their house for the evening for dinner and hugs :) We will miss them so much, they really are a big part of our lives.  We will see them one more time tomorrow when we get dropped off at the airport.

Tonight they are down the road at Mt Smart Stadium watching the Warriors game—all of the family are there which is just lovely... even my daughter.

She just messaged me from the game to let me know that ALL of the Wiggles are sitting right in front of them. Oh my goodness how F loved the Wiggles when he was you (and I was rather partial to the Blue Wiggle).

I've been for some good walks this week in preparation for all the walking we will be doing on our holiday. Today we did the 7 km walk up and around One Tree Hill and it was stunning.  It was a gorgeous day and the fields were full of mother lambs and their babies. It was just so cute, I never get tired of seeing the newborn lambs.

If anyone wants to follow our trip my travel blog is Our Travel Adventures.  I will try to update here a bit too but we'll be so busy travelling that I'll put my focus on the travel blog.   

~ Lynda

Some of the Mums and baby lambs at the park :)

One very clever little cat

My daughter has two cats, Gary and Lady.  Yesterday Gary literally saved their dog's life!

So here's the story: My daughter's little dog, Duke, was home alone yesterday (sometimes he goes to work with her) and he found a box of chocolate.  Normally this box had a secure lid but one of the clips had broken.  Duke decided that he'd eat the chocolate... dreadful idea... and when my daughter got home around 3 pm she found that Duke had been very, very sick all over her bed and when she opened the door Duke took off outside.

She realised very quickly that he'd eaten a lot of chocolate (poisonous to dogs) so went to find him but he was gone.  She called and called, no Duke.  She got her husband to come home and they looked to no avail and then the little cat, Gary, kept meowing and trying to walk in a certain direction.  Of course my daughter just said 'Gary, it's not about you, we are trying to find Duke'.  Gary just kept on so finally my son-in-law decided to follow the cat and was led directly to Duke who was extremely ill, barely breathing and hiding under a tree in the bush reserve behind their house!

He was taken straight to the vet who induced vomiting and then taken to another all hours vet to get an intravenous drip put in.  He stayed there overnight and is recovering well today.  

If Gary had not taken them to where Duke was hiding it is highly possible he would have died.  Gary is the hero of the day :)

~ Lynda

Packing, organising and getting excited

I have everything washed, sorted and packed.  There is so much to remember when you go on a long holiday but I think I've got it all there.  I know I'm packing too many clothes but my total bag weight is only 15 kilos (33 pounds) so not too bad.  I don't like to travel with much more weight because we will need to lug bags around a fair bit.  Some of the B&Bs and hotels don't have an elevator plus we will be getting a bus and train.  

I've booked to see "Phantom of the Opera" at His Majesty's Theatre in London.  Yes, I've seen it before here in Auckland but it was the one show I missed out on back in 1998 when I was in London.  I've also booked to go on the London Eye (giant ferris wheel thingy).  There will be other things to book but I'll do that later.

Our main aim now is to stay healthy! Four days to go... 

We had the boys at the weekend—Charlie stayed on Saturday night and when we took him back we got Cole (on his own) for the afternoon.  He was feeling very sad because his friend from school was meant to stay at his place on Saturday night but he got a bit unwell.  His little friend has some type of muscular disease and uses an electric wheelchair.  He is very short as his legs don't grow.  The poor wee boy will not have a long life due to his condition but he is such a happy, positive boy and I love that Cole is such good friends with him.

~ Lynda

Cole in the TV studio that Stu has just designed and set up (did I mention that he's very clever?)

Cole having his first Lime scooter ride... slowly and carefully and supervised by Stu.

Charlie with his new braces, I'm so happy his teeth will be all straight soon!

Back home and prepping for our next big trip!

We had a good trip away—12 nights in total so quite a long time away.  After my last post we stopped off for a night at the camp Stu's sister works at and had a nice evening with her.  We then drove to Whitianga but stayed for three nights at the NZMCA park and only visited with Stu's father for those days.

On the last day we parked up at his place because other family had arrived and we had a bit of a get together which was lovely.  My birthday was a total non event.  I simply don't 'do' birthdays for some reason.  I took my birthday date off Facebook so I didn't get loads of happy birthday's and just kept it to those who genuinely remember.  

I did get one lovely surprise though because my daughter had couriered a parcel to Stu's father's house so I had a wonderful gift to open on the day!  The best part were the lovely cards made by Charlie and Cole and as usual, the lovely words my daughter always writes in her cards.  Stu and I had lunch out (nothing fancy) but just had a casual dinner in the motorhome. 

Stu did loads of jobs for his father and we also organised a cleaner for him.  Hopefully that works out well because there are things that he simply can't clean now.  

Warning: Long rant follows

Speaking of the "father-in-law"... We didn't stay there or spend more time there to reduce any chance of friction.  Even then he managed to be a prat. He is almost child like in much that he says and does and my goodness it gets to me!  I usually don't bite and just walk away.  An example is he talks in riddles.  Instead of saying "do you know who Joe Blogs is" (example) and replying "no, who is he?"... he'll go "WHY DON'T YOU KNOW"... to which you say "no, who is he". He then goes on and on like "you should know" etc etc.  It drives me NUTS. 

