"Beautiful South Africa!" Suzze's Profile

It was a last minute decision to visit South Africa due to our daughter living out there since August last year. Her partner had been posted there for his job and my daughter went with him taking a year out of work. They both do the same line of work and my daughter was hoping to get a job while she was there, but couldn't.
In the meantime they have recently been given joint posting now to India in Mumbai, and they go the end of Feb.
My husband and I were looking forward to going out to South Africa to visit them later on in the year, but sadly would not be able to now. My daughter then suggested to us on her visit back to the UK for Christmas, why don't you both come out when I go back for two weeks. That way I will be able to take you out and about as I will not be at work and we can do allot of stuff together. So we decided there and then to take the opportunity to visit this country and spend it all with our daughter and partner.
What an amazing time we all had, it was mainly a big adventure with non stop visiting wonderful places and witnessing the breathtaking scenery and experiences and all with our family. My daughter did a great itinery for us and it was non stop.

We slept in tents with the wild animals in Kruger, danced with Zulu's, got kissed by an elephant, had dinner up in a tree, trekked on top of Table Mountain, trekked to Cape Point, did a day's wine tasting tour, and almost got drowned doing a sunset cruise in Cape Town!
My hubbie, daughter and her boyfriend also did a shark dive, and I went shopping at the V&A Waterfront!

I really did love the place and didn't want to come home! I can fully understand why my daughter and her partner love it there. They feel quite sad to be leaving so soon but are looking forward to India as another big life experience.

I also love photography, and it was great to be able to take some great photos of the animals in their own habitat, the scenery and the people.

We flew into Joburg and stayed in Pretoria where my daughter is living at the moment, but also flew down to Cape Town too.

I will now be starting to do my Travel Pages of our trip........

PRETORIA

KRUGER NATIONAL PARK

CAPE TOWN

STELLENBOSCH

Me loving this cruise!

MAY 2009

We sailed with P&O on the newest and biggest of their ships at the moment, the Ventura. So many leisure and dining options. A great atmosphere and as lively or as quite as you wanted it. First class shows with breathtaking acts almost everynight.

With 3,250 passengers it was hard to imagine that this ship could provide such excellent service and make you feel so welcome. The staff always went out of their way to say hello to you.

I was never a cruise fan before but the last few years, talking to other people of my age or around have been making me think, this is not a bad way to have a holiday and see lots of different places at the same time.
What I loved about this was, the boat catered for everything we could have hoped for. That being, a lovely cabin with a comfortable bed. Our cabin steward looked after us so well, coming in twice a day to clear up after us. When we came in from our evening out, we would find the curtains drawn, the bedside lamps on, clean towels again, the bathroom all clean again, and chocs on the bed. Obviously being a woman I wasn't used to all this! :-)

So much to see and do in the evenings. We have never had all of this in any hotel that we've stayed in on the Med or anywhere else come to that.
We would never go to the same place twice in one evening. We would normaly go to a show before dinner, then have our meal and then perhaps watch a comedian or a singer. Not every night we could do that as sometimes after a day on shore we were too tired to stay up late!
The food was fantastic and so was the service. Where ever we were on the ship the service was always there. We never waited more than a minute for a drink.
Plenty of sunbeds too, but having said that my only grievance was, they are all laid out together, so you could end up laying next to a complete stranger. That didn't happen to us as they were never all occupied.
The shore excursions also ran smoothly and felt that everything was really organised.

We sailed out of Southampton, so no flying which was great for me! I could take as much lugguge as my husband could carry!! It was really good not having to worry about how much everything weighed though when I was packing. A great bonus for cruising.

So if you want to see lots of different countries, only tasters mind, love being waited on hand and foot. then this is for you! Bearing in mind you don't suffer from sea sickness........
Having said that though, you could hardly feel the boat moving at all most of the time. We had a couple of rough nights when the sea was rough and you could feel it a bit then. That didn't bother me, just kept me awake a bit that's all. I wasn't sure if I would suffer but I didn't.

We did the freedom dining which is an option worth considering if you don't want to be at a set time and sit at the same table everynight. That is the club dining. We went with the freedom dining, dining at a time to suit you. We could either go to the formal restuarant or the more casual relaxed ones, which was great. We could please ourselves.

Our ports of call were

SPAIN

CADIZ

CPSPAIN

BARCELONA

FRANCE

VILLEFRANCHE

ITALY - PISA

LIVORNO

ITALY

ROME

SPAIN

CARTAGENA

GIBRALTA

I HAVE PUT MY PORTS OF CALL ON MY TRAVEL PAGES....

JULY 2009
No travelling for me here but I have one of my sisters coming to vsit from New Brunswick to celebrate our birthdays together, and to see her great neice for the first time Emelia.
My sister Bev will be celebrating her 40th birthday here which is great. So I have this year off as the last few years it's been me flying to Canada!

I'm going to miss her so very much but very proud

AUGUST 2009

My sister had her visit with us and we had a lovely 12 days of days out and catching up with each other! I also had a life long friend over around the same time from the States as she has been living out in Kentucky for the past three years. So had them both here for my birthday too, which was wonderful. Had to say goodbye to both of them with in a week of each other and had one more to go which was yesterday and that was my lovely beautiful daughter.
She has gone to live in South Africa for three years with her partner as he has a posting out there with his job. My daughter has an interview in two weeks time for the same one, so fingers crossed she gets it.
I said goodbye to my daughter yesterday which was very hard and painful but at the same time felt very proud of her and I am wishing them both a wonderful adventure out there for the next three years.
So, this means that on my VT pages in the not to distant future I will have a South Africa page with my adventures on them too! Can't wait........

My daughter paragliding in Nepal Feb 2011

My daughter has now left South Africa and she is now working and living in Mumbai. A very different country with a very different culture! She is gradually getting used to the way of life out there, but finding it a bit hard too. She is coming home for work for two weeks the end of this month. Really looking forward to seeing her for a little while, I really miss her, but very proud of her too.

My beautiful grandson was born on June 26th 2010 and was in a bit of a hurry to meet us all. He due date was August 13th! So he was seven weeks early and gave us a bit of scare to say the least.

He is now 7 wks old and weighing 6lb 10oz, he's doing really well.

I feel very blessed to have these two gorgeous grandchildren in my life xx

Me with my sister who I miss so much xx

This is me on the left with my sister with me about to leave Toronto Airport back to the UK. I'd come over the week before to surprise her for her 50th birthday! Everything went to plan with the help of her wonderful daughter and my sister had the shock of her life when she saw me! We hadn't seen each other for almost three years.
Had a wonderful week with her and miss her terribly. We are getting together in July when she flies over to the UK in July and after a few days we're going to Turkey for a week, can't wait. We have never done this before just her and I, so really looking forward to spending some quality time together.

July - Turkey

Nov - hopefully a trip to India in Mumbai to see our daughter

March 2012 - have just booked a Caribbean Cruise