Home again

Back to Southampton early this morning and after a final breakfast on board (no need to eat again until October methinks) we were away up the M's 271, 27, 3, 25, 26 and 20 to home, making it back indoors before half past eleven.

Apologies to anyone who has been bothering to stop by on this site over the last week or so, my blogging seems to have drifted off rather in the second half of the holiday. To pick up where we left off, Rome was hot, again, and Nicky and I both lobbed a coin in the fountain so we should be back there sometime soon. We went on the open top bus tour after lunch and having been told by our tour guide that there are 13 obelisks in Rome we managed to bag photos of 6 of them. Jake, Nanny and Grandad enjoyed their tour of the Coliseum, although again struggled a little with the heat - understandable given that we saw a time and temperature display just after lunch recording 42 degrees Celsius. We bought a clock from a shop in one of the lanes inbetween the Pantheon and the Trevi Fountain. Appropriately enough it has Roman numerals around the face, although surprisingly it has IV rather than IIII - maybe it's a British Roman numeral thing to use IIII and not a Roman Roman numeral thing?

After Rome came Sardinia. John managed to walk into town and have a little explore, but the rest of us didn't get very far and enjoyed lazing around on board after three full days of touring (Monte Carlo followed by Pisa/Florence followed by Rome). The day after was another sea day, so more sunbathing, sporting challenges (mostly table tennis with a little bit of shuffleboard thrown in) and reading - during this holiday I polished off Numberland and Dave Gorman's Unchained America, both taken with me, along with three books from the ship's library - a John Humphreys moan about the English language, and the two most recent books from Kathy Reichs - move over Scarpetta, Tempe Brennan is the new grave-digger in town!

On Tuesday we arrived in Cadiz. Jake stayed on board, but the rest of us enjoyed a pleasant stroll around the historic town, and on Wednesday we were back to Lisbon. John, Nicky and I took a (scary) taxi up to the top of town to the main shopping centre and then walked back down from there to the old town. Last time we went to Lisbon we were really impressed, but this time not so much. Difficult to pinpoint exactly why, but just didn't come across as well as last time.

Thursday was Vigo. Not much to say about the town - I don't think there is any particularly good reason for stopping there other than providing a staging point before the return leg across the Bay of Biscay (which was a bit friskier than on the way out but still not too bad). Our last day at sea was taken up with a final trip to Johnny Rocket's, chilling out, packing, our last dinner and farewell to our waiters Fidel and Marco, and a final trip to the casino, which was the liveliest we'd seen it. I tried really hard to hand over my final $50 but the croupiers kept giving my chips back to me, so after an hour or so, I cashed in with exactly the same amount as when I'd started.

As for the ship itself, Independence of the Seas is huge. This gives rise to two very noticeable points. Firstly, there are loads of facilities and all of a pretty high standard. Secondly, there are many thousands of people on board, and at times the numbers can be a little overwhelming, especially when it came to organising excursions, dining in the self service restaurant, or participating in a number of other activities. Also our overall impression was that Royal Caribbean seem to have decided with their ships that they want to cater to a new type of customer, who perhaps wouldn't previously have thought of cruising as the right holiday for them. A few years ago, I would probably have described us like that, but now I think that we are more suited to a more "traditional" approach to cruising, and whilst we will certainly be going on more cruise holidays, we may look at some different cruise lines next time around (as well, obviously, as looking forward to a Disney cruise - hopefully in the not too distant future!).

As always, one of the tasks for the last day of our cruise was selecting which photos to purchase from the many taken by the cruise photographers during the fortnight. Eventually we managed to get the selected set down to seven, and I've just been scanning them in to the Mac. Here we are enjoying the last formal night on board.

Cruising part IV

And so to Rome. We are on coach 35 heading for Rome after another early start, and our tour guide is telling where and when to meet at the end of the day. Hopefully we will be getting about five and a half hours to explore Rome on our own. Jake is on another bus with Nanny and Grandad to visit the Colosseum - more stops and less walking for them.

Yesterday we were in Livorno and took the tour to Pisa and Florence. The leaning tower was great - lots of the comedy photos were taken (the funniest thing being seeing the long lines of people stood with their arms stretched out - "left a bit, right a bit, ok don't move!").

