Land of Soy Sauce and Mothra

I nearly didn't go with 'Land of Soy Sauce and Mothra' exactly because it pairs too nicely with the previous post and I've begun a theme of visiting the Book of Mormon mission locations from the song Two by Two. Mostly because that then suggests we need to complete the trilogy and visit France, and who wants to do that? (Insert over exaggerated shudder). Because of this, I was going to go with 'Big in Japan' instead, something nice and non-specific that allows me to avoid the potential pitfalls that come with continuing the naming convention of the blog.

But then I realised, this blog doesn't decide where we go on holiday, it merely helps to record details of the holidays after we have returned. And hold on a minute, it barely even does that, some of these blogs barely mention the holidays at all and are just used as a loose framework around which to hang a bunch of inane ramblings about, for example, THE CHOSEN TITLE. You're doing it again blog, You can't tell us what to do, we'll go wherever we damn well please!

I'm sorry for raising my voice blog, please don't punish me again.

And now I don't even know if I am writing this, or if I have created some sentient being that is 'the blog' that controls the content of this thing, now I don't know whether to continue, or just sit and wait and see what it does.

Ok, it didn't do anything without me, I think I have been arguing with and being subdued by myself. So I think I'm going to start again. Pretend all this up here hasn't taken place. Imagine I have deleted it  and the blog begins now.

So, for those of you have just joined us and weren't privy to whatever just happened in the preceding paragraphs and therefore missed the hints included in the first one, this trip was to Japan (Land of Soy Sauce and Mothra).

We went to Japan in April, which as of right now, was 5 months ago, but the blog has remained unwritten in all that time, and the reason? Was it laziness? Well, sort of. But I was also working on my final open university degree module and made the decision not to write the blog until I was done, which as of last week, I am! So I can now devote my time to more frivolous pursuits, such as painstakingly documenting holidays, for what? For what purpose? In the vain hope that someone reads it one day and thinks what? This guy doesn't half ramble on, I came here to find out if it was wroth visiting Japan and all I've learned is... Hold on, I've learned nothing. Nothing whatsoever! 462 words and counting of complete waffle and so far all I've got is that you went there. Now I'm not even sure about that!

Apologies, I thought we had left that argumentative guy near the top, hopefully we can proceed now.

5 months is a long time, so it was always going to be difficult to remember details. Luckily for me, I have an excellent resource available to me, this Japan diary that Rachael kept during our trip, that I can refer to to jog my memory.

As a matter of fact, maybe I can just type the whole thing out verbatim, replace my name with the word 'I' and any I's... I guess we see, I can replace some with Rachael's name, some can stay as I if they still make sense, slap my name on it, call it a day, capitalism!

"We arrived in Tokyo Narita at around 1pm. After 1 hour of trying to navigate to the city and getting through security, we got on our train. Having thought we'd probably miss the cherry blossoms, I was very happy to see loads on the way." (Rachael, April 2024)

Actually, I've just looked at this thing and it's 25 pages long, there is a level of detail here that I am never going to match, but that was the first paragraph. You will notice it is very matter of fact, like you might expect a diary entry to be, none of the embellishments and nonsense you find in my blog (which you love), however, I think it's worth sharing another direct quote from Rachael's diary for comparison:

"Since we'd looked in some Rachael shops, James refused to walk any further, sitting on the ground with his legs crossed until I agreed to go to a Pokemon shop."

This was from day 3. This is how long it takes to get bored of keeping a factual account and to stoop to my level. For clarity, I can 100% guarantee that this didn't occur. I'm pretty sure it didn't occur. There is a better than even chance that this is made up...

So yes, the trip started in Tokyo, or that's where we landed after first flying over the north pole, for which we received the Northern route diploma. You may ask, what's it like flying over the north pole? Have you ever seen ice? Yes it looks like that... It's actually really bright though.

As Rachael indicated, we were pleased to catch the Cherry Blossoms, because it's not always particularly easy to plan for, the peak of it had passed, but there were still plenty on the trees and floating gracefully though the air like floral snowflakes. Or you know, like falling petals, just trying to be poetic or something, I won't bother in future!

