Day 3

Drove up the west coast, glancing very briefly at the overpopulated hideousness of Playa de las Americas etc. So many people swigging so much beer, shovelling in so much food and producing so much sewage in such a small area makes me feel a bit sick.

Went as far as Los Gigantes, a nice little fishing village nestled beneath the most GIGANTIC cliffs. Tried to take a picture but it's impossible to do them justice.

Stopped at Puerto Santiago, which has a little beach with soft fine warm black sand. Black sand is just wrong. Also, it gets extremely hot and we were marooned on our little beach towels for the afternoon, like a couple of castaways with bright red noses.

Lovely evening on our huge balcony. Cooked some chicken with eight hundred cloves of garlic and got a bit sloshed playing Contract and listening to Marvin Gaye. Developed into Balcony Disco followed by the Whirley Pits.

Contract score: Rich 246 Lucy 252

Tenerife '12

Been a bit stressed out lately, man, so Rich and I have booked a week in an apartment in a very quiet village in Tenerife. The requirements were no stress and a bit of sunshine. So far so good.

Easy flight with SleazyJet on Saturday from Brizzle. Only shouted at Rich a little bit as he expertly drove the hire car that I point blank refuse to drive on the basis that everything's upside down and back to front.

Fifteen minutes later we were at the apartment, which is modern and luxurious and is equipped with every single thing you could want, including 217 CDs, a billion towels and hair straighteners. Am on mission to find something we need that it lacks. Am failing. It's starting to piss me off. (Today I found a box of tea lights and a selection of sun lotion.)

Slept so well. So quiet, what with no dogs barking, cats scratching, ducks quacking or cockerels crowing. Peaceful countryside my arse. If you want a bit of kip, give me a holiday resort any day. Hope Holly and Grace are coping with them all at home *snigger*.

Rich woke me up with a glass of ice cold juice he found in the fridge. Turned out it was Sangria. Ah well.

Drove east along the coast to Playa Tejita. Few nuddies about for entertainment. I've no problem with naturism; it's just not my thing. Makes me laugh. Saw a man with the most massive todger I've ever seen. HUGE. And his girlfriend wore nothing but a short wet neon green T-shirt and a Brazilian. Didn't seem very 'naturist' to me. More 'exhibitionist'.

Noticed that none of the men strutting up and down the beach with their oversized willies wanging about go for a dip in the freezing cold sea. Can't think why.

Started a game of 'contract' (bit like Bridge but easier to understand) on the balcony whilst watching the sunset. Fabulous.

Wandered up to a local bar and had a plate of fish. I wore expensive cream linen. And drank Sangria. Whilst on my period. Was chaos.

Current Contract score: Rich 60 Luce 60

BERLIN Day 4 (continued)

..n June.

Oops.

BERLIN Day 4

Really fabulous meal last night at the Tappas bar. Fell asleep upside down in the bed and kept waking up and getting freaked out by the two fat American tourists on the wall above our bed.

Guess what? Blue skies! The sun is shining!

After breakfast eggs on the riverside we headed north towards the Jewish Quarter. Second attempt to visit the KW gallery en route was thwarted as it doesn't open until noon. Sigh.

Visited the Western Berlin Wall memorial which was interesting and sad and helped me understand, a little bit, what it was actually all about.

Strolled on to Zionskirchplatz and sat out in the sunshine, with rugs over our knees, drinking coffee. Very peaceful.

Have developed massive blister on ball of my left foot, so limped back south towards the river. Third attempt to visit KW thwarted as lady informed us it's closed until Saturday. Ah well. I guess it wasn't meant to be.

Instead we went to C/O Berlin; in a once-very-grand crumbly mansion at the eastern end of Orienstrasse. Downstairs was an exhibition of photographs by Ron Galella (Paparazzi Extraordinaire) which was fabulous (although ironically we were 'verboten' from taking any pics), and by contrast upstairs was a shocking and powerful exhibition by Gundula Schulze Eldowy. Sobering stuff.

Late lunch/early supper, and now whiling away an hour or so in that great little Café Bar I told you about, before getting a cab to the airport.

Berlin is lovely, and oddly the parts on the eastern side of the former wall seem much lovelier than those on the west. Although I guess that probably wasn't the case thirty years ago.

Our catchphrase for this trip, something we found ourselves saying over and over again, was: 'I bet this is lovely in the summer..'

