A relaxing day at sea. Perfect weather, still enjoying the changes and upgrades to this magnificent vessel. Not everyone’s cup of tea but, of its kind, extremely impressive. 

Oops, second photo

Boarded QM2 today. The boarding process was somewhat chaotic because the IT system had gone down.  Anyhow, now safely on board. From the little we have seen so far the refit has been a great success. Additionally we have been lucky enough to be allocated one of the fully refurbished/replaced cabins — it’s like getting on a brand new ship. We are expecting to sail at midnight for Port Elizabeth. Tomorrow will be a sea day, so I may not do a posting.

Two pictures: the ship from the city, the city (and Table Mountain) from the ship. 

A trip to the Cape (south from Cape Town) and a cricket match at Newlands, in the shadow of Table Mountain. South Africa were playing in the deciding T20 match of a 3 match series. A fantastic atmosphere, lots of banter with the SA supporters and finally Sri Lanka won on the penultimate ball of the match. Tomorrow we will be boarding QM2 in Cape Town harbour. 

Another day, another winery !

Jan 23rd 2017

Off we go again, this time it’s Australia via South Africa and the southern Indian Ocean. 

We will be away for 45 days but may not do a posting every day as there are a lot of sea days. 

First to the Western Cape for wine tasting and touring based in a B & B in Paarl.  Yesterday we went to wineries near Paarl, today it was Franschoek. We have cloudless skies and temperatures in the mid 30s. The first picture is at Melasat winery with our friend Gail who has joined us from Durban and is our guide, the winery is run by a family from Norfolk U.K. and the second picture is our room at the B & B. 

Went into town on the hotel shuttle. Visited a new “attraction” called Miracle Garden which plumbs the depth of bad taste in its design and garishness – see what you think. Also saw the Penguins at the ski slope ( no, really……….only in Dubai !!)

Tomorrow, back to London.

This time arrived by air from Singapore. Landed at the swanky new Emirates terminal. 60 mins from landing we were here at the Atlantis Palm.

Smart followers of the blog will notice that it is a cheat on two counts: 1) it’s a photo of a photo, 2) I already posted this photo on my Far East Holiday blog in January 2014 when we boarded our ship in Dubai at the start of our holiday. 

At present 02.24, GMT (10.24 am Singapore time), we are about one hour into a 7 hour flight to Dubai on Emirates Airline. Anyone reading this blog in 5 years time will think this normal but we can use our iPads and connect to the Internet in flight; in fact, I am posting this blog entry from our flight.  Each seat is equipped with a tablet with which you can control the entertainment, seat position etc. 

We are allowed to use our mobile phones but no-one we know will be awake right now !
  
 

View from our 14th floor room.  You can see a pleasure boat on the Singapore river and, on the skyline the nose of the “ironing-board” sitting on top of the Marina Bay Sands hotel. We will be leaving at 07.00 tomorrow for Dubai.