Misadventure Memoirs

When Col & Marilou travel, what coud possibly go wrong…right?

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  • Man Down in Valencia

    Man Down in Valencia

    The Compulsory Fruit Regime works a treat, only thing is, not really ideal when you’re 20 minutes into a 1.5 hour bus trip! 👀

    We’re starting to get to know our fellow touristas. There’s Helena and Nino from Dubbo, Peter and Sue-Ann from Sydney and Chalky and Rose (dunno where they’re from, but best names ever!). 😄 Everyone seems really nice but they’re all old folks! What the hey?! It’s so weird when you only feel 35 on the inside to realise that these ancient fogeys are your tribe now!

    I found me some chocolate popcorn at our mid morning roadside stop. Too full from brekky to tuck into it right away, but I’m excited for it later in the day! 👏 Our next stop is a town called (hilariously! Bridget, I’m looking at you…) Peniscola!! Miguel, our tour guide pronounces it “pen-IS-cola” with the emphasis on the iss…but we all know we are visualising dicks and brown fizzy drink in a shapely bottle! 😂

    Miguel tells us that Valencia is the paella capital of Spain so we will hunt down a goody tonight. There’s also a local cocktail found nowhere else but Valencia, called Agua De Valencia which consists of gin, vodka, sparkling wine and freshly squeezed orange juice. More about this later. 

    Meanwhile, back to our 2 hours in Peniscola where we stopped for lunch. So it’s the middle of the day and 38 degrees, but we needed some stuff from the pharmacy and supermarket, so we walked a couple of k’s back down the road to attend to our personal admin. On our way back towards the beachfront, who should we meet but Chalky & Rose, the latter sporting her new €8 hat which I admired. By now, both Col and I were sweltering, so we each bought a hat and then wandered to a bar on the beach for mojitos and a rando bag of chippies which constituted our lunch. 

    Our coach had been parked in the blazing sun all of this time so as we reboarded, (and I’ve noted the saturated back of Col’s tshirt) I made a rough estimate that the temperature inside the bus was probs 10 degrees higher than outside. Despite the aircon wheezing and huffing for our remaining journey to Valencia, it made no tangible difference. My €10 personal fan with usb charger purchased from Ale Hop during our lunch break started looking like a true stroke of genius about now! 😁

    Later last evening, after we were rested and refreshed, we caught a taxi to the old part of Valencia and got dropped at Torre Serrano – the ancient gates to the city. It was a beautiful evening to wander around admiring the large open squares, packed with families enjoying a relaxed Sunday meal (although, seeing little kids roaring about at 10pm when there’s school the next day was weird). We delighted in absorbing the atmosphere while admiring the stunning architecture until we were finally ready to have some drinks and find a good restaurant to have paella (apparently a decent paella is not available before 8pm!). It was still in the region of 30 degrees and we had 45 mins to kill so we decided it was time for some good ol’ Agua De Valencia. We downed our whole pitcher in less than 20 minutes and then ordered a bottle of Albariño to have with our seafood paella. 

    Not long after we started eating our scrumptious paella, I felt the Freight Train ‘o Booze swing into my station as our evening moved up a notch. I seem to remember us having a couple of misses finding a taxi home and having to walk a ways to the main gate again. The next bit was a blur, but when we got back to our hotel I paid the taxi driver and exited the vehicle while it seemed Col was dawdling. I doubled back to check out the hold up and was alarmed to see Col’s little leggies flailing about trying to make firm purchase with the ground. I took his arm to shepherd him towards the revolving door of the hotel just as the aforementioned legs went all Thunderbirdy and he subsequently faceplanted into the marble facade of the building! He just went full splat! The full sack of spuds! 😳

    Within seconds, there were various people there to help. Someone fetched a small bag of ice to help stop the bleeding from the bump on his head and the end of his nose (which fortunately wasn’t bent or broken). Some members of our tour group assisted me to help Col up and usher him inside to sit down. Reception staff called an ambulance in case his fall had been the result of a heart or brain malfunction, but within 10 mins it was clear that he was recovering and we cancelled the ambulance call out. 

    By this time, we had a reasonable group of our fellow travellers gathered in Reception to minister to poor Col who was still a bit pale, but just wanted to go to bed with no further fuss. 

    Curiosity amongst the group about the cause of the incident was still at an all time high this morning in the lobby at meet-up…speculation running rife. 😄 Some folks (correctly?) picked it for overindulgence in alcohol. However, we’d had overnight to workshop it and I sold it solidly this morning as the evil effects of dehydration! After all, there was evidence! The saturated t-shirt, the heat, the lack of adequate water consumption during the day, the inappropriate lunchtime nutrition…

    Maybe half of the group swallowed that version. 😂

  • Compulsory Dried Fruit

    Compulsory Dried Fruit

    We walked 15k steps today! It was a big one after 12 hours of solid sleep, commencing with a quick breakfast (complete with pilferage from the buffet selection for snacks later in the day!) before we boarded the bus for a quick guided tour of the sights of Barcelona and then began our walking tour of the medieval quarter at 10am. 

