Woah. Leave. Back. Ouch.

(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

No post for almost a month. Golly, poor blog!

Dubai, London, Liverpool, Haverfordwest, London, Copenhagen, Belfast, Newry, London, Dubai.

What was that? That was your leave, mate. Welcome back 'in station'.

Looking back on the whirlwind that was, the start of it seems like months ago. Copenhagen was our annual attempt to spend some time together away from work and the hustle and bustle of the annual tour of the UK.

Funny place.

The Danes seem to make quite a deal about how free and easy and just, well, downright cool and inclusive and right on they are, but they'll stand on the margins of a totally empty road, yawning blacktop trailing endlessly into the horizon either side of them, waiting for the green light before they'll move. You can freewheel as much as you like, as long as you obey the  rules.

The hotel we finally selected (after weeks of clicking and mulling) was overpriced and packed with American tourists starting out on their Baltic cruises. Actually, all of central Copenhagen was packed with American tourists starting out on their Baltic cruises. Dinner wherever we went was inevitably taken next to Hank and Wilma yelling at each other as if they were still out on the prairie rather than in a cosy and intimate Yerpean restaurant.

We ate well, especially at funky new eatery Almanak at The Standard (a converted old ferry terminus) which we randomly discovered when sheltering from a sudden downpour. It isn't, despite the sound of the name, a Lebanese joint, but a new 'contemporary Danish' place staffed by people who've run away from working in Noma (the best restaurant in the world yadayada) and the food was grin-inducingly stunning. I laughed my way through the meal, my usual reaction to glorious food. And glorious it most certainly was.

We went back for a treat on our last night and watched in dismay as the service fell apart in a Hell's Kitchen sort of way, stacks of plates waiting on the pass, comped drinks all around as the floor staff tried to make sense of it all and failed. It was like the Keystone Cops of food. All it lacked was Gordon Ramsay screaming expletive-laden abuse at them as they tottered around getting everything horribly wrong. The food was still great, it just took three hours for them to get it all out to us. A shame, really.

We visited things. We walked a lot. We learned that cyclists are the new superpower and own both cars and pedestrians. Watching them beasting bewildered Japanese tourists who have wandered unknowingly into the cycle lane was astounding. The Danes don't talk about the Second World War very much, it's sort of missing from the historical narrative which we found generally to be patchy outside of the Christiansborg Palace, which is all very palatial.

We spent quite a lot of time trying to convince people that living in the UAE doesn't mean you have three heads, a close affinity with ISIS and a wife kept in purdah. We've never before been quite so keenly aware of how deeply ignorant people in general are about this place. Maybe it's us.

As for the rest of it, a whirlwind of nieces from both Heaven and Hell, the occasional nephew and many in-laws; friends, family, places and things. We bought a house, as you do. And then we found ourselves sitting in The Oriel at Terminal Three, waiting for the flight and wondering quite where the last three weeks had gone.

It was almost a relief to be back, except it is - as always - very strange to suddenly be plonked with a bump into our real life away from real life. Petrol's gone up, I hear. Other than that, we don't appear to have missed much. In a few days it'll feel as if we've never been away; it always does.

Hey ho...

The Jetwing Warwick Gardens Hotel, Nuwara Eliya

Scotland? Nope, Sri Lanka. Exotic tropical flowers rub shoulders with fuschia 

and pink roses in the rich gardens of Nuwara Eliya's Warwick Gardens Hotel.

Jetwing, often for some reason called Jetwings, is a major Sri Lankan conglomerate with interests in the travel and tourism industry and ownership of a large number of hotels across the country. The company's hulking luxury buses ply the tourist routes, the Eddie Stobart of Sri Lankan tourism. I had past experience of one of those hotels, Galle's achingly beautiful Lighthouse Hotel, a building designed by much-celebrated Sri Lankan architect Geoffrey Bawa.

