afternoon tea experiments

In the absence of anything constructive to do today Dr Fred and I had a tea tasting experiment... We both are very fond of the British institution of a good cuppa and generally cant even get out of bed until this particular craving has been satisfied - well I can't - Its Dr Freds duty to make tea every morning and to be honest it nearly always a perfect cuppa...

tea tasting

However - we do have quite a lot (possibly too many) conversations about what makes the best tea.. ranging from good old pyramid bags to fair trade types and also leaf tea - even broaching decaffeinated brands. I'm such a lush I don't really think there is much difference between the brands we tend to favour - Dr Fred holds firm he has his favourites so we decided to put it to the test... I wont bore you with the details but it was all very cafe scientific - blind tasting of several different teas including a decaff and true enough I couldn't tell the difference and picked the decaff as my favourite, Dr Fred on the other hand immediately identified his least favourite as the decaff but failed to pick out his alleged best choice from the rest... so there by lies a tale - I'll drink anything if its labelled tea and wet and warm particularly if its made for me and Dr Fred is quite fussy - which I knew anyway - how to waste an hour!!!

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Scotland part 2

The second half of the week continued in much the same vein. We had one rainy afternoon which was actually quite nice to be holed up in the house with the rain lashing the windows. It probably wasn't quite so nice for the two visitors that came on their bikes but they're tough cookies - and its only water- but I did feel sorry for them having to cycle six miles back down the track in the wind and rain, but given Scotland, it wasn't as bad as it could be. The big quest for the 2nd half of the week was to find some deer antiers! The chap that owned the house dropped in to visit - he was a very friendly fella and was chatting about how this was the time of year when all the Stags lost their antlers (he collected them and sold them) so after that we were on the serious lookout. It's always been Fred's mission to find some dropped antlers.... The Monro baggers continued with the mission to bag the remaining three Monros... there is discussion as whet...

Vigo

We left the ship to explore Vigo. Its a much larger place then we expected... although tbh I hadn't given ut a lot of thought. Its a real mish mash of old and new and having got a map from tourist info we decided to follow the walking trail to the Monte Castro... the highest point of the town. Most of the town was pretty much as everywhere else... lots of traffic... lots of people... one or two interesting buildings and a lot of shopping. We headed to the art gallery - this has been a year of gallery visits so we we seen o reason to change now. The Museo de Marco is housed in the towns ex prison building and its very grand. In fact, I think that on this occaision the building might have been more interesting than the art.... Although the visiting exhibition by Susanne S D Themlitz was strangely compelling. It was a huge varied collection of eclectic items... found, salavaged, manipulated and arranged in lots of ways - weirdly inspiring - and mostly enjoyable to look at...

Funchal

So after three days at sea we finally hit Funchal in Madeira. An escape from the ship, and I have to say it was very pleasant indeed. First of all the weather is really splendid. Especially when you know that everybody else in the UK is suffering grim storms and vile winds.. Over here it is between 22 and 25 degrees is really quite warm. Funchal is a pretty city. It's built on a hill it with lots of lovely white houses with stunning red roofs. In order to get the best of it we walked along the sea front until we got to the cable car and we took it up the hill. It was a really good ride much longer than we imagined and it's quite weird because it goes right through the town - completely over everybody's house... So not only do you get a lovely vista of the bay but you can view the beautiful rooftops and get to look in everybody's gardens and to look at their picnic sets.. clean washing nice plants... scratty b...

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