For the first couple of days we found our way around Tokyo, we went to Akihabara and played air hockey in an arcade, and we finished our second evening at the Karaoke.

Karaoke is somewhat amusing in picture form, but somehow less amusing than actually watching me attempt to sing the Pokemon theme song in the original Japanese. Videos available on request.

For me, Karaoke is a lot more fun in Japan than anywhere back at home, because you get a private booth, no-one else can hear you, so it does not matter at all how bad you are, and oh boy was I bad at it. Videos available on request.

On the third day... Wait, that sounds like I'm quoting scripture. On day 3 of our trip to Japan, we rode the bullet train. That's right, this wasn't one of those "stay in one place" holidays, oh no, we moved around, we went to Kyoto.

As was perhaps alluded to in Rachael's libelous diary entry, we visited a few character based shops while we were here, the first being the Snoopy shop in Nishiki market (Yes, we know Snoopy is American, but that doesn't mean he can't be enjoyed and celebrated by the Japanese too), once we had finished perusing the available Japanese wares and had consumed enormous Tempura prawn skewers, we passed out to the other side of the market, which led almost directly to the Rilakkuma shop, as we had recently watched and enjoyed the pair of Netflix series, so we went there so Rachael could purchase a stuffed Korilakkuma and a purse.

Then, following absolutely zero tears, and no tantrums whatsoever, despite what others may suggest, we decided to also visit the Pokemon centre. Which disappointingly, rather than being a large red roofed building staffed by red haired nurses and Chanseys, turned out to be more of a shop inside a retail complex that sold Pokemon memorabilia, almost like in this universe, Pokemon is just one big money making machine.

I did get a little Plastic Goomy from a Gacha machine, so that I left with some sort of souvenir. I also returned home with a stuffed Mew, but that wasn't from here.

Having already visited a Rilakkuma shop and bought some authentic Japanese souvenirs and also hearing how busy the place was, Rachael took the difficult decision not to go to the Rilakkuma Tea House while we were in Kyoto, so rather than going to the more famous and busy bamboo grove in Arashiyama, we chose to go to Nenbutsi-Ji temple, which had a smaller bamboo area.

It wasn't too far away. By this point, we were becoming proficient at utilizing Japanese public transport, despite the confusion caused by the fact that on Tokyo buses, you pay on the way on the bus, in Kyoto, you pay on the way off. But once we got over this, we found the sequence of buses needed to get there and made our way up to the temple and sure enough, managed to enjoy some bamboo.

While we were in Kyoto, we had tickets to see the Miyako-Odori, which was a kind of traditional performance, which also included a traditional tea ceremony, where we drank macha, ate a sweet snack, and were given our plates to take away with us.

Naturally, I have no photos from the performance itself, because that would have been incredibly rude, and could perhaps have gotten you thrown out of the theatre. We did however buy the programme, so now it's almost like you're also looking at this book.

It was pretty cool, the sets and the effects looked good, and Rachael's diary has reminded me how we both really liked a part with lightning flashes.

After having spent 3 nights in Kyoto, the next stop on our tour of Japan was Hiroshima, which as you might expect included a lot of memorials related to the atomic bomb, including a peace park with a peace bell, and a memorial building, which had installations attempting to represent the scale of the atrocity. The most affecting part though was the computers. There are computers close to the end which contain a database of all the known victims of the atomic bomb. Start typing any letter and you find thousands of names, click through to any of them, you can find family members including children, all listed.

On the next day, we decided to take the ferry to Okunishima. Now, maybe part of the reason to come to Hiroshima was the history, it's a beautiful place and there is lots to see, but maybe, just maybe, we were down in this part of the country so we could visit this island, an island home to a poison gas museum, that we were so desperate to visit.

Obviously, that was a lie, we didn't even make it to the poison gas museum in the end, the main reason anyone visits this island is because it is also home to lots and lots of Rabbits.

An absence of natural predators has caused the rabbit population on the island to balloon, and the same, coupled with their reliance on humans to keep them fed has let to the rabbit population being incredibly tame, so you can walk around the island and will be mobbed by many many rabbits all looking for same tasty food.

