We were all very excited as we drove into Las Vegas, as my sister Anne and brother-in-law Alan were there but didn’t know we were coming and so we had great fun surprising them! 

The drive from Las Vegas to LA turned into a 7 hour, bumper to bumper nightmare – thanks to traffic heading home from Thanksgiving.  Hitting the LA freeways at 75 miles an hour in the dark was certainly not something I had planned.

The next 2 weeks consisted of celebrity spotting (ie Katy Perry & Russell Brand!) in Hollywood and attempting to go to as many theme parks as humanly possible!  We managed Universal Studios (which was awesome!), Disneyland, Disney’s California Adventure and then off to San Diego for some nature with Sea World, San Diego Zoo and San Diego Wildlife Park..  Phew!!  You know you’ve done LA when even the kids are saying “Do we have to go back to Disneyland today?”

 All too soon, we were at LAX boarding our flight to Honolulu for our final 6 days of the trip. 

Unfortunately, it rained steadily for the first 2 days we were in Hawaii but we still managed to visit the North Shore, although the surf was hardly huge and Pearl Harbour and wander through the countless stores of Waikiki.

So, this is it..  Tomorrow we’re back with Qantas, bound for Sydney and on to Brisbane.  We leave Christmas Eve morning and arrive Christmas night – our Christmas Day vanishes somewhere over the date line!

Merry Christmas everyone!

Today was sunrise at the Canyon.   Amanda, Ashlea & I were the only ones to get out of our toasty beds and brave the cold weather to be in position on the South Rim of the Canyon by 7.00am.
Firstly i had to take some hot water and clean off the thick ice from the car windscreen, before we could head off.
Sunrise was officially 7.14am and definately worth the effort (have a look at our photos on flickr). Back to the hotel by 8.30am and wake up the other 3.
…..Happy Birthday to me, today’s my 43rd!, the kids had made me cards.

 In the  mid afternoon, we went to the 7 storey Imax theatre in town (to see an amazing 1/2 hour journey into the Canyon), then it was back into the National Park, we parked the car in the park & then caught the free shuttle buses along the South Rim to see some spectacular views.
We ended up at a recommended viewing point for the sunset at 5.18pm, by this time the  weather was closing in and getting very cold.
We finished the birthday off, with dinner at Wendys!.

Day 12 – Grand Canyon to Monument Valley

We checked out and got on the road by about 10.30am. We drove back through the Grand Canyon National Park and stopped
at a couple of spots on the South Rim for some last looks. The drive to Monument Valley took about 3 hours. We checked into a Holiday Inn for free (using points, we accrued in Asia!). After a short rest, it was back in the car, for the half hour drive out to the reservation. Entry was $5 per adults. Then we spent the next two hours on the 17 mile off road track, taking in the spectacular scenery, you felt like at any moment John Wayne was going to come and ride past you!.

Today was a great drive, after a late check out (more mini golf!), we headed South to the Mexican border, the landscape  started to become more undulating as we followed the Texan / Mexican borders West.
Our goal was Tombstone, but by 5.00pm we called it quits and stayed at a place called Deming for the night.

Day 9 – Deming to Tombstone To Casa Grande

Today was only about a 3.5 hour drive to Tombstone. We arrived about 12.30pm and had lunch in an old salon.
At 2.00pm it was time to go and get our seats to see the daily gunfight being recreated at the O K Corral. All the characters were there, including Wyatt Earp and Doc Holliday.

The town is purely touristy, but it was fun to have a look around. We drove out of town about 4.30pm to see how far we could get before dark. We ended up in Casa Grande (about an hour south of Pheonix) for the night.

Day 10 – Casa Grande to The Grand Canyon

Todays drive was only about 4 hours due North through Arizona to The Grand Canyon National Park. We arrived about 3.00pm and went straight to the Canyon for our first look. Entry to the park is $25 and gets you a 7 day
pass. We walked around part of the South Rim for about an hour (amazing), until the kids started to say thoes infamous words (Im bored, Im hungry, Im cold), admitedly it was starting to get cold, altitude is about 2500mtrs.

So we headed out of the park (the main town is about 5kms away) and found accomodation for the next 2 nights. Accomodation was slightly more, about $125p/n. We picked a big Best Western Hotel, with the usual free breakfast,
free wifi, gym, sauna etc. This one also had a 6 lane tenpin bowling alley in the basement!.

