Gran Canaria - A to Z of Places I have Visited

I am writing about some places I have visited in alphabetical order.
Still wondering what I will do for the more unusual letters like Q and X etc. but maybe I will have a brilliant idea later.

So for the letter G I decided to take Gran Canaria.

Fred and I have been there twice if not three times now and as with the other Canary Islands we really like it.


In December 2012  we decided we needed a break somewhere hot before we faced the onslaught of a cold Christmas in Northern Ireland so we looked for a last minute cheap holiday in the Canary Islands and chose Gran Canaria.

We had little idea of where we would be staying but ended up in a resort in the southern part of the island.

It was a lovely resort and we had a great time there apart from one thing.

Poor Wi-fi


Everyone ended up in the reception area of the resort sitting on the wide staircase or standing around or if you were very lucky you got one of the few seats there.

Food, rooms & outside facilities all great but the many teenagers there were not so happy trying to keep up with their online social life and Fred and I (not so young) did feel it in the early and late part of the evenings as we are and were then used to great wifi at home.

Yes I know we were on holiday and should have been forgetting about our ipads but we like to chill out reading and catching up on social media at night.



During that holiday most of the time was spent in and around the area of the resort but we did make a trip to Puerto de Mogan to see the Market there and another to Las Palmas the capital of the Island.



Las Palmas

We took a one day coach trip to the north of the Island to see this city which has a large harbour and nice streets.

One of the main sights is the Cathedral and it was one of our first stops (along with a coffee break).

The harbour area was lovely

A lot of the beaches in the Canary islands have "black" sand and here the sand was darker than we are used to with our lovely golden sandy beaches in Northern Ireland but not too dark.

As always the hills and mountains can be seen in the Canary Islands because they were formed by volcanic eruptions.

One thing not to miss, whenever you are in any of the Canary Islands, are the parrots and the parrot shows.  We have enjoyed these on each of the islands we have been to.

Another beautiful thing there was the sunrise so we made a particular effort to get up early and go to a part of the resort to get a great view.

Watching a sunrise in Gran Canaria.

I'm not usually good at getting pictures of the sunrise or the sunset even though we love to watch them but this was wasn't too bad.

That was the day we were heading off to the market at Puerto de Mogan which I would recommend as another day trip.  It was a relaxing day wandering around the market looking at the stalls and listening to some pan pipe music.  We even got a cd of the music these guys were playing and it's playing at home now as I write this post.

We were in Gran Canaria again a couple of times and the latest was in February 2017  when we also went to a resort in the southern part but further west round the coast.

Again a lovely resort and the Wi-Fi was better here but of course it was over 4 years later.

This time we took a short video of the view from our balcony.

The really great thing about the Canary Islands is that the temperatures are quite constant throughout the whole of the year so a visit at any time of the year will be warm if not nice and hot and we have never had a holiday there with much rain but it does happen.

So if you are thinking of a break in the cold winter time we would recommend Gran Canaria or any of the other Canary Islands.

Florida - A to Z of Places I have visited

I am going to write about some places I have visited and do them in alphabetical order.
Still wondering what I will do for the more unusual letters like Q and X etc. but maybe I will have a brilliant idea later.

I have been to Florida 3 different times.

In 1983 I flew over to the US from Northern Ireland on my own to join my husband who had been there for a work conference.

In 1995 our family of 5 drove down from our (then) home in Delaware to let our children experience Disney World and Sea World and a few other places before we would be packing up all our belongings and returning to live once again in Northern Ireland.

In 2017 - yes just last year - Fred and I returned to Florida for a week so that he could attend a church conference and I could sit at the pool at the hotel.


So some of the highlights of Florida for me have been the following:


St. Augustine

In 1983 we were driving from Jacksonville to Kissimmee (after my horrible experiences both at JFK Airport and at a motel in Jacksonville which could be a future Travel Blog Post) and stopped in St. Augustine to see the Alligators.  I mentioned this briefly in an earlier blog post The Alligator in the Ditch.


St. Augustine is a lovely old town and we were able to take a bit of time to see around a bit of it befor going to the Alligator Farm.

Photo Credit - Pixabay

Photo Credit - Pixabay

Photo Credit - Pixabay

I have to admit that I do not like alligators but we enjoyed the alligator farm but if I ever had the chance to go back to At. Augustine I would rather explore the town (old and new) rather than the farm again.



Kenedy Space Station


In 1995 one of the places we saw was the Kenedy Space Station and for anyone with a husband with an engineering background like mine this was a place not to be missed, our two boys who were 11 and 13 at the time also had a great time and our daughter and I quite enjoyed it too.