Bawa's extraordinary architectural vision places the Lighthouse Hotel in every coffee table book of 'funkiest hotels in the world' and it's always to be found in collections of 'lovely hotels' - the camera loves its clean lines mixed with visionary statuary and yet the truth is, when you get up close to it, the hotel is at best unkempt and at worst shabby. It is also home to the mind-numbingly beautiful Cinnamon Room - the restaurant at which, readers will by now be weary of being reminded, I had The Worst Meal Of My Life.

We had also endured a week of public school-like misery at the hands of a 'boutique small hotel' in Sri Lanka, the dubious, woeful and rat-piss spattered charms of Galle's Sun House Hotel.

So booking the Jetwing Warwick Gardens Hotel - a boutique small hotel - as our overnight stay in the lush, cool highlands of Nuwara Eliya was something of a leap of faith. Or lunacy. You tell me.

On paper it looked stunning - C19th planter's house restored check, different out of the way experience check, uniquely stylish way to spend a Nuwara Eliya night check. But still there was a niggle. What if it were, you know, just not very good after all that? What if the TripAdvisor reviews were all so starry-eyed at the splendour of the place they missed the things that make somewhere truly special, not just decoratively exceptional?

We approached the hotel from the Ambewela Dairy Farm side, a dumb move that we only had ourselves to blame for. We're hooning around in a charcoal Lexus minibus and the increasingly precipitous road through the mountains starts to become no laughing matter as the daylight begins to fade. There are yawning chasms inches away to our right as we negotiate the narrowing single track mountain road which becomes barely road and mostly track. Still it wends up through the misty hills and we've stopped talking. Everyone's nervous as Duminda skillfully wrestles with the wheel and guides us past those awful drops and crumbling margins.

The silence bears down on us, the engine becomes something to focus on as its note rises and falls.

Finally we come across a sign. It's a right turn off the track. We take it and meet an even narrower track. There's no tarmac, this is compressed mud and pothole. We bounce and judder down into a valley only to see another track leading upwards, two concrete runners have been laid down, but they're smashed and cracked. White-painted rocks mark the route of the narrow, precipitous track upwards. The Lexus strains as Duminda tries to slow for the potholes and yet maintain enough momentum to take us up the rain-slicked incline. The edge seems very near indeed and then we hit a tight hairpin. It's too much, we have to reverse and re-take it. Bouncing and creeping, we negotiate the iniquitous track and finally draw up outside the old plantation house that is the Warwick Gardens.

It's glorious.

As far as I understood the story told me by the house's factotum as we stood on the lawn looking out over the mountains the next morning (there is a guest-facing staff of three, said factotum, a housekeeper and a chef), a Scottish planter by the unlikely name of Lemon (we tried looking up Lennon, but both come up blank) built his home from home here up in the temperate hills of Nuwara Eliya in the 1880s. He thrived here, with a massive plantation estate of some 10,000 acres.

The family stayed until 1940, selling up to a Sri Lankan chap by the name of Fernandes and he ran the estate until the nationalisations of 1971-2. This was a black period in Sri Lankan history, when the government took to its own any and all plantations over 50 acres, particularly focusing on foreign-owned estates but, it seems, even Sri Lankans weren't safe. His proud mountain kingdom reduced to 50 acres, Fernandes had a heart attack and died of grief.

Thirty years later, the house - a ruined shell in the hills - was discovered by Jetwing chairman, Hiran Cooray and he, his wife and architect Channa Daswatte took to restoring the house to its original glory. Every bit of woodwork is new, the furnishings, fixtures and fittings all selected tastefully to recreate the glory of that 'Grand highlands house in a foreign land' the original owner had set out to create in the middle of his lush plantation.

The result is a very special small hotel indeed.

The living room gives into the formal dining room. Can't stand eating with other guests? 

Find a hotel for the socially inadequate, then...

Two dining rooms (the formal dining room with a ten-seat table and the pantry with a smaller table) and a drawing room and study form the 'front of house' downstairs (there's also a pantry and kitchen).

Informal dining in the Pantry...

