(Mega)yacht-spotting in Antibes with Hazel

Back from a very lazy and very hot and sunny weekend in the south of France, staying at Hazel’s dad’s place.

On both Saturday (photos) and Sunday (photos) we did manage to walk down into and around Antibes old town without really buying anything!

Instead we gazed out into the blue of the Cote d’Azur, paddled on the pebbly town beach and marvelled at megayacht A in the bay – very James Bond. I didn’t know such things existed. It made the other boats in the marina look small.


Cote d’Azur – Antibes

On Sunday we explored the Picasso museum, walked around the marina to the Fort Carré, and totally missed stage 2 of the Tour de France as it passed through the town.

The local supermarchés provided lunches and an al fresco Saturday evening dinner on the terrace, and on Sunday we ate a late lunch at Square Sud on the Place de Gaulle before returning to London via bus 200 to Nice, Aer Lingus Nice to London Gatwick and First Capital Connect train from Gatwick to Farringdon.

Libya Explored

Slowly digesting my 14 days in Libya courtesy of Peregrine Adventures.

The Greek and Roman ruins of the coast were almost too impressive in their extent and had benefitted from rebuilding/restoration by the Italians. Similarly, the rock art in the Tadrart Acacus is in an amazing condition considering that some of it is 14,000 years old. Ghadames felt like a dying town – a very melancholy place. At least Ghat had been put out of its misery.

Panoramic view of the theatre, Sabratha
Panoramic view of the theatre, Sabratha

The highs were:

  • drinking in the Milky Way in the desert silence of the Tadrart Acacus
  • walking around the empty streets of Ghat’s old medina (although the absence of our local guide contributed to the experience)
  • Pippi, Lois and Sybl

The lows were:

  • the unprofessional behaviour of Peregrine’s local guide
  • ending the trip feeling that it has been overpriced and that I’d got extremely poor value for money

Lessons for me:

  • avoid local leader-only tours
  • trust my gut instincts on value for money

I’m certainly not travelling with Peregrine/Gecko’s again. Libya’s worth visiting though, especially if you liked Syria – it has a very similar feel.

Here’s an Excel spreadsheet showing what I actually spent in Libya, on top of the cost of the tour, flights and getting a certified Arabic translation of my passport details for the Libyan visa.

And, our reading list.

(And finally – July – the Photos & Notes.)

Lovely weekend at Dinedor

Train there and back to spend a couple of days with my dad working on his Dore Abbey website (now up to No 4 in the Google rankings!).

On Saturday we also managed a trip out to Forty Acres to admire the new indoor train set up and continued along the Golden Valley to Peterchurch for a fantastic meal at Food For Thought.

Sunday was a beautiful sunny spring day, which prompted a lovely walk along the footpath through the woods and fields that line the river Wye to Holme Lacy. Our return route brought us back along the old railway line and past the ghost of the village station. Daffodils, primroses and catkins were out, adding yellows and greens to the first buds on the trees.

Very therapeutic.

Happily married

12.30pm at Islington Register Office….

Mary Loosemore and Phil Gyford
Mary Loosemore and Phil Gyford

… followed by a fantastic lunch at Vinoteca, Farringdon….

Wedding Lunch Menu, Vinoteca
Wedding Lunch Menu, Vinoteca

with cake by Jean

Mary & Phil's wedding cake, by Jean
Mary & Phil’s wedding cake, by Jean

But still Mary Loosemore.

Photos

Central Asia Overland – now fully Flickred

I do seem to have spent an awful lot of time getting the photos from my last trip (Central Asia Overland, with Explore) onto Flickr… but they’re all up there now, in my imaginatively titled Central Asia Overland set.

All (all!) that’s left for me to do is:

  1. Geotag/map the photos I took in Xinjiang, Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan. The Yahoo! mapping is so frustratingly woeful[1] that I can only cope with geotagging one place at a time… Transliteration and the original-versus-Soviet/Beijing place name variations don’t help.
  2. Improve the tagging. I’m sure I’ve got lots of spelling variations myself… next time I’ll be more rigorous at logging the tags I chose, and checking past conventions, before I start.
  3. Delete some. I’m hopeless at picking which is the best out of any particular bunch. For example, Registan square in Samarkand, the Kalon mosque in Bukhara, not to mention Khiva…..
  4. Defrost. With London’s daytime temperatures hovering around zero our spare room-cum-office is freezing. I’ve been sitting at my computer clad in 2 pairs of socks plus ancient roof terrace gardening slippers, four top layers including fleece and vast woolly jumper, scarf and hat…. and occasionally resorting to wrapping up in the spare duvet too.

[1] This is the most zoomed in map for Samarkand (which you won’t find if you search for “Samarkand”) – see what I mean…

Flickr Map - Samarkand
Flickr Map – Samarkand

(and remember the Flickr/Yahoo! mapping for Bhutan?)