Summer Holidays

[Bruce Rioja]

Next year's holiday's sorted. Playing golf in Marbella. Splendid!

Jammy bugger - I always get kidthwarted.

It's on my must-do list, Fella. Anyway, won't little miss be wanting to holiday with her pals before too long?

[Worthy4England]

Next year's holiday's sorted. Playing golf in Marbella. Splendid!

Jammy bugger - I always get kidthwarted.

It's on my must-do list, Fella. Anyway, won't little miss be wanting to holiday with her pals before too long?

Little Miss is already in the flown the coop category - it's Little Master that's the problem.

[TANGODANCER]

Next year's holiday's sorted. Playing golf in Marbella. Splendid!

Lucky you. Loved wandering around the old town area. Never stayed there but have in San Pedro de Alcantara which is just down the coast a tad. Will you be choosing your yacht in Puerta Banus while you're there? Some of em must cost more than the Reebok.

[TANGODANCER]

And now Bruce, just got a bolloxing off the wife who says I'm definitely losing it. We have stayed in Benalmadena at Hotel Bali. Remember now, and if you're stuck for something to do one evening, take a short taxi ride down to Carihuela. Delightful little place and one night we sat in a bar there with the sea just a few yards away hearing the tide wash gently in, drinking lumumbas (cold chocolate and brandy) and listening to Spanish music. Sublime.

[Bruce Rioja]

Next year's holiday's sorted. Playing golf in Marbella. Splendid!

Lucky you. Loved wandering around the old town area. Never stayed there but have in San Pedro de Alcantara which is just down the coast a tad. Will you be choosing your yacht in Puerta Banus while you're there? Some of em must cost more than the Reebok.

In order to disguise the cost, one of the lads has told his Mrs that we're just going to Fuengirola for a few days. The lying toad!

[bobo the clown]

Next year's holiday's sorted. Playing golf in Marbella. Splendid!

Lucky you. Loved wandering around the old town area. Never stayed there but have in San Pedro de Alcantara which is just down the coast a tad. Will you be choosing your yacht in Puerta Banus while you're there? Some of em must cost more than the Reebok.

In order to disguise the cost, one of the lads has told his Mrs that we're just going to Fuengirola for a few days. The lying toad!

Ah ... lies & decit. The backbone of any successful marriage.

[jimbo]

Next year's holiday's sorted. Playing golf in Marbella. Splendid!

Lucky you. Loved wandering around the old town area. Never stayed there but have in San Pedro de Alcantara which is just down the coast a tad. Will you be choosing your yacht in Puerta Banus while you're there? Some of em must cost more than the Reebok.

Speaking of yachts, saw Abramovich's yacht Eclipse in Port Vell in Barca last week. Absolutely huge!

[Montreal Wanderer]

Next year's holiday's sorted. Playing golf in Marbella. Splendid!

With Tom Watson?

[boltonboris]

Rotterdam sounds like "ferry terminal" at the end of that list.

True, but if finishing in Bruges (a truly stunning little place) then why travel up to Rotterdam for the boat when you're right by Zeebrugge?

Or rail it to Antwerp for some top scran

[Bijou Bob]

Just returned from a long weekend in South West Wales (Tenby /St David's area). I've never spent much time down there before, but as a family centre for a summer holiday if and when the weather's good, I think it's unsurpassable. Incredible, safe, clean beaches, some lovely pubs and extremely reasonable to eat out.

[Prufrock]

Got back last night from Cyprus. Rents, our kid and I. Really enjoyed it. We're all growed-up now, so we escaped the screaming kids and the daft entertainment round the pool. Sat around in the sun, cooling off in the sea, few drinks at night, repeat. He's almost outgrown stroppy teenagerdom finally, so we went off and did quite a lot of brother stuff (I whooped him at pool, table tennis, and shuffleboard - at which I discovered I am a pro- and he comprehensively dicked me at tennis). Relaxed, feel really fit (playing two hours of tennis a day in 35 degree heat will do that to you) and I have a human being for a brother! Splendid.