There's a ceiling-high tapestry on the dogleg of the stairs and then a landing leading to the other rooms. Behind the tapestry is a secret staircase to the glorious 'White Room' - originally called the Netherleigh Room. This is where we stayed - a minimalistically stylish room with an equally stylish bathroom attached to it, complete with walk-in shower and claw-footed bath. If you ever go to this hotel, book this room. Just do it. The views out over the stepped country-house lawn and peaks beyond alone are worth it.

Dinner consists of no menu. What sort of thing do you like? Sri Lankan? European? Chicken? Fish? What floats your boat? We plumped for Sri Lankan and settled down for drinks in the living room. Our host pours a serious G&T.

A long while later we wandered over to the dining table and enjoyed a meal of rare finesse, a chicken curry, vegetable curry, breadfruit curry, dal and string hoppers together with a spiced coconut sambal were subtle, spicy and served piping hot. A dessert of set yoghurt and a traditional Sri Lankan set pudding followed by coffee (from the estate's own plantation) and a battering, flashing thunderstorm whipped up almost to order, with rainwater cascading off the house. There's magic in the air.

The post-storm night is noisy. All sorts of things bump, croak witter and caw through the dark hours. And it's majestic. The morning sunlight floods the white room as we pull open the heavy curtains.

Walking in the Warwick Gardens' gardens is a morning delight...

Breakfast ("What would you like for breakfast?") was an omelette for Sarah and, for my part, bacon, sausages and eggs. With toast, home made preserves (including jam from the strawberries grown on some of the 30 acres of land remaining to the house) and more of that excellent coffee. Then a walk around the grounds, fresh from the night's rain, the channeled streams muddy with the night's run-off.

The staff are knowledgeable, charming and couldn't do more to help. The water in the bathroom is hit and miss - really not consistent with the rest of the experience on offer. There's nothing quite like standing, freezing and covered in suds waiting for the other room to turn off the tap to make you count quite how much you're paying for your boutique small hotel experience room. That's my only complaint - apart from the mad track to the house.

But, by golly, this is a special place made more special by its staff. I have no hesitation recommending it heartily to anyone who wants to do something outstanding and memorable at least once in their lives. I'd rank it alongside Ballymaloe, The Clarence and Auchterarder House as one of my favourite hotel experiences ever.

Sri Lanka Week

Some flowers. A symbol of Sri Lankan hospitality or some such...

Rather in the same mould as a hotel special night - and having had one too many themed buffet meals than we needed over the past week, thank you - this week's going to be Sri Lanka Week, so if you're not interested in Travels In Serendib, I'd give it all a miss if I were you.

We did a hare-brained, breakneck tour of Sri Lanka over Eid, as usual ill-informed and wilfully determined not to be told what to do. We had help at hand - an 'inside job' had been arranged by Sri Lankan pal Deepika, who had a driver at hand. The scheme was simple - clock into Colombo at the dreadful hour of 2.50 am thanks to Air 'we like the cheap slots' Arabia and stay briefly at the Ramada Katunayake at the airport before whizzing up to Kandy for two nights staying at the Earl's Regency, Nuwara Eliya for a night at uber-funky boutique plantation house The Jetwing Warwick Gardens and then back down to Colombo for an evening at the Mount Lavinia before flying out again in the early hours.

There was method behind the four-night madness. We had travelled to Sri Lanka before, a week's stay at the lovely-looking Sun House in Galle. That week was to turn out to be nothing short of disastrous, featuring a gurgling twit English hotelier, a randy old monk, sham tea plantations, rats piss blankets and The Worst Meal Of My Life. We eventually escaped to Colombo and got drunk before fleeing Sri Lanka vowing never to return.

I reviewed the Sun House Hotel for now defunct food blog The Fat Expat back in the day. The review's linked here and worth a read for a laugh. As a taster, it starts...

"What more could you want to make your boutique hotel experience unforgettable than the facilities offered by the Sun House in Galle, a former colonial bungalow converted into a small, exclusive and luxurious hotel?

