Tag: travel

New Forest – Hampshire/Wiltshire, UK – Day 1 27th September 2024.

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Today we set off from our home in Bedfordshire to the New Forest some 150 miles South West. We often visit this area of outstanding beauty. My parents visited for many, many years and my mother loved it. So once a year we come down with my Dad and continue to create happy memories.

The New Forest  is one of the largest remaining areas of unenclosed pastureland, forestry and heathland In the South of England. The Domesday book states that William the Conqueror proclaimed the area a Royal Forest……. It is an area where livestock, in particular ponies roam wild and freely. They are known as New Forest Ponies and never referred to as horses…I had this drummed into me at a very early age by my mother !!!!….. Over my lifetime the ponies have been joined by cattle, donkeys and also pigs. Although the pigs are only let out to forage the acorns, which are poisonous to the ponies, they call this the pannage season, occurring in the autumn.
However!! I digress…….We set off from home at 10.18am having picked Dad up and participated in the usual strategic jigsaw puzzle of fitting everything into the car. This has become slightly more challenging as we now have to fit in Dads fold up mobility scooter as well as my pillows…..Job done and we were on our way.

Bedfordshire and Northamptonshire have, according to the TV news, been hit the hardest with flooding from our continuing heavy rain. Having done our research into which roads were open and which were not, we departed in a Northerly direction. Alas …… we were foiled and only 30 minutes after setting off horror of horrors!!!! we actually had to U-turn…something 2J’s pride themselves on rarely having to do………. We slowly weaved our way through some back roads. At one point we put 2 wheels on the pavement as we couldn’t tell how deep the water was….we realised that we were being used as ‘the outrider’ for several cars behind, who obviously wanted to see if we made it through some flooding of the roads…..we did!!! An hour and a half after we had set off we made it into our adjoining county, Buckinghamshire. Although their rivers and fields were flooded the roads were on the whole free from standing water. We were finally really on our way… we knew we were on the right track when we saw the beautiful topography gardens which always make us smile.

The rest of our journey was quick and fairly uneventful. Several hours later we arrived in the New Forest……what a pleasure to navigate around ponies blocking the road, a sight which always makes us smile..

We knew we were nearly at our destination when we went through the delightful village of Beaulieu. It’s always a favourite of ours as the ponies wander through the main streets without a care in the world.

On arriving in Lymington we soon found our rented house. Surprisingly it’s not our usual quaint and quirky accommodation . It is a newly built house on an estate……..we have however stayed here several times before ……..it has exactly what we need…1 double bedroom with dbl bed next to bathroom with bath and shower over it, 1 kingsize bed with en-suite bathroom with shower and a single bedroom with bunks suitable for putting case on. The kitchen is very well equipped with a dinning table for 6 and the lounge has 2 big sofas with PowerPoints in convenient places, …… there is also a downstairs toilet….it has heating and air conditioning throughout which is easy to adjust, big smart tv, WiFi throughout, a microwave, double oven, dishwasher, washing machine etc….so really great for a week of relaxation. It is also in a really convenient situation for getting out into the forest and for getting to the coast……if you look at the picture below…no I am not breaking in…New Forest Cottages email you a key code for the key safe a couple of days before your booking. There is also a really easy to navigate ‘Welcome’ file which tells you quite simply how everything works and also gives you all necessary emergency numbers such as dr, dentist, nearest hospital, shops etc.

John quickly unpacked the car and we were soon getting comfortable in the lounge. I had booked a Tesco delivery with the weeks food…menus are all good and we’ll probably eat out a couple of times…a great start to what is going to be a great week not least because it’s not raining yipeeee!!! And there is some wonderful blue sky yeahhhh!!!!
Happy holiday one and all..

September 2024 update

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Just a little update so our faithful followers don’t think that we’ve forgotten them….

John and I tend not to travel very much over the British summer months..Why? You may well ask…Well! It’s when everyone else travels and we tend to have visitors at that time of year…..it is also our holiday planning time as well as our book writing time…..some of you may know that John has had 26 books published by Amberley Publishing Company. We have had our first jointly written book published and we are working on another for which we are contracted to deliver at the beginning of 2025. John, as usual, has more contracts spread out over the next few years. So the British Summertime tends to be a busy time for us.