We chose a hotel on the outskirts (1/3 of the city prices) and rested for the night. Next day turned into a total rest day, as a majority of us had come down with a touch of the flu, quite unusual as for most of this trip we have not caught much.

The following day it was sightseeing,regardless of how crappy we felt. We drove and parked in the old French Quarter, and set off.

After walking the French Quarter, we drove through the old Garden district (to see the big old Southern homes)  then drove through the Lower Ninth Ward, the worse affected area from Hurricane Katrina, have a look at our photos, its very sad that 5 years on and its got a long way to go.

Day 6 – New Orleans to Lindale

Today was a big driving day, the aim was to get to Fort Worth Texas,but after about 8 hours of driving, we stopped about an hour east of Dallas at a place called Lindale for the night. Usual accomodation for $70 with all the extras, including a great indoor pool…..Michael & I had fun for hours, while the girls watched cable!.

Day 7 – Lindale to Odessa

Todays goal was to drive through Texas and get as close to the Mexican border by sunset. After a couple of stops and enjoying the continual scenery changes, we stopped at Odessa, just off the interstate highway.
We researched accomodation options the day before, and this was definately a pick. For about $80 p/n we got a huge room (2 queen beds, fridge & microwave), free hot buffet breakfast, free wifi and as this was “family” orientated, it had a big indoor playground (3 storeys high), indoor 9 hole mini golf, a heated indoor / outdoor pool, sauna & hot tub……life is tough.

Picked up the car today, first time driving in 10 months – other side of the road and other side of the car – bit scared!!.

First challenge,  how to work the GPS!. We  made it out of Miami with only a few insults hurled at us!!.  Once out on the interstate highway, we started to get used to the right side & the left hand drive!!. We tried to go as far north as possible today. We ended up in Lake City (Northern Florida) by sunset, so stopped at one of the incredibly cheap highway hotels, this one was a Best Western for $65 p/n for a room with 2 queen beds, free wi fi,breakfast,gym, pool & sauna!…..things were looking good,  as our budget for hotels across America was $200p/n.

Day 2 – Lake City to Pensacola

Unlike most of this year when we have just got out of bed when we felt like it, we have started setting the iphone alarm clock!!!(Yuck), so we can try and be on the road by about 8.30am.

Today we were aiming for New Orleans,but after a couple of stops, by about 5.30pm it was starting to get dark, so we deceided to stop in Pensacola. We found a Comfort Inn (Similar deal  – $65 p/n).

Tonight we ventured out into town,to go to a buffet restaurant at about $5.00 p/head, we all had a good feed – but probably overdid it – Welcome to America!!

Day 3 – Pensacola to New Orleans

As it turned out, our unplanned stop in Pensacola turned out to be quite fortuitous, as Pensacola has the National Navy Museum there.
We went and checked it out (also free!), and even luckier for us, today was Veterans day, so they were having a huge aeronautics show on. It was like watching Top Gun, definately a “big” kids day as well.   (check out our video – on our flickr link).

After the show it was supposed to be a quick 45 minute drive to New Orleans, or so i thought.  Anyone who knows me well, knows that Maths is one of my strenghts, well not today. Three & a half hours later and we roll into New Orleans. (i was popular….Not)

C’est la vie
Our next stop after Spain was living the French life in a beautiful medieval village in France – Montaigu de Quercy.  Lucky for us, Paul’s father and step-mother own a cottage in this fantastic place where you could easily forget the rest of the world even exists.  We spent almost 2 idyllic weeks “speaking” French with the neighbours, eating fresh baguettes, cheese and pate.  We didn’t do any sightseeing or go anywhere; we just lived (including the kids doing homework and I actually shopped and cooked!).

 Paris
As four of us had already been to Paris on a couple of occasions, we were pretty relaxed about what we saw.  Saying that Paul walked our legs off!  We found a brilliant hotel – cheap but in a great location (see our accommodation page for that recommendation) so we were able to walk all over Paris and occasionally caught the Metro.

We did all the usual stuff including the Eiffel Tower, Notre Dame, Arc de Triomphe.  Possibly my two favourite places in Paris are the Tuileries Gardens next to the Louvre and the Luxembourg Gardens – in fine weather there is nowhere better.

I had always had Versailles on my list and had never managed to visit there on any of our earlier trips.  Unfortunately, we thought the whole place was a disorganised debacle and somehow we fell mistakenly onto a guided tour, which although was informative, I’m not sure was worth the lining up and ticket cost.