Our first stop in Florence was a Trattoria in Piazza Santa Croce, and then we tried and failed to get on the open top bus tour. Still it turned out that the city centre is very compact and we were able to see some fantastic sights - the Duomo is just breathtaking.

We didn't get long enough to see everything, but another city has just been added to the must revisit list.

Must stop now, our guide is advising us about where to go in Rome.

Cruising part III

Getting the train from Villefranche to Monaco may be good value (13 euros return for the three of us) but it's not exactly a timesaver. We had to queue for about 20 minutes for the tickets and then about the same again for the train here, and now we are waiting almost an hour for a train back again.

Monte Carlo is as ridiculously affluent as ever and I have a large number of photos to prove it - Ferraris, Rolls Royces, Bentleys, and mega-yachts a-plenty.

Jake has been kept going with croissants, milkshakes, ice cream etc, but true to form he doesn't enjoy the heat and so we are looking forward to getting back to the air conditioned splendour of Independence. At least for the next couple of days he will have coaches to take him to and from the sightseeing.

Talk has already turned to plans for the next holiday, as concern is mounting that we won't have any active countdowns once we get home. Apparently the next cruise will either be Celebrity or Disney.

(By the way, a rather lovely golden retriever has just come and sat near us at the station café - Nicky is finding it hard to restrain herself.)

Cruising part II

It's just after five and we are somewhere mid-Med on our way to the South of France. The list of what I've done so far today extends to being pampered at the barbershop, eating, reading my book and playing Jake at table-tennis and shuffleboard. It's a hard life!

As we have another formal night tonight I decided, based on John's recommendation, to have the 10 o'clock appointment at the barber - he nobly agreed to get up earlier for the nine o'clock slot. 100 bucks seems like rather a lot for a shave, but it was a whole hour of pampering including massage and facial treatments.

Yesterday was Gibraltar, and after my initial comments about it getting warmer all the time we actually had some rain (normal sunshine service has been resumed today). We didn't opt for a tour of the rock - we went to visit the cheeky monkeys last time we were here, so we took the shuttle into town. Not much to blog home about - reminds me of the Channel Islands in that home but not quite home way. Highlights were a trip to M&S (!), two new PSP / DS games for Jake, and an opportunity for Nicky to reacquaint the credit card which her favourite jewellery shop. It had moved since we were last in Gib, but that didn't stop Nicky's retail compass from homing in.

After a restful sea day today we have a few "busy" ones coming up. Tomorrow we are in Villefranche (and going to Monte Carlo), the next day is Livorno (going to Florence and Rome) and the day after that is Civitavecchia (going to Rome). Better make sure that the camera batteries are well charged.

John and I went to the casino last night for some roulette. Without going into too many details I can confirm that I have some new lucky numbers - 9 and 12, and that I came out ahead. No doubt I'll be giving it all back soon enough.

One other thing - Nicky has seen some dolphins, and has the photos to prove it - ambition achieved.

Cruising part I

And so the cruising has begun in earnest, and we are en route to our first stop in Gibraltar tomorrow, where hopefully I will be able to send this post.

We left an overcast and occasionally rainy Southampton on Saturday afternoon and we're now on our way down the Iberian peninsular having traversed a splendidly calm Bay of Biscay. With every mile travelled, the sun shines a little bit brighter and the mercury expands some more. Jeans have been relegated to the bottom of the wardrobe and its shorts all the way from now on.

As always with cruise (and lots of other) holidays the first 24 hours or so were a little frenetic, with kids' club registrations, getting unpacked, organising excursions, and, most important of all, leaving the cares of the world behind us for a while. Now the pace is slowing down just so, and as I type we're all happily doing our own thing - I'm diarising away, having just come back to our cabin from a couple of hours of sunbathing and reading up on deck, Nicky and Margaret have returned from their pedicures and are chatting on the balcony, John is snoozing / reading over the way in their cabin, and Jake is off with his new mates Tom and Alex - no idea what exactly they are up to but I would guess a shortlist of table tennis, arcade or ice cream!

Yesterday was John and Margaret's 40th wedding anniversary, and a jolly nice time was had by all with champagne, canapes, chocolates, cake and more champagne.

