Now that we’ve covered the hotel we stayed at in Puerto Rico, we can move on to the activities. We planned to do 3 different activities: * Night-time kayaking at a bioluminescent bay * El Yunque Rainforest * Walk around old San Juan Because we ran out of time and decided to take it easy and relax rather than push the activities for the 3 days we were there, we skipped the walk around old San Juan (a reason to go back and visit Puerto Rico!). But we did do the first 2 things on our list. Saturday morning dawned a bit foggy and it rained on and off throughout the day. [[image:pr34.jpg:Rainy morning:center:0]] * Side note on the view from our balcony – our shuttle bus driver from the airport informed us that Karl Wallenda of the Flying Wallendas died while performing a sky-walk across those 2 buildings. It’s […]

After almost a week of hot sunny days in Spain, we flew back to England from Malaga. We arrived at Gatwick and it was raining cats and dogs. What a welcome, eh? 🙂 We made our way back to Mei’s place, and that evening we went to a barbeque with Mei and Colin and met a bunch of people from their diving club. Unfortunately no pictures of the barbeque because a) it was night time and b) it was still pouring rain. It’s true – the English barbeque in all weather!! The next morning, Mei and I picked up a rental car before she went off to work, and Vin and I packed lightly for our one-night trip up north to Leeds where Vin’s sister Joanne lives. So we got into the very small car (I should have taken a picture of Vin sitting in it!! Sort of Kancil-sized) and […]

After a long delay of finishing up the chronicles of our European Adventure, finally I’m back to do the last few entries. After our fun time in Jaen, it was time to head back to Malaga where we would spend one last night in Spain before heading back to England. We took a bus from Jaen to Granada, and another bus from Granada to Malaga and made it back in good time. It was late afternoon by the time we got to Malaga. We didn’t have reservations at any hotel, so we asked the tourist information kiosk at the Malaga bus station, and they gave us a map of hotels in Malaga. Not only did the map tell us where the hotels were, there was a write-up about the hotel, hotel reviews, and approximate prices. So based on price and proximity to the beach, we decided to try the Hotel […]

After we checked out of our hotel in Amsterdam, we went to the train station and caught the train to Brussels. It was a 2.5-3 hour train ride and I’d love to say that I took beautiful pictures of the passing scenery. We went through Rotterdam and several other cities in the Netherlands before crossing into Belgium. Unfortunately, I was so zonked out I slept most of the way. So…suffice it to say we took the train from Amsterdam to Brussels, and from there we caught a plane to Malaga, Spain. Malaga is a southern coastal city on the Straits of Gibraltar. We were to spend a night in Malaga before journeying on to Jaen (about a 3-hour drive north east). We had decided to splurge and stay at the Parador de Malaga Gibralfaro for the night. The Paradores is a chain of hotels established by the Spanish government and […]

The next leg of our European adventure started out by taking a train from Surrey to Gatwick Airport where we were catching a plane to Amsterdam. Now, before anybody gets overexcited about Amsterdam, we were only there for less than 24 hours (1 night) and so we did not get the full Amsterdam experience. Yes, no bike riding along the canals, no canal tours by boat, and we didn’t make it to Anne Frank’s house even! And no, we did not make it to the Red Light District… I think this means we must go back to Amsterdam and spend a little more time there! After arriving at Schiphol International airport, we took the train into central Amsterdam. And from there, we bumbled around (the Dutch tourism information people were incredibly unhelpful and unfriendly! I was quite unhappy with the service we received). We had reservations to stay at the […]