ronpes

What an absolutely beautiful town and the fantastic art-deco architecture everywhere. I don’t know what the temperature is but it is absolutely roasting here today and we had to get out of the heat.

In Napier (New Zealand) today. Lovely day here with temps in mid 60’s. Away for a quick breakfast and then ashore.

Papeete today. VERY warm and humid. Went to the local market.

Another warm day in Moorea. It’s 32C here today. Beautiful place.

Sunset tonight at Moorea

Thought I would pop in and say hi. We are currently steaming towards Moorea and the temp is a toasty 27C. We crossed the equator last night so we are now officially in the Southern Hemisphere and it is now spring/summer again !

Thank you for your comments. We are already on our journey, and will discard all tobacco products etc in Australia before we leave for Singapore and take it from there.

Have a wonderful holiday.

And we’re off. Sitting in the BA lounge enjoying a cheeky pre-flight drinkypoo (as you do) before we set off on the long trip to Seattle. Well I figured it’s 5 o’clock somewhere ! To all those heading on their travels this month, Bon Voyage and safe travels.

We also need an observed test before our cruise no more than 2 - days before embarkation. We are booked in to get it done at Heathrow Airport before we fly to Seattle on Wednesday. We have also learned that at the end of our first leg (7-days Alaska) we will need to get tested again in Vancouver before we sail on to Hawaii. Fortunately the ship will deal with that one but, it is a major concern if we fail any of those tests as that is effectively "game over". However, as the saying goes "plan for the worst, but hope for the best" and we have taken every precaution up until now be we also accept that nothing is 100% safe so it is what it is, and just take it as it comes.

Thank you but I must admit I am not normally that well organized ie we normally pack 2 - 3 days before. This time round, due to our sons visit etc, we had to prepare in advance. I used to work with a colleague who was always late for everything and I do mean everything, ie work every day, meetings etc etc. He admitted to me once, that he and his wife were on one occasion still packing/cramming things into a suitcase for a foreign holiday as the taxi was sitting outside their house with the engine running and waiting to take them to the airport. Oh dear.......

Beautiful picture. Thank you for sharing.

It’s also a very beautiful day here. We are only 60 miles from Balmoral but keeping well away from the crowds, as we leave in 10 days time. We are keeping a very low profile and staying in as much a possible as we have to take a supervised Covid test before we fly out (2-days before boarding Ovation) so we cannot afford to catch anything now after all this time. We are already fully packed, and cases closed and weighed as our son is here just now and working from the spare room so we thought we would get that out of the way. (We always pack in fabreeze tumble dryer sheets in the cases to keep the clothes smelling fresh-ish!) Counting down the days. For all those traveling this month, stay safe and take care.

Wow,. Lotus notes !now that’s a blast from the past. I remember that well. I also had issues with my old work laptop back in the day, as I was the only person who had access to the original cad system that our original company used and we literally had several thousands of drawings still in that format. IT in their infinite wisdom refused to continue with a software support package so the “solution” was to redraw all the drawings in the new cad format. You couldn’t make this up. Crazy.

It’s not a nice day here with rain, although good for the plants and grass and the farmers will be pleased. Although it is two weeks until we leave, today we are making a serious effort on the packing front to get it done and out of the way.

Ok so now that I have looked into this in more detail, it appears that there are no alternatives allowed ie Patches, Lozenges, ie all tobacco "delivery systems" are banned. It appears we will have to totally discard all items before we leave Australia and then probably purchase one pack of cigarettes to get through our short stay until we leave.

So sorry for your loss and what a beautiful girl. She was lucky to have you in her life. We know from our own experience how hard it is when we lose our much loved furry members of our family. Our thoughts are with you during this difficult time.

Good luck with that. I was speaking to my BIL today and was telling me that he ordered a new car (VW) in early May and has been told he should get it end of Sep / early Oct. So its perhaps its not as bad as I first thought.

This might sound like a daft question but I’ll ask anyway. My wife uses an E-cig, and we are scheduled to stay two nights in Singapore on our way home from Australia. I see however that in Singapore that e-cigs / vapes etc are completely banned, so we will have to discard them before we leave Melbourne. The obvious alternative would be nicotine patches as my wife does not want to go back to cigarettes, even for a very short period of time. I am curious to know if others have had the same issue and would like to know what worked best for them. Thank you.

May I ask, what is the waiting time for new? as I read somewhere recently that it was potentially 12 - 18 months wait for a new car. Hence, the demand for 2nd hand these days. The value of my sons 2nd hand Volvo has gone up by over £4K in the last 12 months. Crazy.

I’ve never seen a single episode (or film) of Downton Abby. I know it’s incredibly popular so I’m glad it brings so much pleasure to many. Maybe one day I’ll get round to it.

Victoria2: Thank you for taking the time and trouble for posting your regular updates. I am enjoying them immensely and they are very much appreciated.

I never tire of this view

This is where we were on Friday afternoon enjoying one or three “Pitlochry Punches” which went down extremely well.