    Having the afternoon free to explore on our own, we headed to Park Guell. On our previous visits to Barcelona, we have visited La Sagrada Familia and La Pedrera, leaving only Casa Battlo and Park Guell to round out our Gaudi immersion experience. The queues at Battlo are always unappealing (and we have it on good authority that La Pedrera is superior anyway) so we chose the Park. So glad we did…it was amazing! From the adorable little gingerbread house to the highest point with a 360 degree view of Barcelona, it was all magnificent!

    Still on a high and all Gaudi’d out, we wandered down the hill to find a bar for a refreshing late afternoon beverage. Finding a little place with a rear courtyard, we ordered two mojitos and waited patiently for 10 to 15 minutes before Col went inside to follow up. Apparently, the lads were kicking back, chatting and giggling…certainly not gainfully whisking up our longed for tall, quenching drinks! We should have known at that point that it was a sign to vacate the premises, but (another) 10 minutes later, two glasses of the most horrendous concoction imaginable were delivered to our table. So, if you can conceptualise, super strong lime cordial enhanced by a dollop of mint sauce, with no ice but a straw. Completely undrinkable! We ordered a Corona each which we skulled and then scurried out of there at the earliest opportunity, leaving the Kermit green horrors untouched! 

    On our way back to our hotel, we stopped off at Barcelona’s old bullring, which has now been converted into a shopping complex. It’s a magnificent structure and has been skilfully adapted to its new purpose. Just inside the main entrance is a stand alone dried fruit retailer called “Luxury Foods” which, over the ensuing 15 minutes was to become the scene of the greatest swindle of all time! (I still can’t explain it, but I swear it involved sleight of hand, hypnotic techniques and perhaps even some rohipnol laced dried strawberries!).

    My first mistake was making eye contact with one of the two sales assistants as we were about to wander past their stall…and that was it…mark made. They worked as a team the pair of them and with rapid fire generosity, they began luring us into their craftily conceived trap by extending gloved fingertips full of plump, succulent and exotic dried fruits. The twist to the trap was that all fruits were the same price, regardless of exoticness, so once we had agreed to purchasing some of our second selection, we were gone! What followed was some evil sorcery whereby one chick plied us with luscious morsels, garnering agreement that, yes, they were indeed splendid, while the other filled a brown paper bag with ladles full of the latest offering that we had agreed was delicious. At one stage I remember glancing at the price and noting €4.50 per 100g…starting to feel a little queasy, not so much from being practically force fed dried fruit, more from the fact that our paper bag was now alarmingly bulging with goodies…all mixed, so of course there was no way back…we were well and truly committed to paying for that stash! When we finally pulled the pin, refusing any further persuasion to try just one more variety, the Great Weigh In occurred…2.1kg of dried fruit!! 😳

    Now I stress, mixed, dried fruit…so there’s no possibility of taking out the black cherries or the cinnamon apple pieces to reduce the pocket hurt…we are dudded beyond belief! The whole days shopping budget is blown on one ginormous bag of dried fruit! €90.45 (that’s AUD 163). What’s more, we have to consume that entire humungous bag of sniper laxatives over the next 30 days as there’s no bringing ‘em back through Australian Customs! (I did a quick calc in the taxi on the way back to our hotel …we’re individually up for a daily compulsory consumption of 34g each for a month. By which time I dare say we will have the cleanest pipes in the Southern Hemisphere!) 😂

  • Ninja Moves @ 2am

    Ninja Moves @ 2am

    What are the odds? I heard my name called as Col and I stood in the queue to board our flight to Doha and there was Lucy’s great friend from school days, Sarah, with her husband and two kids just a few peeps in front of us! It was only the previous weekend that we had (separately) attended Lucy’s 40th birthday party which we all agreed was fabulous. So now, we oohed and aahed about the amazing coincidence of us all being on the same flight as we waited patiently with our fellow Zone 1 passengers, me imagining that we had been selected for preferential boarding (and of course Sarah and her family had also, as they were travelling with children)…dead wrong! The six of us schlepped all the way to the actual bowels of the plane and took up our respective seats in rows 42 & 43! 

    However, there are certain advantages to travelling with people you know around you. Col and I were able to retrieve and return dropped kids items from under their seats, I got the intel on the primo on board snacks (as voted by the kids) and had two bags of chocolate popcorn duly delivered to my seat, and I didn’t hesitate to stand up on my seat and step over Alan, balancing briefly on his aisle armrest before vaulting to the floor at 2am when my bladder threatened to burst! ( I could never have done that with a total stranger in the aisle seat!!)

