Cienfuegos

Cienfuegos has a very different feel to the places we have so far seen. It's architectural heritage is more French than Spanish with wide boulevards and a French colonial feel to the buildings.  The main square is large and open with its very own mini Arc de Triomphe. The most spectacular building is the Casa de Cultura Benjamin Durate which was once a private Palacio. It is being renovated and will be a museum once finished. It has large airy rooms and beautiful iridescent tiles in one corridor.

The area we stayed in had lots of homes in art deco style and a number of large buildings one of which is the yaught club
We dropped in for a daikiri.  The area is on a promentory which sticks out into the bay. At the end is El Palacio del Valle. It was built in 1894 by an Italian architect who had a wild imagination. The dining room would not look out of place in the Alhambera. The stairs is heavily art nouveau and other rooms have an Italian or French feel. One guide book describes it as kitch but we liked it's insane mixture.   The roof terrace had lovely sea views and we watched pelicans diving for their dinner as we sampled their cocktails. A nice way to end our visit to a lovely city.

Heading south

It was a long drive down to Playa Larga but well worth it. The town, or rather village seems to be having a major refurbishment. There were piles of sand and gravel everywhere.  Our casa was lovely though. Casa Frank had the first decent shower we have yet had in Cuba. The beach was stunning.  My first experience of a Caribbean beach. White sand, shady trees and water the most beautiful colour of aquamarine.  It is also shallow here and warm! That was the biggest surprise to walk into a sea and feeling as if it was a warm bath.

After a huge dinner we went for a stroll and came across a bar with a band. After a few drinks we were brave enough to have a dance. Well I suppose we should really. No one laughed so I'll take that as a good sign.

The next day after another very large breakfast we headed off to Cienfuegos.  On the way we stopped of at a bay which operated as a mini resort. It is in the middle of nowhere and the road to it was , shall I say , challenging.  Caleta Buena lived up to its name.  It is a sheltered bay with a coral reef. As the reef was actually the shore I'm sure it isn't the most colourful but the fish.... After I got a snorkel that didn't leak I got my nerve together and spent ages looking at a fantastic variety of fish of every shape size and colour you can imagine. E said it was the best snorkeling she had ever done. I can only imagine what the offshore reef was like. It was amazing and the sunburn is totally worth it.

Vianales

A few hours north of Havana is another of Cuba 's UNESCO sites. The drive there was interesting. There is a 6 lane highway in the middle of Cuba.  But the road surface is unpredictable with many large potholes. Add to that the people standing under bridges waiting for busses or looking for a lift as well as the odd farmer standing on the central reservation or hard shoulder selling cheese,  onions or cooked chicken ;and a horse or two running behind a man on a motorbike, driving here is never dull.

Vianales is a small town in a limestone area with stunning views and odd rock formations.  We decided to go for a horse ride tour around the area. Bright and early we set off. After riding through some thick sticky mud our first stop was a tobacco plantation.  Because this is a national park the farmers are not allowed to use mechanisation.  They plough with oxen. The tobacco plants grow quickly. They are planted in oct/November.  Harvested in march. The higher up the plant the better quality the tobacco.  The farmer showed us how to roll a cigar. It was simply lay the leaves on top of each other and roll. It was amazing how it stayed together. 

The next stop was a cave. The erosion of the limestone leaves these outcrops of rock and we got our feet wet scrambling through the cave.

Our last stop was a coffee farm. The harvest is happening now. High school students have to spend a month picking coffee beans. They get a grade which goes towards their final school mark depending on how hard they work.

We had a bit of excitement on the way back as hubby's horse stumbled and he fell off. Luckily into the mud so he wasn't hurt. He was covered in red mud. The senora at the Casa took away his muddy stuff and good knows how got his trousers clean. Hopefully he won't come down with something nasty.

After a relaxed lunch at a local hotel we went to the local botanical garden. It is a garden planted in the 1920s by a Chinese man and his local wife. It has plants from all over the world and is gorgeous. They can grow anything here. The highlight was a humming bird nest with two babies. 
Heading south again tomorrow.  