The Sun House offers a gurgling twit British owner who appears to have escaped from a comedy show, limited and inflexible dining, a set of threadbare towels and sheets, broken plumbing and a nice, steady stream of rat's piss onto your pillows as you sleep. It really is the perfect way to come to a state of fear and loathing in Galle."

As for The Worst Meal Of My Life, that was at the gloriously beautiful Lighthouse Hotel in Galle, in probably the most handsome restaurant I have ever dined in. That one's linked here for your listening pleasure. As a piece of review writing, it's one of my personal favourites, by the way and still makes me, despite everything, laugh. Here's a snippet:

"In fact, the entire meal had come out and then simply gone back. And the waiter didn’t bat an eyelid. He had obviously seen this happening before: seen the breathless anticipation of romantic couples turned into wide-eyed horror and revulsion and then plunge into despair."

Sarah 'The Hedonista' Walton went to Sri Lanka and loved it, writing it up as an ethereal and magical experience. I could never reconcile that with our own snarling, resentful journey of furious disappointment.

So this time around Deepika talked us into it - but we decided to move so fast that if we encountered disaster, at least it would be fleeting. And I'm glad we did it now, because we had a fantastic time - a roller-coaster ride of ups and downs that was never less than fascinating, frequently endearing, sometimes frustrating but never in danger of going anywhere near the painful lessons of Galle.

So welcome, armchair traveller, to Sri Lanka Week...

Remote

It's been an eventful holiday one way and another. We spent a miserable day in Limerick Regional Hospital's A&E waiting room before being sent home for lack of a bed. By the next morning, Sarah (who was extremely ill) collapsed and had to be taken right back there by ambulance, a journey of over an hour. The paramedics were absolutely fantastic, a jovial yet highly professional crowd. All of the medical staff were truly marvellous: kind, good-natured and funny.

We owe the doctors, nurses and staff at Thurles Ambulance Service and Limerick Regional a huge thank you.

Despite that, Ireland's health service is obviously at breaking point - even from our limited experience you could see it was dangerously under-resourced and over-managed. I was infuriated by the fussy bureaucrat in admissions who insisted on calling me rather than letting me call them to check on the availability of a bed - only to find out when it came to the crunch that they actually couldn't call me as I had a UAE mobile and their lines were barred from international calls. We only found out we had a bed when I called back in desperation post-collapse. I pointed out this was perhaps an issue worth escalating in case of other international travellers being in our situation only to get a repeated response of 'that's not my issue, it's nothing to do with me, that'. I understand, I said, but perhaps you could flag it to management because as it happened it was a somewhat dangerous situation. 'That's nothing to do with me, it's not my responsibility.'

Thanks.

And of course, the one time we decide to spend a week offline in a totally remote lighthouse in the middle of nowhere (well, West of Kinsale, anyway) is the one time we needed online access - when Iceland's most unpronounceable volcano erupted and spewed ash across Europe's airspace, everyone was directed to airline websites (the airlines having worked out that websites are really cool at informing customers rather than actually talking to them). Aer Lingus are as good at not answering the phone as Limerick Regional's bureaucrats are at avoiding responsibility. In fact, we haven't managed to get through to a human once all week - despite tens of calls every day.

Our flight out of Cork got canned so we've gone north to stay with the in-laws in Dundalk - we'll be flying out of Dublin as and when we do get away. In the meantime, it's lots of following aviation sites on Twitter, watching the news and drinking Guinness.

Well, even clouds packed with volcanic dust must have their silver lining...

Sharjah Summer Breaks from AED99

Image by kevin (iapetus) via Flickr

Sharjah Summer Breaks from AED99 is a startling promise to make in an advertisement (Gulf News today) and one that is guaranteed to pique curiosity from would-be summer breakers.

But that's the deal - Sharjah's going for it and I'd commend an overnighter to the 'Cultural' emirate most highly.

