Paradise Lost

My in laws are moving away from this house in Scotland to be nearer family in the south of England. It will be great to see more of them but they have the most perfect house in the world at the moment, the photos above are taken from the front garden. We have had some magnificent holidays here and the children have memories that will stay with them for ever. It is a real contender for the best house I have ever had the fortune to spend time in. My in-laws have a knack of finding amazing houses as they used to own a holiday home in France that would also be in contention for the best house ever award.

Paradise found

The picture above is a perfect “chocolate box” summer village scene in England. Both of my children play junior cricket and one of the great things about summer evenings and weekends is going down to watch them. The matches take about 3 hours and it’s a great opportunity to sit in the sunshine watching the world go by…. It’s the polar opposite to watching them play football on a freezing wet February morning in winter which I also enjoy but in a different way.

Berlin Pipes

After Palma I had a need to spend a couple of days in Berlin and despite having visited a number of times I saw something this time that I have not seen before,  a kind of “mousetrap” collection of pipes above ground. They looked to be ramshackle and temporary but they did appear to have a liquid running through them. A quick investigation on Google revealed that they were in fact temporary water management pipes used in construction.  Apparently Berlin in built on a swamp and during construction of new buildings water has to be pumped out of the area and into the drains. The pipes are above ground as they are temporary and the strange “up and down” design is to get them over the roads and other access points.   

A city misunderstood ?

As indicated in the last post I recently had the chance to visit Palma Majorca. For years it has had the reputation with me of a “party island” and not a place that was high on my list of places to spend any time, It turns out however that the Spanish have been very clever. They have reserved one part of the island for the British tourists, another part of the island for the German Tourists and they keep the rest of the island for themselves. Palma Town is particularly nice as the photographs above show. The reason the plaza is so empty is because I visited it during “siesta” another Spanish tradition that still survives.     

An unusual lift arrangement

The picture is not the best, unfortunately, but I have recently spent a couple of days in Palma Majorca and the hotel I stayed in has a very unusual arrangement with the lifts.  The buttons are on the outside. 

On arrival in the lobby you press the button for the floor you want to get to and the display directs you to one of the lifts, there are no buttons in the lifts.  After an entire life of having buttons inside the lift is somewhat disconcerting it is also important that you get into the lift that the screen indicated or you will not get to your floor. If this happens you have to leave the lift and start again on the outside.