    All in all, we had an uneventful and comfortable flight. I was thrilled with the performance of my Temu special…a foot hammock that one hangs over the meal tray arms and then closes it to hold the contraption firmly in place. This simple gadget is a life changing total winner! The ultimate cheap scab travel accessory! My foot hammock, together with my new memory foam, wrap-around, Velcro secured neck pillow truly transformed the long haul flight experience for me! (Sarah tried out our spare foot hammock – Col wasn’t having a bar of the fanciful gadget – and she swears it’s a game changer as well!) We parted company with the Duffys in Doha as they transferred on to a flight to London and the two of us flew through to Barcelona.

    It’s always such a ball-breaker when you get to your hotel after 20+ hours of flying and transit not to be able to check in to your room until 2pm! We were dusty and tired, just longing for a shower and to be horizontal for a couple of hours before our tour group’s welcome drinks at 6pm when, (I believe it was me that hatched) the sheer genius plan of adjourning to the rooftop pool for a swim, adjacent loungers for a relaxing lie down, and the nearby bar for a mojito or two whiled away the intervening hours. Scorchin’ scheme! 

  • Fiji Day 1 – No Beer & Two Skittles!

    Fiji Day 1 – No Beer & Two Skittles!

    Arriving at Melbourne airport on Sunday after our bus trip from Geelong, we were pumped for our glorious sojourn in Fiji! We eagerly wheeled towards the escalator heading towards International Departures, however, instead of winging our way to paradise soon thereafter, we spent the entire day at Royal Melbourne Hospital!

    It all started as Col, in typical gentlemanly fashion, stepped aside to allow me to walk onto the escalator with my newly purchased Kmart med/lge hardshell suitcase. Col followed on behind me but, nek minute, all hell broke loose! Instead of my bag tucking in nicely onto the stair below me, it skewed sideways and tipped onto the stair below dragging me bodily with it! I toppled straight backwards, taking Col out as well in a game of catastrophic human skittles! Like some out of control Panzer tank, the jagged metal edges of the escalator steps kept rising up to shred our elderly flesh as we both momentarily lay there, dazed and confused until Col’s Boy Scout training kicked in and, in a stroke of genius, he MacGuyver rolled to the right and lurched back behind his head to reach for the emergency ‘off’ button of the escalator.

    We both lay there for a few seconds like a pile of geriatric jetsam, each performing our personal damage assessment appraisals, until Col arose, relatively unscathed. We were joined within seconds by an airport Customer Liaison volunteer who held up my head while a kind bystander went to fetch some bottled water for us. From some secret doorway within the bowels of the building appeared a young chap by the name of Steven, dressed wholly in black and armed with a walkie-talkie- Steven had merely to show the back of his hand to fellow passengers approaching the escalator to send them scurrying for the lift instead. As Col began to explain how the carnage had occurred, Steven assured us he already knew as he and his colleagues had watched it all unfold on CCTV.

    Meanwhile, I had recovered sufficiently to at least sit up on one of the escalator stairs, but was still in the grips of a vasovagal syncope episode, feeling simultaneously like I was going to faint or vomit, shivering uncontrollably and unable to move to the wheelchair which Steven had made miraculously appear at the bottom of the escalator.

    It was at that moment that a bolt of intense pain shot through my chest from front to back. I managed to start some deep breathing and within minutes was in the wheelchair being guided along Embarrassment Avenue by Steven to the VIP room to await the arrival of Ambulance staff. Although the chest pain was starting to abate, the paramedics ran an ECG, which showed enough variation from normal for them to recommend taking me to the hospital for blood tests to rule out any issue with my heart.

    Many hours later, I was released from hospital in time for us to catch an Uber to a hotel near the airport, have dinner and wait out the night to determine if we could resume our travel plans on Monday. We had our driver in stitches describing Col’s MacGuyver manoeuvre and the likelihood of our CCTV footage making it onto YouTube…or at the very least, providing part of the entertainment package at the Melbourne Airport Christmas party this year!

    When we arrived at the airport the following morning to salvage our bags and rebook our flights, we were assisted by Jenny who immediately knew our story from the 7am staff briefing! She escorted us to the Fiji Airways Service Desk, mentioning to the young man behind the counter that we had left our luggage in their care the previous day, he responded knowingly with “Ohhhhh, you’re that couple that fell down the escalator yesterday!” …and helped us to check in!

    Cut to Friday 5 December 2025 – a gathering of ground staff huddle around a monitor, plastic flutes of bubbles aloft  as one person exclaims “check out the look of dismay on her wee face as she realises that the angle of her body trajectory has an inevitable outcome”…and they all piss themselves laughing!!  

    Postscript: The matching scabs on our respective left legs from the flesh-shredding monster machine’s relentless rise are nearly healed!