There’s a hell of a lot to see and do in Sharjah, from a wide range of museums, art galleries and restored souq areas through to desert trips taking you to the idyllic Indian Ocean retreat of Khor Fakkan (and its venerable but still fun hotel, The Oceanic) and the important mangrove swamps of Khor Kalba. An overnight in Sharjah would be well worthwhile, IMHO, for many people - particularly the many living in Dubai who've never bothered going next door. These posts about stuff to do around the UAE might help

Don't forget that Sharjah's 'dry', but don't let that put you off, either.

Go crazy this summer and give one of these a bash - there are more on the Sharjah Tourism website, but I've cherry picked the best of 'em here.

FIVE STAR

Radisson Blu
Tel: +9716 5657777
Dhs 299
The Radisson SAS. This is a pretty nice hotel, actually, with a good pool and beach and does simply fantastic Lebanese food. The Friday buffet’s not unpleasant and I'd recommend the place as easily the best hotel in Sharjah.

Holiday Inn Corniche
Tel: +9716 5599900
This hotel’s on the Buheirah Lagoon, in the city centre near the famous Blue Souq (Souq Al Markazi).
Dhs 255 Single
Dhs 299 double

FOUR STAR

Sharjah Rotana
Tel: +9716 563 7777
On the site of the old Palace Hotel, plonked just on the edge of the bustling Al Arouba souq area, this business hotel always struck me as a slightly odd place. Never been in it.
Dhs 200 double

Marbella Resort
Tel: +9716 5741111
The Marbella has been there for donkey’s and is next to the Holiday Inn. It’s all chalets and has always seemed pleasant enough to me. I do recommend a visit to the website, which is highly nostalgic and will take you back to 1970s retro brochure design and first generation website design.
Dhs 199 junior suite

Sharjah Carlton Hotel
Tel: +9716 5283711
This is one of the older properties in Sharjah and used to look pretty imposing back in the 1980s. It just looks old now, but is not unpleasant, has a lovely beach and is near the old fishing village of Al Khan and Sharjah’s aquarium, which is well worth a visit. Its website describes it as situated on the lush Arabian sea and so, I guess, it is.
Dhs 199 single
Dhs 225 double

Oceanic Hotel, Khor Fakkan
Tel: +9716 238 5111
This is, again, an older hotel with distinctive round porthole windows and is absolutely fine to stay in, has a lovely beach and pool and is ideal for exploring the East Coast of the Emirates.
Dhs 99 single
Dhs 199 double

Personally, I'd go for the Oceanic for sheer value and the East Coast and the Radisson for facilities.

BTW, I got the pricings above from the most helpful Mohammed at the Tourism call centre - 800 SHJ to you!

Thanks to Rob, whose comment on the original post (which I scrubbed) alerted me to the fact that Sharjah Tourism's website had been updated and my whinge about it's lack of content had been addressed even as I was whingeing!

The Falls of Dochart

Image by snappybex via Flickr

At the end of Loch Tay, nestled in the roaring, freezing spring melt-waters of the Falls of Dochart, is the island of Innis Bhuie (inchbhui or any other spelling you fancy). This is where you will find a mausoleum containing the remains of various old Chieftans of the Clan MacNab - it's the last remnant of the swathes of Clan MacNab land around Loch Tay.

To take a walk onto the island, which is protected by an iron gate, you used to have to pick up the key from the sweetshop in the village of Killin. Nowadays there's a visitor centre and you get the key to the island from there.

Not today. The village was filled with fire engines - one of the white pebble-dashed semi-detached houses in the village was spewing smoke from its ruined roof, the blackened spars jabbing up from the top floor as firemen sprayed great coronas of water over the house, spraying the smoking roof of the house next door as they tried to bring the fire under control and at least preserve the other house.

The visitor centre was closed - we were told that the burning house belonged to the lady that runs it. We climbed the wall onto the island instead and stood, looking through the trees and over the roaring green-brown waters to her burning house, feeling terribly sorry for her loss.

