Exploring... probably the only city we will see this holiday..

Jet Lag!!! I was up at the ungodly hour of 6.00 am the first morning and that was it it!!! But it was fine, and we got up leisurely and had breakfast and then headed off to find a Australian sim card - harder then it sounds - 4 supposedly intelligent people who had no idea what to buy - the waiting time in the phone shop was 90 minutes so we were advised to go to the supermarket and just but one of the rack - but which one? anyhow we finally made a decision and got what we hope is right.

Next.. Fremantle - first, to recover from the ordeal of buying a sim card, to a lovely quirky coffee shop with a little - well actually quite big- art gallery showing local art and a lovely outside seating are for nice coffee - I finally felt I was on holiday- the temperature was about 29 degrees blue skies all around and serious cafe culture!!!

Fremantle is an artist town - the old bit is really pretty full of interesting buildings that in terms of Australia are quite old the are populated by bespoke shops and small galleries - we spent some time in a really fab gallery showing original First Nation art - some fantastic pieces - very varied and so incredibly colourful even the ones that seemed to done in what I would call earth tones - If I had had to pick on I wouldn't have known where to start but actually at the end of the day I would probably have gone for one of the more traditional earth toned ones - but to be fair I wouldn't really know what was traditional!

We moved on through the town, to the Jail - the oldest building in Fremantal known as the Round House. Set on top of promontory overlooking the sea this was built a s a jail for early prisoners - by early prisoners, and was small but probable very effective. There were some stocks and the volunteer on duty ( who is also allowed to fire the cannon) put Dr Fred in them - it looked very uncomfortable - back in the day people would have been in the stocks for a minimum of 6 hours while passerbies wold hurl abuse and rotten food at them. We were kinder to Dr Fred and he was only in there for 2 minutes... and we didnt throw anything at him!(early days). I played at being a prisoner with a sign around my neck - that was plenty for me.....

During the second world war loads of children were evacuated from the UK to Australia. Dr Freds Dad was one of them - aged 14 he was put on a boat with a lot of other young people and shipped halfway around the world!! The boats first landed at Fremantle and there is a large monument dedicated to those people that migrated either by choice or not to the southern hemisphere - we were sure of the criteria to have you full name on the tablets but we looked for Dr Freds dad to no avail - some of them were cordoned off so we couldn't cover them all but we stood and reflected next to the statue of young children with a suitcase and considered how hard it might have been to be so far away from home and in such an alien place. Dr Freds dad ended up the other side of the country in Queanbyan - which we had visited 10 years of so ago.

Time then for lunch- another outside cafe sitting in the shade - I have to say by this time I am flagging a bit with the heat and jet lag but we wandered though the busy town - I'm finding it amazing to see all these people in shorts and summer clothes - hard to imagine that back home its probably a tad chilly.

In the evening we went 300 yd down to the river with some snacks, beers and wine and sat watching the sun go down and made friends with a friendly rat that we called Nigel for no other reason than the name Nigel hasn't been registered in the UK for many years now.

We've had two really good quite full days made welcome and shown around by some good friends -I have loads of pictures that I will post but we have been so busy and still a tad jet lagged that I just haven't had time yet... today we went downtown Perth here is a taster but more next time I have internet access

Tomorrow we pick the van up and I don't know when we will have wifi again but I will keep as up to date as possible this is already shaping up to be a fabulous adventure.

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...

Planet Ruby Starrs

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