Our final trip on the bullet train brought us back to Tokyo for the last 3 days, where we visited Teamlabs planets, a sort of interactive art gallery, we visited more arcades, sang more Karaoke, continued to be amazed by the fancy toilets and ate a lot more Ramen.

I could go into more detail, but the specifics are all in Rachael's diary. if you're interested, it is available from all good our houses. It's in our house. There's one copy. Because it's a diary

Land of Gnomes. And Trolls!

Figuring out how to start these posts off is always the hardest part. That and actually bringing myself to write the thing. Some start with the journey, some start with the decision making process, some start halfway through the trip, then the introduction sort of helps tell me how to structure the rest of it, do I go through chronologically reeling off everything that happened, do I jump about randomly as though I'm too easily distracted to be able to finish a thought in one go, or do I spend most of the post waffling, then briefly mention that we also went on holiday somewhere in the last paragraph? 

I don't really know this time. 

The journey probably does warrant a mention just because of how remarkably uneventful it was, it was probably the most stress-free travelling ever. No queues at security, leaving plenty of time to stop and have a meal before flying. Flight was shorter than advertised, no queues at passport control, and a (pre-booked) taxi driver waiting for us as soon as we arrived. We did take our lives into our hands slightly because he drove us to the hotel in a Tesla though, but thankfully it didn't explode on this occasion.

   

In case you are in any way curious, the destination we had arrived in was Bergen in Norway. At least we think so, the hillside by the airport wasn't quite sure where we were. 

Bergen turned out to be that somewhat unusual sort of place where it seemed like everyone I spoke to had already been. As though it's one of those places that everyone goes, and no-one had told me about it.

Our trip had 3 full days and we managed to fit in quite a bit, especially since for one of the wettest cities in the world, we had glorious sunshine the whole time we were there.

On the first day, we walked around Bryggen (that's all the old wooden buildings along the port that feature on all the Burgen fridge magnets), went to an indoor zoo, then rode the funicular train up the hill. It's much like a regular train, but slanted so all the sections are stepped up from each other to level it out. Basically, the train would be crazy if you moved it onto a track on level ground.

From the top you get an excellent view across Bergen, and if like us, you only buy a one-way train ticket, you also get a nice walk back down the hill, which is definitely worth it, you walk through the forest on the way down, and down is so much easier than up, probably even easier still if you actually stick to the paths.

Which we didn't. All along the path down there's little "shortcuts" that take you down little barely there stone and mud paths, which are much harder to navigate as you scramble your way downhill, it is much more likely you'll find trolls though, weirdly, we did not, however hard I looked. When we arrived back on the main path, there was a sense of relief that we had made it. until we saw another little path slightly further on. After falling over or otherwise sustaining minor injuries walking down one, we decided to stick to the path the next time we found one though.

For the second day, Rachael had found an outdoor museum called 'Old Bergen' a village made to look like it was from Bergen in the past, with actors playing a series of villagers. It was a 10 minute bus ride away, or for a bit more money (probably), a 50 minute boat ride away. Naturally, we took the boat.

Inside there were a series of buildings, including homes, shops and a school set up to look like they would have done, with a series of villagers either being remarkably relaxed about strangers traipsing through their homes, or putting on little scenes in the square. In this one this young delivery man (who was previously a dentist) is proposing to his girlfriend (who was previously married I believe to a trader - I believe these were probably all different characters)

Arriving by Beffen (the boat) gave us 20% of the admission price, and also the same discount off admission to the aquarium, so, we decided to get off at the aquarium and go there on the way back (damn you for the effective marketing strategy!)

The aquarium was quite a good one, it had outdoor areas with seals, otters and penguins, all the fish and crustaceans you would expect, and also crocodiles in the basement.

On the last day we took another boat trip, this one was a bit further, out to the fjords and too see some nice waterfalls

Oh but I do get to make a callback to a 16 year old bit:

The Bergen Dog

A good hot-dog, made with proper sausages. I found the original time I did this, and it was all structured with ratings and so on. I can't be bothered doing that, but here's a photo.

