Leeds Light Night - A Brief Soiree

I had a quick wander around Light Night in Leeds - it was good but we were with tired small children and the parade didn't start until 7.30 and our little people were very weary so we didn't see it all - what we saw was very impressive, including the high wire chappie in the Trinity shopping centre - our nine year olds were totally entranced - I know they were just waiting for him to fall off!!!!

The over sized paper lantern puppets were great - the kids loved them, they were celebrating womens suffrage - 100 years of having the vote...

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Alesund

Our final destination stop was Alesund. This is a very pretty town in southern Norway built on a peninsula. All the houses are painted pretty colours and a lot of the architecture is all very Art Nouveau based. This is because the town itself was completely burnt to the ground In 1904 by a fire for which they never found the original cause. The whole town had to be rebuilt and this became a huge National Effort and a lot of prominent and up and coming architects flocked to the town to stick there 20 pence in. Consequently the town is very heavily Art Nouveau which was very fashionable at the time. There is this wonderful Museum just off the harbour which is a very beautiful Art Nouveau house. It has amazing panelling, doors, wallpaper, and it's all furnished with beautiful art Nouveau Furniture. It also house a collection of of enameled Art Nouveau Trinkets,boxes, spoons, jewellery, very very beautiful. There is an interesting collection of old books and paintings a...

Almost last chapter... In which our Go Stargazing team watch Astonishing Aurora Borealis seen from the deck of the Astonishing Borealis!!!

The weather brightened considerably and the snowy peaks lining our sail down the fjiords looked glorious and sparkly in the sunshine against a (mainly) blue sky back drop. More awesome scenary.... the Go Stargazing team wrapt up their lectures ... only searching for the illusive Northern Lights remained. The tension from the night before dissolved in the sunshine the forecast for Aurora borealis was looking fairly positive - it was the captains farewell cocktsil party so everyone had their gladrags on.. We ate dinner and sky remained clear so we headed back to our room and donned as many layers as we could move in and proceeded to deck 10 in anticipation of stars and northern lights..... it did not dissappiont - just we got there as the bridge announced that the lights could be seen on the starboard side of the ship. It was stunning. Slowly the intensity built. The auroral green became brighter and bigger areas appe...

Istanbul

We had a really excellent day exploring Istanbul. It's over 25 years since I went to Istanbul on a long weekend trip with somebody that I thought was my friend at the time. But with with hindsight.... Well that's another unimportant story for another time... All that time ago I did have a brilliant time and loved the city. I loved the mix of east meets west - It left me intending to return sooner than later so I was really looking forward to revisiting. I was a bit unsure about how Dr Fred would take to the place because it is enormous, it's bustling, it's noisy, it's smelly. There are lots of exciting backstreets and of course there are a lot of tourists - And I was determined to visit the Grand Bazaar... Istanbul didn't disappoint - but I have to say it was a very different city to how it had been all those years ago. It seemed even bigger, and was definitely more full of visitors. I had started with a plan that packed the ...

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