Back to the Ol Dart
Our Paris tour was over after 3 packed days and we took a train to Le Havre and a cross channel ferry to Blighty.  Yay!  

How we had longed to reach an English speaking country!  Funny that the first person we spoke to didn’t have his teeth in and came from somewhere in Northern England and I couldn’t understand a word he said!

We had a great day at the Portsmouth Historic Dockyard.  Old ships, new ships, naval history and pirates – not to mention modern navy simulators – every kids dream.  We had to drag the kids out of here!

From Portsmouth we headed to Littlehampton to stay with Paul’s brother and his partner.  They spent a week going around all the places they used to live and reminiscing about the “old” days.

London
We love London – it now has the official endorsement as our favourite city.  The architecture is wonderful, you can get around easily on the Tube or on a bus and we fell in love with Sainsbury’s supermarkets. 

We had a room in a hostel in Earl’s Court, within easy walking of the Tube and the shops and settled in for two weeks.  Luckily, we were there at the right time of the year and Buckingham Palace was open so we included that with the Royal Mews.  We went on a free walking tour with our old favourite New Europe, which covered all the usual sights and prepared us with a lot of historical information for our trip to the Tower of London.

We discovered that a bus to Oxford was free for kids, so we spent the day exploring Christ Church and saw some of the other places filmed in Harry Potter. 

 Great Bardfield
We were very excited to go back to Grandma and Grandad’s, where we spent a relaxing week  – and were spoiled with some traditional English food – family roast dinner, full English breakfast and scones with jam and clotted cream! 

Party in the USA

All to soon, our time in Europe and the UK was over and we were flying into JFK Airport. 

We walked up and down and all over New York City; checking out Ground Zero, the Statue of Liberty and Times Square, walked the Brooklyn Bridge and went to church in Brooklyn.  There are so many iconic places in NYC and we saw most, if not all of them.   We even saw a few movie sets, including one that was set up outside our apartment.  Not as exciting as it sounds though – trust me it was getting very old at 3am when the director shouted ACTION! for the 5 millionth time..

We Megabussed down to DC to check out the White House and Capitol and all the memorials and then Megabustook us to Philadelphia to catch the Amtrak to Lancaster County.  What can you say about Amish country – beautiful countryside, really interesting people and all those horses clip clopping – I loved it!

Pretty soon we were back at JFK, this time to jet on down to some warmer weather in Miami, Florida to board our Carnival cruise for the Caribbean.

Seville was in the hands of the Moors for hundreds of years before being taken back by the Catholics and so the architecture is very Islamic and quite different from the other cities in the north.

We thought about doing someothing really Spanish and going to a bullfight, however there were none scheduled in Seville while we were there, so we went to the bullfighting museum instead.  This consisted of a lot of bulls heads mounted on the walls and a whole gallery of paintings depicting bulls, horses, dogs and sometimes men in various states of their intestines being dragged out!

When we arrived in Madrid, it was the weekend and we found that the bullfights are televised, similar to the football at home.  The telecast begins about a half hour before it all starts where the commentators talk about the various matadors and how great a season they’ve been having and what they expect to happen in the ensuing fight. 

The vision flicks to out the back to show the Matador limbering up.  Apparently they need assistance to get into their fancy outfits – presumably men can’t pull up their own tights!

There’s no mention of the bull until he is released into the ring.  Obviously he is stirred up a bit out the back because he thunders into the ring with his eyes wild, already a bit crazed. 

Over the next 20 minutes, the matador and his mates spend their time weakening him by spearing him in the neck and shoulder and exhausting him by taunting him with the movement of the cape. 

It doesn’t take long before he is covered in blood, his eyes are rolling around in his head and his tongue is hanging out.  The crowd, who have paid rock concert type prices for their seats, scream and yell like they’re at the MCG and encourage the matador into the final act.  The idea is that he takes a small sword and plunges it through a gap in the vertebrae, into the bull’s heart by getting the bull to lower his head to charge.

Unfortunately, as we were to discover, this doesn’t always go to plan.  One bull we saw, stood looking at the matador, sword sticking out of his neck, not dead.  Oops!  Took a little bit of jiggling the sword and fiddling around before the bull finally got his lines right and ceremoniously fell to the ground.

Needless to say, after watching that, we were not inclined to go watch in person!  We just stuck with the normal sightseeing..