Havana.

We have settled into our casa paticura. It is in a local neighbourhood. A working area I would say. The people seem to live in apartments some very delapidated. Nearby is the Hotel National which in contrast is 5 star at least. We wandered in last night and had a mojito overlooking the sea. Later we sat in a bar and listened to an excellent band playing the local music known as Son.

Today we were real tourists and headed into Old Havana.  Old it certainly is. There are wonderful colonial buildings. A lot are being renovated.  You can see they are gearing up for an influx of tourists.  The hotels are being spruced up. Street life here is fascinating. Everything from a carribean lady offering  to tell  your fortune to mechanics repairing the classic cars. We did follow the Hemingway trail and visited the hotel he was fond of, right in the centre.  Then we negotiated a cut price taxi ride home in a 1950s convertible. .well you have to really.

Things to know about Cuba

1. There are 2 currencies,  the Cuban pesos and the Cuc pronounced cook. 1 cuc=25 ish pesos.  Tourists are quoted prices in cuc but to add to the confusion they are often  called paeso or sometimes dollar. Restaurant bills can be in either.  Small private cafés often use  Mn (cuban pesos )  and when you pay in cuc will give change in pesos so you need to check your change.

2. Prices are negotiable.  It can be done in a quiet polite way where the first price does not have to be the final one. Decide what you want to pay and if that seller won't give it, another will.

3. Yellow taxis are the expensive ones. Taxis are generally expensive but if you get a local one they are more reasonable.  Local taxis tend to be the very old cars sometimes with a cardboard sign saying Taxi on the dash.  Again prices are negotiable.

4. You will get hustled. They are very good at it.

5. Prices make no sense.  A wonderful meal can be very cheap , a dreadful one very expensive. 

6 Mojitos cost around $3

7. A basic knowledge of Spanish is very useful.

8 Havana is more expensive than you expect. 

9 Unless you are staying in one of the big hotels, wifi is difficult to find. There are public hot spots. You buy a card from a post office for 1 hours connection. Then look out for groups of people hanging out on a street or in a square all looking at their phones, the odds are that's a hot spot.  The upload and download speeds are not very good. You will easily use your hour. This is difficult for an fb addict like me.

Havana nights

E is drawn to live music like a moth to a flame. She loves music. We began to think bands only play two songs. Everytime we heard a band playing in a cafe we would go in , order a drink, hear the end of one song and all of the second. The band would then stop playing and the hat would go round. This has happened a number of times so it is getting expensive to listen to music! So we decided to do it properly.  T had read about La Casa de la Musica a place to hear the best cuban musicians.  There 2 venues,  one in town the other in the suburbs. Our oracle Oscar the senor who made our amazing breakfast,  told us that the city centre one was closed for a referb. So off we went. Only when we got there did we realise the band didn't start until 1am. We had a mojito then sat with the other customers in a theatre like venue watching music videos drinking rum. The thing to do was buy a bottle for the table. They then gave you a tub of ice. We also got lemonade as there is only so much neat rum you can drink. The lack of dance floor didn't stop some impressive dancing. A chap we named Snake hips was a particularly flexible dancer.  E fell asleep but was up and dancing once the band got going. They were called Havana    
          And are one of the best in Cuba it seems. To be honest I wasn't mad keen
They had too much of a jazz feel for my liking.  We got home at about 3 am
In complete contrast Hubby and I went to the Cafe Parisienne at the hotel Nacional was all a tourist could want. A very colourful flamboyant show with scantily clad women and excellent dancers. We really enjoyed it. You could imagine you were back in the Havana of Hemingway and Greene. 

Williamsburg, Jamestown and fried green tomatoes.