What’s on the cards for 2J’s World of Adventure…..

We are about to spend a week in The New Forest with my 92 year old Dad. We hire a house in Lymington for a week…. I will blog some of the week so it can give ideas of what to do and where to go in that area of ‘Our green and pleasant land’. We use a company called New Forest Cottages to rent a suitable house. We have used them for several years and can thoroughly recommend them as a highly reputable company.



In November we will be off cruising in the Caribbean for 21 days in celebration of our 10th Wedding Anniversary…an area of the world we both love. We will again blog our daily activities, although I suspect much will be sea and sand !!!

The planning for 2025 has started. We had been looking to Safari in Namibia as well as South Africa. However, Namibia seems to have become increasingly expensive and trying to book accommodation within Etosha National Park has proved a frustrating and unenjoyable experience. So, I have ditched it for next year and we will instead stay in a South Africa, spending a month in Pilanesberg and Kruger National Park.

We are also investigating and planing two other adventures….. A trip around Spain, Portugal and Morocco and also a trip to Uzbekistan-the silk route. We are looking to do both of these with tour companies. ……more on this soon as I am trying to secure good prices for both of these trips so that if you decide you fancy one or the other of them you should be-able to get a really good deal. One of the companies starts the tours in the country of the tour, which means our readers across the world will be able to access the same price regardless of their country of origin …you would then be able to book your own flights, direct or indirect depending on what you want to add on, do and of course your budget.

Well that’s all for now….watch out for our New Forest blog and of course the occasional ‘Been there got the t-shirt’ blog.

Many thanks to those of you who have purchased our framed prints. We have been delighted with your highly complimentary responses and we are so pleased that they have all arrived safely and you are enjoying them on the walls of your homes….

Thanks again for your continued following and interest in our travel adventures.

Alaska – Juneau – BEEN THERE GOT THE T-SHIRT

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Been there got the t-shirt

The delightful town of Juneau is the official capital of the USA State of Alaska. It is situated on the Gastineau Channel …an area Cruisers call the inside passage. It is both a coastal and a mountain town which is rich in both culture and wildlife.

It was named in 1881, after gold prospector Joe Juneau and it became the designated  capital of Alaska in 1906. It covers an area of 3,255sq miles, of which only 14sq miles are inhabited by approx 32,400 people.

One of Juneaus unique features is that you can not drive to it. The rugged mountain ranges surrounding Juneau make it impossible to access by road. People either fly in, arrive by ferry or like many visitors arrive by cruise ship. 

We have been fortunate to visit Juneau on many different occasions. This has meant we have visited most of its attractions :- 

The beautiful Mendenhall Glacier is only 12 miles from the centre of Juneau and is a very popular attraction. Visitors  enjoy a variety of activities here including hiking, wildlife viewing, and exploring the Mendenhall Glacier Visitor Center. On one occasion when we visited the UK BBC had just finished filming bears during the salmon spawning season from the raised wooden walkway along the river at the foot of the glacier. Lots of people choose to glacier walk here. We, however, like walking the wooden platforms looking for bears. We’ve been lucky a couple of times and even luckier to see a porcupine rattle past us. 

Mendenhall Glacier
Close up of Mendenhall Glacier

The Mount Roberts Tramway is another visitor attraction. Although there is usually a long queue it moves quickly and it never seems crowded at the top . The tramway is a quick and scenic ride to the top of Mount Roberts, from here you can enjoy panoramic views of Juneau and the surrounding area.

The Salmon Hatchery is extremely interesting. You learn all about Alaska’s important salmon industry, the 5 different types of Salmon and you get to see salmon up close.

Our favourite activity which we do every time is Juneau is Whale Watching. Juneau is a great place to spot humpback whales and killer whales (orcas), especially between April and November. We take a tour boat out in Auke Bay. The company we always use guarantee that we will see whales or they will give you your money back. We’ve never had to have  a refund because we have always seen whales…..splendid sightings…

Breaching Humpback Whale
Whale Fluke
Orca whale (often referred to as the Killer whale ) .

