...and this is The Great Escape - I'll come back to that.... Hello Folks, Lisette and I have headed off for one of our adventures - this time to Sri Lanka. Unlike our usual approach to holidaying (buy tickets, catch plane and pray) we have decided to deviate. We are "on a tour". The tour started somewhat inauspiciously. We arrived after a 12 hour flight at 3 am on Valentines Day in Colombo. We were met by a man bearing an "Adventure Company" sign who bundled us into a van together with our fellow tour-ees/tour-ettes. All were pretty shattered at this point and pretty much hoping for instant bed. Not to be. Our tour guide (Asangha) drove us for quite some time and we were in some pretty ropey neighbourhoods by the time he confessed that he may have taken a wrong turn at some point. However, by 4am we were delivered to a hotel. The good. The bad: hotel was pitch black and it soon became apparent that we did not have reservations. The group mood did darken somewhat at this point, particularly as by now the flies (which dont need sight to detect human flesh it seems) were by now crawling upon us fairly profusely. Not much happened for quite a long time as I recall. Asangha made a lot of phone calls, essentially begging the hotel to open up and show us the love. Am delighted to say that, in the end, they turned on the lights and in due course delivered us to rooms where we collapsed. It was later revealed by Asangha that he had made reservations for us... but not at that hotel. Hey ho. Expectations suitably lowered.

Dear all, Never ones to sit back and relax, Lisette and I have been busily exerting ourselves in Santorini. It's a good way to break up the mealtimes. The most ambitious activity so far has been a hike from our digs, halfway up the island on the West side, to "Oia" - a town at the North-West tip of Santorini. Looking at the map on the morning before the hike we scoffed at what a short distance it was and made plans to complete said journey in under 2 hours. This was not to be.

Greetings from Greece...... and Salutations from Santorini! I am writing to you from Fira - the island capital. Fira, is one of the few "vertical" towns which I've have had the pleasure to encounter. Nothing here is flat. Essentially Fira appears to be a cliff face onto which bits of shop, restaurant and pathway have been pinned - possibly by genial giants with an architectural bent. We are in a land truly unfamiliar to spirit-levels.

We have arrived in the Cinque Terre which is on the North West coast of Italy. The direct translation is "Five Towns" and the idea is that you stroll / hike from one town to the next marvelling in the sights of the sea and the beauty of the towns. And the towns are lovely - it is as if Walt Disney came here 80 years ago to get his ideas of what fairy castles etc should look like.

I have little, in fact no, tolerance left for young women who sit with their legs crossed on public transport. Why they do it is beyond me - surely they know they are taking up more than their allotted space when they do so? I mean, i'd be bound to notice if i spent 50 minutes kneeing the person in front of me in the back and non-stop kicking the person next to me with every vibration of the bus - wouldn't you? It's as if they are completely unaware of their own bodies from the ankles down. Give me strength. (By the way apologies if you believe I am unfairly maligning the good name of "young women" - it is just that I havent yet encountered any men / older women / boys / girls / dogs / cats that exhibit the same objectionable behaviour)