If we ever come back to Berlin we'll definitely come i

BERLIN Day 3

Woken by a text and an image arriving on my phone from a dear friend, sent in error. Was intended for his girlfriend as a belated Valentine's message. Would love to share but having immediately realised his error he freaked, panicked and INSISTED I delete. Suffice to say they caused MUCH hilarity at this end and resulted in Rich and I spending the morning composing apt responses. Unfortunately not many words rhyme with 'labia' (which may indeed be either red or blue, as @bettybluetoyou will testify.)

Today was icy and windy. Bitte, in fact (haha, geddit?). After our breakfast eggs we set off up the riverside path, following the river Spree west past the Reichstag and the stonking brand new government buildings, which are BEAUTIFUL. Weirdly, I think Norman Foster was involved in their design. Anyway, there doesn't appear to be a lot of austerity going down in Berlin, ANGELA BLOODY MERKEL.

Generally speaking Berlin pavements are well-gritted. Not so the riverside path. Was compacted ice and having spent my last weekend at work manipulating fractured wrist after fractured wrist and cursing the idiots who go out in icy weather, I was a bit neurotic - a broken wrist is all I bloody need, frankly - and we literally tottered along to the Tiergarten - the massive park west of Brandenburg Gate. We picked our way through the park to the Victory Column, in the centre, which could be reached via a network of pristine subways and tunnels with sculptural light
installations and not a puddle of piss in sight (get that, Boris). Ironically, right in the middle was a busker, belting out 'Streets of London' and we joined in at the top of our echo-y voices. Was a surreal moment.

Tottered on through the park, and around the Zoological Gardens WHICH I REFUSED TO VISIT AS IT CONTAINS LARGE ANIMALS AND WHAT'S MORE SO SHOULD BLOODY YOU, and on to the western and hence surprisingly unattractive Charlottenburg. Went to KaDeWe, a Department store akin to Harrods, specifically to visit the Wintergarden restaurant on the top floor (as recommended by @smartie999 and @anotherjulia). Was lovely. You wouldn't belieeeeeve the buffet selections - which you pay for by weight; they weigh your plate at the till. Sorts the fat bastards out from the skinny bints. And the rich from the poor. Unfortunately, or fortunately, we'd not long had breakfast so we settled for a humungous cake each instead. Wonderful.

Traipsed on up the canal to Potsdamer Plaza. Didn't like it here AT ALL. All steel and metal and trying much too hard. You know the type.

Back up Eberstrasse, past the very bleak memorial to Murdered European Jews, and back to our new favourite bar - Boese-Buben Bar at the east end of Marienstrasse. Candlelit, wall-to-wall books and mellow music.

I reckon we've walked about six miles a day since we've been here. I reckon I deserve this glass of wine. I'd also like a foot massage please. Cheers, Big Ears.

BERLIN DAY 2

Eggs for breakfast then jumped on a bus to Ostbahnhof to see The Wall. There is a stretch of about 300 metres where the wall is still intact, and on the East side it is a gallery - various artists have done pertinent graffiti art. The west side is just a load of genuine graffiti. It's rather beautiful actually. For some reason I'd imagined the wall to be much wider than it is - it's less than a foot wide - but it's still very imposing.

We walked along the length of the wall, adjacent to the river Spree which was full of great creaking lumps of ice, then crossed the river via the Oberbaumbr bridge. The sun was shining and it was all rather lovely.

We wandered the streets of the Turkish area of Kreuzburg, stopping at a little café for a coffee and to warm our hands in front of the open fire. We took a short cut through a scary park on our way to the Turkish market at Maybachufer. There were some very dodgy-looking characters standing about behaving very oddly. Drug-dealing I think. So we got the Hell outta there.

The Turkish market was exotic and the architecture in Kreuzburg is grand. We continued walking along the Urbanhaden canal - which was frozen solid and full of ice-skaters - all the way to the bottom of Friedrichstrasse, where we checked out Check Point Charlie.

At school my two least favourite subjects were German and History, hence Berlin is a confusing place to me. Check Point Charlie is guarded by American soldiers. Uh? WHAT THE FOOK HAS IT GOT TO DO WITH AMERICA? I don't get it.

Also, if only I could stop Richard from goose-stepping across all the pelican crossings...

