Steve's Blog Blogging since 2004, about the significant people, places, sights and sounds of my world. Now dabbling with retirement!

In these days of 8, 16 and even 24 meg broadband services, it was good to know that here in sleepy Kettering, the local exchange can now handle…….wait for it….. “1 Meg”! Well at least that’s double the speed of a week ago!

We found a nice little restaurant last night ‘La Maison de Marie’ tucked away down an alleyway. 5, Rue Massena06000 Nicewww.lamaisondemarie.com Excellent service and food! Ann’s main course of fish was large enough to feed a nation. Around SIX types of fish, each portion, the size of a main course by themself! We were both …
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Up at 6.15 to a beautiful sunrise. We got up early to ensure we had enough time to finish packing and to cram it all in as we’re definitely leaving with more stuff than we arrived with! Breakfast at 7.15. Slightly chaotic as 95% of passengers all seemed to be taking breakfast at the same …
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Up early today – 7ish. The day looked a little cloudy but it turned into a scorcher! We wanted to get to the station at Livorno fairly sharpish so that we could go by train to Lucca. We jumped on the shuttle bus alongside the ship and after a long scenic tour round the docks, …
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Up at 7 this morning, literally as we docked in Civatavecchia. A relatively early breakfast and then on the coach to the entrance to the docks. We then took a short walk to Civatavecchia railway station to get a train to Rome We know the route well! It’s only about an hour away and only …
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Ooo err! The Captain announced last night that due to weather conditions, we WOULDN’T be going to Sorrento. He added ‘..and if you are on travel medication, may I suggest you take it tonight…’ Sounds like we were in for a rough night. It was. Rockin’ and rollin’ for most of the night although the …
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We didn’t get up until 8.30 this morning – I think that’s a record!!! 🙂 We’re at sea all day today on our way to Sicily. So we’re heading down the east coast of Italy in the Adriatic round the heel of Italy into the Ionian Sea. A full English breakfast in the restaurant before …
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Up at 2.45 am – that’s even early for me! A short taxi ride to Terminal 2 to get us there for the obligatory 2 hour ‘prior to departure’ check-in. On arrival at the Italia desks we find the check-in desks closed! Queues, queues and more queues! Once through check-in, we head for Security/Departure Gate. …
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A real s*** journey down to Heathrow! Left home at 2.20pm and arrived at the Holiday Inn at 6pm! The main problem seemed to be the M1 around Luton where they are building an extra lane to ease congestion 🙂 Once we got through that we hit the M25 where it was nose-to-tail Yuk! An …
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We’re picking up the ship in Venice – ‘The Seven Seas Navigator’ – and we’ll be sailing around the coast of Italy in a clockwise direction. Venice round to Livorno and then disembarking in Monte Carlo. The total distance covered by the ship is approximately 1250 nautical miles

Ann laid on an Italian menu tonight. Debbie, Stefan, Karen and Paul joined us. Paul was fresh from his golf tournament – where his team won!

Visited ‘Han’ the Chinese restaurant in Market Harborough with David and Val. An excellent meal (as always!)

Used Friday to get their new PC up-to-date and ready-to-use. Nice spec! and all for under 400 pounds from those nice people at Dell. We then went over to theirs today to get it all set up and give Bertie his first PC lesson.

I’ve been doing some more research into HOW I still managed to get ‘flashed’ and my Road Angel Plus didn’t alert me. See my recent Blog HERE It seems that if you are close to the laser gun (less than 150m), then the device will NOT sound an alert! (Diagram courtesy of Blackspot Interactive who …
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I picked up my repaired XDA Executive from the O2 shop in Kettering yesterday. It’ll become a spare device just in case the main one breaks down. Due to a later version of the ROM on the new spare one, I was unable to quickly restore any of the data I backed up from my …
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I must admit, the thought of acquiring a total of NINE points on my Driving Licence hasn’t made me the happiest of people this week. I’ve been nervously waiting for Northamptonshire Ticket office to send me details of either:-1. The inevitable addition of three points on my Licence for speeding in Daventry a week or …
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Our existing colour Printers (The Epson 1200 and Epson 1290) are slowly deteriorating. The 1290 now refuses to print any photographs or labels without smudging. The 1200 just won’t print anything! So, it was off the eBuyer to look for some good deals. We settled on a Canon in the end. The Pixma iP5200. Wow! …
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Lee and Humberto are staying with us for a week or so…

We visited the Restaurant ‘Edwards’ in Crick with David and Val tonight. Superb food and a very friendly atmosphere!

We stayed with Roger, Jane and Oliver for the weekend. I manged to fix the email problem Jane was having with their laptop. My, Oliver is growing!

Mick and Jane came round for a late lunch. We haven’t seen them in quite a while! It was good to catch up, and we even managed to eat outside too! …will this Summer ever end? 🙂

Phew! It’s been hot here during the last three weeks. So much so that we decided to invest in a portable air con unit. We got ours from from Alaskan – a company based near Roger’s business. The unit arrived today. It was really easy to set up and you can even program it to …
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