Friday was my last day in Germany before I spent a day getting home. It was another planning day (work wise) and it was clear from early in the day that we weren't going to finish early.  We eventually finished at just after 3pm and then we had a 2-hour car journey back to Cologne airport. I have always wondered what people do in towns like Schmallenberg. On the way there and back to Cologne we...

Not much happened yesterday really. Stephen & Michael are still in Switzerland. Michael spent the day skiing and Stephen spent half the day skiing (he has hip trouble and has now decided to pack in skiing - old age setting in). the only photo I received from them yesterday was of them have a drink at the top of mountain. I am just assuming that they actually skied as I have yet to see a photo...

At least one section of the family has made it home. Helen and Chloe had a reasonably long lay over in the early morning in Dubai. They made a bed out of some chairs in the lounge and got a few hours sleep before having to board the flight back to Cape Town (that's Helen sleeping in there - photo creds to Chloe). That flight was delayed in departing but they got home close to the...

Today was the last time we will all be together until 30 January and so breakfast was the last meal together (even though I said yesterday that it was dinner). We had breakfast at a Pasteleria around the corner from the hotel. It took us awhile to figure out that you had to take a ticket to get served but we did that and then managed to get our order in. Breakfast was slightly more expensive...

I never really understand why hotels charge so much for breakfast. Our hotel charges €18 per person for breakfast. We walked down the road on route to our appointment this morning and all had breakfast for €10.35. I am not sure how it is possible to even eat €18 of breakfast. The only challenge really was once we found a place to have breakfast was to figure out how to order. Many people just seemed to...

Up at 3:30am this morning for our 4am pick up. Some of us managed more sleep than others. I was rudely awaken to the munching of peanuts at midnight and when I said 'noisy' my dear wife replied 'really' ... Some of us were getting a good night sleep up until that point.  Our flight was at 7am and so we managed to have some breakfast in the lounge before we had to board. It was...

Another late start to the day with breakfast at 10:30am and then straight after breakfast we decided to head for the Gold Souk. Given the weekend traffic, that took us almost an hour to get there (about 35kms). We had been told the Gold Souk was a must visit place even if you didn't buy anything and they were right. I have never seen so many jewellery stores in one place.  There are over 300 stores...

Our sleeping hours are still very much on SA time it seems. Everyone seemed to go to sleep late and so at 10am I woke up the kids so we could get to breakfast before it closed. I had suggested we try the other breakfast venue this morning on the Lower Ground - boy did I pay for that mistake for the rest of day. Firstly it took us about 5 minutes to get a lift...

Yesterday at 1:30pm we left Cape Town for Dubai on Emirates Airlines.  It is a 9:30 hour flight which took slightly longer because it seemingly took us forever to actually land at Dubai airport.  We eventually landed at 1:30am. It was quite a good flight.  Emirates have Wifi on their planes for $1 for 500MB. Needless to say everyone was very soon on the WiFi.  No doubt two of the members were Whatsapping their girlfriends, Helen...