Photo Credit - Pixabay

Disney World


In both 1983 and 1995 there was a visit to Disney World and of course the first stop each time was The Magic Kingdom

Photo Credit - Pixabay

followed by Epcot Centre.

Photo Credit - Pixabay

My best memory of 1983 was Fred and I buying turkey legs to eat for lunch and not realising how big they would be.
They are enormous but also delicious - so if you are heading there try them out (if they still do them after all these years).



Sea World

In 1995 we also went to Sea World and Universal Studios which are also great for all ages.

Photo Credit - Pixabay

Photo Credit - Pixabay

Relaxing


2017 in Florida was so different for us.

No Alligator farm, no Space Station, no Theme Parks.

As well as relaxing by the pool I got to do some relaxing shopping because we found two nice large Craft Shops for me to wander around  -  just didn't get to buy all that I really liked because of having to travel back home but managed to get a few things I couldn't get in the UK.

How could you possible pick scrapbook paper from this multitude?

We also got to meet up with some friends from when we lived in Belgium for a lovely meal and chat one evening.


AND


We got to go to some restaurants we had loved when we lived in the US

Doggy Bag from The Ponderosa!

 so just had to take some selfies to make our kids jealous.

What do alligators and doggy bags have in common?

Ennis - A to Z of Places I have Visited.

For the next few months I am going to write about some places I have visited and do them in alphabetical order.

Still wondering what I will do for the more unusual letters like Q and X etc. but maybe I will have a brilliant idea later.

In March 2015 my husband had to visit several different sites in Ireland because of his work.

I don't normally travel with him on work trips in fact let's say we could probably count the number of times I have done so on the fingers of my two hands and we are talking of a time span of over 30 years.

However on this occasion he was going to a different location each day so that meant a long working day followed by a long drive to the next place and a different hotel each night so he suggested I go with him for company on the journeys.

We live in Northern Ireland (CLICK HERE to go see the difference between Northern Ireland and Ireland if you have not already read my blog post on this) and then come back here to finish off this one.

As I was saying , we live in Northern Ireland but have not been to very many different places in Ireland so it was an opportunity for me to see some towns and cities during the day as well as not have to cook for almost two weeks.

It was also an opportunity to see quite a few hotel rooms and resulted in a blog post on Top 10 Things that Make a Good Hotel Room which you probably want to read as well

and another amusing one about all the strange/quirky things I encountered in those hotel rooms see 10 Things that made me laugh in Ireland.

On this trip we stopped one night outside what I thought was a small town called Ennis.

The next morning after I had a late breakfast and did a few puzzles I ordered a taxi and simply asked the driver to take me into Ennis so that I could have lunch and go for a walk around.

The taxi driver dropped me off beside a very tall statue and when I asked where I could get a taxi back to the hotel again he pointed over to another street and said I'd find a taxi rank there.

Convinced that this was a small town, and this seemed to be confirmed by the narrow streets, I walked along without a care in the world looking at the shops as I passed by on my mission to find somewhere nice to have my lunch.

I could see shops, I could see pubs, I could see coffee shops, I even passed a hotel on the main street but nowhere that looked like it would offer a simple lunch.

On and on I walked turning into one small street after another and starting to get convinced that I would get lost in this town of narrow streets when I turned a corner and there it was - I am so disappointed that I did not take a picture of it or think to write down the name - but I had found my cafe.

It was lovely inside and there was a peaceful atmosphere about it.  I ordered and was definitely not disappointed when my food arrived.  After eating I lingered on reading my book over a cappuccino enjoying both the beverage and the surroundings, but eventually I had to leave to see a bit more of Ennis and find my way back to that statue to get a taxi again.

Some of you may have read in previous blog posts that I like unusual roundabouts but I certainly wasn't thinking about finding one here, yet that is exactly what I did find. Shortly after leaving the cafe I turned a corner and found myself in a somewhat wider street with a roundabout at the end of it.

I immediately asked myself a question - was I really seeing a cow on a roundabout?

And the answer was yes.

A cow and two figures.

I had lived near a roundabout that had several animals on it in Tervuren in Belgium, they were all playing musical instruments and forming a fountain (it is absolutely beautiful) but never a cow just standing there.

There must have been some reason behind this but I have yet to find it out.

At least I remembered to take a photo of the cow and the figures before I went on finding my way back to the statue.

At the statue I then headed over to the place the taxi driver had told me about, at least I thought it was where he was directing me but there was no taxi rank there. I wandered around a bit and eventually ended up going over the river Festus.