"After leaving the Outer Banks we headed to Williamsburgh. We went into the town to see what it was all about. At first it felt a bit like being on a Disney set. The houses are perfect, the streets wide and tree lined. It is described as a restoration and re construction of 17th centuary Williamsburgh and acts as a living history museum. While it was all very nice, and the costumed ladies were lovely, ( I forgot to take any photos ) I much preferred the Historic Jamestowne site. This is the actual site of the Jamestown fort. We had a walk with an archaeologist who explained some of the features they have found so far. And then later a talk with a National Park Ranger who had a different slant on the site. To be fair if you saw the story of the settlement in a tv show, you wouldn't believe it. There is mutiny, greed, starvation, bizarre coincidences and canabalism oh and Pocahontas as well. You can read about it here https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jamestown,_Virginia

It was also strange to go into the shop and to see pipes made by a good friend for sale there! 

Finally, those fried green tomatoes. We stopped off in a cafe in a settlement called Charles City. I have looked it up since we visited, and the city has a population of 133. You can't fault the food at the cafe though http://culscourthousegrille.com/ . When I saw fried green tomatoes on the menu, I couldn't resist, and they were lovely. 

We have had a wonderful trip and 2 days was not long enough in Virginia, we will hopefully be back again soon. Bye y'all. 

Goodbye to the Outer Banks

Rather than sit in traffic as the weekend changeover means everyone is trying to leave and get onto the island by the only 2 routes available, we went to see where the Wright brothers made the first powered flight. Something they do very well here is the national park service. Any park we have been to you can go to talk given by a ranger and they are always entertaining. Ranger Chelsea was even more entertaining than most. To say she was passionate about the Wright bros would be an understatement. The brothers were from Dayton Ohio, and went to the town of Kittyhawk because they had been told there was wind, sand on which to land and privacy as the place was not very populated in the 1900s. They eventually managed 4 powered flights . 

The first flight took 10 seconds and went from where I was standing to the first stone, the second attempt to the second and the third...well you guessed it. The fourth attempt by Wilbur went much further, to the tree line. When the brothers were there, there were no trees, it was all sand. What blew my mind was the fact that just 66 years after that first flight, a man walked on the moon, and Neil Armstrong had a small piece of the Kittyhawk in his pocket as he walked on the moon. 

The Kittyhawk ( replica ) 

On the way up to Williamsburg we went a half mile off the beaten track and had lunch in a waterfront cafe which was just what you imagine a southern eatery to be, a friendly waitress , good food and both types of music, country and western. It was wonderful. 

Wild horses

It wasn't until we got to the Outer Banks that I found out that one of their unique points is the wild horses that live on the northern end of the islands. They are direct descendants of the horses brought over by the Spanish and are genetically unique. Of course we had to go on a tour to see them. We knew the only way to get up to where they live is in a 4X4 as where they are, is only accessible by driving down the beach, which is bizarrely officially an unpaved highway. 

We set off in our hummer which sat 13 plus the driver. It was fun speeding along the beach, there were more trucks and SUVs parked in the middle of the beach with families having fun on the beach. 

A selfi mirror! 

I had expected to see horses wandering through the dunes, what I didn't expect was a lot of houses out in the "wilds". This in a nutshell is what is wrong with the Outer Banks in my opinion, it is over developed. While it is a long strip of land, in places it is very narrow. You can literally be driving along the highway and out one side of the car see the ocean and out the other see the Sound. 

Back to the horses, we saw a group of four almost straight away, munching grass in someone's front garden. It is against the law to feed or get closer than 50 feet to them, so they are fearless of humans. There are only 110 or so left when there were hundreds only a centuary ago. But the numbers are slowly rising. 

We drove around for a while and spotted another stallion in another front garden. On the way back we found another walking along the beach. They are small, but they are horses not ponies. It was lovely to see them, but sad that their small bit of habitat is being developed, and the number of sites for sale was depressing. You can read more about them here http://www.ncwildhorses.com/

The History Bit

This is the Elizabeth II. She is a replica of the ship the Elizabeth, that brought the colonists to Roanoake Island in 1587. It is hard to imagine how anyone would trust their lives to a 69 ft boat to sail the Atlantic into the unknown to colonise a place they knew nothing much about. But that is what 115 people did. Sir Walter Raleigh had a charter from Queen Bess which gave him control of the East Coast of the New World on the proviso he settled it as well. So he set up a relocation company and convinced a group of farmers and tradesmen to head off for a better life in the Americas. They weren't just dumped there, a survey party had been there a few years before, and a second expedition left carpenters and blacksmiths there to construct a village for the settlers. They chose Roanoake island. At first there was good relations with the local tribes, predictably this didn't last. 

