Capital tour

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I have absolutely no desire to visit America. The United States thereof, that is.

I didn’t have much desire to visit there before Captain Cheeto came along – maybe Monument Valley, and Washington State, but the rest of it: nah – and I have a good deal less now.

Yeah, I’m sure that I’m missing out with my simplistic anti-American views, but I’m not ruling out travel altogether. It’s just that there are a good number of countries that rank above the US in my list of places I want to visit.

I’d like to do a capital city tour of Europe for example.
Although, maybe I should actually head to the USA for that. Because look at all these places:

Deeply, deeply unoriginal, but I suppose that we need to blame the European settlers for that, rather than the Americans that they became.

And we’re not even going to be able to get to:

Andorra la Vella (Andorra)
Baku (Azerbaijan)
Bratislava (Slovakia)
Bucharest (Romania)
Budapest (Hungary)
Chisinau (Moldova)
Helsinki (Finland)
Kyiv (Ukraine)
Ljubljana (Slovenia)
Luxembourg (Luxembourg)
Monaco (Monaco)
Nicosia (Cyprus)
Podgorica (Montenegro)
Reykjavik (Iceland)
Riga (Latvia)
San Marino (San Marino)
Sarajevo (Bosnia and Herzegovina)
Skopje (North Macedonia)
Sofia (Bulgaria)
Tallinn (Estonia)
Tbilisi (Georgia)
Tirana (Albania)
Vaduz (Liechtenstein)
Valletta (Malta)
Vatican City (Vatican City)
Vilnius (Lithuania) or
Zagreb (Croatia)

if we do this the American way.

So let’s not.

Incidentally, I am reliably informed that there is no Port Louis in the USA either.

I’ll just have to manage with the one here.

Bum bum

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Warning: Juvenile post ahead!
(As if you hadn’t guessed from the title.)

But seriously, Little Miss 6000 recently did her Grade 7 vocal exam. And the natural progression is now to Grade 8, although there’s a consensus that there’s not going to be too much hard work towards that in the remainder of this year.

Just a look.

And so the books were brought home last week. And… well… I was honestly expecting something a little more grown-up and challenging than this:

The rest of the piece (and this bit too, I suppose) is in German.

And I’m sure that it’s going to sound beautiful. But if you can read music, then you’ll note (no pun intended) just how bars 29 and 30 are going to sound, and you’ll understand that I’m going to struggle to keep a straight face.

Blue Flag

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I might be on a nice little island with some lovely beaches, but are any of them Blue Flag Beaches?

Well, actually, no.

While Mauritius is making efforts to achieve Blue Flag status for its beaches, and some beaches have the potential for it, there are no universally recognized Blue Flag beaches listed in the search results for 2025.

Although the water here is stunningly blue and appears to be crystal clear.

Back home, however, Cape Town is full of Blue Flags:

Yep:

  • Bikini Beach
  • Camps Bay
  • Clifton 4th
  • Fish Hoek
  • Llandudno
  • Melkbosstrand
  • Muizenberg
  • Silwerstroomstrand

As ever though, (some of) the locals are accusing the city of “paying” for the titles (that’s not how it works), complaining that their local beach (not on the list) isn’t very clean, or quite simply inventing weird reasons why Cape Town shouldn’t have any Blue Flag Beaches.

Ah yes, the old “orange urine” thing.
And that “continuous” issue.

You might want to see a doctor, Johann.

But I don’t think there’s much danger of that sort of thing, really. Let’s say that 10,000 people each urinate 250ml into the ocean. That’s a total of 2,500 litres of wee. And that sounds a lot until you understand that the volume of the South Atlantic is 160,000,000,000,000,000,000 litres. (That’s 160 million km3).

I think that’s going to be pretty diluted.

I think we’re going to be ok.

As for me – I’m going to take my chances with the Indian Ocean outside my door.

Happy Swimming!

Last time out

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I haven’t been out here for 9 years. But I’m hoping that at least some things won’t have changed.

Like this:

I’m not 100% sure what was in this particular cocktail, but I will have no issue in experimenting out here until I manage to get something like this shot again.

Perhaps with a little more light on the subject in question, although it depends how many subjects I will have gone through before taking the photo as to how successfully it turns out, I guess.

A travel day

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I’m away for a few days.
Traveling all day today – well, the daytime hours, at least – for a few relaxing days away with Mrs 6000.

Actually, she’s already there, so there are plans for a romantic rendezvous on the west coast of a tropical island this evening.

As for the blog, well this is a holiday dedicated to slowing down (almost to a full stop), relaxing and enjoying the sunshine. So there is not much likelihood of any blog posts while I’m out there.

[audience gasps]

Which is why I am writing and scheduling (have written and scheduled by now, I suppose) a few before I go.

[audience sighs with relief]

But, you know, if the need and/or opportunity arises…. You know where to look.

(It’s here.)

See you on the other side. 🙂