Review of our Greek island and other places cruise with MSC – Opera cruise ship & Holiday

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I have promised lots of our followers a review on how we found the holiday and the cruise…..

Those of you who know my husband will know that he is very rarely derogatory about anything…where as I am quite outspoken and say it how I see it…

So I will start with Johns review ….he decided to compare MSC to our preferred cruise line Princess……

Johns views:-

MSC Cruises v Princess Cruises

The end of MSC Opera’s seven-day cruise around the Greek Islands – and Bari in Italy – prompts me to look at a comparison between these two cruise brands.

Perhaps this particular MSC cruise destination and timing skews my perception, but it was soon obvious that there were two noticeable differences. The MSC demographic was noticeably younger. Whilst on Princess, English is the predominant language, the MSC profile was much more multi-lingual.

There are differences in the crews too. Let me say at the outset that the cheery outlook of all MSC is an absolute treat whereas, on occasions, the Princess personnel give the impression of pretence or forced smiling!! As to numbers, I dont have comparison figures, but there are far more staff in evidence across all the Princess activities compared to MSC. However the MSC staff are far more attentive, quicker service and more proactive in meeting their customers needs. On the evidence we saw, the theatre performers were not of the same quality as that of those on the Princess Cruises.

The food on board is different, too. On Princess the choice suits what I would describe as ‘the American palate’, whilst on MSC it is clearly more ‘Mediterranean’. The menu choice on Princess includes foods like lobster, steaks, duck , beef wellington etc. Where as on MSC this type of food is at an extra high charge.

That’s Johns review….mine is a copy of the response I gave to our travel agent when she said my response to their online customer satisfaction survey was very mixed …this is what I said…

The clientele on our cruise consisted mainly of large very loud Italian family groups – in the buffet they took huge platters of food of one type…all the fruit, all the bread rolls etc then they grouped up to 20 chairs and made their own family buffet..often not finishing the platters which they put down the middle of the tables…this left other passengers with no assorted fruit etc…no member of staff stopped them doing it by telling them to just get their own plate of food, and lots of these big family groups sat for several hours at every meal time taking up all the seating area In The buffet whilst still saving their sun loungers …so we never got a sunlounger the whole cruise and gave up trying to get a table in the buffet at breakfast, preferring to go to the main dinning room and wait for service…… we often went without lunch because on port days the ship doesn’t serve in the dinning room and we couldn’t get a seat in the buffet. Our evening meal was nice, we sat in the same nice area every night and had two great waiters. 

We saw one really good show in the theatre but the only other one we could find seats for was weak vocalists …… again huge blocks of seats were reserved by a couple of family members..some filled near the start of the show others never filled…..the shows we went to we had to get there over an hour in advance to get a seat. 

On the sea day we couldn’t get any loungers or a table, we eventually found two chairs which we sat on but it was like Butlins on water, the disco started at 10.30 am with everyone shouting, jumping up and down…horrendous……the excursions…..were ok apart from the scenic cruise of corfu coastline…sounds good but it was a nightmare…we had booked the English commentated one….alas after a few minutes the guide spoke virtually entirely in Italian. Even worse she started talking about “The Anglaise” …a young German, couple who were doctors, told us she was being very offensive to our race…all the Italians were laughing and shouting “viva Italy”….. we felt very intimidated. When a lot got off for a swim the lady came and asked if we were ok and I said we were not happy that the commentary was in Italian and that she had humiliated us with what she was saying about the English. She pretended not to understand saying her English wasn’t good and the majority of people were Italian . The German couple spoke to her in Italian and explained what we were saying she just shrugged and wandered off….on the way back after the swim she encouraged everyone to dance so we couldn’t even see the scenic coastline….This wasn’t sold as a party cruise it was sold as a scenic cruise……on top of this MSC had double charged us/double booked this excursion we realised prior to the excursion and they said it would be refunded to our cruise account and we could cash it out as Euros. We said we’d prefer it to be refunded to our credit card they said they couldn’t do that …so we lost out twice by paying a transaction fee on the card and on the exchange rate changing it back to £…… so this wasn’t good .. as for the end of cruise excursion…..this we had booked through our travel agent and not through MSC……it was pleasant enough…the limousine it advertised was actually a Mercedes’ taxi….we went to all the places described but unfortunately it was only 3 and a half hours not 4/5 hours …we could hardly ask him to just drive around for another hour so we again felt the excursion was mis-sold…so again disappointed as we spent hours at the airport unable to book our cases in until 2 hours before our flight…..not great

