Catedral de Pedra, Canela
Canela is a pretty and picturesque town in the South of Brazil, located at 837 meters above sea level in a region called Serra Gaucha ( Gaucho Highlands) or Regiao das Hortensias ( Hydrangeas Region) named after its beautiful blue Hydrangeas flowers that frame roads and landscapes throughout the spring and summer months. Located in the state of Rio Grande do Sul ( it means Great Southern River) which is the Southernmost estate of Brazil, bordering with Argentina and Uruguay. Canela
Pigeon Point – Tobago
17/02/15 to 03/03/15 – Standing on our hotel balcony and looking across to a sea view made up of blue skies, coconut trees, and a pleasant sea breeze, we are so happy to be back in Tobago. It feels like an old friend. Brian and I visited this Caribbean Island in March/2013 for a one week holiday, but this time we will stay for 2 weeks and we are not alone, we have travelled here with our friends Mark and Marion.
The winter in the UK had taken its toll on us, we were both badly needing
Cheers to the Bride
According to Wikipedia a Hen Do or a Bachelorette party is a party held for a woman who is about to get married. It is modeled after the Bachelor party, historically a dinner given by the bridegroom to his friends shortly before his wedding. Hen parties were uncommon until the mid-1980’s and they are not at all common in Brazil.
As it turned out the Bride was already married when we set off for a long weekend of debauchery in Barcelona mid May 2014, but this Hen Do was not,
2 – 4 of May 2014 – We attended the wedding (Take One) of our lovely Brazilian niece Caroline, to Englishman Benjamin on the beautiful Isle Of Wight (IOW) just off the South coast of England.
The happy couple met in 2007 in Bournemouth, Dorset. Ben was in Bournemouth attending a friend’s stag do (bachelor party) and Carol lived with us not far from Bournemouth, and on that particular night, she was out with friends clubbing in Bournemouth. I believe it took Ben few beers
October 24-26 – To celebrate my birthday, my husband Brian booked us into a gorgeous cliff top hotel by Mullion Cove in West Cornwall for a long weekend. We left home on a Friday morning and travelled there by car from Dorset. It took us about 4 hours to get there, we crossed the County of Devon and arrived at North Cornwall, Truro ( the only city in Cornwall) in time for lunch at the lovely Blue Bar Restaurant, nicely placed at a horseshoe shaped
Since we were going to be in Rome for a whole week, we thought a day trip to Naples to visit Mount Vesuvius and the Ancient Roman town of Herculaneum would be doable, and worth the travel.
If you remember from my blog post on Rome (previous post), our Rome apartment was very near the Termini train station and therefore it was rather easy for us to catch the 7:30 trains to Naples.
There are significant fare differences between the various categories of trains and there is an opportunity
We could probably have done a better job of recording all the incidental costs which we have just captured here under Misc…. things like food and drink, taxis, tours, haircuts, massages, ice creams etc etc etc, but that will have to be an improvement for future blogs as we just didn’t really record these as we went along. All the major travel and accommodation costs are in here though, and the total is about right.
We could have saved on this amount and cut corners,
DAy 9, Sunday 02/02/2014 – We were not sad to leave Patong as a mini bus pulled up to our hotel to take us to the Ferry Port where we boarded the Ferry Cruiser boat to Ko Phi Phi Island ( we purchased our Ferry ticket to Ko Phi Phi Don a day before in one of the many tour agencies in Patong, it also included the minibus pick up from our hotel). We boarded the Ferry boat after queueing for a little while to collect a stamp like a ticket that we then attach
Day 7 ( Friday, 31/01/14) – Our 2 weeks backpacking adventure continued, now to the South of Thailand on the Andaman Sea. We flew from Chiang Mai to the large Island of Phuket.
From the Airport in Phuket we took a minibus to Patong Beach, arriving at our hotel tired and hungry at about 4 pm. Also annoyed with the mini bus driver, for stopping randomly at a place where they were clearly keen to sell excursions etc. to all of us when all we wanted was to be taken to our hotels with no
Day 6 (30/01/2014) – Our last full day in Chiang Mai. 
I told my sister Angelita, before our trip to Thailand, that I would love any opportunity to spend time with elephants at an elephant sanctuary. We had not pre-booked anywhere to see elephants, so it was hard to find a place that was not already full. Luckily, however, we managed to get a morning at the Ran-Ton Elephant Camp, not our first choice, but I had read good reviews of this place, where they look after