The Talk

Posted By Mark on May 8, 2016

Star Princess: South America Cruise (Part 2)

Posted By Mark on May 8, 2016

This is the second part of the article outlining a holiday with Princess Cruises on the Star Princess from Buenos Aires to Valparaiso to celebrate the twentieth anniversary of our first date and the fact we’d managed to save up long enough to afford it. The first part of this article can be found here: Star Princess: South America Cruise (Part 1). The Beagle Channel One of my favourite sights on our trip was waking up to discover the cruise ship was docked in Ushuaia and surrounded on three sides by towering mountains made more ominous and oppressive by the dim pre-dawn light of day. What can I say? I like the sea and I like mountain ranges; put them together and you’ve got yourself something I like twice. Now, unlike the Falkland Islands where we’d been told it could be cold and wet but it wasn’t, in Ushuaia we’d been told it would be cold and wet and it certainly was. It was very cold. And it was very wet. Fortunately, the wet part eased off early but the cold part persisted. How cold was it? It was long-sleeved top and thick hoodie and wool hat and waterproof coat, with hoodie done up and hood raised, and coat done up and hood raised, and gloves on cold. And we’d booked an excursion on a catamaran out onto the Beagle Channel to look for wildlife so it was all that type of cold plus out on an exposed stretch of water cold. Still, only one mad, mad person decided to ignore the spray and biting wind and spend the entire catamaran venture out on the deck of the boat rather than taking in the views from inside. That was me. So, sure, I was cold. Frozen, you might say. But I knew I’d recover and I got some wonderful views and fabulous shots of mountains, birds, sea lions, and a lighthouse, as well as the fond memory that there was probably at least one person on board other than my wife thinking “What is that loony doing out there?” Cruise Tip Maybe two pairs of gloves next time I head out onto the Beagle Channel. Ushuaia Now, we’d been told on the Falkland Islands that the majority of people who were really a little bit, er, antsy where it came to that place’s sovereignty were the Argentinians in and around Ushuaia; whether this was because the harsh living and economic conditions there simply brewed anger couldn’t be said with absolute certainty but most other people in that area of the world had a more liberal live-and-let-live attitude. We’d also...

Invictus Games: UK Versus USA

Posted By Mark on Apr 30, 2016

When Barack Obama and Michelle Obama challenge Prince Harry with respect to the upcoming Invictus Games he brings out the big gun in response… Gran.

Benefits Of Brexit

Posted By Mark on Apr 30, 2016

It won’t be long until the Britain votes whether to remain in the EU and risk the terror of what we know or to leave it (the horribly-named Brexit Option) and risk the terror of what we don’t know. Everyone who can vote and who intends to vote has already made their mind up about it. There are no undecided people left but there is a lot of airtime to fill and column inches to write and website articles to get spidered and ignored and so here comes my explanation of the benefits of leaving the EU just for the hell of it. 1. Pension Excitement In case you’re wondering why it’s mostly older people or those incapable of adapting to the fast changes in modern life in favour of leaving the EU then the answer becomes obvious when you realise that many of these people are bored. They’re already retired or approaching that age. There’s a life being lived by younger people out there filled with thrills they’ve missed out on through the lottery of being born too early. Leaving the EU gives them something to get the heart racing; it gives them an uncertain stock market and a higher likelihood of a reduced pension. Take a hypothetical old man who’s currently looking at living for decades in a well-insulated house during our increasingly milder, shorter winters, knowing he’ll always be able to afford another couple of cardigans to put over the three he’s always wearing even if he can’t actually break the bank to switch on the heating for the one chilly weekend that causes the Daily Express to announce the start of a new Ice Age. Where is his joy? Now consider a diminished pension pot and not even being able to buy a solitary cardigan. That excitement of not knowing if he’s going to survive a winter is back! That social joy of attending somebody else’s funeral in January is a given! And that’s why he’s voting to leave the EU. 2. Better Foreign Holidays If there’s nothing you like more than escaping this dreary country at every opportunity to go spend a few weeks in one of those warmer countries you’re desperately trying to distance yourself from when you vote for Brexit then just think how much better it will be when it’s that much harder? For most people in favour of leaving the EU the best thing about foreign holidays is complaining about airport queues and how foreign everything is when they get where they’re going. The benefits of Brexit are no more fast-tracking through the EU citizens queue and less of a...

Star Princess: South America Cruise (Part 1)

Posted By Mark on Apr 25, 2016

This March, to celebrate the twentieth anniversary of our first date and to celebrate the fact we’d managed to save up long enough to afford it, my wife and I took a holiday with Princess Cruises on the Star Princess from Buenos Aires to Valparaiso. This post forms the first of two long parts documenting the holiday’s highlights as well as giving some hints and tips about cruising in general and cruising with Princess in particular. Some tips will probably update those presented when I wrote about our first Princess Cruise around Asia in 2008. The Air France Experience To say we were a little worried in the lead up to our cruise would be an understatement. Do we need visas? Have we got travel insurance? Did we arrange the parking for the right day? Are our passports valid? Did we really get travel insurance or have I mistaken that for the Iceland trip last year? And so on. One of the major concerns was that we’d arranged to fly out to Buenos Aires through Princess (there are flight protection benefits doing it that way) and this meant we had to fly Air France from Heathrow with a change at Paris Charles de Gaulle. Yes, we’d be risking the entire vacation on French air traffic controllers being at work. As it was, the air traffic control worry never materialised. Instead, after a short hop to France we settled into our seats for the 13+ hour flight to Argentina. Settled into our uncomfortable seats. If you’ve ever wondered what happened to those hard plastic chairs you used to sit on at school then I can tell you now that someone put a tea towel over them and installed them on Air France planes. Painful seats, equally painful food. I know that airplane food doesn’t have a good reputation, but French food does so we had high hopes they’d cancel out into something average. But no. It’s something when you and your wife disagree what something is before you eat it – I thought potato, my wife thought egg – then both change your minds to “Is this some genetically-engineered tasteless fish? Is this entire trip a psychological test or TV prank?” We still don’t know what we ate on Air France and were too scared to ask in case someone told us. Arrival: Buenos Aires, Argentina We picked up our luggage, got through security, spotted some Princess Cruises representatives, and were directed to the end of the airport where someone would take our luggage and put us on a coach to the ship. The representatives in the airport were having...