The end is nigh...

Our holiday comes to an end in two more days. We fly out on Wednesday night (England time) and arrive home Friday morning (Aus time).

Cornwall.

Cornwall provided many places of interest, not to mention the delightful B & B we stayed at, Menkee Barns. It was cosy, quiet and very comfortable with wonderful hosts Margo and Robert Kirkwood.

See if you can recognize some of the photos below taken at Port Isaac.

Doc Martin's surgery.

The chemist run by Mrs Tishell in the Doc Martin series.

This bay features in many of Doc Martin's episodes.

On the second day in Cornwall we drove to Padstow, also known as Padstein because the famous chef Rick Stein owns many of the restaurants, cafes, fish and chip shops and a patisserie there. It was absolutely packed with tourists, probably exacerbated by the fact that it was a long weekend to celebrate the Queen's 60th jubilee. I bought a huge meringue from the patisserie...it took me three days to eat it and that was with Dan helping me.

Just one of the cafes we saw that are owned by Rick Stein.

Our third day in Cornwalll involved a visit to a National Trust house called Lanhydrock.

There were people dressed In period costume in the grounds of Lanhydrock enjoying a traditional morning tea. Shortly after this photo was taken it started drizzling rain, but they continued to sit there with umbrellas...

On the west coast of Cornwall we visited the ancient village of Fowey. It had narrow streets and was practically built on the water, but once again it was crowded with hoards of tourists.

Colorful houses in Fowey.

 

Canal boat trip

Narrow boating on the English canals is wonderful. We cruised the Llangollen canal and also the canal to Ellesmere, traversing two aqueducts, one wind-up bridge, two locks and two tunnels. We had Trina and Bob with us and Bob did most of the driving of the boat which gave Dan and myself time to enjoy the scenery. I would love to spend a whole week on one. We were lucky to have beautiful warm weather.

Bob at the helm with his two navigators.

Crossing the 38 meter high Pontcysyllte Aquaduct.

Dan winding up a walkway bridge.

Our boat in a lock.

 

Farewell dinner - Berlin

Berlin was the final destination for our Trafalgar tour. We were treated to an entertaining evening at a local restaurant with music and karaoke. Our Tour Director, Malcolm, sung a song and surprised us all with his great voice. We sat at a table with some fellow Aussies and were by far the loudest table and having the best time.

A table of Aussies enjoying our last supper.

The following morning we said our goodbyes and promised to keep in touch by email.

 

Berlin

Berlin is a city alive...there is much construction and restoration work being done and the skyline is full of cranes and buildings with scaffolding erected around them.

We visited the remains of the Berlin Wall that divided the East from the West, also Checkpoint Charlie, the point where people from the West could pass through to visit relatives in the East.

We saw the Brandenburg Gates. During the time the Berlin Wall was constructed the Brandenburg gates were in an area known as no-man's-land because people in the west were not to go past a certain point before the Gates and the Wall was just the other side.

Another interesting place was the Palace of Versailles where the Treaty of Versailles was signed on 28th June 1919. Next was a tour of Sanssouci Palace and its surrounding gardens.

Brandenburg Gates in the background.

Some of the remaining Berlin Wall.

Checkpoint Charlie, the only entry into East Berlin between 1962 and 1989.

The Palace of Versailles.

Sanssouci Palace.

Belarus - Minsk

Before leaving Moscow Malcolm treated us to a little gem that is a very interesting tradition followed by the Muscovites. It is something they call a Christmas Tree. When a couple marry they buy a lock and take it to a special 'tree', lock the lock and throw the key into the river in the hope that their marriage will last forever. There were hundreds of thousands of locks on many of the 'trees' as can be seen in this photo of just one 'tree'.

Traveling to Minsk we passed a collection of Russian tanks that had been used to help Russia win the war against the Germans. Of course the 'boys' couldn't resist climbing all over them.

Our local guide for Minsk was Malcolm, the Tour Director, as he actually resides in Minsk with his wife of 12 months. He took us to an appartment building where Lee Harvey Oswald, (the alleged assassin of President John F Kennedy) lived in a subsidized apartment after defecting to Russia in 1959.

The Lee Harvey Oswald apartment building.

There's a monument of a little boy in Minsk and Belarussian women rub his private parts in order to promote fertility, as you can see it is very shiny.

We had pestered Malcolm to bring his wife to the hotel so we could meet her. On the morning we were leaving Minsk he presented us to Anastasia, an extremely attractive, petite blonde. She spoke perfect English and it was pleasure to meet her.

Moscow

Moscow is different in many ways...there are 12 million people in the city and 9 million of them use the Metro every day. We were taken on a tour of the Metro which was an experience in itself. The underground rail stations are fitted out with chandeliers, paintings, statues, stained glass windows and mosaic paintings, which are the very last things you would expect to see in a railway station.

Red Square by night is beautiful...there is a large very modern department store that is positioned on one side with churches at either end and then of course the Kremlin wall forms the other side. In front of the fort there is a cemetery containing the graves of all the presidents except for Boris Yeltsin and Khrouchtchev. Because many celebrations and rock concerts are now held in the Red Square the cemetery is going to be moved because it is the general consensus that it is no longer an ideal place for a cemetery.

Us in The Red Square.

We toured inside the Kremlin...not very interesting except for the museum containing clothes worn by Peter the Great, Catherine the Great and many others from that era, along with gold trinkets, bowls and serving dishes, Faberge eggs, armory, carriages of gold encrusted with jewels and much much more. No wonder the starving peasants wanted to kill the aristocrats.

The traffic is horrendous. When Mr Putin drives to work the police stop all traffic five minutes before he is due to travel along a road causing more chaos. His officials have chauffeur driven cars with a blue light on the top and a police escort. These officials are able to drive wherever and however they like, often causing fatal accidents. This has angered the public.