We did a couple of excursions one long day, one half day cruise, one night cruise. The first was an extended trip up a hill to a monastery. I don't know why people do these things. Every year a parent insists we sit on a bus for hours to look at a church. This one is apparently one of the richest monasteries in the world due to being given a load of land when the Turks invaded, so that the owners wouldn't have to pay as much tax (they taxed those who wouldn't convert to Islam according to how much land they owned. To get around this, the Cypriots gave their land to the church). When the Turks went the church generously decided to keep the land anyway. They used the money to deck out the chapel in a style similar to what I imagine Puff Diddly's downstairs lavatory looks like. Elton John would have said, 'come on lads, is that not a bit much?'. And said rolling-in-mullah monastery charged you a fiver to get in, and a further fiver to go in their museum. Very Christian, lads. Furthermore our tour-guide was a fully paid-up nutter whose mother had walked four hours that morning to the very same monastery to pay pilgrimage. Our tour-guide explained how because so many people had been cured by walking past the covered up idol of the Virgin Mary, which had been blessed by one of the apostles, lots of people went their to pray for sick loved ones hoping for their own miracle. Note those lovely cocksure indicative verbs !

The rest of that trip was spent stopping off in various tiny Cypriot villages, trying their coffee (horrid, but then I don't like coffee!), their tea (not proper tea of course, weird fruit ones, but tasty all the same), their food (pretty awesome, a sort of cross between Moussaka and Macaroni cheese a personal fave), their sweets (A-MA-ZING, apparently Turkish delight is actually Cypriot, and they had all sorts of flavours of that, and sugared almonds, OMNOM), and their booze (Commandaria - kinda sherry like, v nice; and Zivania, fook me, like firewater, you get a liking for it though).

We also did two boat trips. We do a lot of boat trips on holiday. They tend to be pretty standard fayre. These were fantastic. If anybody is going to Paphos, go on these trips, I implore you. I can't remember the name of the company but the boat was called the Ocean Flyer, and it is the same company who have the big pirate ship in the harbour, so you can't miss them!

We were picked up from the hotel by an English guy who'd left a well-paid IT job and moved out there to drive coaches, who told the same jokes over and over again, but was a good guy (and let me pinch a couple of smokes on the evening trip too) and taken out on a fantastic boat. Brand new, £10m job. Great entertainment, great crew, good food, fantastic. On the sunset one we had a great time spent with 7 Russians, only one of whom, their translater, spoke English. My mother could start a conversation with a Trappist monk!

Anyway, I had a cracking time.

Also, Worthy, I saw somewhere else you are going to Rhodes. If you're going to Rhodes Town, you're gonna have a good time. We had a great time there a few years back.

[TANGODANCER]

Glad you had a great time Pru. Your bit about the Russians made me laugh; we once spent our last night at a Spanish hotel not bothering going to bed. Got a big circle of folk: Brits, Frenchies, Spaniards, Germans and a Welshman, who insisted only neanderthals still spoke Welsh, all jabbering away, nobody really understanding each other, laughing our bollox off at Lord knows what and having a ball. Boat trips are ace, once went on a big deisel-powered catamaran out to Catalina Island in California, a boatman's paradise, and had a day and night there then sailed back, Tremendous.

[Prufrock]

This translator was there to look after their kids. When we first got on the boat he had taken them off to have a look round and so wasn't there. The grandfather of their family tried to ask my mum if she minded if he smoked. He spoke no English. My mum had no idea what he was saying. She finally twigged and tried to explain that this was fine. She speaks no Russian. He had no idea what she was saying! They had a conversation for a good five mins whether neither knew what the other meant. Finally, through the international language of mime we got there. Lots of smiling and laughing. My mum then leaned in, looked him in the eye and said, "Well that's was hard work wasn't it?"

[Bruce Rioja]

Was thinking earlier, in four years time I'll reach 'the landmark'. Also in four years time the Olympics will be in Rio. Now there's an idea

[Bijou Bob]

Was thinking earlier, in four years time I'll reach 'the landmark'. Also in four years time the Olympics will be in Rio. Now there's an idea

Gotta say you're looking great for 56 Bruce

[Bruce Rioja]

Was thinking earlier, in four years time I'll reach 'the landmark'. Also in four years time the Olympics will be in Rio. Now there's an idea

Gotta say you're looking great for 56 Bruce

This Sea Turtle's not at all impressed with your work there, Bob, and I have to add - neither am I!

[Annoyed Grunt]

Have a lovely time Colin! Will be quiet without you here Hope you have set your video to record all that crucial TV you will be missing!