So you can see why the review was a mixed bag of frogs….the staff on the ship were very helpful and pleasant ( apart from one in the WiFi department who was obnoxious, luckily the manager intervened) the food in the restaurant was good but the rest of the experience was not good at all.

Our Travel Agent, Rosie Price – rosie.price@dialaflight.co.uk. – passed our views on to MSC. Very surprisingly …a pleasant surprise …… because when we’ve voiced issues to P&O, Princess and TUI/Marbella Cruise companies they’ve either not responded or the later gave a very abrupt and rude response asking what we wanted, I said “an apology for giving us two right angled twin beds when we had requested a double and informed them it was our honeymoon and they had refused to let us change cabins with an elderly couple who had requested single beds and had been given a double”….we never heard anything back from them even though we felt we had a valid reason to voice our displeasure…….I digress ……….. back to MSC response…which we asked our travel agent to thank them for……

Dear John and Jennifer Jackson,

Thank you for taking the time to provide such detailed feedback about your recent cruise with MSC. I genuinely appreciate your honesty and am truly sorry to hear about the negative experiences you had. Your comfort and satisfaction are our top priorities, and it’s disheartening to learn that we fell short during your trip. Let me address each of your concerns.

I’m sorry that you were unable to find sun loungers throughout your cruise and that finding a table was so challenging. It’s disappointing to hear that you had to compromise on your relaxation and dining experiences due to overcrowding and lack of available seating.

I regret that you had difficulty finding seats for the shows and that the quality of the entertainment varied. Reserving blocks of seats should not have been allowed, and it’s concerning that this disrupted your enjoyment. We strive to offer high-quality entertainment for all guests, and it’s clear that we need to improve in this area.

While I’m glad to hear that you found the staff mostly helpful and pleasant and enjoyed the food in the restaurant, it’s clear that the overall experience did not meet your expectations. The mixed experiences you had, from loud and disruptive environments to feeling unsafe and unwelcome, are far from the relaxing and enjoyable holiday we aim to provide.
As a gesture of goodwill, we would like to offer you a £130 cruise discount voucher. To accept this, just let me know and I will send this straight out to you. We understand that we cannot change what has happened, but we want to do what we can going forward, to put this right.

Please accept our sincere apologies for the distress and inconvenience you experienced. If there is anything else we can do to address your concerns or if you would like to discuss this further, please do not hesitate to contact me directly.
Thank you again for bringing these matters to our attention. We hope to have the opportunity to restore your faith in MSC Cruises.

Kind regards,
Jack Murphy
Customer Service Executive

I am certain everyone reading this response will be amazed at its concerning manner…rarely do people apologise and I take my ‘hat off’ to Jack Murphy for his show of concern and the wording of his response…’Well done Sir!’. However, we will not be accepting the discount voucher because we do not intend to cruise with MSC again…we do accept the apology which was conveyed to us in a very congenial, honest way…Thank you Jack Murphy and thank you Rosie Price (rosie.price@dialaflight.co.uk) our disappointment has been somewhat appeased.

Day 9- 4th June 2024-Athens – End of Greek Island Cruise and other Places

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it’s taken me over a week to get around to our final day of this cruise and disembarkation…..the reason being we both picked up “Cabin Cough” on the cruise and it took us a week to get over it….I often seem to get it cruising, it’s the air conditioning which brings it on and this time we had an inside cabin….a never again scenario…….The evening before we had put our cases outside our door before midnight….a much better time than cruise lines which want them before 9.00 pm….When we got up in the morning they had bern magicked away. We had to leave our cabin by 8.00am and we went down to the restaurant for breakfast. We then sat in a lounge. We had requested a late disembarkation. The ship for the first time all cruise was relatively quiet. At 10.00 am we wandered off the ship and down to the baggage collection …our suitcases looked a little lonely all on their own in area 21….but hey they were both still there, so that was good news.
We ad found out, onboard that the ship did offer an airport transfer at 2.30 pm which would really have suited us but it hadn’t been advertised on their excursions or transfer so I don’t know how we or our travel agent were supposed to know about it…it would have been a great deal cheaper than our excursion was, which we booked through DialaFlight who had booked it through Viator.