Other highlights so far - a few games of shuffleboard and table tennis, our first trip to Johnny Rockets and my first, sadly unsuccessful, trip to the casino. Must improve - clearly need more practice.

Pre holiday

We're getting to the "pre holiday rules apply" stage in our house. This means that I'm wearing a pair of old tracksuit trousers this evening, as everything else is either currently in the wash or no longer allowed to be worn as per the pre holiday rules. It's omelette and chips for tea, as the pre holiday rule of no more food shopping kicked in a few days ago. Oh yes, and the other, rather more annoying rule will be enforced later this evening - get the work PC back out of the bag and carry on in a vain attempt to get everything up straight before fleeing the office for a couple of weeks.

N&J enjoyed a visit from the Pitt family on Monday this week, and unfortunately I wasn't able to get home in time to see them, so I am making do with Kate's excellent daily blog. Does rather put my occasional ramblings on here to shame, both in terms of quality and frequency of output - anyone would think that Kate was a professional!

As to today's blog question, it's a good one, and no doubt a number of others have been flinging boulders in my path for some time now, mostly at work. Having said that, the truth of the matter is that I probably put most of them there myself, which makes it all the more tragic that I continue to jump over them even after they've been cleared away!

Letters of note

One of the feeds that I follow on Twitter is from Pixar, the wonderful people who brought us Toy Story 3. Understandably, a large amount of the recent stuff has been promotion for the film, but who can blame them! However, they did retweet an entry which had a link to a site called Letters of Note, which turns out to be rather fun.

The link in question was to a letter written by Pete Docter (bigwig at Pixar and director of Monsters Inc and Up) in reply to a piece of fan mail. It's great - have a look here.

Finking about Fibonacci

Driving home from Brighton today the circus / funfair was setting up in the park, and for some reason it reminded me of a trip to the funfair when I was little. I really can't remember very much about it, but I think that it was on the playing fields over the road from our house, and swingboats were almost certainly involved. What I do have a vague recollection of is coming home with prizes: a goldfish in a polythene bag and possibly a 7" vinyl record - how bizarre! Maybe my parents can help me with this and let me know if I am remembering correctly or if I am managing to piece together fragments of separate events.

Anyway, it was great to see Mum and Dad at the weekend at Bec's and entertaining to hear that Dad has already got the book that I have my eye on for holiday reading. As it seemed to get his seal of approval I have put my order in with Amazon and it should be arriving any day now. Apparently, one of the topics to look forward to in this popular maths tome deals with the Fibonacci sequence, a numerical sequence easy to grasp but with some fascinating properties. The first two numbers in the sequence are 0 and 1, and then new numbers are added onto the sequence by taking the sum of the two previous numbers. So, the sequence goes 0, 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21 and so on.

The particular property being considered is that if you take any number in the sequence and square it, then compare the answer with the product of the two numbers on either side of it in the sequence, the difference is always 1.

For example, 5 squared is 25, and 3 x 8 = 24 - difference 1. Similarly 8 squared is 64 and 5 x 13 = 65 - difference 1, and so on. Also worthy of note is that as you move along the sequence, the differences alternate between +1 and -1.

Being the fully paid up member of the amateur nerd society that I am, I have just bemused the rest of my family by writing up a proof about this and e-mailing it over to Dad!

The Sloop John B

When I change radio stations in the car, they tend to stay changed. The key determining factor for me seems to be what I listen to in the morning. I went through a fairly long phase of pretending to be a proper grown up and listening to the Today programme on R4, and this meant that I usually caught the 6:30 comedy on the way home, along with other random programmes when driving around from meeting to meeting during the day - Ed Reardon would often be a late morning treat!

But now I have acknowledged the fact that I'm not really a grown up at all and stopped listening to R4. The main reason is that I now start the day with the Chris Evans breakfast show on R2 (perhaps this is a rather bad sign and I really should start drawing a pension any day now). But, even once the breakfast show is long gone, I don't manage to change channels very much, although I do occasionally draw the line at some of Jeremy Vine's lunchtime nonsense and turn off.