Amanda had visions of me out running at night in Asia somewhere, getting lost or something terrible happening, so sanity or fear prevailed and they were left in a packing box at home.

Well for the first seven months I would see people out running and quietly I would wish that was me.  (If you think that sounds weird, dont worry, you’re probably in the majority!).

By the time we got to Munich, Germany (after 7 months), I couldn’t wait any longer.  60 Euros later and I was now the proud owner of a brand new pair of Asics!

I think those Asics came just at the right time for me.  By month seven when we hit Italy, we were starting to lose our way a bit.

It was ironic, but as “independent travellers” travelling through S.E. Asia, China, India and the Middle East, we actually found it easier than in the “Civilized West” of Europe.

I think from being so long on the road in developing countries, we had become very accustomed to things that way, so arriving in civilized Europe was actually quite tough for us, from the perspective of higher prices, lack of available internet!, people (generally) appearing less friendly (or more busy!) and I suppose from a travel perspective, Europe was quite like being at home.

This all had alot to do with our decision to add Morocco to our itinery. I felt to get back on track, we needed a clear path and a bit of “spicing” it up.

Instantly when we got to Morocco, we felt alive again – the people appeared friendlier, the pace was slower, things were cheaper and perhaps our senses were again being challenged.

After Morocco, we moved easily through Spain (we had our mojo back!), had an absolutely amazing 2 weeks in Montaigu de Quercy (S.W. France) and kept powering on to Paris, then England.

…..So back to those joggers!!!   I have had the pleasure of running in Strasbourg, Lyon, Marseille, Seville, Madrid, Barcelona, Littlehampton (England) and finally my favourite run to date, a great run in London last week.   Through Hyde Park, passed Buckingham Palace up to Westminster and Big Ben, across the Thames to the London Eye, back across the bridge, up Whitehall past Downing Street to Trafalgar Square, then up the Mall and finally back through Hyde Park!

…….Roll on next week, it’s New York and Central Park!

Human nature being what it is, once we get into the swing of things and we get into a bit of a routine, things start losing their gloss.  Like the shiny new car  – after a month of admiring it, it becomes a means of transportation.  The beautiful home you designed, decorated and slaved to afford becomes the place where you watch tv, put your feet up and have a roof over your head.

All nice things; all worthwhile and enjoyable but after a while not as exciting.  Travel is no different.  Unfortunately, one of the downsides of long term travel is that it becomes your everyday.  Yes, we’re travelling to exotic locations and seeing amazing things but we’re also schooling four children, shopping, doing laundry and finding a place to sleep – it’s everyday life for us now.  The gloss of those amazing sights wears off.  Yes, I know!  It’s a travesty!  Believe it or not, some days we’ve had to force ourselves to leave our room and go out and look around a new city.  It’s like anything, you have to remind yourself how blessed you are to have such amazing opportunities and make the most of everyday.

After our sidetrack to Morocco, we were planning on taking the ferry across to Spain and working our way north.  Here’s an insight into the exciting day we had moving continents.

We always try to have a decent breakfast so that we’ll be able to skip lunch.  This is for two reasons:  1.  Don’t know if we’ll be able to source something for lunch and 2.  it’s way cheaper to survive for 6 people on 2 big meals a day and a snack in between.  We decided to lay into the buffet breakfast at the hotel in Tanger before heading off. 

On a moving day, we can be packed and out of a room in about an hour if we take our time.  I think the fastest we’ve ever done is about 10 minutes but generally it’s about a half hour to an hour. 

We left our lovely Ibis Hotel on the outskirts of  the city and headed for the bus stop on the opposite side of the main road, around 9am to catch transport to the port to get our ferry.  We didn’t have any intention of catching a bus but wanted to get one of the taxis, whose drivers were sitting smoking on the side of the road but they all want to charge you outrageous prices so we were playing it cool – “No thanks – we’ll catch the bus” etc etc.

Eventually, Paul got the price he was happy with and we all piled into the massive old Mercedes Benz that makes up just one of the fleet of cream coloured taxis. 

On arrival at the port, we knew we had to take a shuttle bus to the “new” port.  A man opened the taxi door for us and ushered us into a waiting room with other shuttle bus customers.  Within about 10 minutes, he was back again telling us our bus was here and as we went to put our large backpacks into the luggage hold a man in the bus company uniform took the bags from us and put them in himself.  Naturally, the bag man wanted baksheesh,  and then the “bus is here announcer man” also wanted his tipsy.  They weren’t happy with what they go (are they ever?) and while Paul stood outside making sure nobody stole the bags, I got in the bus with the kids.  15 minutes later we were still sitting, waiting – the bus was not turned on so there was no air conditioning – we were melting, but eventually got underway for the 45 minute drive to the new port.