The Holiday That Wasn't There

Image via Wikipedia

It's Sunday! No Monday! No Sunday! No Monday!

Finally Gulf News puts the endless speculation to rest. The forthcoming one day national holiday on the occasion of the birthday of the Prophet Mohammed (PBUH) will take place on Saturday for the private sector and Sunday for the public sector.

(Sound of tyres screeching)

Hang on. Isn't the Prophet's birthday by custom celebrated on the 12th of Rabi Al Awwal, corresponding this year (Hijri 1430) to Monday the 9th of March 2009?

This new arrangement means that the UAE's private sector, which takes a Friday/Saturday weekend - the same as the public sector - will not get a day off at all. And nobody will take a day's holiday on the right day.

"We did not want to cause any interruption between the public and private sectors," UAE Minister of Labour Saqr Ghobash told Gulf News, explaining the reason why the change made the holiday 'more coherent' with the public sector holiday.

Oddly, he also told GN, "As far as I know, the majority of companies in the private sector have only one day off, which is Friday."

Why, then, if you are going to move the holiday to the wrong day at all, would you not give both public and private sectors the Sunday holiday? "Giving the holiday on Sunday would have caused another interruption in the holiday," Ghobash told GN's hard-eyed hack on the front line of the war against flibble.

So that's nice and clear, at least.

PS: We're taking Sunday anyway. Nyer Nyer Nyer Nyer Nyer...

Kids

So I haven't posted for days. Sue me.

The Niece From Hell arrived with her parents in tow on the 18th and we've been sight-seeing and shopping and generally doing family-type stuff. My Web 2.0 life has suffered as a conseqence...

One of the neat things about TNFH is that you get a ten year-old's perspective on things and that's always welcome input. This year's big phrase is OhMiGod. It must be used in every other sentence. There! I feel hipper and more 'street' already! Club Penguin is evil and makes Second Life look like a Cub Scouts' outing. Massively Online Multi-Media Games filled with 10 year-olds are bloody dangerous places, I can tell you.

Everyone spent millions of dollars on her Christmas and the runaway hit present award belongs to me - an 'i-Dog'. Think about an iPod speaker in the shape of a cute uber-funky plastic doggie that taps its white plastic paws to the music and flashes happy lights when you play tunes through it. You also have to pet it, otherwise it whines and makes unhappy light patterns. It's the result of an illicit backstage liaison between a Marshall Stack and a Tamagochi. And it's now her constant companion. Human, shmuman...

Dad, TNFH and I went to Atlantis' Aqua-thingy, which was nice. It's incredibly expensive (Think Dhs 1,000 for a half day out for three - and at 10 years old (over 1.1 metres), TNFH is an Atlantis 'adult'. You wouldn't, of course, normally find me there dead. It made me giggle, which is a worry.

The signage at Atlantis is awful. The bus dumps you and you're supposed to know what to do and where to go by osmosis. The staff we met were worse than useless, leaving us feeling disorientated and pissed off. As two men accompanying a small girl, we couldn't be with her in the changing rooms and there were no female attendants on hand. For a family from the child-abuse rich UK, that was a really big deal. Thankfully a total stranger stepped in and took care of TNFH as she changed. An interesting cultural moment - I understand that children are cherished, venerated and generally safer than houses here, but people living in the UK are in constant fear for their kids' safety. And I do think that's sad.

Once you finally find an English speaking member of staff and get them to explain the procedure, you can get on with having fun - but I cannot understand for the life of me why there aren't leaflets, signs and other aids to explaining how you're supposed to get into it! The rides are, quite simply awesome. I don't normally 'do' aqua parks, you understand, but Atlantis was great - delighted hours of bobbing around on tidal waves while sitting on inner tubes.

I still think the hotel is decorated in the style of someone who has drunk bottles of primary school poster paint and gallons of rich bouillabaise then vomited it in a massive burst of uncontrollable projectile eructation but the water park is honestly good fun.