Summer Roundup (Part 1)

Keeping with the theme of my travels outside of Dubai, this Summer proved to be particularly active both travel-wise and work-wise. 

Just before the holiday season I headed to Seoul for my regular trip to see various clients. This was somewhat closer to the Summer period than visits in previous years so was certainly hotter than normal although by contrast with the blazing heat of Dubai it was actually quite pleasant. 

I then embarked on a three week trial before immediately heading off to Nice to catch up with the family.

 This was our first stay in Nice (although we had previously past through it on the way to Marseille to watch England play Argentina in the Rugby World Cup) and it had direct flights from both London and Dubai so was a convenient starting point for our trip around France. 

We spent three nights sampling the cultural and culinary delights of central Nice before travelling across to Arles via Aix en Provence (where we visited the excellent  Cezanne exhibition). 

As with last year, we had decided to take a river cruise - this time up the Rhone from Arles to Lyon through Provence stopping at various historic towns along the way as well having a painting lesson in the “style” of Van Gogh in Arles (not sure I was particularly successful in mimicking his style although the rest of the family fared a lot better).

Particular highlights of the cruise included the Camargue and Avignon as well as the town of Viviers in the Ardeche before disembarking in Lyon. Similar to last year, we lowered the average age of the passengers by a significant number of years (or at least the kids did) but we had a terrific time exploring the Provençal countryside. Next stop Paris.

Night Boat to Cairo

 ….and speaking of returns to places I visited many years previously (as I was in the previous post), another recent trip (this time for a work event in October) was to Cairo where I was speaking at a conference. 

My previous visit was on the occasion of my 30th birthday during a period when I had embarked on quest to visit as many of the sites of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World as I could access. Whilst I did not manage to visit them all those I did included the remains of the Temple of Artemis at Ephesus (not a huge amount to see) and the site of Mausoleum at Halicarnassus (Bodrum) both of which were in  Turkey. However, my favourite (and the only one still standing) was the Great Pyramid at Giza just outside of Cairo which we visited during a holiday to Cyprus by taking a cruise to Egypt. 

I do not recall much about that trip other than a epic camel ride up to the Pyramid which provided a great view point demonstrating its impressive size (although the tunnel to its centre was  somewhat claustrophobic and E took some persuading to accompany me).

My visit this time took me through the teeming centre of Cairo. The Government  is building a new administrative capital outside the urban area to try to relive some of the pressure on space but for the time being the highways and byways of the city is a chaotic combination of honking cars and insouciant pedestrians who somehow coexist in the same space without an almost suicidal disregard for each other.

The venue for the conference was next to the Nile which although nearly as crowded as the roads was relatively calm and provided an impressive backdrop to our evening dinner. Whilst I did not manage to get to the Pyramids on this trip, it was a very enjoyable reminder of some of the cultural delights within Etsy access of Dubai.

Is it that time of year again?

 In fact, not only is that time of year where tradition has it that I will blog a post per day, but in fact I am 4 days late to the party having missed the usual kick off on the first of the month. It did not occur to me until today that I had neglected the start date mainly I suspect because I was off on my travels again although not for work but much more importantly to celebrate a major wedding anniversary. 

E. and I met up in Venice for a few days although the actual anniversary was a few weeks ago. This was my second trip, my first coming many moons ago during a youthful inter-railing trip with my mate J. We had travelled through Holland, Germany, and Austria with an extremely optimistic accommodation  budget of GBP15 per day with the  intention that when we arrived in the supposedly cheaper countries of Italy and Greece we could find somewhere suitable for GBP10 per day.

Even staying in the Lido on the mainland, this proved to be a challenge in Venice and despite staying in the cheapest campsite we could find, we were significantly eating into our financial resources.

We were also absolutely hopeless at putting up our tent (it had been borrowed from someone who had neglected to include the instructions so we had a assumed that the rods used to provide the frame of the tent needed to be hammered into the ground - this proved virtually impossible as the sun hardened earth was like concrete and the rods were quite thick so even with pouring our precious supplies of mineral water to soften the earth,  our efforts to create a stable structure were to  little avail and our 2 man tent had an alarming sag in the middle) and tempers were getting frayed when I spotted an identical model to our tent close by. 

That tent, however,  was around twice the capacity of ours due, it transpired when I asked the owner to give us some pointers, to the fact that the rods were supposed to be inserted in the material around the edge of the canvas to give it its shape (rather than being planted in to the ground) and the actual tethering of the tent was by hammering the tent pegs into the ground and tightening the chords. Genius. This transformed our tenting experience.

Nevertheless the cost of the campsite was significantly higher than our budget allowed which left roughly enough to take a vaporetto to St Mark’s square but not enough money to actually go into St Mark’s Basilica and the Doge’s Palace next door. This explained why St Mark’s square looked reasonably familiar but that the extraordinarily beautiful interior of the Church (and the treasures of the Doge’s Palace) rang no bells at all for me - a WhatsApp to J confirming that its was not simply poor memory on my part but a desire to eat last time we were in town that caused us to miss this visual treat.