It was a lovely calm view from the bridge.

It was the Harmony Row Bridge which is a pedestrian bridge in a arched shape.

The bridge and river look good from this view too.

Well I asked several people about the taxi rank yet never got any help but eventually I spotted a taxi coming along the road I was then on and I hailed it down.   Yes, I hailed it down, something I have never done before even though we have lived in The US and have been in London several times.

The taxi took me back to the hotel just as Fred was arriving back from work for the day.  He was tired and hungry and I was tired and my feet were getting sore from all that walking and walking.

On doing a little bit of research on Ennis online (should have done this before I got there of course) I discovered that this town of the narrow Streets (as I will always think of it) is actually the County town of County Clare so it is larger than I thought and that explains why I ended up walking through so many streets.

Have you heard of Ennis the Irish town with the narrow streets?

The tall statue is called the O'Connell Monument with a link to the Crimea War.  The figure at the top of it is Daniel O'Connell who is called the "Great Liberator"

I also discovered that there are other statues apart from the tall thin one I met on my arrival and those on the roundabout. 

Yes there is one of a hand.

I never noticed it.  I wonder is this the only large town sculpture of a hand in Ireland and I also wonder if there are other unusual large sculptures in Ennis.

Maybe I need another visit to seek out more and to find that lovely cafe again.

As for any of you readers, well this just might be a good town for you to visit in Ireland because I think it would be just what some of you imagine an Irish town is like.

Durbuy (The Labrynth) - A to Z of Places I have visited

For the next few months I am going to write about some places I have visited and do them in alphabetical order.
Still wondering what I will do for the more unusual letters like Q and X etc. but maybe I will have a brilliant idea later.

My D for the series is Durbuy, a small town in the Luxemburg region of Belgium.

We lived in Belgium for over 6 years and loved our time there especially seeing so many new places.

One day trip we made from our home in Tervuren (on the outskirts of Brussels) took us to the Labrynth (Maze) at Durbuy and being a Mathematical person I am also a logical person so I love to have a puzzle of some sort to work out.

The Maze Was Very Large 

and it was also very tall.  No seeing over the top of those hedges but if you managed to get up higher somehow (you'll find out later) you would have seen that

there was something at the centre of the Maze.

Fortunately we did get a map of a kind to help us find our way to the activity at the centre.

So Off We Went 

and to start with I had the map.

Fred was looking at it along with me and our son Jonathan was coming behind taking some photos.
It was a lovely day with the sun out and we were very comfortable in our short sleeves but because the hedges forming the maze were so tall parts of the trail were in the shadow and that meant a lot of dark patches for the photos.

Fred is 6 foot tall so looking at these photos now I'm presuming the hedges were between 7 and 8 feet high.

At one stage Fred ended up with the map on his own - I was probably lagging behind talking to Jonathan.

Then Fred was off and I had to

run to catch up with him before we would get lost.

Fred had decided that he knew exactly where we were and where we were going and so he took the lead and we just followed.

Of course he was right (as always) and a little while later we had arrived at the centre.   

Walking In There

we saw some other people were sitting waiting and there were a few people dressed as soldiers. 

 One of them had a map of the regions of Belgium so that everyone could see where we were. 

Soon some other people arrived and the soldiers took charge and gave some commands for us to stand and then they picked out some from the crowd to come to the middle of the clearing and the rest of us had to sit down on benches around the perimeter of this area.

Well Guess Who Got Picked

Fred!

My husband is always full of fun and always willing to enter in at times like this and Jonathan and I were happy to sit and watch and laugh and laugh.

The soldiers tried to teach them all to hold a gun (really a large stick) making them look and act in a very funny manner and then

they had to be able to do something with their hands held up - I don't remember what that was because we were just laughing so much at them all.

Each one of the "volunteers" got picked on for a part of the training 

and then they had to practice marching.

After our bit of entertainment we had to find our way towards the exit of the Maze and Jonathan found himself a great place for a view over it all.

Now you know how we have those first two pics looking over the maze.

We took some photos of him up there as well as him climbing up and down it and he got some photos from that height too. 

Then He Took a Nice Pic

of his old mum and dad sitting below.

Before we left he took another nice one of us on a wooden seat under a trellis.

It is a lovely place and we had a relaxing time there even though we had to navigate a maze.

An entertaining day in the middle of a puzzle in Belgium

If you are ever in that area of Belgium do make the effort to go and I hope you get a nice sunny warm day as we did.

If you missed any of the previous places in this series just click on the Titles below:

A for Alicante
B for Bratislava
C for Calpe