What a difference a week makes

We have just come back from a week's holiday in Florida, at £389 for the flight, car hire and Hotel it was a real bargain. It's a pity that there seem to be no bargains like that to be had from France so we had to go from Gatwick.
However the total cost including a Ryanair flight from Dinard to Stansted, a coach to London Victoria and the Gatwick express train to the airport plus a night at the Premier inn at Gatwick plus the holiday in Florida complete still came to just on £500 each about  the same cost as I could have got just a return flight from France!

We had a really relaxing holiday over there although probably to many American Breakfasts for the waistline.

Apart from going to the cinema a couple of times and a couple of visits to a Van Heusen Factory outlet store for some very reasonable and good quality clothes we spent most of the time around the pool, swimming and soaking up the sunshine. All in all a great week.

When we got home I couldn't believe how much every thing in the garden had grown, the grass looked as if it hadn't been cut in a Month and 5 new rows of potatoes had sprung up. Also while we were away the deer that we seen to have in abundance around here had helped themselves to most of the new growth on the roses! In fact they were devastated!

Holidays

A friend of mine happened to mention that he was trying to arrange a couple of days away in a hotel for a break and it got me thinking of holidays.
Now, anyone who knows me knows that I'm not exactly slow when holidays are mentioned so it just jogged me into action as we had been considering taking a break in Spain later this Spring. Even though we are already on the right side of the Channel to drive, it is still about a 2 day drive to Spain so I started looking at ferries from France to Northern Spain which is a 14hr sailing and not really cheap at around 300 euros return.
I then thought about flying as we have a local airport in Brest about an hours drive away. However a flight and hotel for a week in Tenerife came out at a 1076 euros each! On top of that I would have almost certainly wanted to hire a car. It just seemed a lot of money for a short flight and hotel.

As I was thinking things through an email from TravelZoo arrived, this is a weekly email with their top 20 travel deals which I have used several times in the past and can definitely  recommend.

Five minutes later I was off the phone having booked a week in late May to Florida from Gatwick total cost £389 each which includes Flights, all taxes, a three star hotel and a hire car including insurance for the week!

What a bargain, Oh well I will have to drive up to the tunnel again but I just couldn't pass that up.

Sarasota Beach at Sunset Photo: roger4336, used under Creative Commons License (By 2.0)

It's a hard life being retired!

Back Home

Well this last few weeks have seen us doing an awful lot of travelling, Our daughter Anna, lives exactly half way round the world from us so visiting her is a major event. We started off with an 8 hour drive to the tunnel and stopped overnight in Folkstone before setting off from Heathrow, the first leg of the journey is (just) an 11hr flight to LA we spent some time in Santa Barbara before continuing our journey, another 13hr flight to Auckland a 2 hr wait and the an hour's flight to Wellington arriving refreshed (sic) at 8am in the morning, during which we passed the date-zone so lost a complete day!

We had a lovely time catching up with Anna, James and the 3 boys ( Joe,Leo and Blake ) while we were there we all hired a beach house a couple of hours drive north from Wellington.
The house backed right up to the sand dunes with a short walk to the sea......Lovely!

 A nice seat directly behind the house on the sand dunes overlooking the sea

 

Miles and miles of deserted wide clean beaches, the beach is actually designated as a road with a 30mph limit and many vehicles use it to tow boats or just to gain access.




There was a lovely decking area around the house and an outside Pizza oven with a good supply of wood which we made good use of. A nice place to spend a few hours each day with some cold beer and wine!

The time there went all to quickly and we were back on a plane or another 1 hr flight to Auckland another 3 hr wait and another 13 hr flight to Hong Kong, In actual fact we stayed this time the other side of the water in Kowloon for a couple of nights which made a nice break before yet another long flight 13hrs 40mins back to Heathrow!
All in all a lovely holiday and one to remember.

Back home now with all the spring and summer to look forward to. The garden is the first priority so I've spent a bit of time this week rotavating quite a reasonable sized area beside the fruit beds ready for vegetables.

From this end it looks quite a big area which in reality it is as against the area of grass I have cut down in readiness for turning over in the next few weeks but looking from the other end I wonder what I've taken on!

 I've also knocked up a compost area out of some of the trees I've been taking down so all in all I'm quite pleased with my work since we have got home

I am now also making the first tentative steps to forming quite a large decking and seating area at the rear of the house, this should make a very nice entertaining area and I would very much like to get it completed in March so that we have the full use of it during this coming Spring and Summer. 

Watch this space!