Anyway, the colonists were left at the settlement and pretty much told to get on with it, but their leader returned to England to ask for more support and supplies. He was supposed to be gone for 9 months, but weather, politics and the Spanish Armada got in the way so it was 3 years before he returned. All there was left of the settlement was a post with the word Croatoan. The colonists seem to have packed up and gone. Even the houses had been dismantled and taken with them. It was suspected they had moved south to another island called Croatoan island. But a storm was coming and the crew refused to go looking for the colonists. It seemed that the fates were against them being found as for one reason or another no serious search was made for the "Lost Colony". Current thinking is that as there was the worst drought in 800 years during the time the colonists arrived, they may have been forced to leave due to that. It is possible they then integrated into the local indigenous population, as it was noted some years later that some of the native people had grey eyes, which was very unusual. 

All this we learnt by visiting the Roanoake Island festival park. http://www.roanokeisland.com/  

Sight seeing around Nags Head

We haven't been out and about all that much, two reasons why; this is primarily a water based holiday and the weather. The weather has been a bit tempremental. The mornings have been generally fine, hot, humid and overcast. In the afternoon the mother and father of all thunderstorms, along with his brothers and sisters have been passing through. That has curtailed our outings a bit. But we have managed to see a few things.

Thundercloud over the bay.

The first was the Elizabethan Garden. It is a lovely wooded garden with some knot beds on the bank of the Sound. It had a lovely walk laid out and it was pleasant and cool. There is a very large statue of Queen Elizabeth I but it reminded me of the Red Queen in Alice in Wonderland. There were lots of plants I had no idea what they were as well as roses and a lot of hosta. 

Elizabethan garden. 

We also took the boys to see the lighthouse on Bodie ( pronounced body ) Island. The Labrador current with its cold water runs south past the banks to meet the Gulf Stream which causes the build up of sandbanks which change all the time. There are hundreds of shipwrecks along this coast. The lighthouse is a beacon to tell ships to go out to sea to avoid the sandbanks. It is a lovely building painted with black and white stripes. They only allow 8 people to climb it every half hour. This is because it has a "floating" staircase, it isn't attached to the wall, but to each landing. We didn't climb it. There were no tickets available and the heat index ( like the wind chill factor, only in reverse ) made the temperature inside 100 f. I can't say I was too disappointed. The boys were though, as there was something called a Pokemon gym at the top!

A floating staircase. 

The house...wow

Anyone who knows me will tell you that I love looking around other people's houses. This one is quite special. It is a four bed house with views over the bay. Nice, I hear you say, but what that doesn't tell you is the size of the place,  5,600sq ft. You come in on the basement level, there is a garage with a ping pong table, behind that is a games room with a huge tv, pool table and various easy chairs. You can then take a lift ( yes it has its own lift ) to the first floor which has the front door and the bedrooms. There is also a wrap around porch with views over the swimming pool. The bedrooms are each en suite, there are also two other rooms, which for zoning reasons can't be described as bedrooms, but, hey, the seats are OK to sleep on. 

Upstairs is the living area. It is an open plan kitchen with dining area and living room. Again you can walk out onto the deck to relax and look at the views. It is an amazing place. There are 10 of us here but it is perfectly possible to lose all the others about the place. Oh did I mention the dock? The boys have been fishing from there.

Of course we looked the place up online to see how much we could buy it for. I'm not sure the bank manager would lend us the $1.6 million though. 

Living room

Part of the view. 