Slightly ominous sound effects

15 years. 15 consecutive calender years between 2005 and 2019. I obtained my first passport in 2005 at 18 years of age, and in every subsequent year, I left the country at least once (Don't go back and check, because this only goes back to 2007 anyway).

And then we arrived in 2020, and in 2020 and 2021, for some reason we didn't go anywhere.

Ok, it wasn't just 'for some reason', I think we are all aware that the reason was the global pandemic, nowhere was safe, except locked up inside my house.

It wasn't the hassle of mandatory self-isolation, or mandatory testing that put us off, we could have handled that, and we definitely wouldn't have been 'those' people ending their holidays early to get home before isolation orders came into effect, because seriously, if you are rushing home from a holiday, in order to make it to work, your priorities are incredibly out of order and you need to slow down and take stock of your life for a minute. Here's a free life-hack for everyone if this ever happens again, if you return from a holiday during a mandated stay at home order for anyone returning from abroad, you have a free excuse for NOT showing up at work, that is enshrined in law. You are welcome.

No, the reason we didn't go away was because, seriously, did you not read any of the news? There was a global pandemic going on, and we didn't fancy getting sick. Also, when I'm on holiday, the various activities and the eating out at restaurants is the holiday, I'm not entirely sure what's left to do if you show up somewhere and everywhere is closed. Anyone?

Ok, so seeing as it is still 2022 now, and I have taken this blog down from the attic, blown off the dust and plopped 8 brand new size C batteries under the slightly cracked rear cover, you've probably already figured out that the travelling drought that was the first 2 years of this decade, was ended recently. Which it was.

We did a bit of proverbial toe-dipping by making 1 trip to Llandudno and 2 to Sheffield in order to watch snooker, and found those trips were fine, no issues whatsoever. So shortly afterwards, we were talking and we said, "Hey, maybe we should do that thing we like to do, you know the one, where we're in a place that isn't our house for a little while, where the weather is nicer, and we spend a bunch more money because we'll eat out every day".

The word we were looking for was 'Holiday', naturally, after such a long time, the lingo had eluded us.

So, approximately one week later, we found ourselves in sunny Montenegro, specifically, Kotor on the Adriatic sea.

Now comes the portion of the evening where I can punctuate my lines of text using images collected from my phone. We arrived on a Wednesday, several hours before the check-in time, and phoned the renter to ask if we could leave our bags anywhere. She said yes, then showed up and just let us in. That set the tone really for the rest of the holiday, everyone was just nice. 

We had an apartment overlooking a small river just outside the old town (which can be seen just towards the right hand side of this picture from the balcony).

After a walk and something to eat in the old town, the majority of day 1 was done, but we made the most of our time here and every day had a different activity of some description.

Oo, actually, lets do it like this:

Day 2 (Slightly ominous sound effect)

Day 2 took us on a walk along the coast where we followed a footpath between a small pebble beach and the road (which actually coincidentally separated a handful of restaurants from their outdoor eating areas, bringing to mind a level  from overcooked where a road separates a kitchen from the serving area. though in this scenario, the road was pretty quite and the waiters weren't working against the clock).

As we approached the end of the walkable stretch of coastline, we were offered a boat ride for a lower price than we had seen along the way, so we accepted. By the miracle of story telling, we can now jump straight to that boat ride as though that happened instantaneously and not a couple of hours later, when we had to return.

Our first stop was Our Lady of The Rocks, one of 2 tiny islands near the mouth of Kotor Bay, it consisted of a church and a gift shop and... yea.

The first interesting thing about the island is it is completely man made, and it is built upon the remains of sunken ships due to a history of attempted invasions being thwarted by blocking off the one entrance to the bay.

The other interesting thing is the gift shop (not now, now it's just a place to grab a magnet or a large novelty pencil), but it's original purpose was as a room to settle blood feuds. Feuding families would be locked inside the building, and would not be allowed out until the feud was settled. Or one of them was dead (though I suppose that does settle a feud too).

