Yup, it’s all done for another year now. A semi relaxing time apart from poor little Willow having to be taken into hospital for 3 days, poor little soldier (and a very expensive experience too).
And then New Year 2022 at the Star with the Folks
We visited the area some 16 years ago when we travelled Europe in the Banana Wagon, at a time when posting a blog meant taking a photo on a digital camera, finding an Internet cafe, logging into your site and uploading the pictures.
But now we’ve done it again we might wait another 16 years
Build a Museum to them and charge people to look at them. Sometime I love my life.
Well when I say walking, it involved walking to a ferry, walking off a ferry for lunch, then walking to a bar and walking back for the ferry
A short trip across to Garda, which like all the other locations is small and quaint with lots of lakeside tavernas for a spot of mussels and then a short stop at a little port of Salo.
Today we actually have no idea where to go, but it will involve walking, eating and drinking.
A gentle hours steam boat ride down to Riva on the edge of the lake and then the incline railway to a restaurant overlooking a beautiful view
After a wonderful meal of octopus and scampi on tagliatelle, the restaurant brought out a luminous bottle of Limoncello, so we drank it all (would have been rude not to). The effects of Limoncello are devastating, it creates the chocolate ice cream monster you see below
As you can see the eyes are wide open as she consumes dark chocolate and thanks everyone with the priceless phrase of Gracias (despite being in Italy)
Up bright and early to join every other tourist going up the 2 cable car journeys to the top of the mountain and of course the obligatory FFP2 Face Mask while in the sardine can!
But obviously Mrs Fogg has to have a cup of tea once at the top (despite the option of a glass of Dom!)
Ok, so Lake Garda hasn’t fully dried up yet, but castles cobbled streets, Italian wine and lots of zee jermans. Beautiful weather, awesome food and wonderful company
Well a fairly uneventful journey back from the Maldives, beside the sea plane flying through heavy rain and then 2.5 hour wait at Male airport before we could checkin. Saying that the move through Male airport was a breeze, so much smoother than most UK airports.
4.5 hours flight from Male to Doha, a 1.5 hour wait then a 7.5 hour flight from Doha to Manchester. Mrs Fogg was unfortunately on the verge of losing her lunch, since there was onion in the earlier flight meal and as we explained she was feeling sick the only thing on the cabin crew’s question list was “is it COVID”, which we had to try and explain several times as they desperately wanted to disembark us before flying. No it’s mild food poisoning from a previous flight “well it couldn’t be a Qatar flight” came the response, “but it was”, we replied. “Must be COVID we get doctor!”.
Eventually we got to continue on and 7 hours Kip, left Mrs Fogg all fighting fit and raring to go. And for the first time ever, we landed at Manchester at 0715, cleared the farcical UK border control, collected our luggage from the broken conveyor belt, navigates the abandoned wheelchairs and found the unmarked bus stop to the car park, eventually driving away from the airport by 0750.
And now all set for work, whoop and kitchen tiling, what an exciting life we lead.
Yup we have now left Maafushivaru on the 14 hour trek to Manchester, just as the heavens opened.
Have to say even tho Male airport is tiny and disorganised we sailed through security, checkin, immigration and the second security in less than 10 minutes. What’s betting Manchester passport control will take hours and the luggage carousel will be broken.