Moulin Rouge

We're heading back to the UK on the Eurostar. So much easier than the farce that airports have become. And not much longer door to door.

We've really enjoyed the brief weekend here. I was expecting it to be dirty and busy but was pleasantly surprised.

Indulging in some gourmet British cuisine at the airport before flying out to Porto tonight. Note the papiér wine glass and bespoke tomato sauce.

Porto

Our apartment has a record player and a huge collection of music we've never heard of. Where's my brown skivvy, cigarettes and moped?

Sloppy pulled pork and gooey cheese buns. Hey, we're all going to die one day; might as well do it with a smile on your face and cheese on your chin.

It looks like a bad Photoshop job but these are very large letters.

Looking out over the Douro River across to the many port houses on the other side. Those will be a job for tomorrow.

View from the gondola back across the river.

Tour and port tasting at Graham's. Lots of very good ports have English names because the British set up most of the exporting businesses there.

We're in the Duoro valley today and, Dad, you'd love it here. Lots of gnarly grapes growing in harsh conditions on steep rocky slopes. Lots of hand picking and feet squashing and traditional methods doing it the hard way.

They still use feet because it avoids crushing the grape seeds.

These fermentation / aging barrels are 150 years old. They clean them out with wine in between batches and leave the spiders alone to control the mosquitoes.

Coronation Street tour at long last!

We're in Londontown this weekend. We caught up with Graham and Kerry (Sally's cousins) last night and went out for dinner near King's Cross. The whole area has been revitalised and is looking great. Lots of nice eateries.

We're currently heading out to Amersham to have brunch with Sally's Aunt Rosemary.

We're in Amsterdam this weekend. Just a short visit unfortunately but we're keen to come back.

Here we're on the roof of our tiny AirBnb at 10:15pm after a big day of walking and canal tours, eating and drinking.

Amsterdam is built entirely on reclaimed land and on a forest of long wooden piles. Many of the piles are starting to give way and have had to be reinforced so you see a lot of leaning buildings. The buildings themselves were taxed on how wide they were so they tended to construct them narrow, tall and deep with very narrow and steep stairs and ladders and with a beam and pulley mounted at the top to bring furniture and goods up.

An incredible number of cycles here. I love a city where cars are second to pedestrians and cyclists and wish New Zealand and Britain would take a leaf out of Amsterdam and Copenhagen's books.

[Edit: this morning a couple of guys asked me to help them lower a pinball machine down from a top floor. That was fun.]

Mauro and Yif spent the weekend with us and we had a blast showing them the nice and not-so-nice bits of Manchester.

Last night we went for pizza and a comedy show. Today was a bit of lounging around followed by watching football in the pub and more lounging around.

Tomorrow they're off to York for the day and heading back in the middle of the night to London to continue their travels to Europe.