Next up was the submarine tunnels, or at least one of them, there are 3 of them hidden in the mountainside, all connected together so they can be walked between on foot, which were dug out by hand using slave labour from a local prison and used to repair submarines in secret with camouflaged gates that could be closed and the tunnels would be invisible to passing planes.

Next up was the island prison. I don't think it was the same one used for slave labour. Annoyingly this used to be a tourist spot that you could visit with many of the rooms and facilities still intact, but in the infinite wisdom of the government, it's been effectively bulldozed in favour of a large Hotel and Casino, because hooray for Capitalism eh?

Most interesting about passing this spot was my phone welcomed me to Croatia. So for a brief moment, I could have phoned or texted people without paying the extortionate roaming charges still present in Montenegro. Not that I really needed to.

The final (intended) stop of the boat tour was to the blue cave, which is a cave, where the water looks blue. This is the obligatory stop on any boat tour where you are allowed some time to swim.

No-one did. We were in the wrong shoulder season really, so the sea was far too cold, also, we had just been battered by winds while making our way out here, personally I was in no rush to make the journey back more uncomfortable.

This meant there was leftover time to visit Perast, a tiny coastal town facing the lady of the rocks from before. Only about 20 minutes though, so a quick wander down the coast to buy a small bottle of some ginger juice and return just in time to head back. 

On the boat we got chatting to a couple sat next to us, a lady from Montenegro and her husband from Liverpool (I believe it is one of the natural laws of the universe that you are guaranteed to find a scouser wherever you are in the world), she told us about a sort of pastry she enjoyed that you could buy from a bakery. I had forgotten the name by the time we entered a bakery a couple of days later, but I saw something that looked like what she had described, a sort of filled pastry, it was large, I thought we should at least try it, so thought we could get one to share and see if we liked it. I pointed to it and asked what it was. Not understanding me, she picked it up and wrapped it up for me. A moment later seemingly having not heard this attempted interaction, Rachael had the same idea upon spotting these items herself and came to the counter alongside me and asked what it was. Therefore we walked out with 2 of the things.

Day 3 (The same ominous sound effect)

Day 3 would become the day of the secret beach. We started the day by walking, this time heading in the opposite direction around the bay towards a part of the area we did look at apartments in. The area was quieter with smaller unlit roads, and down by the coastline was a tiny little pebble beach surrounded by a hill with trees, with no-one on it.

For the time we sat there, this beach was ours, we sat and read and we skimmed stones on the water, but not at the same time due to the risk of accidentally skimming e-readers across the water.

While walking back, we realised how we were glad we hadn't booked an apartment on this side, it was nice, that wasn't the problem, but walking along small coastal roads without pavements is fine during the day, but at night would have been a different story, and could effectively have given us a daylight curfew, or a necessity to take a taxi home if we found ourselves out in the old town at night. Which we generally were.

Day 4 (You know the sort of sound I mean? Like 2 notes, would sort of accompany text on a screen perhaps indicating the time or how long is left, as the scenes inbetween escalate up to something)

If you've been keeping track, Day 4 is a Saturday, and on this day we headed to the bus station and took a trip out of Kotor to Budva.

Budva is larger than Kotor with much larger hotels and beaches and is presumably a more popular tourist destination. Budva also has an old town, with similar tight streets, but without quite so many cats (Which are interestingly, 2 facts about Kotor I have yet to impart).

We stopped at a small restaurant and ate a pizza, where apparently someone on the next table mistook me for a waiter. This Guy. The one in shorts and a hawaiian shirt. He was sitting down and asked me if this table was ok. I replied, 'Yes. This one is our table'.

After a short walk through a park, where we stopped for a read, we headed back to the bus station and enjoyed the little zoo outside it. We had already come across it on the way out, but there was no point mentioning it twice, but this time, one of the rabbits stuck it's nose through the fence for Rachael to tickle him.

We returned to Kotor in time to see stages being set up, so we stuck around to watch the music later on.