E. and I more that made up for that this trip and our high step count over the 3 days we were there was testament to our vast intake of cultural delights - we also managed a trip to the Galleries d’Academicia and the Peggy Guggenheim Museum as well as the Opera - a terrific trip and I hope a good enough reason for delaying my participation on the blog per day challenge until today.

2024 Round up

After a frankly quite challenging 2023 which involved the loss of my Father and Father in law, 2024 was a chance to re-charge batteries although it also signalled some fairly major changes in life-style most notably V’s successful navigating her A levels and heading off to the UK to University and E moving back to the England as well to see more of her Mother and to help E to settle in. A also switched courses to doing an MSc, so all change!

In consequence, after the big Summer holiday recounted in earlier posts, I returned to Dubai on my own and - apart from a trip to Amsterdam for work where E and I managed to catch up in November and a trip back for the Christmas holidays spent in Bristol and Kent - it has mainly been about work for the last part of the year with some cycling thrown in for good measure (mainly the Spinneys build up rides and my weekly visits to the Mountain Bike trails at Mushrif Park).

The Summer holiday was obviously a major highlight although the lead up was quite stressful as I tried to plan for being away from the Office for a couple of months - re-allocating cases and reassuring clients that I was contactable if necessary. If that was not sufficient to raise my blood pressure then deciding that given the forthcoming reduction in numbers at home (and the escalating rentals in Dubai generally), we would also move to smaller premises also lent a certain frisson of excitement  to the Summer plans.

It is fair to say that our initial foray into the property market was not very successful (mainly I suspect due to my somewhat unrealistic budget and dabbling with moving back towards the seaside) - the contrast between our last move (some 7 years ago - where we relocated from near to the beach to the desert close to the kids school) could not have been more pronounced - pre-Pandemic there was no shortage of larger individual villas at relatively reasonable rentals whereas now there were plenty of new but very small places with no gardens and eye-watering prices.

In the end, we found somewhere relatively close by to our old place (actually closer to the the kids old school and near to where some friend’s of ours live)  - still expensive but a reasonable size (although as it turned out not sufficiently large to fit in our various possessions even after some downsizing) and in a nice quiet area.

Work wise - and apart from the challenges of reorganising my caseload due to the sabbatical - it has been very busy with expansion across the Middle East - including after much to-ing and fro-ing with the powers that be - into KSA and the first part of the year included a couple of trips to Saudi and my first trip back to Hong Kong for nearly 10 years (which also took in a trip to Beijing). 

The HK leg of the trip was particularly memorable as it coincided with a typhoon which certainly brought back some (dampish) memories of our 6 years there! Not a huge amount seems to have changed in the interim in terms of people although politically it is a very different place than the one I left in 2009.

I also managed a work trip back to London for the first time since the pandemic ended and was able to combine that with a trip to Kent so the Summer period was particularly busy with A levels for V. and moving/sabbatical planning.

In addition to doing her A levels and planning a move to the UK, V turned 18 -  a birthday that coincided with our River Cruise which I think pleased her - normally the timing means we are en route either to or from holiday destinations so at least part of her birthday (as she has continually reminded me over the years) has been spent in the air - the fact (as I remind her) that she usually gets to spend her birthday in two countries does not seem to be of great consolation to her). The added advantage of a birthday on the Cruise was that the staff made a huge fuss (V being by some distance the youngest person on the boat) so her 18th was greeted with cakes and song. 

Relocating to UK and living among students was I think something of a culture shock for V which has taken a little while to get used to. However, she seems to have made lots of friends and is enjoying her course (after much debate and applications to various different courses including Liberal Arts and Linguistics she has embarked on a Fine Art degree) and she also found time to take no less than three roles in the end of term Shakespeare Society production which we all thoroughly enjoyed when we picked her up for the Christmas holidays.

Having decided to switch to an integrated Masters degree, A has also been hard at it this term although fortunately he is studying very close to V so we were able to bring them both back to Kent at the same time for the first part of the Christmas holidays.

A seems to be contemplating a PhD once he finishes his MSc so we shall see where that takes him.

That pretty much brings us up to date - prior to us all heading to Bristol for Christmas with E’s Mother and then  back to Dubai for the New Years,  E and I managed to have a day in London with A whilst we were back in Kent  - in the afternoon we saw the “Monet and the Thames” exhibition at the Courtauld Gallery in Somerset House before we headed down to the O2 Arena to see Paul McCartney -  another very sprightly Octogenarian (there seems to be a theme this year for the live acts I have seen ….) - who absolutely smashed it out of the park in front of 20,000 fans. 