Summer 2016

I wasn't sure whether to bother with writing up this trip. To be honest I am not expecting to do much this time. As usual, there is always something going on. The flight out was unusual. We had booked to go through Iceland as it was significantly cheaper than the regular routes. We were slightly late leaving, no biggy, then two hours later we landed in Glasgow. Now that is only 200 miles. Turns out there was a "computer failure" at Keflavik Airport so no planes could land or leave. It seems there is a long running dispute between the air traffic controllers and the government. The law was changed preventing them from striking, so it seems the computer system is now having problems. 

We did get to Iceland a couple of hours late. The airport is small but it was crowded with a lot of people going to all sorts of places from Anchorage to Seatle, all leaving at 19:30. It was amazing how quickly they cleared all the flights. In the end we were about three hours late getting to Newark. On the up side, we got to see New York all lit up and didn't have to struggle to stay awake as it was nearly midnight by the time we got to S,s 

The next day we had our toes painted, a tradition when I go to the States. I love the chairs they sit you in, you get a lovely back rub at the same time. 

The next day was spent driving down towards North Carolina. It seems easier to travel vast distances here than in the UK. We stopped to look for somewhere to eat and found a local restaurant selling "soul food". It was busy so we thought it was worth a try. It took a while to have our order taken, someone ordered chicken, they didn't have any, no fries either, so we settled on our order and waited. One thing about people living south of NY , they are very friendly. An elderly man tapped me on the shoulder and asked if M had something wrong with his head. Oh heck I thought, we are being rude, M was wearing a baseball cap. He took it off and apologised, then we realised he was a Cowboys fan and M 's was a Steelers cap. Everyone had a good laugh. Then the waiter came back to say more of what we ordered wasn't available. It got to the point we were laughing and asking what was available. 

It sounds awful, but in fact was very funny. It was a new place so they hadn't quite got the hang of things. 

the Chesapeak BAY bridge tunnel. 

A day in the Eternal City

On Monday we had said goodbye to H & P  and had to amuse ourselves for the day. Mondays can be tricky as most of the museums are closed. I had a scout around and we opted to visit the Baths of Caracalla. I had no real idea what to expect, but boy are they amazing. These are public baths built by Septimus Severus and Emperor Caracalla  212  A D. It took 9000 men 5 years to build and had 6000 people use them every day. It had an olympic sized pool as well as another outside. There were two gymnasiums, saunas, massage suites and two libraries. It must have been a stunning place full of light and colour.  All there is now are a few mosaics which would be national treasures in the UK, and parts of the superstructure which give a vague idea of the scale of the place.  https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baths_of_Caracalla

After lunch we headed out to the Appian Way to visit some Catacombes. For an ancient road, you take your life in your hands dodging cars and busses. Beyond the Catacombes, the road was much quieter, somewhere to explore in future I think. Rome is such a wonderful city. We spent the rest of the day just wandering around and going into places that took our fancy.

The next day we were back on a train heading for Turin. We left Rome at 10 am and got to Turin at 3 pm. One thing about traveling by train is that it gives you a real perspective to the actual size of a country. Turin was a very pleasant surprise. The old town is laid out on a grid pattern with lots of large public squares. We headed straight to the Egyptian Museum. I had planned a couple of hours here then a visit to the Royal Palace. As it was we were practically thrown out of the museum at closing time and had to dash around towards the end. It is a fascinating museum which shows in an understandable way the development of funeral practices in Egypt from the pre dynastic up to The end of the pharonic. 

We could have done with longer to explore the city. It has a real elegant feel to it. It is on the list to go back to again. 

Our last day was a very long one. The train from Turin to Paris was through more stunning scenery. I did get the timings wrong in Paris, and it became a dash to get to Gare du Nord, but as it was I had read the date as the train time, so we were in plenty of time! 

So our great train advent is over. Would we do it again? Probably , with a few changes. The sleeper was not a great success . I would, however, have another go if it was the Orient Express! Certainly travelling around Europe is not a problem, and with more time, yes, we would do it again. 