Anyway ….we sat outside waiting for our driver for our excursion to Cape Sounia & Temple of Poseidon. We had selected this excursion as it was an area we hadn’t seen near Athens and also it was advertised as between 4 and 5 hours so we wouldn’t have to spend as long at the airport. On the dot of 10.30am a smart gentleman carrying a sign with our name on arrived and introduced himself as John. He quickly went off and bought the car around. It was a Mercedes’ cream coloured taxi. …..Off we went along the coast which was full of pretty coves and mariners occupied by some very fancy yatchs and pleasure cruisers.

We stopped off at a “hidden gem” …a large lake which was filled with from hot water springs attached to an intricate cave system…..it was quite fascinating, a bit smelly but we soon got used to the slight rotten eggs aroma you often get with hot water swims…we wished we’d known we were stopping here as we would have kept our costumes and towels out.

We stopped again for a view of the Temple Poseidon across the bay on the top of the headland.

We continued to the Temple car park. Although it’s an easy walk up some shallow well spaced steps I didn’t feel up to it, so John went on his own. He paid €10 at a kiosk and up he went.

The Temple of Poseidon is approx 70 Km away from Athens. It is deemed an important sight aprt from the archaeological remains, Cape Sounion is also famous for its beautiful sunset and the great views of the Aegean Sea…….it is the last point you see as you sail away, on the southernmost tip of the Attica peninsula.  In the past, sailors revered the sea god, Poseidon to grant them safety and fortune on their long voyages.

Made entirely of white marble, it was erected in the middle of the 5th century BC and built to honour Poseidon, god of the sea.The first version of the temple was built during the Archaic Period but it was destroyed by the Persians in 480 BC. It was rebuilt around 440 BC. The temple was 13 columns long and 6 columns wide. Unfortunately, not all columns stand until today. A 5-meter-tall statue of Poseidon used to stand inside the temple. Nowadays, the only part of it that has survived is displayed in the Museum in Athens.

John returned raving about the views and how unbelievable it felt to be amongst something so old. We had a drink and returned to Driver John and the car. We had now seen everything included in our tour so Driver John took us to the airport….unfortunately our tour had only taken just three and a half hours…..we could hardly ask to go around the route again ….we had enjoyed the tour but we were a little disappointed that it was so short…there had been a lot of tours for this length of time at a much cheaper price but we had selected this one to use up some of the time before our flight.

We arrived at the airport at 2.00pm and fortunately found two of only a handful of seats….and there we sat…..we couldn’t do anything because we had our large suitcases with us as well as our hand luggage…the desk for luggage drop didn’t open until 6.00 pm …We sat out the 4 hours … at about 5.00 pm a queue started at the baggage check in for Easy Jet ….we didn’t get in it straight away as there were two flights going out before ours….but as they didn’t open the check in until 6.

John eventually joined the queue and after and hour and a half I joined him for the last 15 minutes. By now we knew the flight prior to ours was 2 hours late and ours was 30 minutes late…..what seemed like forever and a day passed and eventually we boarded the plane and had a further 50 minute delay….Thankfully immigration, baggage and customs were quick at Gatwick and we our driver Albert was waiting for us…we walked through our front door totally and utterly exhausted at spot on 2.00 am…….what a journey …..no wonder we were both ill for a week !!!!!…”Avoid Athens airport at all costs” is the reminder engraved firmly on my brain…..never, never again…..and as for the actual cruise….well, I’ll do a good and bad points follow up to this blog shortly….thanks for travelling along with us hope you enjoyed the tour…