The new port passenger terminal was quite big and very well organised (particularly when compared to what we were used to in Greece, where there are no passenger terminals and nobody seems to know what anybody else is doing).  We did the usual routine:  xray check all our bags to get into the building; show our passports; show our tickets;  passport control checks;  try and spend the rest of our Moroccan Dirhams on snacks as per our skipped lunch theory (see above);  show our passports again;  xray checks to get out of the building; show our tickets and passports again and then finally get on another shuttle bus to take us to the dock.

We’re standing on the dock watching the ferry come in and prepare for the trucks and cars to board.  Finally, foot passengers (about 10 of us) are motioned over to the border police for yet another passport check; up the gangway for a ticket check; another passport check and then finally we are on board.

On Greek and Italian ferries, you take your bags with you and plonk them down in the lounge so that’s what we did.  Apparently, not the done thing in Spain.  We were rudely told that no bags were allowed, this was a first class lounge!  “Fine.” I said,  “Where do we put them?”   The attendent looked at us like we were the stupidest people on earth and said “I don’t know.  One moment I find out”. 

I was starting to think she was the stupidest person on earth, after 20 minutes of standing around waiting for her to turn up again and tell us where to put our nasty bags.  Eventually, she returned and waving her hand in a very absent and generalised way, said “Down there”.

We had no idea where “down there” was but stumbled off in the general direction to find the same man who had checked our tickets, at the same place and never said anything about our bags.  Finally, they were stored away satisfactorily and we returned to the lounge and spent the rest of the two hour journey catching up on blogging and playing our DS’s.

We soon caught sight of the Rock of Gibralter and were coming into port. Welcome to Spain!  We weren’t overnighting in the port town of Algeciras, so after going through the whole passport, xray thing again in reverse, we were spat out into the bright sun hoping to catch the train to Seville.  We had been led to believe that the train station was not far from the terminal (wrong!) and that it was the cheapest way to get to Seville (wrong again!).

After asking for directions a couple of times, let’s just say we knew we were back in Europe (people don’t give a damn and it’s very different from developing countries where everyone falls over themselves to help you first).  We did find the bus station eventually, as well as a sign over the ticket window CASH ONLY.  We needed a stack of Euros and quick.

Paul went outside to see if the taxi drivers lounging around outside were up for some directions.  “Oh yes, it is very close.  Just go up here, around there, turn left, right, yada, yada, yada..”  He paid one of them to drive him there.. and in a few minutes was back again, Euros in hand ready to buy the tickets. 

As is typical in Europe, the ticket seller was sitting completely behind glass and you talk to him through a microphone and speaker system.  He was though, having a very animated conversation with a co-worker and doing a brilliant job of ignoring of us all standing there looking at him expectantly.  We looked, he talked and so it went on until Paul couldn’t stand it any longer and said in a normal voice ”Excuse me?”.  He continued to chatter away, so Paul said a little bit louder “Excuse me”.  Still no response, so this time he shouted into the microphone “EXCUSE ME!!”  Ticket seller turned slowly and glared at us, gave us the required tickets and then calmly returned to his conversation.

We found our bus and five hours later drove into the Seville bus station. Once again we were spat out into the sun, this time the setting sun as it was around 7.30pm.  Now to find our rooms for the night.

We followed the instructions in the email we had received from our hostel to walk around 2km from the station – past some amazing city gardens and fountains, the massive cathedral and the Moorish architecture we would learn makes Seville special.

The hostel was a converted house of about 6 floors with maybe 2 or 3 rooms per floor.  Our room had 3 bunk beds crammed into but we did have our own bathroom which is an absolute bonus.  By the time we had checked in and got everyone through the bathroom it was around 9pm and we had to find some food.

Luckily, there were a number of restaurants around the place, so we ducked into a tapas bar.  We had no Spanish and no idea how the whole thing worked but managed to order some drinks and some prawn tapas which were delicious.  We weren’t quite full though so found a pizza restaurant and each got a slice of pizza before heading back to the hostel, exhausted.

By the time we got everyone through the shower and into bed it was around 11.30.