Another bloody awful habit of his is constantly butting into people's stories with his own TOTALLY UNRELATED LONG story.  So rude.  I've started ignoring him and carry on listening to the original person talking.  Yes, I know he's old and allowances need to be made (but he's always done this so it's not age).

The final straw came when we were having some shared snack lunch/afternoon food while watching the rugby.  He said he had pizzas and sausage rolls so everyone bought a few other things to add to that.  I looked at the pizza package that had been in the freezer and it was six years old.  I kid you not, SIX YEARS.  I said no way are we eating that.  We then proceeded to go and buy fresh pizza.

All good so far. Then it came time to cook the sausage rolls which he'd cut up and put on a tray ready to bake.  We asked him when he'd bought them and he said four weeks ago.  Well as they cooked they smelt wrong and they looked wrong.  Stu's sister and I both looked at each other and said no way we'd be eating them.  I then looked through his bin and found the wrapping that he'd only just put in there and.... drum roll...........

They were TEN YEARS OLD.  I shit you not. We instantly binned them all and then dear father-in-law said that he was waiting for his sausage rolls so I said 'no, they are in the bin, they were too old'.  He then stood up and glared at my and basically swore they were only a month old.  I said no, the use by date on then was ten years ago and even the packaging was of the type that has not been sold for five years (I had looked it up). He then yelled at me and was really angry "THEY WERE NOT OLD, I JUST BOUGHT THEM".  Blimey, I just gave up and left it there.  I wasn't going to argue. 

Perhaps he did buy some and use them and then pulled the old ones out thinking they were the new ones?  We checked, there were no other ones in the freezer.  

Anyway, all good.  We all ended up playing various games through the evening—Yakkity, Sequence and Uno.  He was still a prat and called me a geriatric again but I let it go, he thinks he's being funny.

So there you are, our time away.  I'm now busy organising, spreadsheeting, washing, making lists etc for our big UK trip in only eleven days.  It's all getting real. I have the boys most days after school this week so that is lovely.

~ Lynda

Three different views of our stay at Whitianga, it's such a lovely NZMCA park but it's closing soon as the lease has expired and houses will be built on the site.  

Birthday photo in the motorhome

Noodling around the country :)

We have spent the last few days slowly making our way up towards Whitianga.  It's been lovely.  In the back of my mind I am starting to stress about packing for our big holiday but I know I've got plenty of time to figure that out when we get home.  

So far we've stayed at Te Kowhai, Raglan, Ngongotaha (Rotorua), Maketu and Omokoroa (north of Tauranga).  It's been all freedom camping except for Raglan so keeping it low cost.  We've also kept bought meals to a minimum and cooked in the motorhome most nights.

Today we are heading off up north nearer to our final destination—hopefully to a paid camp so I can get some washing done.  

One funny story from Maketu... I asked the lovely lady in the fish and chip shop if freedom camping was safe there because I knew there had been a bit of a gang problem in the area.  She laughed and said "if you have any trouble tell them you know the lady in the fish shop".  I thought yeah, right... I thought she was joking.

Anyway I was saying to Stu about it being safe and he commented that there were no gangs in the area (haha yeah right) so I googled it and it turns out that the fish and chip shop is owned by the Mongrel Mob leader's family!  You can only pay cash there because the banks refuse to trade with the Mob!  

Thankfully we had a very safe, peaceful night with only one other camper there.  We do try to be careful where we freedom camp though and the beauty of a motorhome v caravan is that if there is any trouble you can just start the engine and drive off.  

We stopped off at Tauranga to visit my long time friends from when I lived in Lower Hutt. It's lovely to catch up with such lovely people whose friendship over 35 years has never wavered.  

Oh, my slimmer UK holiday body never arrived... thankfully I have enough clothes that fit me so I'll be fine.  I am shocked at how much I have aged these last few years—sagging eyelids, sagging jowls, thinner skin which makes eye makeup difficult, sore eyes, fat tummy etc etc.  I won't even go into more personal problems that come with age.  Yes, I know, it's just life and I am 67 this week but it's hard to accept at times.  The person in the mirror is not the person I feel and I sometimes get quite a shock at my reflection! 

Anyway that's my current pity party moment, life is good and I just need to accept age creeping up.

~ Lynda

Photo time!!

Bridal Veil Falls, stunning!

Lunch out at "The Shack" in Raglan.  Highly recommended, it was amazing.

Stu outside The Shack

A nicer day for a walk at Raglan

We even walked to the wharf and back at sunset so about 14,000 steps for me that day.

The beach at Maketu looking over towards where we parked for the night.

Another gorgeous evening parked up to enjoy a drink and watch another sunset.

Finally lovely clear skies.

Omokoroa Beach

There is an amazing walkway/cycleway all the way back to Tauranga.

 

Our park for the night.

My view out the door this morning.