Rugby in Rome

Match day arrived and after a rainy start the weather decided to behave. We started the day by meeting H & P and dragging them to one of my favourite things in Rome, the garden fresco from the villa of Livia. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Villa_of_Livia. Then it was off to see the rugby. 

We shared a tram to the Olympic Stadium with all the mad characters you expect with an England game. There were Morris men, Knights, a King Richard or two and a few "damsels" . The atmosphere was fantastic. The Italians were in good voice and we were also treated to a song or two on our way to the match. 

When we got into the stadium we were met with a very good Queen tribute band which soon had us all dancing. There was a fly past by a couple of large helicopters, some very fancy marching and gun waving by the army, the anthems and then we were off! 

Any rugby fan will know how the game went. I was sorry Italy didn't get a try, they deserved it. The fans were amazing and the brass band that suddenly sprang to life behind us kept us all amused. 

All in all it was a great day, and I would happily come here again for a rugby match. 

Heading south.

On the whole the train trip experiment has gone very well. We arrived in Rome on time and the Italian trains were excellent. The only leg of the journey I would not be in a hurry to repeat was the SNCF sleeper from Cologne to Zurich. First of all it was almost an hour late arriving in Cologne. We gave up standing on a very cold platform and went looking for warmth in the very large station complex. This was OK except that all the seats had been taken up by the local homeless population who were bedding down for the night! Then, for reasons unknown, we were woken up at 5:30, 6:30 and 7 am to be told we would not be arriving in Zuric at 8 am, but would be an hour late. On the upside the bed was very comfortable, but we were exhausted when we got to Zurich. 

So from the overpriced, least satisfactory part of the journey, to the cheapest and by far the best value leg. Zuric to Milan was lovely. The train was bang on time and the scenery was stunning. Milan to Rome was amazing. The train averaged 250 km/hr, and at one point hit 299km/hr (188 miles/hr) we traveled further than London to Edinburgh in 3 hours. Put that in your pipe and smoke it Network rail! 

Roamin' to Rome

For reasons too boring to go into, I had the bright idea that rather than fly to Rome like any normal couple, we would go by train. The objective of the trip is to watch Italy play England in the 6 Nations. It so happens it is also Valentine's Day on Sunday but to be honest I didn't realise this when I booked the trip.
So at 7:30 this morning we set off on our epic trip. Virgin trains took us to London in just over 2 hours. A short stroll to St Pancras and we boarded the train to Brussels.  Another 2 hours and we had zipped though northern France and we were in Belgium.  Honestly Londoners have no idea how lucky they are. The continent is a mere hop, skip and a jump away!
A quick change in Brussels and another two and a bit hours and we arrived in Colone, or should I say Köln, at 16:15. The plan was to break our trip here.
As you walk out of the station the first thing you see is the Cathedral. It is an impressive building but could do with a bit of a clean. I think it is a work in progress as a little bit has been done and it is a beautiful white stone. The Old Town well, isn't that old as far as I can see. Perhaps most was destroyed in the war ( must Google that later ) . The street plan looks old but not the buildings. The main street is a shoppers paradise. A lot of the shops were familiar and one old friend C&A; I almost went in for old times sake. They have a different take on street life here, a homeless lady with a pig and a busker with a grand piano! 
We wandered down to have a look at the Rhine and the had a wonderful hot chocolate at a cafe called Fassbender.  It is a very elegant circular building inside.
Somehow I managed to keep my lentan promise and said no to the cakes. Boy was that hard. After another wander we found the 4711 building where the Eau de Cologne comes from; who'd have guessed. It is a smell that reminds me of my Nanna.
We had dinner in what I suppose is the German equivalent of a local pub. Certainly the clientele were local and known to the staff. The food was filling and not expensive. I had potato rosti with salmon and hubby had beef with red cabbage and potatoe dumplings, which looked very suggestive with a red jam type stuff on top. I shall leave that one to your imagination. 
So now we are sitting in Starbucks at the station,using their wifi while we wait to board the sleeper to Zurich.  Night all.