Southern Italy - love and hate

- *Loved Pompeii, and Herculeam. In some places you can see the remains of doors, floors, shop shelves and even a wooden laundry press. Reading Robert Harris's Pompeii while there was pretty cool even if the book is crap

* My Italian is coming on well. In a bar I thought I had asked for a glass of beer. The waitress looked confused and asked if I wanted wine like Marilyn. I said no and repeated my request. She shrugged and bought back a glass of wine for Marilyn and a empty glass for me

* The beauty of the Isle of Capri overcame the mass of tourists, but Sorrento was very ordinary

* Litter and rubbish everywhere. Suppose this is what happens if you outsource your country's waste disposal to the Mafia. Our apartment overlooked a beautiful beach and bay but the rubbish that covered the beach every day blew in the sea. It was like swimming in a municipal tip

* Fell in love with the chaos and frenetic activity in Naples: Managed to get a box at the opera but the locals were not impressed by our dress sense. Archeological museum, especially the Secret Rooms full of Roman pornography, and the ornate glass that had somehow survived the centuries

* Amazingly it has been difficult to get anything other than mediocre food, except for the fantastic pizzas in Naples

* Hated the graffetti on everything

* Marilyn learnt that it is best not to wait for the loo to become free if two men are using it at the same time

* Couldn't work out why every night a guy would play the one arm bandit in the local bar putting in 100s of Euros but not taking any of the winnings. The owner would have to empty it a couple of times a night just to keep him supplied. When the machine hit the max it could record in winnings he would call the owner over who would give them back around £700 worth of euros.

* Why when buying a train ticket I buy part of the journey at the train company's ticket office but have to buy the other part at the tobacconist

* In Naples guys sell stolen lap tops, mobile phones, MP3 and cameras openly from the tops of cardboard boxes

How to save the world - fly more!

We took trains and buses from Malaga to Milan. This was nearly £400 more expensive than flying. Had we flown and used the money saved to offset carbon emissions we could have covered nearly half a plane load. If another couple had done the same we could have made the whole flight carbon neutral

Barcelona is a brilliant city, I cant think of another that has such great architecture, restaurants, parks and stunning beaches. We managed to get a cheap hotel in one of those neighborhoods where people search the bins for cardboard or stand on street corners with bling and two mobile phones selling small packets of stuff. Even the girls and some older ladies got all dressed up in fish net stockings just to hang around on the street

In Milan we managed an opera in La Scalla. We got gallery tickets with a somewhat restricted view. Seated we could only see the top left corner to the curtain and none of the stage so we had to watch the whole opera standing up but it was a wonderful experience and as you can see we dressed for the occasion.

The Duomo in Milan and the Leaning Tower of Pisa have both been cleaned up and look like new. We went up on the roof of the Duomo to watch the sun set. Climbing up the leaning tower is a weird experience,  you feel the lean!

I used a faulty loo on the train to Naples. Somehow it was open to the air flow beneath the train. I didn't notice until I starting weeing and it did a u-turn back into my face!!. Still once I had got washed and changed we had a great pizza in Naples

We are now in an apartment for a week in a village just outside Sorrento.

Mr Bean on the train

After Seville we went to Cordoba's magnificent walled city and the biggest mosque outside of Mecca. We managed to hit it at feria time again and had to pay a fortune at the only hotel with an empty room. To save a bit of money we decide our next stop should be an apartment in Alicante

It was a 6 hour train journey with a change. Because we only had ten minutes to spare I made sure our rucksacks were on before the train stopped. Mine was covered in the security netting we used in South America. It snagged on my day bag and ended up hanging down behind me. I couldn't reach it, and Marilyn couldn't undo it, so I had to take the rucksack off. By this time the train had stopped and loads of people were queued up behind us unable to reach the door. Trying to be quick, I swung the rucksack round and it caught on a suitcase that a guy was taking off the rack. I yanked it and the weight of my heavy rucksack spun me round so fast that I was thrown backward. The security netting caught the toilet door which opened revealing a guy sitting on the loo. We were in the middle of two carriages; one full of pissed off, impatient people waiting to get off the train and the other full of people in fits of laughter!!

The Costa Blanca is even worse than the Costa del Sol. The Spanish have destroyed a complete coast line by uncontrolled, rampant development. It is both ugly and soleless, mile after mile of identical boxes and towers. Even worse it has been taken over by sort of English (and the Irish) who just want a facsimile of ´home´. We have even been into bars and shops where they don't speak Spanish. The food is terrible and the pubs all have TVs showing English football and soaps. Later on in the evening the TV is replaced by karaoke and pub quizzes. The beaches and the sea on the other hand are stunning.

The picture shows the view from the balcony of our,very cheap, apartment

Death in the afternoon

Managed to get to Seville during one of their major ferias. Hundred's of very smart entertainment tents, packed with families drinking, eating and dancing to live music. Its a great atmospere, especially as the parties spill out onto the streets. Everyone arrives by horse drawn carriage and in traditional dress. Its like walking through a town full of celebrating Carmen extras.

The feria includes a week of top bull fights in Spain´s oldest ring. The best tickets get sold out a year in advance but we managed to get a couple crammed in with the locals - sitting on concrete steps with peoples' knees in our backs and people nestling into our crutches. If the audiance had been American, they would have had to reduce numbers 8 fold.

I found the first fight really upsetting, seeing such a magnificent creature wounded, tormented, reduced to a corpse and then dragged out of the areana behind a team of horses. But after a few fights I became innured to suffering and began to appreciate the artistry and bravery of the matador. Especially when one went back to the fight after being tossed into the air and trampled on.

It is amazing that a modern European country still encourages, let alone allows such an event. It is horribly cruel but set against the other things we are doing, including wiping out complete species it doesn't, in my mind, come to high on the list of mankinds' sins.