It was my first time seeing him live and although his voice did struggle a little on the higher notes he was absolutely captivating. I have always been a massive Beatles fan and he did not disappoint with a wide selection of old favourites as well as some of his better known Wings tracks including a spectacular rendition of Live and Let Die during which the below pictures were taken.

Summer Tour London to Dubai

 The last leg of our long Summer break involved a visit to London to the Van Gogh “Poets and Lovers” Exhibition at the National Gallery (a chance to see some of the companion pieces to the works we had seen in US and Japan); a few days in Kent including some golf at Leeds Castle and then a trip down to Bristol to catch up with E and V (via Guildford to see Micheal Palin in his “There and Back” tour  publicising his latest book of Diary entries) before heading back to Dubai. 

Considering that he is 82, MP is remarkably spry (although the picture below does not really do him justice) and it was a very entertaining evening. As noted elsewhere on this blog, it was he who inspired me to keep my own daily Journal starting in 2021 (he started in 1969…) which has provided a degree of competition/battle for content with this Weblog but which has provided a valuable reference point for the main topic for this year’s November post a day (now extended in January…).

By way of comparison I also went to see Joanne Lumley performing a similar type of retrospective travel/film/book show when I arrived back in Dubai. Although only a few years younger than MP, JL was similarly lively and engaging and whilst very different personalities, their career trajectories and themes (TV/film/Travel shows) are very similar and of course both now have the status of national treasures.

Probably quite fitting to end the big Summer tour watching two doyennes of the TV travel show genre recounting their memories. Whilst our own trip did not exactly follow the original plan (and hopefully V and E will have a chance to visit Japan again at some point) it was lovely to be able to spend some time with all the family on the river cruise early in the Summer and to have a chance to see so much of A in Japan and the US. 

My last “World tour” with E in 1999 involved a journey in the other direction - starting in Brazil and taking in Ecuador, Peru, Chile and Argentina in South America before heading to New Zealand and Australia and returning to UK via Singapore. This trip was probably less ambitious but just as fun and I cannot wait to do it again!

Summer Tour - New York to London

Our last day in the US was spent ticking off the last couple of sights to see including a trip up the Empire State Building which once again allowed Manhattan to show off it’s photogenic best in the late Summer sunshine.

We were also able to spend a bit of time in some of the less touristy NY attractions including the Horological Society offices (A is big into his watches) which happened to be across the way from our hotel and was located on the third floor of a much more traditional  high rise including  a lift with a metal grate door and less high tech staircase than the ESB.

Also on the same road as our hotel was the Algonquin Hotel - a favoured watering hole for the likes of Dorothy Parker and other luminaries of the NY literary smartset during Prohibition-era America. A and I there enjoyed a couple of cocktails (which NY bar-tenders do very well although at remarkable expense) and a burger amongst the wise-cracking ghosts (as well as taking in some of the feedback from the recent Trump/Harris TV debate) before completing our packing for the trip to London.

I really enjoyed New York despite myself. It was definitely noisy (and had a distinctly “grassy” smell) but undoubtedly had a buzz about it and the Museums and art galleries were definitely on a par with London and Paris - we had managed a quick look around NY’s MOMA on our last afternoon and saw some excellent Dali, Picasso and Mondrian (the latter appeared to have been very much taken to the hearts of New Yorkers during his brief sojourn here during World War 2). Would very much like to return.

Summer Tour - New York Part 3

Coming rapidly to the end of the North American part of our tour, A and I took full advantage of the touristic opportunities that NY offers including a day exploring Hudson Bay, Liberty Island and Ellis Island courtesy of the Statue City cruises.

Having wrestled with the myriad offers of tours around the Statue of Liberty from various providers, we ended up catching our ferry from Battery Park on Manhattan Island on another beautiful summer’s day. 

Despite the airport style security check we were able to board our 11:15am sailing without a hitch and spent a glorious couple of hours sailing across Hudson Bay firstly to Liberty Island where we walked up to Liberty’s crown and explored the two museums telling the story of the fund-raising and construction of the Statue in France before transportation to New York in 1886; and then on to Ellis Island where the Immigration centre had been sympathetically restored and the Audio tour/Ranger tour (which we managed to tag on to) gave a fascinating (and quite moving) insight into the history of America’s role in providing opportunities for a new life for European, Middle Eastern and Asian settlors.

The views towards the shores of the Hudson River towards New York City and to New Jersey were striking and A and I then enjoyed a brisk walk back from Battery Park, via Wall Street to Brooklyn Bridge before catching the subway to Grand Central Station - very much a cathedral among train stations as the below photo shows.

Having braved the Subway once, we then took it again in the evening heading to the Yankees Stadium in the Bronx for the game against the Boston Red Sox. It was our first baseball game and whilst I cannot pretend to be very clear about the rules, the game ended very satisfactorily in victory for the NY Yankees  - terrific atmosphere and an interesting insight into US sporting culture.