We walked on up to Unter Den Linden, through the Brandenburg Gate and to the Reichstag - an incredibly impressive building with a huge glass dome that one can visit provided one has registered on-line, two days in advance. Which we hadn't. Ah well. It looked a bit scary to me. We probably would've bottled out anyway.

Went for a meal in a posh-looking brasserie next to the hotel. It was terrible. Really terrible service and really crap food. And reeeeally expensive. Never mind. We have found our 'favourite' bar, a Tappas place called VOLVER (hahahaha) just up the road. So we finished the evening there. Mellow. And with sore feet.

BERLIN

Originally I'd planned to take Rich to Norfolk for his birthday trip. Neither of us have been to the east coast of England and on the internet I found a lovely looking little cottage in a pretty coastal village with lots of pubs and a Michelin-starred restaurant nearby. Unfortunately the holiday cottage company reckoned that, as mid-February was the 'high' season (seriously?), they would only allow me to book a cottage for a whole week. So I told them to get stuffed and booked three days in Berlin instead, which was cheaper. As it happened the Landrover conked out the day before we left so it's just as well we didn't go for the Norfolk option - throw in the cost of a hire car for a week and a fortnight in Florida would've been cheaper.

I managed to keep our destination a secret until we reached airport security, although he sussed we were flying somewhere when I chucked all of his toiletries out of his luggage. He didn't shriek with excitement when I gave him his boarding pass, but then Richard has never shrieked with excitement in his entire life and, although I had it on good authority from a number of sources, including Holly (@hollygable), that Berlin is ROCKING, I admit that to the uninitiated it does sound a little grey. And cold.

We arrived at our hotel (a funky little place called Art Hotel Luise on Luissenstrasse, close to the Reichstag) at about 11pm German time, and having dumped our luggage, set off to find a rocking bar for a nightcap. It was about minus 10 degrees and snowing and we made the fatal mistake of exiting our hotel and turning right. Three miles of trudging about the freezing pavements later and we hadn't found a single likely-looking establishment. Or in fact any establishment at all, that wasn't locked and barred. This was a bit depressing to be honest, although we've since come to realise that had we turned left, rather than right, we would have happened across many a cosy bar within 200 yards. But at the time it was a bit of a downer. I guess it was the equivalent of stomping around London's Parliament Square or Horseguard's Parade at 11pm on a Sunday night, going 'But where are the BARS? I thought London was supposed to be SWINGING.'

Maybe I should point out here that, ordinarily, I'd rise above such minor set backs, and view this experience as an adventure; a bit of a laugh. But due to life dealing me a few bummer cards lately, I've been struggling to remain buoyant. It was Richard's birthday the next day and I wasn't sure I was up to the task.

Next day started OK. Rich liked his presents. We found a nice place for breakfast, overlooking the frozen river Spree. Three eggs and ham on rye bread set us up nicely, and we set off for Tachela, a huge apartment block at the top end of Oranienburger Strasse which has become a massive squat, occupied by artists. Amazing place. You have to go there. It was incredible.

Next stop was KW on Auguste Strasse. Unfortunately this was closed on Mondays. I was disproportionately sad about that.

Rich is the sort of person who is variously described as 'laid back and easy-going' or 'completely lacking enthusiasm' depending on what mood I'm in. At this point it seemed to me he was the latter, and feeling unequal to the task of motivating both of us, I slumped.

He took my hand and headed for a bar, where an Irish Coffee hit some sort of 'spot' and next thing I knew tears were spilling effortlessly and silently out of my eyes. Fucking Hell. Fucking fucking arsing Hell. It was Rich's fucking BIRTHDAY for fuck's sake. Birthdays are a BIG DEAL.

Anyway. Better out than in, as they say. I felt better, although a bit sheepish, after that and so we went up the Fernsehturm Tower. This is a massive phallus that acts as a landmark all over Berlin. Fortunately it's solid and you don't have to climb up it (we do badly at wobbly towers - we failed in Bruges, Prague and didn't even attempt the Eiffel Tower) but you get whizzed up in a lift and then spewed out at the top before you have the chance to freak out. Was nice up there. And there was a bar.

Was quite a trek back so we jumped on a train. We couldn't work out how to buy a ticket so didn't bother, and fortunately got away with it. Could've been a disaster though, getting arrested in East Berlin an' all.

Found a lovely Vietnamese Restaurant and had a stupendous (early) dinner and hit the sack by 8pm. Rock and roll, baby. Rock and roll.