I LEFT MY SLIPPERS IN SINGAPORE!

View over Rangitoto

The Croziers have returned to Crete after a couple of months on the other side of the world. The north shore of New Zealand is definitely a world away from sleepy Crete, but it was a wonderful adventure and Pa Crozier looks very fit on his return having left in rather poor shape after the fall at home and a chesty cough caught on the journey.

First of all, we need to record our thanks and admiration for the Passenger Assistance offered by Olympic Airways (Heraklion and Athens), Emirates (Athens, Dubai and Singapore) and Air New Zealand who took care of Mr Crozier providing wheelchair assistance at all these airports. We can hardly believe that we made it right across the world and back with such good care and the only damage was a cracked suitcase on arrival at Heraklion. Nothing went missing at all! Hats off to all those people because it worked!

Dubai mosque

Our first two day stopover in Dubai was interesting. Somehow we had managed to book a super luxurious apartment with two bathrooms, fully fitted kitchen, two TVs in a sitting room and bedroom with air conditioned super-duperness! We were awakened by a call to prayer from the Mosque next door and enjoyed the Dubai sunrise. Sadly though, the free self-serve breakfast was held in the worst possible design of dining room I have ever experienced with no thought given to the dynamics of 200 people needing to get plates of food and cups of coffee from one side of a scrum to another. It was like eating in the middle of a market place and having to fetch trays of food for K (who cannot manage this with crutches) and then repeat the process for myself was exhausting. We will never get used to chicken sausages either! A bottle of wine and four beers from room service set us back over £100 – so we decided not to go there on the way back. We took a taxi ride across the city to a new build shopping mall .. a bit like Arabian Nights meets Bluewater and after having a cup of coffee at Costa(packet), we jumped in the taxi and returned again! Not very adventurous unless you like shopping but we knew we had no space in our suitcases!

Gardens by the Bay, Singapore

We looked forward to Singapore – thinking that it would be a little more relaxed only to find that we had booked a hotel with a very small room. The two twin beds were in a sort of corridor – one on the left, the other on the right with a flight of steps in the middle. There was no window, no bedside tables, no wardrobe and it cost us a lot of money. This is the place that I left my slippers under the bed but nothing would induce us to book the same place for the journey home even to retrieve my slippers! We were too far away from shops and cafes but were surrounded by “Spas” and 24 hour massage parlours! We took a taxi to the Gardens by the Bay and tried to get a feel for the city. Masses of skyscrapers, amazing plant life and trees in the steamy heat, and shopping malls everywhere. I took a walk around the neighbourhood to investigate Silk and Carpet shops and to look at beautiful Mosques but sadly Raffles was surrounded by hoardings and I didn't manage to taste a Singapore Sling. We were amused that every taxi driver in Singapore asked us how old we were!

Singapore Botanical Gardens - fabulous

Our arrival in Auckland was lovely. The grandchildren had prepared banners, flowers and all sorts of goodies to welcome us. The weather was atrocious and about three or four cyclones passed over or near Auckland during our visit. Parts of South Island were badly flooded and under emergency status. Fortunately, in Auckland there was plenty of sunshine in between.

Walkway around the East Coast Bays

We stayed in Mairangi Bay. All the bars and coffee shops were buzzing. Men were doing deals, joggers and dogwalkers dropped by for marvellous Brunches. Kiwis certainly do the big breakfast thing with panache serving fabulous breakfast dishes (some healthy, some not so healthy) but they all came to the table with appealing style and we have a lot of dieting to do as a result!

I did school pick-ups, swimming galas, reading books, birthday parties, trampolining and walking! The children are wonderfully healthy, engaging and interesting. We revisited places I had been to on my first visits to NZ which had changed from open countryside to completely new towns in the meantime. The houses are LUXURIOUS, cars are LUXURIOUS, people lived in great locations in the most beautiful surroundings. The cost of living is horrendous! We know that our pension would never go anywhere! However, all our plans went well. Pa Crozier went fishing a couple of times, we ate fish and chips a lot, ate curries a lot, ate eggs benedict a lot and generally had a jolly time while drinking in all the lovely countryside and seaside places.

For the journey home, we were not quite so much innocents abroad. We recommend the Ibis Hotel on Bencoolen in Singapore and the Airport Premier Inn in Dubai which were comfortable and had everything at hand with pleasant service. I eventually tasted the Singapore Sling, which was interesting but nothing like as good as Cretan fresh orange juice!

After taking in all these palaces to the gods of materialism mid journey, it was great to return to our little home in Crete. Look what was waiting for us!

Flowers, potatoes, oranges, lemons and eggs!

I wanted to post many more lovely photos with this blog from my new camera, but each photo has taken about half an hour to upload, so I will have to do some homework on photo storage files.