This is also the month that people head off to the to gym and combined with the sales in diet paraphernalia that points to an interesting aspect of our culture – all that eating and drinking in December, without a care, and then some serious dieting the next month!

Unless we are staying longer than a few days we opt for hotels but anything longer than a week in one place and we normally get a rental property. The most unusual place we have rented so far was in Tunisia where we stayed in Hammamet and we loved it. I hope the current situation there calms down because it is a lovely place to visit with the family.

I’d love to treat them to a nice honeymoon trip seeing as they are on a tight budget, something like a Branson vacation where they could relax and have some fun together. But as they are both studying at university until February they cannot go anywhere just yet. All the same, there are some nice small electricals available online to buy these days and I will be sending them some lovely gifts.

We are loving the postcards she is sending and she is very much looking forward to her first Xmas there.

We have booked a coach trip, three days worth, to see around the west coast of Ireland with the kids as surprisingly he has not been there yet. Looking forward to it too!

Many of their friends are going on Disney vacations in the summer break and it seems our kids feel a bit left out by being the only one’s who have not yet been to visit Mickey Mouse. They have been to Portaventura in Spain though to see Woody Woodpecker – and that is where James cut his eye open on one of the slides.

While we cannot do that it sounds like a great idea and  destin florida vacation rentals look like they are just the medicine for people suffering from that seasonal disorder syndrome. I have been told that going there at this time of year means you have to go elbow to elbow with other tourists all looking for some warmth and sun – I could handle it I think, anything to get away from this bitter cold weather!

We got lost so many times, ended up on rural roads, farm tracks and private drives that in the end we gave up and got out the good old road map. At least it doesn’t talk at you in some annoying voice!

It is so sad to think – to know – that there would have been a good number of people on that plane who would have been nervy flyers and then to have been involved in what they would have been sitting there dreading…

Still, it is well known that the trip to the airport in the car carries far more risks than the actual flight and to be true there are thousands of planes criss-crossing the skies all the time without incident. All the same, as the news trickles in about this latest disaster people will be considering going on Caribbean cruises  in bigger numbers than before. I look at it this way – that crash will not be the last one!

I remembered it well; Fairmount Resort was THE place to stay at when visiting the Blue Mountains. Celebrities from overseas always made for the beautiful spa overlookin the Jamieson Valley – it cost a packet to sta there even for a weekend. But now hard times have fallen on the Fairmount since it was taken over by an asian company.

They have sacked most of the local Australian staff and employed Korean’s who cannot speak a word of english and who have no idea how to clean a room, or change a bed, clean the beautiful Delta fauctes or sweep a floor. This is one reason why Australians are big on ‘Australian owned’.

The resort is now a filthy establishment with broken down facilities and a long line of very unhappy customers. Fortunately local tourism concerns are doing something about this; the resort has been removed from all tourism listings until the new owners get their act together. I hope it works – it is bad enough when foreigners take over something inherently Australian but when they make a mess of something that was once wonderful it is almost unforgiveable.