Travel talk

While I sort through my 700 photos, I thought I'd tell you a little more about the good, the bad and the ugly from my trip.

The good:
The food - American's sure know how to eat! Cheap food, fast food, HUGE portions!
The shopping - one word: "cheap". Everything. But especially food and electronics. Ipods over there are half the price they are over here. Same with digital cameras and laptops. I was in geek heaven!
Miami Beach - We spent 2 days here before sailing off to the Caribbean. It's unlike any other city I have visited. Very Latino. Some shops even have signs in the window which read "English spoken here!"
Convenience - London has some 24 hour corner shops and nightclubs, but Miami had 24 hour restaurants, bars, pubs, clubs, shops, pharmacies and more.
Beaches - In the Caribbean. Not one bad experience. They were all amazing, but my favourites were Barbados and Half Moon Cay in the Bahamas (a private island owned by the cruise line)

The bad:
Madrid Airport - Even though we were in transit, we had to pass through passport control. Fine, except that I had bought a litre of Jim Beam in the UK duty free shops and since you can't travel with more than 100ml of liquid through European airports, the b@$t@£d$ at customs took it off me! "Drink it or we must destroy it". I was tempted, but it was 8am! On the way back to the UK, a bunch of South Africans on the flight were caught out 'cos they didn't have Schengen visas to enter Spain! But they weren't actually entering Spain, they were in transit to the UK!
US Taxis - Besides the rip-off prices (all up we spent around US$250 in airport transfers), we always had trouble finding cabs that would carry us 'cos we had a baby and they won't take you without a baby seat in the cab. :-(
Pedlars - the only thing that I didn't like about Barbados. On the beach you never got a minutes peace and quiet. "You wanna buy jewlry ma'n?", "You wanna go snorkelling ma'n?", "You wanna...?"
Sea sickness - Not me. But while we were out on the dive boat, 3 of the other divers fed the fish. LOL

The ugly:
Iberia - We travelled with the Spanish national airline. Never again! The service wasn't bad 'cos it was non existent. The food wasn't very nice. There were no TVs in the back of the seats, only communal ones. My earphones didn't work anyway, so it didn't matter. There wasn't even any running water in the toilets on the way back from the USA! Somebody threw up in one of the toilets and the stewards left it. You can imagine the smell permeating through the plane!

I have posted some photos on my photoblog to whet your appetite while I resize the rest for the web.

Chat soon,
DelBoy