The band were more or less what you would expect, guitarists, drummer and singer doing covers and songs in Montenegrin I could not understand, but that was when we discovered we had shown up for our holiday at the time they were celebrating their independence day, which was nice (Although, had we known in advance that no shops would be open for a large chunk of our holiday, we might have done some stocking up in advance of the weekend)

Day 5 (Something like that 'dun dun' at the start of law and order, I always thought that sound effect seemed a bit out of place, because it is sort of ominous, but I thought law and order was basically a procedural? Maybe it is secretly a horror, I don't know)

On this day, we began with something of a lazy day, but the day had other ideas.

We went out for a walk, we walked to the end of our road and came to a hill, the hill looked like it led to the castle on the top, the sky was a little dull and the air seemed cooler than normal, so we went for a stroll, a nice leisurely 2 hour stroll up a hill. In the scorching heat. Because of course the drop in temperature was a lie and the sun came back out to batter us on the way up.

It was fine really, and we really did take it at a leisurely pace, the return journey only took 45 minutes, but on the way up we kept stopping to rest and admire the view. As well as the goats.

That's where the hill could lead to, a goat farm, we stopped and watched the goats for quite a bit when we saw them, but we didn't continue on up towards the goat farm itself, we diverted so we could continue to walk towards the wall.

And then we made it, all the way up to the castle on the top of the hill.

Well, the outside of it at least, with a small rickety ladder, perched precariously on the edge of the rocks just outside the wall, leading up to a window which was much smaller on the inside than the outside, accompanied by a sign warning people not to attempt access through the window. We decided that it was probably best not to disobey the sign in this instance. This picture doesn't do justice to the positioning of the ladder, in the picture, it looks like there is plenty of room where it is stood. There was not.

Day 6 (Just to clarify, I'm not actually building to something sinister, there's no general narrative and finale event coming, this is just a series of disparate events tied together by the fact that they all happened while we were in a different country for a few days, otherwise known as a holiday.) (Also Dun dun)

On Day 6 we wandered down to the markets they have outside the old town and bought some fruits (Strawberries if memory serves) and a couple of fancy cheeses.

What? I did warn you I wasn't building to anything, the days can't all be action packed and full of boat rides and ladders. Would it help if I said the bakery story from earlier may have belonged in this day? I just told it early, because it paired with the couple on the boat.

Also, in the evening, I ordered fish, and she filleted it right at the table, which was pretty cool. She asked if I wanted the head. I did not.

Day 7 (Pressing the sound effect button appears to have no effect, maybe it's broken. I press it again, still nothing. I ask that you imagine the sound effect is playing again, because we appear to be having some technical difficulties)

So on day 7 (Dun Dun) Damn you butt..(Dun Dun).

Day 7 became... That thing isn't going to go off again is it? No, I think we're good. Day 7 became our cultural day, where we thought we would visit the museums and such that Kotor had to offer.

We started with an art gallery not far from the main square. We walked in to a lovely and cool building, occupied only by a man sat near the door. As we entered, he stood and told us extremely apologetically, that the entrance fee was 5 euros.

We genuinely assumed from his tone he was about to tell us the place was closed, I've never had someone so apologetic while telling us the price of something. And it was for a good cause, the gallery we had entered was the gallery of solidarity, which was created following an earthquake in 1979 which devastated a large part of the surrounding area, where they collected artworks from all across Yugoslavia (as it was at the time).

A particular favourite of mine was a painting of Our Lady of The Rocks, mostly because I was able to recognise it and recognise it was painted from Perast.

The art gallery was only small, 3 rooms of artworks that we were told rotated through their 400 strong collection. But the ticket price was not just for this gallery and the feeling you get for contributing a small amount to a solidarity fund, they also allowed entrance to St Pauls Church and St Michaels Church.

So when we left, we dutifully followed his directions to St Pauls and found a massive church building, which was undergoing renovations, so it also had a guy on a ladder with a 'Don't mind me, go about your tourism' vibe. Up some stairs was an outdoor museum with shelves of old pieces of ornate stonework.

And we next made our way over to St Michaels, which was another display of old pieces of ornate stonework. But this time, everything was numbered and we had little binders telling us what everything was, and this to the right was... one of them. Yes sorry I didn't take notes.

