Lisbon Castle

Today we headed for Lisbon Castle. It has a great view of the surroundings; what with it being on the top of a hill and all that. 

Heading Home

The Isle of Man is lovely. It's as if they've taken lots of the best places in England and folded them in on themselves to make a place where there's something really nice round each corner.

And you get to drive on a race track. 

We're heading home today. But we'll be back. 

Isle of Man Royal Manx Show

So, today we went to the Isle of Man Royal Manx Show. Wonderful. Rather like the Traction Engine rally of last week, but with more cows. We didn't expect to stay all day, but a combination of good weather and plenty of things to see took us all the way to the Grand Parade at the end. They had dog agility, pony club express, bright blue sheep (and a Bo Peep to go with them). They probably had a kitchen sink somewhere too. And very probably it was beautifully decorated. 

One of the highlights was the Stampede Stunt Company.  They did a fantastic routine showing us the "Way of the Cossack Warrior". Which apparently is all about the Dzhigits of the Cossack people. The pronunciation of which for some reason had me thinking of this video. Anyhoo, they were awesome. Of course I had a camera with me. Of course I took some pictures. 

Impressive

Most impressive

Now you're just showing off...

Off on my holidays...

Of on my holidays today. By boat. This is the view from the ferry.

This is the view as we docked. 

Red vs. blue..... I think were going to like it here...

San Francisco City Centre

If I'd moved a tiny bit to the right this picture would be completely perfect......

Today we got on the bus and headed to the centre of San Francisco. I really like the way that the city has a proper centre, with lots of shops and other good stuff. The weather was very kind to us (especially by the standards of San Francisco), and so I took a bunch of photographs. As you do.

We went on a boat trip round the bay

The pier and the skyline looking good

"That" bridge

First Day in San Francisco

The kind of thing you find in the trees around here...

It occurs to me that perhaps people don't care about what I do on my holidays. But please remember, dear reader, that I write this blog for me........

We slept very well and headed out first thing for breakfast. The place we are staying is right near the Golden Gate Park which is really lovely.

Conservatory of Flowers - we'll go here later in the week when it is open

They have this great little boating lake

We had a good wander round and then staggered back to the flat when the jetlag kicked in....

Holiday Start

Our ride...

Big day today. In more ways than one. It's the start of the holiday (yay!) and it will also be around 8 hours longer than usual thanks to time zones etc. We got off to an early start  which turned out not to be necessary as our flight out of the UK was delayed. But thanks to the magic of computers we were automatically routed onto a later connecting flight and the journey was smooth enough. Particularly when those awfully nice Delta people moved me into a seat with actual legroom.

We are presently in San Francisco, looking for some flowers to put in our hair. Or something.

Last Holiday Day

We didn't build this tiny Stonehenge, but we rather wish we had

This is the last day of this part of our holiday. Tomorrow we head back to Hull and real life. We stayed in Swansea at an amazing guest house and had a really good time. We were revisiting places that we last went to over 20 years ago and seeing what, if anything, had changed.

Quite a few things were different, but the lovely scenery is still there and the weather was very kind to us. 

Dr. Who in Cardiff

Peter Capaldi doing the signing thing...

..we interrupt this holiday sequence with a Dr. Who report. You may not have noticed this, but there is a new Dr. Who coming. He is being played by the actor Peter Capaldi who is just about a contemporary of mine. I made the mistake of mentioning to number one son that I was only slightly older than Dr. Who. He replied with "What, 300 years?" which didn't put him in my good books.

Anyhoo. Today we stopped off in Cardiff on our holiday travels. On the way through the town to the castle we noticed a bunch of folks waiting by barriers. Some of them were wearing rather familiar clothes. Turned out that the world premier of the first new Dr Who episode was taking place later in the morning and the stars of the show were going to be walking through the town.

So we thought we'd stick around and see what we could see.  Number one son stationed himself close to the barrier, whereas I wandered around seeing what photographs I could get. 

Jenna Coleman explaining stuff

I got some quite good pictures, number one son ended up with better ones, plus he managed to snag Jenna Coleman's autograph, which was nice. 

Turns out daleks don't do autographs

Neither do Cybermen..

All the other stars of the show were there too and the weather was lovely.  Sometimes you just can't beat being in the right place at the right time..

Holiday Wednesday

Quipomatic 5000 narrative: "He was thinly disguised as a toothpick."

Holiday Starts

On holiday this week. Which means that there will be nothing but pictures and some humour from the "Quipotronic 5000" which will be generating the written content for the rest of the week. Just as a taster (*click*)

"The dish was getting very concerned about the way her father kept introducing her to spoons."

Back to Hull on a shoe string

This is exactly how much holiday money we had left when we got to the airport to fly home.

Jolly Boating Weather

If you are feeling a bit annoyed about my endless parade of photographs of good weather and happy times, please bear in mind that I’m writing this back home on Monday evening and it is cold, dark and raining… But on Saturday it was none of those things, so we went on a little boat trip.

This is the view back up the lake to where we were staying. Torbole is on the right hand side. I bet that bit of rock made a great noise when it fell down.

Nice church

Part of a nice castle

Wind surfers making the most of the excellent conditions.

Lakeside Fun

The bridge has these padlocks all along the railings. Perhaps they symbolise undying love between two people. Perhaps they are from tiny bikes that have been expertly stolen.

Lakeside excavations

Lunchtime macro photography

This is a far better picture than photos taken with a mobile phone have any right to be.

Mountains and Waterfalls

Mountains

Waterfalls

Verona Day

One of the great things about being on holiday is that you don’t have to worry precisely what day it is. As far as we’re concerned, today was “Verona Day”. In other words, we got on a bus and went there.

They have a proper Roman Amphitheatre. Apparently “One Direction” have played in this very place, so we are obviously in an area with a lot of history.

According to local folklore, this is the actual spot where a bunch of nineteenth century marketing men got together and decided that they should get themselves a piece of balcony based “Romeo and Juliet” action.

The evenings here are rather pretty.

Holiday Hill Climbing

 

Today we took a walk along to Riva del Garda, a town just a couple of kilometres from Torbole. Very nice place. Great museum (I like museums) and a castle thingy half way up the hill at the side of the town. The guide book said it was a 20 minute stroll from the centre of the town. Which it is. For Superman.

For us mortals, arriving a somewhat exhausted forty minutes or so after setting off, it was well worth the trip though. I made the picture above from four shots taken with the Lumia 1020.

I also took a few panoramas while I was there.

Speaking Italian Like a Local

The good news is that I can speak Italian like a local. The bad news is that it is a local of East Yorkshire, UK. I’m trying to pick up words where I can, it seems the height of bad manners to expect everyone to learn English just because they might one day want to speak to me.

It is not going too well. I usually have this unnerving habit of speaking French whenever I go abroad. It’s the only foreign language that I know more than a bit of and it sometimes works in France. In Italy it is more of a hindrance though, serving to massively confuse the person I’m speaking to and massively annoy any French people in the room at the time. Oh well, but I did manage to order the right kinds of coffee today, which must count as some kind of progress.

Day 1 in Torbole

We are staying in a lovely little hotel in a place called Torbole, which is at the top of Lake Garda. It is quite a nice place to take photos.

Today we went for a walk along the edge of the lake. The weather was the comfortable side of hot and the light was lovely.

I’m starting to get this holiday thing.