R2 tends to go a bit off the safe popular hits piste at 7 o'clock with a selection of Jazz, Folk, Country and so on programmes. Tonight we had a programme from the Cambridge Folk Festival, introduced by Mike Harding amongst others (wasn't he a comedian in a former life?) and one of the acts that they featured was a group called the Fisherman's Friends (from Port Isaac - been there).

One of the songs that they sang was the Sloop John B. Whenever I hear that song, I am transported back to the mid eighties and my first year at grammar school. We had a mad and slightly eccentric music teacher (there were two, and they were both mad and eccentric, but at least this one was mad in a nice way) and quite often our music lessons would consist of nothing more than handing round the song books and having a jolly old sing-a-long, accompanied by our teacher on the piano. Looking back, I remember enjoying this a great deal, and yet I still get a lump in my throat when I hear that song. I think that I must have been having a bad day one time when we sang it, and that the enormity of moving on from the cosy, know the ropes world of junior school to the scary, small fish in big pond world of senior school was weighing heavy on my mind, and I did have to stifle a tear or two as we sang the chorus:

Let me go home

I want to go home

I feel so broke up

I want to go home.

The small matter of a quarter of a century or so has passed, but I still seem to have the occasional day just like that one.

TS3

OK, it has taken me a while to get around to posting about Toy Story 3, but better late than never. In some ways it probably helps because I usually come out of a movie thinking that it is the best one I've ever seen, but then start to get some perspective on it as time passes.

There was definitely a mixture of nervousness and excitement about going to see the third instalment of the adventures of Buzz, Woody et al, as is always the case with sequels, but this was tempered by the fact that since bursting onto the feature film scene 15 years ago with TS1, Pixar really haven't had a bad movie in all that time. And, it's amazing to think that it has been 10 years since TS2, so this is the first new Toy Story story to be released in Jake's lifetime! We took great delight in being ahead of the UK curve in seeing the second film, as we saw at the end of 1999 during our Las Vegas holiday, a few months before it was released in the UK.

Anyway, as to the film, my review can probably be encapsulated in three words: it was fantastic. Once again it was a film with a great story, lots of fun, and full of heart. Tinged with an undercurrent of sadness (people moving on, toys being neglected ...) it still managed to be positive and upbeat.

Libby Purves wrote an excellent piece in the Times about it last week (I would link to it here but the meanies have started to charge for online content). Whilst I don't really go for the political analogies, I thought that she'd got it spot on with this observation: "In their prison-break adventure they all put aside self, take risks for the group and nobly attempt to save even their fascist overlord. When it seems that they are doomed to the martyrs' fire, they tremble but quietly reach out hands to one another, knowing that what will survive of them it love. Inspiring stuff." And not a dry eye in the house either!

In other Disney movie news, it has been announced that Disney are selling Miramax, looking to concentrate their efforts on the family movie end of the market under their more recognisable labels, presumably in part to tie in more closely with other parts of the corporation (i.e. opportunities for merchandise and related theme park attractions). Got me to thinking that probably a fair few people hadn't realised that Disney owned Miramax anyway, so here are a few more things that are part of the Disney family (at least I think they are - don't quote me on any of this!!):

1. Spiderman - as per one of my previous posts, Disney have acquired Marvel, and hence own Spiderman and a few thousand other Marvel Superheroes.

2. Monday Night Football - we all know how huge (American) Football is in the US, well Disney owns ESPN, the sports network, who pay huge amounts of money for the privilege of showing live NFL action.

3. Desperate Housewives - Disney also owns the ABC broadcasting network (of which ESPN is a part I think) and the tales of Wisteria Lane are one of ABC's hit shows.

4. Kermit and Miss Piggy - Disney acquired the Henson characters a while back and so added all of their characters to the Disney stable (personal favourites - Dr Bunsen Honeydew and Beaker!)

5. Woody and Buzz - may seem obvious but when they were first created, Woody and Buzz were not strictly Disney characters. Pixar was a separate company which had a film distribution deal with Disney. At one point once that deal ended it looked like Disney and Pixar may go their separate ways, but differences were ironed out (possibly thanks in part to the departure from Disney of Michael Eisner) and Disney acquired Pixar a few years back (making Steve Jobs - Mr Apple - one of Disney's biggest shareholders).