On Board With Alison

Finding money in a pocket in something you havn't worn for ages (put in holiday fund). Traffic lights being green. Scoring a direct hit with a scrunched up piece of paper in a waste bin. The queue you've chosen to join moves the quickest. Finding change left in a vending…

Back in November, I was very fortunate to not only attend the River Cruise Convention beautiful Cologne and see a variety of the River Cruise Lines on the Rhine, but I was then whisked away to the stunning scenery of the Danube and spent 4 nights onboard the magnificent 5*AmaCerto…

Last Thursday I was very fortunate to be invited to London with my colleague Marie to a unique dining experience. We were invited by Rocky Mountaineer to a superb dinner prepared by their executive chef Jean Pierre Guerin which was prepared the same way and with the same ingredients as…

Firstly, this is the the nightclub where my daughter planned to spend New Year's Eve, before it flooded.   Then this is our town centre where we may have ventured out.   So Mum invited us to hers for dinner but supplies proved a bit of a problem. So we…

Just before Christmas there was a story in the paper about a woman who plunged off the end of St Kilda's pier in Melbourne, Australia while viewing Facebook on her mobile. She was thankfully rescued from the water by the emergency services, still tightly clutching her phone. This prompted a…

     When did the expression start about the number of sleeps till something special? Even Leona Lewis is singing about it this year. Well I've jumped on the bandwagon so to speak and have decided to count my sleeps from the 25th December until the 2nd January, hence 8…

  This is the time of year when some names take on a whole new significance. Are you Mary or Joseph or even Jesus, a very well used  name in Spain and South America. Maybe you are a Carol, Holly or Ivy. What about Gabriel, Emanuel, Eve, Noel, Joy or…

Well... where to start? I have just come back from a fabulous cruise on the beautiful Danube with the excellent Ama Waterways and prior to that I was in Cologne with some of my colleagues at the annual River Cruise Convention. On top of that, I had only had 2…

This is a Chinese Brush  picture of a Mulla Mulla which is an Australian flower that I painted in art class on Balmoral at the weekend!! Amazing what you learn on your travels- even the Australian lady sat next to me hadn't heard of that one. Incidently, this was my…

I have just got back from the wonderful "Agatha Christie cruise to the Canaries" on Fred Olsen's  Balmoral. The weather was glorious, the destinations delightful and the theatre company and guest speakers, including Agatha's grandson, were very good. I learnt the art of Chinese Brush Painting and made new friends.…