The last stop on our cultural tour was the cat museum, this wasn't on the same ticket as the other 3, it had it's own entrance fee, and collected artworks, coins, medals, album covers, anything at all to do with cats and displayed them for us the visitors to peruse.

Because did I mention the cats at all?

Kotor

is

absolutely

packed

full

of

them!

Ok. I am willing to concede that maybe the last one was a rat and was not in Kotor, but it doesn't make it any less true about the number of cats in Kotor.

(dun dun).

It's ok, I was finished anyway.

(And Rachael was worried I wouldn't remember everything if I waited a few weeks to write this thing)

A post focused entirely on our trip to Milan in 2019

 Who remembers 2019?

Do you see what 2020 has made me do? Because of the sheer ridiculousness of the present year, it has forced me to start a blog post as though I am a rubbish stand-up comedian. And it get's worse, because following several years of complete rank stupidity, it has become trite to criticize a single full circuit of the sun based upon the completely arbitrary points we have declared as the start and end of the 365 day cycle, which we have labelled with an arbitrary number based on when someone in Rome decided we should begin counting once.

All that is to say, sorry for calling 2020 ridiculous, it's just a year and it was wrong of me to suggest the previous one was much better just because I could go outside.

But yes, 2019, that near forgotten time when you could go on holiday without the fear of catching a deadly virus, or, worse (based on the insane people racing home before a 4am deadline a few weeks ago) being made to stay home with your family for a couple of weeks. (I mean seriously, where does anyone have to go that desperately that staying home is such an imposition? Don't say work. No-ones job is so important that their colleagues will be unable to cope for an additional 2 weeks).

I keep trying to talk about 2019, but it is possible that the year 2020 has had a far larger impact upon my writing than was initially intended. I'm sure it's fine, you probably wouldn't have noticed had I not pointed it out to you. Go back and look though. It's subtle but it's there.

We made use of our capacity to share a small flying breathing space with hundreds of similarly minded travelicians to spend a couple of days in Milan.

I had to check myself and confirm that this was in fact out only trip last year, and it was due to inconsistent work patterns and the fact that we decided to watch as much of the World Snooker Championship as possible in lieu of a holiday  (in person at the crucible, TV watching habits have a limited impact upon our travel plans).

We booked ourselves into an AirBnB near the city centre, which gave use our own apartment and that brief feeling of being a local as you share your common areas with people who actually live there. Plus a really nice welcome basket from the owner filled with jams and those hard things that look like bread.

Unfortunately it rained while we were in Milan, but that is something that can be expected. When you take your holiday after the end of summer you're always rolling the weather dice and you know that any nice weather you do get is residual and left over from the summer you chose not to holiday during. But as the old saying goes, when life gives you lemons, take those lemon skins and stitch them together into a makeshift fruit umbrella. I think that's how it goes.

In this case, our makeshift fruit umbrella was one of those open top tour buses. Something we had never done while on holiday was ride around on an open top bus, but as it turns out, they have a canopy style roof for when it rains so you can still enjoy the sights, albeit the somewhat much greyer sights. Also, open top buses are perhaps the most touristy thing it is possible to do and I needed to balance out that brief local feeling.

Due to being on a loop and being intended to allow hopping on and off, open top bus tickets last for a period of days and cover all of the routes, so we took advantage and traveled all of the routes. Including the one that visited all of the sporting attractions like the football pitch and the local teams headquarters or whatever you would call the building adorned with footballers labelled with one of the teams names.

It wasn't all rain and buses, we actually got off the buses in some locations and some of the days, the weather was quite nice. Here was a... building we visited. I really need to start taking notes.

I don't have a story about this picture, I just like it. I like how you can see some of the actual street the photograph is situated on around it. It isn't the same location behind it, but that didn't stop me from enjoying this image while I was just trawling through my photographs looking for things to share, so I decided that I would.

So yes, a quiet year for holidays abroad, but no matter, I'm sure we'll get to visit lots of places in 2020...