A typical travelling day over for 6outofoz…

The first interesting thing that happened was at the railway station.  We had booked our tickets to the airport, where they actually sold us bus tickets because there was going to be a train strike.  When we arrived at the station at 6.15am, the front doors were flanked by 2 rows of camouflage clad soldiers; presumably there to control the strikers.  Catching the bus wasn’t easy.  There are no signs and conflicting directions from anyone we asked, but we made it eventually and arrived at the airport unscathed. 

Ryanair leaves from the “lowcost” terminal.  We’ve never been on a low cost airline before and we’d jumped through hoops to make sure that our bags were each under the 20kg allowance we had prepaid.  Low cost means a concrete floor, limited computers and plastic chairs in the waiting area.  The plane itself was new but the most amazing thing happened!  There are no allocated seats!  You can imagine the chaos.  People travelling alone immediately jumped in seats of 3 and those travelling in groups split all over the place.  There were aguments over who had which seat first and so on and so forth like a school bus.  Really quite a rediculous system.

We made it to Morocco alive and well, although all of us were questioning if the decision to save money on a plane flight was actually a smart one and I don’t think we’ll by flying “cheap” for a while.

Morocco was a bit like going back in time.  Back to bottled drinking water and bartering for a taxi; back to everyone wanting a piece of you.  On the positive side, it also means going back to friendly people who aren’t in a hurry, who aren’t over touristed and who genuinely want to talk to you and help.  It also means we can stay in decent hotels without haggling over how many people are in the room and we can all get in the one taxi!

Fes reminds us of a cross between Egypt and Jordan, although it has nowhere near the tourists of Egypt, nor the wealth and infrastructure of Jordan.  It does have a sort of “Arabian Nights” feel to it and due to multiple reports we had read about security issues such as kidnapping and violent muggings, we were a little uncomfortable when we took a taxi to the Medina (the ancient city). 

Typically, our taxi driver had driven us to the entrance where he had a mate who had a restaurant.  Turns out this is an entrance at the back, and it didn’t seem to us there were too many tourists using it.  It was mainly men and the occasional donkey; virtually no women, which also makes me feel less comfortable. 

This old city, like all the others we had been in, like Jaisalmer in India and Jerusalem and even Venice; was a labrynth of alleyways and doorways that lead to more doorways that lead to more alleyways and so it goes on.  We discovered that a lot of men pick up stray tourists and just start talking about the Medina.  Next thing you know – you’re on a guided tour you didn’t ask for and you’re in a dark alleyway you had no intention of going down.

  Suddenly you start to wonder about this friendly stranger.  Is he really a friend?  What lies around the corner of the alley he insists we go down?  Strangely, we don’t trust this man but we’re forced to because without him we don’t stand a chance of finding our way out.

It’s getting dark and it’s Ramadan, so there are men starting to drift around us getting ready to break the fast.  Still no women around.  To his credit, our guide, typically named Mohammed, did show us a lot in the small time we allowed him before we reached panic status and asked him sweetly if he would take us to the outside.  “No problem.” he said with a big grin.  “Just follow this path.  Go straight ahead.  No right, no left.  Stay on this path.” 

We were at this stage on what appeared to be a major “road” and we had seen a tourist couple in front of us, so we decided to take his word for it, paid him some Dirhams and set off at a trot for the outside world.  Men who were eating their breakfast  – typically dates, dried fruit and boiled eggs – looked at us curiously (or was it mysteriously?) as we bolted past. The gate suddenly loomed and we were out!  It was like a breath of fresh air. 

We scolded ourselves for being complacent and putting ourselves at risk and also for being so untrusting.  Not surprisingly, though, a few days later when we went to the Medina in the port city of Tanger and immediately a guy started walking and talking with us, we immediately told him we were not interested.  We weren’t deviating off the main road and if that meant we weren’t going to see the best sights that he kept telling us were off down the side streets, so be it.  He walked beside us for at least 20 minutes, not getting the idea that we weren’t going to go with him.  Eventually he left (after Paul told him to GO AWAY!) but he wasn’t happy.

As we discovered in Greece, this is a really smally world!  We were having dinner near the Tanger Port when we heard an Aussie accent and turned to see a young Sydney couple we had met in Italy when catching a bus to Naples. They had just got off the ferry from Spain.  We’re amazed at how these things work and wonder what the purpose of this chance meeting may be in the future?