Yes, I did....couldn't miss Geordie Shore.

feck me, it was hot out there.

[Worthy4England]

Also, Worthy, I saw somewhere else you are going to Rhodes. If you're going to Rhodes Town, you're gonna have a good time. We had a great time there a few years back.

Glad you had a great time, me.

Paphos has some great food on the harbour - absolutely bombed out restaurants - but it's possibly a bit late to mention that. Mind you we should have been able to remember it anyhoo.

I'll try and explain the "trip to a monastery day" from the other side of the fence. Over a 14 day period, sat there keeping an eye on you sprogs as you maurade around the pool/beach/waterpark, obliviously splashing 18 stone, innocent and now angry, Russian mafia types, there comes a point when a break has to be taken (I didn't have a pool/beach holiday from the last one with my ahem, "rents" at about 14, until I got wed at 35, as it's largely not what I want to do). So it's not really for your benefit, it's for ours. When you look around these places there's generally:

1) Monasteries - lots of these make their own firewater - they also have shade
2) Archaelogical Sites - These often have neither shade nor their own firewater
3) The Old Fort - sometimes have shade, generally don't have firewater, as pi$$ed and cannon don't make good bedfellows.

And often not much else. So on the balance of shade/firewater, monastries win.

I did once haul the entire clan over to a monastry in Albania, from Corfu. The intention being that they might spot how the "other half live". I nearly succeded when they witnessed some youngish kids gutting a cow which was splayed between two trees and the fact the young Albanian kids were delighted with amounts that my kids wouldn't have counted as currency. I suspect on balance the massage didn't last too long.

I'll almost certainly have a chug or two round Rhodes Town, then off to Faliraki for some action*

*This is a lie

[Prufrock]

That had slipped our mind! We were staying just outside Paphos, so we weren't there every day. The harbour was nice though. They've recently built a coastal path from where we were along to the harbour which was very picturesque.

On the trips front, we got a brochure, all wrote down our top three choices, and did the most popular. Very democratic. Rents both had the monastery trip down. I had the same trip but going around in jeeps. We concluded we might as well do the one they wanted, as it was largely the same. I didn't twig that the only reason I had picked that trip was because it was in a jeep! Jeeps are cool. This is well-known. It was my own fault really.

I can see some logic to your monastery policy. Certainly the archaeological sites ought to be ruled out. They also tend to be inland, so not only is there no shade, it is even hotter. We went to a couple in Paphos, which are both really hyped, and thought both were rubbish and couldn't wait to leave. This may or may not be related to going at midday with not a drop of firewater inside us! There still must be something better than monasteries though! If you've seen one...

I'm not totally averse to appreciating the beauty of churches, York Minster is shit-hot, and there was a Duomo in Siciliy that was similarly 'sick'. This was just a small church like any other, aside from the Puff Daddy levels of bling. 8 bastard hours round trip for that!

Albania sounds awesome, I'm normally the one trying to get us going abroad from abroad. I wanted to do a trip from Rhodes to Turkey, vetoed. Surprisingly the tour company's day trip to Damascus wasn't running this year.

We drove through Faliraki. Wow. Looked like sunny Blackpool if Blackpool had decided its current classy approach was outdated and it needed more mini-golf and kebab shops. Rhodes town is lovely. Harbour very similar to Paphos, lots of good food, a lot of really good bars (we watched the world cup in a cracking Norweigan bar). Also plenty of shops for Mrs Worthy if she likes doing that weird thing women do, 'Oh look, it's Next, over here. Let's go in and compare prices of the same stuff they have at home. Only I don't understand the exchange rate, so I'll just assume 1 euro=1 pound. Gawd, it's jolly expensive. Oh look Debenhams...'.

[Worthy4England]

Also plenty of shops for Mrs Worthy if she likes doing that weird thing women do, 'Oh look, it's Next, over here. Let's go in and compare prices of the same stuff they have at home. Only I don't understand the exchange rate, so I'll just assume 1 euro=1 pound. Gawd, it's jolly expensive. Oh look Debenhams...'.

Mrs Worthy does something similar, but generally to the exclusion of the shops we have at home. There will be an "I've found this little jewellery shop" incident, one evening when I've had 5 beers. I will manfully hold out, just long enough to ensure there aren't two.