You spend weeks preparing for a holiday, you look forward to getting away from work and home and before you know where you are, it is all over and all you have is the memories and a few credit card bills still to arrive. As trips go this was both busy and essentially relaxing. Busy because a Mediterranean cruise is about the places you are visiting rather than the time you spend lounging on some deck (particularly at the end of October when the weather is hardly hot). But also relaxing because you get to receive a particular level of service, food and general hospitality we wouldn’t usually seek or receive. I wasn’t sure how I would like a cruise, I wasn’t sure what my teenage son would think, but actually we all had a great time. This doesn’t make cruising cool for a 16 year old who has told his friends he just visited Italy, but actually I am not sure what there is to be ashamed about, but then I am a long way from 16 so what do I know?

I cannot describe quite how tired I felt before I went away. I had not been sleeping well in the couple of weeks leading up to the trip and was finding it hard to function. Yesterday as I returned to work properly (I had been to an out of town meeting on Monday) I did feel rested and certainly more alert. However there is that strange feeling you get on that first day, where nothing that is said or done can quite affect you, where everything just washes over you. Sadly that feeling doesn’t last for very long (usually a day in my experience). The good feeling was also tempered on the way home by the fact it was dark (clocks went back on Sunday)  and that petrol has now reached a pound sterling a litre. It is going to be a long winter!

For pictures of our trip, have a look in the side bar as I have uploaded for the first time to Flickr.